How do I earn from AdSense

Someone asked these questions about AdSense, and I though I might as well answer them in a post. Will expand on this post as I have more to add.

1) How can i earn from Google AdSense.
2) How will i be paid for it .
3) Do i need to pay anything to Google for this .
4) If i need to pay anything how much it is .
5) Will my personal information will be kept confidential.
6) Do i need any special software.

But before you can earn anything, you will need a website. If you don't have one, you can start a blog. Then you will have to apply for an AdSense account. You can do that by clicking on the text link that says "Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense" at the top of the right sidebar.


How can I earn from Google AdSense??

You can earn from Google AdSense in three ways:
1)Contextual Advertisements
By placing contextual text or images ads on your sites. These ads are of two types - CPC (Cost per Clicks) ads for which you will only be paid if readers click on the ads, and CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) for which you will be paid for just displaying the ads on your site, irrespective of whether the readers click on them or not. Although it is Cost per 1000 impressions, you don't need to reach 1000 impressions to be paid, but you would be paid proportionately for each click. The figures are given as cost per 1000 impressions because if they are given as cost per impressions, the figure will be so small that it will be below 2 decimal points. However, in the long term, CPC and CPM ads should give equivalent earnings to you.

Types of Contextual Ad units
There are 2 type of contextual advertisement units that you can put in your site - ad units and link units. Ad units displayed the ads directly on your site. An example is the Wide Skyscraper Ad unit you see in the left sidebar in this blog. You will be paid as explained as above. An example of link unit is the one you see just below the title of this blog in the Header. You will not be paid for clicks on links in link units. However, clicking on one of them will cause a page with ads relevant to the title of the link. You will be paid as explained above for clicks or impressions as explained above. The maximum number of Ad units you can put in a page is 3, and the maximum number of link unit is 1.

2)AdSense Search
You can put up to 2 AdSense search boxes on your site. They can be just for searching the Web, or they can be used for searching only the content of your site. You will not be paid for readers for using the searchbox, only if they click on any ads that may be displayed in the search result page.

3)Referrals
You can also earn by referring people to join AdSense or AdWord, or to get other things like FireFox with Google toolbar, Google Pack, Picasa. You can see examples of referral text links at the top of the right sidebar of this blog. You can place a maximum of 2 referral buttons or text links per product on your sites, and if your readers click on these, you may be paid under certain conditions. Currently, there are 4 referral products that available - Google AdSense, Google AdWords, FireFox with Google toolbar and Picasa (now being replaced by Google Pack, depending on which country you reside in). For Google AdSense, if your reader join AdSense via your referral button, you will be paid US100 if they manage to earn US$100 within 180 days (6 months). For Google AdWords, if your reader sign up and spend US$100 within 90 days, you will earn US$20. For FireFox with Google toolbar, if your reader download, install and runs the browser for the first time, you will be paid up to US$1 depending on their geographical location. For Picasa, when a user you've referred to Picasa downloads and runs the product for the first time, you will earn up to US$1, also depending which geographical location.

UPDATE 2 February 2007: The pricing structure for AdSense and AdWord have been improved and it is now easier to get a referral fee for them. If within 180 days, the person you referred to AdSense earn their USD5, your account will also be credited with USD5. If within the same period, they earned USD100, your account will be credited with an additional USD250. In addition to these, if within any 180 days you referred 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).

When an advertiser (AdWords) you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5. When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40. If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).

How will i be paid for it?

You will be paid if in a month you earn US100 or more. If you earn less than that, you will not be paid, but the amount will be carried forward and you will be paid when the total reaches US100 or more. You will normally receive your payment by check sent to the address you registered when you apply (even if you don't live in the US). Some countries have the option of being paid by EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer) where the payment is transferred by wire, and will be faster and cost less than being paid by check.
Do i need to pay anything to Google for this
No, you do not need to pay anything to Google. However, for earnings obtained from ads via AdSense searches, some amount may be deducted for the cost of performing the search, but the amount deducted will never be more than what you earn.
Will my personal information will be kept confidential
The only information that anyone can get from the Web is your AdSense ID (which can be obtained by viewing the source code of pages which have your AdSense ads, but which will be useless to them as far as getting personal information about you.) No other personal information is displayed anywhere on the Web.

Do I need any special software?
No, you don't need any software or download anything from AdSense. To participate, all you need to do is to sign into your AdSense account and generate the scripts you need to add to your site to get the AdSense products displayed.

It is very easy to apply for an AdSense account. All you need is a website which some content (someone got his account approved by having just one post in a blog), click on the "Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense" text link at the top of the left sidebar and fill in your particulars

Getting AdSense Products on your Site
If you are new to AdSense, you can learn how to generate the scripts needed from these posts and how to blend the colors to the colors of your site (click BACK button to get back to this page):
Generating scripts for your AdSense Ads

Blending colors of your ads to the colors of your site

Generating script for your AdSense searchbox

Blending color of your searchbox to the colors of your site.

How to set up URL channels

You may have more than one sites displaying AdSense Ads for Content. You may want to see which site is performing better. To track this, you will have to set up URL channels. Then all the clicks and earnings coming from that site will be shown in the report. To set up URL channels, do the following steps:
1. Sign into your AdSense Account
2. Click the AdSense Setup
3. There will be 3 choices, AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search and Referrals. Click AdSense for Content.
4. Under the AdSense Setup tab, click "Channel"
5. Click "URL channels" (See screenshot below. Click to enlarge)
6. Click "Add new URL channels"
7. In the box, enter the URL's of the sites you want to track, one URL per line
8. Then click "Add channels" and you are done.

AdSense for Content URL channel

After that, you don't need to do anything, even when generating the scripts for your ads. You don't need to select the URL channel. You only have to select channels if you are using Custom channels

Canon EOS 450D

Why Canon EOS 450D?

Entry level DSLRs, such as the Canon EOS 450D, are best suited for beginner and amateur photographer but firstly, need to get used to a camera. The images produced are high quality. Canon is also one of the top brands of DSLR.

Canon EOS 450D is the entry level DSLR with an affordable price, yet produces pro-like image quality. It is suitable for beginner and amateur photographer.

The suggested retail price of Canon Malaysia is RM2, 699 (body only) but you can get 450D at less than RM2, 500.

The Canon image stabilizer gives stabilization up to four stops. This means you can successfully shoot a sharp image as low as 1/4second. In practice it doesn't seem to work as effectively.

In my tests I got a blurred image at 1/4second and it wasn't until 1/6second that the image got sharp. Taking shots at 1/6second with the IS on and off showed a definite difference so the lens was certainly doing its job and it's only a 2/3stop difference.

The top plate of the camera has the built in pop-up flash with dedicated hotshoe for external Canon flashguns.

The mode dial features the familiar, green Auto mode with the equally familiar layout of pre-programmed modes below the green box and programmable modes above.

Program mode is the same as Auto in the respect that it does everything for you. Looking in the Menu system will reveal the differences as more options will be open to you for creativity.

AV is Canon's Aperture-Priority mode where you control the aperture and the camera controls the shutter speed. TV is Shutter-Priority and does the reverse of Aperture-Priority. Manual allows you to control both the Shutter and Aperture for full creative control. The final option is A-DEP which stands for Automatic Depth of Field.

The power switch is sat under the mode dial with ISO getting its own dedicated button between the mode dial and the thumb wheel. The shutter release button sits on an oblique ledge away from the other controls.

The AF modes are accessed by pressing the right arrow and three options of One Shot, AI Focus and AI Servo are available.

Pressing left gives access to the drive modes and you can choose from Single Shot, Continuous Shooting, Self Timer (10second), Self Timer (2second) and Continuous Self Timer. The Continuous Shooting is a high speed burst mode generally used for sports photography for capturing fast moving objects. The Self Timer is great for self portraits or if you wish to take landscapes and minimize vibration from pressing the shutter making your pictures super sharp.

The down button has nine pre-set picture styles for Standard, Portrait or Landscape work in addition to Neutral, Faithful, Monochrome (Black & White) and three user defined settings. The pre-set options will adjust the color, contrast and saturation for optimum shooting results in those genres so think of them as pre-set modes for the initiated.

Canon EOS 450D: Build and handling
The low end SLRs and DSLRs from Canon have always strived to be the smallest and lightest. The EOS 450D is the same at a welterweight 475g compared to some rivals such as the Nikon D60 at 495g or the more portly Sony Alpha A200 at 545g. It's by no means the lightest, though with the Olympus E-420 coming in at a sprightly 395g.

The screen is bright and has a new layout with large icons and letters to make it easier for the novice to understand. The shutter speed and aperture dominate the upper portion of the screen with exposure compensation chart just below. The program you're currently in will display to the left with the White Balance setting across from it.

Which Lens?

The Canon kit lens is good enough for beginner. If you have the budget, you should buy a couple of better built lenses to have higher image quality.

After some researches and friends’ suggestions, I have chosen the following lenses to match my Canon EOS 450D:

• Canon EF 24-105mm F/4L IS USM lens — one of the best and most popular Canon general purpose lenses. This is the lens you want if you can only have one lens. It works very well in low lighting condition and best of all; the background of the picture taken is off focus or blur, like those model / superstar picture. relatively good quality for its inexpensive price of around RM 1,200
• Canon EF-S 17-55mm F/2.8 IS USM lens — Wide angle lens. Very high image quality, one of the best general/multi-purpose lenses available.
• Canon EF 100mm F/2.8 USM Macro — Excellent macro lens. The 100mm focal length along with great foreground/background blur quality makes this a great portrait lens as well.
• Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L USM — Telephoto lens, arguably Canon’s best value “L” Lens combining professional grade build and optical qualities.

Canon EOS 450D: Performance
The colour chart test shows the familiar boost in primary colours thanks to the JPEG format and Digic III processor doing as its told. Blue is the most prominent with green and yellow following behind and these help with landscapes. The tones are nicely balanced, but I think the skin colour is too pale.

The kit lens has a close focusing distance of 25cm which is pretty rubbish, but it's only designed for regular use.

I tried the adjustments that can be made in camera by selecting user defined and going into the main menu and choosing shooting styles. Pressing Display in this area will open up the Saturation, Contrast, Sharpening and Colour tone for manipulation.

I took one shot in standard and one with some definitions adjusted, boosting the sharpness, saturation and contrast. The colours certainly look richer in my shot of the old car and the contrast is punchier. This could get tardy if you don't keep an eye on it so be careful.

The shot of the white horse is a quick display I wanted to include to show how a DSLR like the EOS 450D can distort features in this case making the horses nose look larger than it really is. This is done by choosing a wide angle.

The shots of the canal were taken in live view and show how moving the white box around the screen will expose from the chosen area.

The Landscape mode for the image of the lock has chosen a relatively wide aperture of f/8 and shows with the bridge being slightly out of focus.

Chromatic aberration is present from the kit lens shown as green and orange bands on the white bars leading into the canal, the windows and roof of the building but it's not the worst I've seen. There's nice detail in the grass, but I'd like to see it a bit greener maybe.

Despite a pale skin tone result on the color chart, I like the results in Portrait mode. The skin is balanced with no harsh shading from too much contrast. Using the built-in flash has balanced out the shadow areas without overloading the highlights too much which is a good result. Catchlights have been created too, putting more life into the eyes.

The portrait shot taken in Aperture-Priority is a bit darker than the one in Portrait mode. The shadow areas are heavier and putting the camera into portrait picture style hasn't improved the exposure any. Interestingly, Aperture-Priority was set to Centre-Weighted metering, so used that setting, but Portrait mode adjusted to Partial metering which is the obvious reason to the more balanced exposure.

The colour chart has boosted the primary colour, giving good mono tones but the skin tone colour is too pale.	The kit lens is unsuitable for close detail, but putting the subject off-centre creates interest taking your mind off the lack of macro.
Good detail is created in the standard picture style setting.	In User Defined, the settings can be changed, but could get sickly if overdone.
Why the long face? Using a wide angle setting can distort features making them look unusual. Note how the landscape bends slightly on either side of the horse.	Slowing the shutter speed allows for flowing water to smooth out looking like silk. A setting of 1second or slower is a good starting point.
Using the exposure box in live view, I moved it to the grass at the left of the shot.	Moving the exposure box to the reeds has given a slightly flatter exposure due to their neutral colour.
Exposing for the sky makes for a broody shot, but it's predictably underexposed.	In Portrait mode the skin tone is quite nice despite what the colour chart told us.
Using the flash fills in the darker areas nicely without blowing out the highlights. Nice catchlights are added to the eyes.	In Aperture-Priority, the centre-weighted metering has wrongly exposed. The skin is warmer too, but that is the Portrait picture style built in to the camera.

Canon EOS 450D: Plus points
Easy to use
Image stabiliser in standard lens
Nice features
Live view

Canon EOS 450D: Minus points
Change of external media for existing users
Film speed capped at ISO1600
Easily removable battery door

FEATURES

HANDLING

PERFORMANCE

OVERALL

Earn Through Email Marketing

There are many ways you can earn online. The easiest way is be a content publisher and let entities like Google AdSense and Kontera ContentLink, etc., do the rest of the hard work. Their job is to put RELEVANT advertisements to display on your sites. Your part to keep the content informative, useful, interesting, up to date and very important, get traffic to your site. No traffic = no earning.

There are various ways to generate traffic to your site. You may get some tips at build traffic to your site.

Others drive traffic to their sites using advertising campaigns, and a very cost effective one is Google AdWord. With Google AdWord, you can choose CPC (cost per click) ads in which you can specify keywords relevant to your site content, bid for how much you are prepared to pay for clicks to get traffic to your site, pay nothing if no one click, specify geo-targeting (only display for surfers from specified regions), There are other options and you can get more information from Google AdWord.

However, if you can be successful in network marketing, affiliate marketing, e-Commerce, that may bring in money faster that being just a content publisher and depending on advertising income.

For such thing as affiliate or network marketing and such, one of the most valuable thing you can have is a mailing list. He gave me an excel file containing a list of email address, and when I expressed reservation on how he got his mailing list, he assured he has confidence in his source. However, I am going to refer him to iContact Email Marketing which is ideal for those earning that way. I am very wary of using mailing lists. I have a very long list of contacts in my Gmail account obtained mainly from bloggers asking question or requesting help, but hesitate to use such contacts for marketing purposes. One can get reported for sending spam and get into trouble. Using opt-in list, or even better, double op-in list, is much safer and should be the way to go. This PDF file - Email Marketing Best Practices by iContact contains lots of very useful information including importance of opt-in lists and I am going to email him to read that PDF file as it not only have good information and tips on mailing lists, but lots of other good stuff and tips as well.

I am going to encourage to sign up for a iContact 15 days free trial and would encourage you to do the same thing. For there are lots of other features offered by iContact such as autoresponder, however, to see what that have to offer, you have to sign up for a free trial and log in. There are lots more stuff like email newsletter software. newsletter software, etc. You just have to check for yourself.

How To Make Money Online

Earning as an affiliate online

You can make money online even without a product to sell online. Examples are Amazon for physical as well as digital (downloadable products), PayLoadz (for downloadable digital products only), etc. The majority uses the cookie system to track traffic coming from your affiliate links. Cookies are small files and data saved to the computer when you visit a website, and some consider cookies as spyware (non-malicious). If a visitor do not purchase anything on the first visit, if they return to the site later and purchased something within the lifespan of the cookie, you will still earn the commission. Anything later than that, you get nothing.

These are weakness of affiliate programs that uses cookies. Once cookies are deleted, your potential commission is gone, no more.

Also, most affiliate programs gives you affiliate links that are easily identifiable as such, for example

http://www.auctionads.com/refer_2c73d07577f5a006e245

The part that comes after "com" is a give-away that it is an affiliate link, and some envious surfers who do not want you to get your hard earned commission will delete the identifying part an go to

http://www.auctionads.com/

and there goes your commission.

The best affiliate program ever

The best affiliate program I had ever come across is by Online Canadian Pharmacy Escrow Service. The system is not based on the unreliable cookie system. They have a unique system which you can earn commission by referring a visitor to their website, irrespective of when because it has no shelf life. That is pretty generous.

Make money online as a content publisher (Google Adsense)

Google AdSense have a abundant of advertisers and they serve text link ads that are very relevant to the content of your site, plus they have a variety of products (including a site search box which I use in all my blogs) which not only help you earn money, but can help your visitors. In fact, as an AdSense account holder, I have to be very careful when I visit my own site because the advertisements displayed by Google AdSense are normally related to what I am interested in, and if I am not careful, I click on the ads on your own sites, I may get my account suspended. However, things are not really as precarious as I described it because if you do make a mistake, you can to to AdSense Support and you will see a link to an online form to report invalid clicks. Not only that, Google AdSense have a way to detect invalid clicks and will not count them to add to your earning. In fact, I have reported invalid clicks twice and they replied that if it is only one or two, I may not need to report them as they can detect invalid clicks.

Google AdSense have various ways for you to generate income via their program and you can read about them at How do I earn with Google AdSense.

Sell own products online

This is the best option if you have your own products to sell, especially if they are digital products like Software, eBooks, music, movies, digital art, manuals, articles, certificates, forms, files, etc., that can be downloaded by customers 24 hours a day and 7 days a week without you intervening and having to do physical delivery. Selling physical products will involve physical delivery (hard, time consuming manual work) but may be suitable for some.

Some also help sell physical products of merchants who do drop-shipping, that is, you get the sale, they do the shipping. But I suppose the responsibility of the customer actually getting the products purchased falls on you, plus I am not clear about responsibility for the quality of the product.

Yahoo Search Widget Blogger / Blogspot

I have mostly seen yahoo search boxes on most blogs.So i thought of implementing a cute looking yahoo search box widget for blogs.This search widget can search either your blog alone or the entire web.This is just a simple search widget which will nicely fit into your blogger sidebar..

This search box has the google branding logo inserted within the search box.By default the search widget will search your blog.The user can opt to search the entire web if he wants.. To install the widget you may use the widget installer below..

Note:-If you are reading this in a feed reader the widget installer may not be displayed properly..So just visit the original post to get it installed..

SEO To Increase Traffic

When Blogger blogs are listed in the SERP (search engine result page), the default is the blog title is displayed first followed by the post title. See screen shot below:


This is bad especially if the blog title is long, the post title may be truncated. It is better to have the post title first before the blog title like the screen shot below:



In the above case, the post title is displayed first and the blog title is nowhere to be seen. Having the post title displayed first will result in better click through rate from search engines.

Note that had the blog title been as long as the post title you see in the above, the post title would have been obscured, not visible. Even if the blog title did not obscure completely the post title but is before the post title, this will result at less hits (traffic) from search engines. It is also bad for SEO (search engine optimization). It is thus advantageous to have the post title displayed first followed by the blog title.

I tested a hack I found at Optimize Blog Title for Search engine Results and increase visitors on this blog yesterday, Friday 6 February, 2009. I recorded the test at Testing SEO tip - post title and blog title in search engine result page. It will take some time before the change is indexed by the search engines.

And today, one day later, I found the very first search engine result which have the post title displayed before the blog title. Google for countdown for blog and see for yourself or refer to the screen shot below:



Note that the result is displayed as Countdown clock for blog: Blogger Tips and Tricks with the post title displayed first followed by the blog title.

Footnote: I discovered the above by examining the "Recent Pageload Activity" in Statcounter visitor counter statistics. This is one of the thing you can gain from installing a visitor counter. Note that not all the results will have this feature. Some not re-indexed by search engines will not have this feature and it will take time before the rest will display the same. How long I do not know but will continue to check the statistics in my visitor counter