Getting Started with Blogging and Google AdSense By Joel Comm www.joelcomm.com ** No part of this book may be copied, or changed in any format, sold, or used in any way other than what is outlined within this book under any circumstances. NOTICE: You DO NOT have the right to copy, give away, sell or otherwise this book. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION — WHAT IS BLOGGING AND WHY IS IT A GREAT ADSENSE EARNER? ....................................................4 1. BLOGGER — FROM USER TO PUBLISHER IN 5 MINUTES OR LESS......................................................................................6 1.2 Adding AdSense To Blogger...............................................8 1.3 Optimizing AdSense on Blogger.........................................8 1.4 Adding Ad Units To Your Blogger Blog...............................10 2. WORDPRESS — EASY TRACKABLE ADS ............................12 2.1 Adding Ad Units To Your Wordpress Blog...........................13 2.2 Phil Hord’s AdSense Inline...............................................13 2.2 The AdSense-Deluxe Wordpress Plugin.............................15 3. MOVABLE TYPE — BLOGGING FOR PROS..........................17 3.1 Creating A Movable Type Account ....................................18 3.2 Putting An Ad After Your First Post...................................19 3.3 Optimizing Channels With Movable Type...........................20 4. BLOG LAYOUTS THAT BRING BIG BUCKS.........................21 4.1 The Top Of The Page......................................................22 4.2 The Sidebar...................................................................22 4.3 The Main Area ...............................................................24 5. CREATING CONTENT — WHAT TO WRITE, HOW MUCH AND HOW OFTEN.........................................................................25 5.1 Keeping It In The Family.................................................26 5.2 Making Your Interests Interesting — And Profitable............27 5.3 Getting The Most Out Of Your Work..................................28 5.4 How Often And How Much? .............................................28 6. BRINGING TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG ................................29 7. CONCLUSION...................................................................31 © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. INTRODUCTION — WHAT IS BLOGGING AND WHY IS IT A GREAT ADSENSE EARNER? There’s a lot to be said for Google’s AdSense advertising program. There’s the way they match the ads to the content of your website. That gives you maximum clicks without annoying your users. There’s the flexibility of changing the way the ads look. That makes your ads attract attention without turning your site into a billboard. And then there’s the fat checks, of course, delivered month after month. That gives you almost anything you want. But probably the best thing about the ability to earn good revenue with AdSense is that anyone can do it. You don’t need any specialized knowledge. You don’t need to invest huge sums of money in expensive hardware. You don’t need anything... except a website. Now, it’s very easy to put up a website these days. You can buy a domain, choose a template and put it on a hosting company’s server in a very short space of time. All you have to do next is fill the pages with good quality content and bring in traffic. Easy, right? Sure it’s easy, but it does require a little bit of work and for those who have never built a site before, that process can look like a bit of an obstacle. The solution is blogging. Putting up a blog and using it for AdSense advertising is simple, fast, and can give you at least as much revenue as building a conventional website. Blogs originally started as online diaries but they quickly developed into so much more. There are no frills, bells or whistles. You just get page after page — usually on someone else’s server — to put all the text and pictures you want. You can write about anything you like from your family life to what’s happening in your workplace to what you think about politics, sport, religion or anything else that takes your fancy. You’ll be amazed at what people want to read. If a topic interests you, you can be certain it’s going to interest someone else. Those people will come to your blog, read your comments and views, and click on your ads. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. You’ll be getting paid by Google to talk about your favorite subject. Making money doesn’t get any better than that. But what makes blogging such an attractive option for people who want to make money with AdSense is that you can be up and running in minutes. Because blogs themselves are so simple — you can think of them as online notebooks that anyone can read — you don’t have to worry about layout or which pages you need to build or even what your site should be about. All you have to do is select the blogging service you want to use, pick one of the professional-looking templates they have available and write the first thing that comes into your head. You can update your blog with a new entry as often as you wish, join blogging circles to bring plenty of interested visitors in quickly and of course, optimize your AdSense ads to blend them into the site. And Google loves blogs. The company loves the fact that the pages change frequently. They love the fact that a good blog builds a loyal fan base. And they love the fact that most blogs focus on one particular topic. All of that means good search engine rankings, well contextualized ads and plenty of good revenue that can start flowing in within just days of launch. Oh... and did I mention that many blogging services are free? In this guide, I’m going to introduce you to three main blogging platforms: Blogger, Wordpress and Movable Type. For each, I’ll explain how to sign up, add AdSense and optimize your ads to maximize your Click Through Rate (CTR). Follow the instructions for one or all of those chapters and you should find yourself earning money. I’ll then provide some tips about the best ways to arrange your ads and choose your content, and offer some advice about bringing people to read your blog and click your ads. By the time you’ve finished reading this guide, you’ll have all the knowledge you need to launch your blog and start earning from it. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. You’ll also be able to do that in less time than it took you to read this guide. Let’s start with Blogger... 1. BLOGGER — FROM USER TO PUBLISHER IN 5 MINUTES OR LESS Fig. 1.1. Create a Blogger blog in 3 easy steps. When you’re just starting out in blogging, your first stop should probably be Blogger (www.blogger.com). Blogger has two main strengths: 1. Set-up is fast. You can be up and running with your own blog in five minutes. Really! 2. It’s owned by Google. That means your AdSense implementation is going to be smoother than a greasy ice rink. 1.1 Creating A Blogger Account There are a few things easier than creating a blog at Blogger: falling out of bed is easier; finding nothing to watch on TV is easier; and spending money is easier... and that’s about it. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Creating an account Picking templates Adding AdSense Maximizing AdSense Fig. 1.2 Creating a blog is as easy as 1-2-3. The first stage is to create your account by choosing a username, a password and a display name — the name that will appear on your blog. Most people don’t want to put their real names on their blog but there’s no reason why you can’t do that if you want to. The second stage is to name your blog. Again, you don’t have to wrack your brain trying to come up with some fancy title. “John’s Blog” or “Jane’s Place” is good enough. At the same time, you’ll be asked to create your own URL. This will be http://[your_choice].blogspot.com. You might have to enter a few possibilities before you come up with an address that hasn’t been taken. You’re not the first person to discover blogging! You can also host your blog somewhere else if you want to, which is nice if you have a domain name of your own that you’d like to use. But if you want to save time, just use Blogger’s own server. And finally, the third stage is to choose a template. Blogger offers twelve templates to start with and once you’ve made your choice you can tweak it to make it suit your taste. They’re all good, professional designs though, so even if you leave your template unchanged, you’ll still have a good looking site. And if none of those twelve take your fancy you can change it for a different template later. There’s a good selection at http://blogger- templates.blogspot.com. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. And that’s it! You’ve got a blog. You’ll then be taken to a page where you can start writing and posting. You’ll also be able to change the settings and formats of your blog, control the comments and play with the template if you want. The most important points on the blog though are what you put in the writing space — and you can start doing that right away — and your AdSense ads. You can start putting those in right away too. 1.2 Adding AdSense To Blogger Your blog is managed from a “dashboard,” which lets you add new posts and change your blog’s settings. Directly beneath the options to do those tasks though is a link to sign up to AdSense. You can also find the AdSense page at: Settings > Template > AdSense To create your AdSense account all you have to is tick the check box that says that you agree to the terms and conditions and click the button at the bottom of the page. Blogger has even completed the rest of the form for you. I do recommend that you read the AdSense terms and conditions though. I know most people take one look at these contracts, assume that everything is okay and tick the box. But with AdSense, they’re important. You want to understand what you can and cannot do to get users to click. Get it wrong and you could find your earnings cut off. You’ll get a summary of the highlights when you complete AdSense’s own form, but it’s worth being familiar with the entire thing. Once you’ve applied for AdSense, you’ll be sent your confirmation email and asked to choose the format of your first AdSense ad. 1.3 Optimizing AdSense on Blogger The principle behind all success with AdSense is to make your ads look like part of your content, not like ads. Blogger assumes that’s how you want your ads to look and it’s a wise assumption. It’s why the default color scheme when you’re first asked to choose your ads is the “Blend Template.” © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. This removes the borders from the ads, makes the background color the same as the background color of your blog’s template and Fig. 1.3 The Blend Template makes your ads match your blog. matches the font colors of the content and title of the ad to the content and title of your blog. Don’t choose any other color scheme. The Match Template is ugly and while choosing other schemes will make your blog look pretty, they won’t do much for your revenues. But Blend Template isn’t perfect. It doesn’t match the font color of the ad with the font color of your blog. The easiest solution is to first choose Blend Template, then Custom. All you’ll have to do next is change the color of the font. Very easy. Fig. 1.4 Customizing the Blend Template. Just change the text. A much tougher choice is the format of the ad. When you’re optimizing your AdSense ads, it’s important to put the right ad format in the right place. You start by placing one ad at the top of the page and you’re likely to get the best results there with one of the following: a 234 x 60 half banner, a 180 x 150 small rectangle or a 468 x 15 horizontal row text link. Why are these formats the best choices for the top of the page? The half banner fills the space very neatly above the first blog entry; the small rectangle leaves plenty of space around the ad, helping it to stand out even though it looks like content; and when the ads © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. are optimized, the horizontal text link will look like a menu bar of a conventional website. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the other formats. You should. But you should use them in different places on the page. Once you’ve added some content to your blog, clicked the link in the confirmation email and filled in the AdSense application form, your next job will be to put more ad units on your page. 1.4 Adding Ad Units To Blogger So you start your blog with one AdSense unit at the top of the page. Google though lets you place up to three ad units on a page, one text link unit and a search box. Each ad unit will display unique ads so you won’t be spamming your users with the same ads over and over again. Stick to just the one ad Blogger gives you and you’re wasting some valuable opportunities. The people at Blogger know this of course and that’s why they explain how to put another ad unit in the sidebar. You can find that guide at http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=974 What Blogger tells you is that you’ll need to log in to your AdSense account and click the tab marked Ad Settings. You’ll then have to choose your ad format and select your colors. Blogger recommends that for the sidebar, you choose between a 125 x 125 button, a 120 x 600 skyscraper, a 160 x 600 wide skyscraper, a 120 x 240 vertical banner and a 180 x 150 small rectangle. Those are all good choices and you’ll have to test them to see which one works best for you. Start with the button, follow your stats for a week, then replace it with a skyscraper and compare the results. You should soon discover which delivers the best CTR on your site. I’d probably skip the narrow skyscraper and the small rectangle but I do recommend that you put in a vertical text link. These are perfect for sidebars and slip in so smoothly under the links that you’ll believe they were made to go there. The colors, of course, should match the colors of your blog. © 2006 Joel Comm and InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.