As an owner or contributor to many sites, not just search engine related, I've come to learn a thing or two about monetizing a site.

The thing is, I don't mind writing for these sites it gives me an outlet because my mind is always racing with new article ideas.

On one of my sites is about console gaming: Xbox, Nintendo and so on. It's not a huge site, but I get some decent visitors. I have a friend who writes for a similar site that deals with portable gaming units like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.

When we started writing it was for fun and to bring some news to the world. Kind of like a console gaming news aggregator.

So when Google came out with their AdSense product I applied for an account immediately. Since I work in the industry I knew about AdSense long before most people and got an AdSense account within 48 hours of applying for it.

The setup was quite easy. I logged into a web based console and the system helped me pick the types of ads I wanted to display and even helped generate the code to insert into my pages so the ads matched the same font and background color of the site.

All in all it took me about 15 minutes to sign in, generate the code and paste it onto my page template. Now, every page on this site has Google Ads displayed.

And the great part is the ads are related to the content of the pages. For my Nintendo pages, all the ads relate to Nintendo while for the Xbox pages all ads relate to Xbox.

And the best part of this is that for every click on an ad I make a few cents.

Now, I don't make a lot of money on AdSense, but there are sites out there that do. Weblogs Inc. is a series of blogs all built around themes. A recent interview with the founder showed that the sites are on par to make over $1 million in AdSense revenue this year. That's right $1 million from AdSense.

So you can see that AdSense could be a way to make money in addition to whatever else you do on your site.

How do you get an AdSense account?

Well the first thing you need to do is apply for an account.

It's quite simple really, you give some basic information such as the URL of the site that will host the ads, your contact information and so on, and submit your application.

Google responds fairly quickly and generally your site will be accepted if it meets their guidelines and policies. You can find more information on these policies on the AdSense site.

Once you've been accepted it is a matter of creating your ad code, of which there are two basic types.

AdSense for Content

AdSense for Content is the most common type of ad displayed. These are the ads you see on sites that are marked with "Ads by Goooogle" either above or below the ads, much like the ads you see on Google's site.

The display formats vary for these types of ads which you can see on the AdSense site here. As you will see, there are a variety of layouts available, from text ads to banners.

Once you've selected the type of ads you want to display on your site, you pick the number of ads, and apply a style.

Pick a style which matches your site. In other words, try and pick one that has the same color background and text as your site. This way they don't stand out as much.

Finally, copy the code provided by Google (yup they even provide that for you - pretty simple hey?) and paste it on your page where you want it. Google even provides ideas on the best placement of your ads. Check this page out for more information on ad placement.

AdSense for Search

As the name implies, this is a Google search box which you'd place on your site that searches Google and returns Google results. For these searches you can earn money as well.

Google even allows you to customize the search box by changing the colors to match your site and even insert your own logo if you'd like.

Then, when you've added this feature to your site, your visitors will be able to search Google or search your site and, as I mentioned, if they select an ad you get a cut of that money. You can even find out what phrases people were searching for.

Tracking your Performance

Once you have the ad code(s) inserted into your site the first ads you will likely see are PSA (Public Service Announcements). This is because Google uses its advanced crawling technology to crawl the pages where the ad code are found and matches ads to the content.

Therefore if you check back in 15 or 20 minutes you should see ads that closely match the content of the page on which the ad code is found.

Google also offers you a way to monitor your AdSense account's performance.

By logging into the AdSense console you can generate tons of different reports showing click through rates, impressions, average returns per click and more.

Further, you can get more advanced as time goes on, by setting up channels and tracking them separately. Google now allows for 200 channels. Which means you can have 200 different ad display types scattered throughout your site.

Lets say, for example, that you want a search box as well as ads, but you have different places you want to place ads on your home page as your internal pages.

By using channels, you can track the clicks separately to see which types of ad positions perform better. This allows you to find the best place on your pages to place ad code to make the most money.

Show me the money!

Payments for AdSense are pretty straight forward. Google will mail you a check or you can sign up for their beta direct deposit program.

If you click on the "My Account" tab you can edit your payment preferences.

Google only pays out monthly on $100 or more. So if you don't have more than $100 by the end of the month, the total will roll over into the next month and continue to grow until you do have $100 or more by the end of the month.

I remember when I got my first check I was so excited. I was expecting a check with the Google logo you know like the logo they have on their home page. Turns out it was a very official looking corporate type check. Too bad I was going to scan it and save a copy of my first Google check.

Some final thoughts

If you find that your site just doesn't generate enough clicks in a month to generate at least the $100 minimum, you can use your ad code on other sites which do drive more traffic.

If you know someone who has a high traffic site but isn't taking advantage of a program like AdSense, I'd recommend contacting them to see if they'd be willing to display ads on their site. Perhaps you can make a deal with him splitting the ad revenue. Be careful not to distribute your code on too many sites, though, as you could set up flags because your clicks have gone up so quickly in a short time.

One thing some people have been known to do is create content specifically for high paying ads. I read a story once about a guy who built a blog around asbestos removal. He didn't know anything

That way you can monetize your site (and others) using AdSense in addition to your existing products or services.

What In The World Is This Google Sandbox Theory Thing? And How Do I Beat It?

Ok, so over the past month or so I've been collecting various search engine optimization questions from all of you. Today, I'm going to answer what was the most frequently asked question over the past month.

You guessed it... What is the Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? When you finish reading this lesson, you'll be an expert on the good 'ole Google Sandbox Theory and you'll know how to combat its effects. So, pay close attention. This is some very important stuff.

Before I start explaining what the Google Sandbox theory is, let me make a few things clear:

The Google Sandbox theory is just that, a theory, and is without official confirmations from Google or the benefit of years of observation.

The Google Sandbox theory has been floating around since summer 2004, and has only really gained steam after February 4, 2005 , after a major Google index update (something known as the old Google dance).

Without being able to verify the existence of a Sandbox, much less its features, it becomes very hard to devise strategies to combat its effects.

Almost everything that you will read on the Internet on the Google Sandbox theory is conjecture, pieced together from individual experiences and not from a wide-scale objective controlled experiment with hundreds of websites (something that would obviously help in determining the nature of the Sandbox, but is inherently impractical given the demand on resources).

Thus, as I'll be discussing towards the end, it's important that you focus on good' search engine optimization techniques and not place too much emphasis on quick get-out-of-jail' schemes which are, after all, only going to last until the next big Google update.

What is the Google Sandbox Theory?

There are several theories that attempt explain the Google Sandbox effect. Essentially, the problem is simple. Webmasters around the world began to notice that their new websites, optimized and chock full of inbound links, were not ranking well for their selected keywords.

In fact, the most common scenario to be reported was that after being listed in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for a couple of weeks, pages were either dropped from the index or ranked extremely low for their most important keywords.

This pattern was tracked down to websites that were created (by created I mean that their domain name was purchased and the website was registered) around March 2004. All websites created around or after March 2004 were said to be suffering from the Sandbox effect.

Some outliers escaped it completely, but webmasters on a broad scale had to deal with their websites ranking poorly even for terms for which they had optimized their websites to death.

Conspiracy theories grew exponentially after the February 2005 update, codenamed Allegra' (how these updates are named I have no clue), when webmasters began seeing vastly fluctuating results and fortunes. Well-ranked websites were loosing their high SERPS positions, while previously low-ranking websites had gained ground to rank near the top for their keywords.

This was a major update to Google's search engine algorithm, but what was interesting was the apparent exodus' of websites from the Google Sandbox. This event gave the strongest evidence yet of the existence of a Google Sandbox, and allowed SEO experts to better understand what the Sandbox effect was about.

Possible explanations for the Google Sandbox effect

A common explanation offered for the Google Sandbox effect is the Time Delay' factor. Essentially, this theory suggests that Google releases websites from the Sandbox after a set period of time. Since many webmasters started feeling the effects of the Sandbox around March-April 2004 and a lot of those websites were released' in the Allegra' update, this website aging' theory has gained a lot of ground.

However, I don't find much truth in the Time Delay' factor because by itself, it's just an artificially imposed penalty on websites and does not improve relevancy (the Holy Grail for search engines). Since Google is the de facto leader of the search engine industry and is continuously making strides to improve relevancy in search results, tactics such as this do not fit in with what we know about Google.

Contrasting evidence from many websites has shown that some websites created before March 2004 were still not released from the Google Sandbox, whereas some websites created as late as July 2004 managed to escape the Google Sandbox effect during the Allegra' update. Along with shattering the Time Delay' theory, this also raises some interesting questions. This evidence has led some webmasters to suggest a link threshold' theory; once a website has accumulated a certain amount of quantity/quality inbound links, it is released from the Sandbox.

While this might be closer to the truth, this cannot be all there is to it. There has been evidence of websites who have escaped the Google Sandbox effect without massive link-building campaigns. In my opinion, link-popularity is definitely a factor in determining when a website is released from the Sandbox but there is one more caveat attached to it.

This concept is known as link-aging'. Basically, this theory states that websites are released from the Sandbox based on the age' of their inbound links. While we only have limited data to analyze, this seems to be the most likely explanation for the Google Sandbox effect.

The link-ageing concept is something that confuses people, who usually consider that it is the website that has to age. While conceptually, a link to a website can only be as old as the website itself, yet if you have don't have enough inbound links after one year, common experience has it that you will not be able to escape from the Google Sandbox. A quick hop around popular SEO forums (you do visit SEO forums, don't you?) will lead you to hundreds of threads discussing various results some websites were launched in July 2004 and escaped by December 2004. Others were stuck in the Sandbox even after the Allegra' update.

How to find out if your website is Sandboxed'

Finding out if your website is Sandboxed' is quite simple. If your website does not appear in any SERPS for your target list of keywords, or if your results are highly depressing (ranked somewhere on the 40 th page) even if you have lots of inbound links and almost-perfect on-page optimization, then your website has been Sandboxed.

Issues such as the Google Sandbox theory tend to distract webmasters from the core good' SEO practices and inadvertently push them towards black-hat or quick-fix techniques to exploit the search engine's weaknesses. The problem with this approach is its short-sightedness. To explain what I'm talking about, let's take a small detour and discuss search engine theory.

Understanding Search Engines

If you're looking to do some SEO, it would help if you tried to understand what search engines are trying to do. Search engines want to present the most relevant information to their users. There are two problems in this the inaccurate search terms that people use and the information glut that is the Internet. To counteract, search engines have developed increasingly complex algorithms to deduce relevancy of content for different search terms.

How does this help us?

Well, as long as you keep producing highly-targeted, quality content that is relevant to the subject of your website (and acquire natural inbound links from related websites), you will stand a good chance for ranking high in SERPS. It sounds ridiculously simple, and in this case, it is. As search engine algorithms evolve, they will continue to do their jobs better, thus becoming better at filtering out trash and presenting the most relevant content to their users.

While each search engine will have different methods of determining search engine placement (Google values inbound links quite a lot, while Yahoo has recently placed additional value on Title tags and domain names), in the end all search engines aim to achieve the same goal, and by aiming to fulfill that goal you will always be able to ensure that your website can achieve a good ranking.

Escaping from the Google Sandbox

Now, from our discussion about the Sandbox theory above, you know that at best, the Google Sandbox is a filter on the search engine's algorithm that has a dampening influence on websites. While most SEO experts will tell you that this effect decreases after a certain period of time, they mistakenly accord it to website aging, or basically, when the website is first spidered by Googlebot. Actually, the Sandbox does holds back' new websites but more importantly, the effects reduce over time not on the basis of website aging, but on link aging.

This means that the time that you spend in the Google Sandbox is directly linked to when you start acquiring quality links for your website. Thus, if you do nothing, your website may not be released from the Google Sandbox.

However, if you keep your head down and keep up with a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and keep adding inbound links to your website, you will be released from the Google Sandbox after an indeterminate period of time (but within a year, probably six months). In other words, the filter will stop having such a massive effect on your website.

As the Allegra' update showed, websites that were constantly being optimized during the time that they were in the Sandbox began to rank quite high for targeted keywords after the Sandbox effect ended.

This and other observations of the Sandbox phenomenon combined with an understanding of search engine philosophy have lead me to pinpoint the following strategies for minimizing your website's Sandboxed' time.

SEO strategies to minimize your website's Sandboxed' time

Despite what some SEO experts might tell you, you don't need do anything different to escape from the Google Sandbox. In fact, if you follow the white hat' rules of search engine optimization and work on the principles I've mentioned many times in this course, you'll not only minimize your website's Sandboxed time but you will also ensure that your website ranks in the top 10 for your target keywords. Here's a list of SEO strategies you should make sure you use when starting out a new website:

Start promoting your website the moment you create your website, not when your website is ready'. Don't make the mistake of waiting for your website to be perfect'. The motto is to get your product out on the market, as quickly as possible, and then worry about improving it. Otherwise, how will you ever start to make money?

Establish a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and follow it religiously. For example, you can set yourself a target of acquiring 20 links per week, or maybe even a target of contacting 10 link partners a day (of course, with SEO Elite, link building is a snap). This will ensure that as you build your website, you also start acquiring inbound links and those links will age properly so that by the time your website exits the Sandbox you would have both a high quantity of inbound links and a thriving website.

Avoid black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing or cloaking'. Google's search algorithm evolves almost daily, and penalties for breaking the rules may keep you stuck in the Sandbox longer than usual.

Save your time by remembering the 20/80 rule: 80 percent of your optimization can be accomplished by just 20 percent of effort. After that, any tweaking left to be done is specific to current search engine tendencies and liable to become ineffective once a search engine updates its algorithm. Therefore don't waste your time in optimizing for each and every search engine just get the basics right and move on to the next page.

Remember, you should always optimize with the end-user in mind, not the search engines.

Like I mentioned earlier, search engines are continuously optimizing their algorithms in order to improve on the key criteria: relevancy. By ensuring that your website content is targeted on a particular keyword, and is judged as good' content based on both on-page optimization (keyword density) and off-page factors (lots of quality inbound links), you will also guarantee that your website will keep ranking highly for your search terms no matter what changes are brought into a search engine's algorithm, whether it's a dampening factor a la Sandbox or any other quirk the search engine industry throws up in the future.
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by Brad Callen
Search Engine Optimization Expert
Get Your Website To The Top Of The Search Engines In Under 28 Days With This Breakthrough SEO Software!
http://www.seoelite.com

Google AdSense Tools & Resources

Google AdSense software, services & ebooks to help you maximize your income from Google AdSense; a pay per click content and search engine advertising program.

Here are some popular Google AdSense products and services, with more coming soon.

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Description

AdSense Tracker is a real-time, server-based, Google AdSense ad tracking program, that tracks ad impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and web searches, by referrer, search engine, keywords, channels, domain, page, and ad format, to help you maximize your AdSense income.

Format

Free Trial

Cost

PHP & SQL Script

Online demo

$99.95

Visit the AdSense Tracker web site

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Description

The Definitive Guide To Google AdSense, by William Charlwood, is a self help guide on how to make money by adding Google AdSense ads to your content webpages and search results.

Format

Pages

Cost

Downloadable ebook (PDF)

101

$67

Visit The Definitive Guide To Google AdSense web site

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Description