How To Make Money Online In Nigeria

Top 5 Reasons I Have A Preference For Web Conferencing With Clients

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:39:23 +0000

You must have come across that picture depicting, with a funny twist, human evolution from a chimpanzee to a guy who’s hunched over a computer (if not try searching with “evolution computer” at Google images). It got me thinking that it isn’t that far off from the reality. The image portrays mankind getting addicted and too reliant on technology, and that’s pretty much the truth.

From shopping to watching movies, and from dating to making new friends, we are doing everything on PC’s thanks to the power of Internet.

An idea that’s still in its early stages but promising to become widespread is web conferencing. Despite the fact that this is one thing I’ve been doing for quite some time now. Being in charge of a business that offers online services to a number of clients (web development, designing, Internet Marketing, etc.), I use web conferencing for a number of reasons, which are given below.

To Avoid Presentation Frights

People tap their feet, wring their hands together, play with their hair, and avoid eye contact-clear signs of nervousness even if they manage to keep their face straight and put on a confident facade. These little gestures don’t go unnoticed when people are physically present within three feet of you. These certain giveaways of nervousness chip away the marks you can get at university, or if that was an official presentation, your boss will so not be impressed at all.

While people may still feel the nervousness, it is easier to disguise that in the digital world, during the web conferencing.

Avoid Boardroom Fears

It might seem illogical but it’s true: no matter how many presentations I’ve given since my first one at high school, there is still a certain degree of sweating and anxiety that I just can’t shake off before entering a room full of audience, hanging on every word I utter.

With a web conference, I always feel safer and more confident, and more in control of the proceedings. Naturally when I’m in control, my thoughts and ideas will convert into words and expressions more easily, and I’m a much better speaker than I would have been while being physically present in a full boardroom.

Avoid Appearance Anxieties

As long as your face is fresh and your hair is brushed, you’re good to go live. A serious presentation can make or break a career, and when I’m giving one I can focus on more important things instead of how to greet an important foreigner, or to not do or wear something that might switch off my clients. I can forget that my feet are bare and other insignificant social etiquettes, and worry solely about what’s coming out of my mouth and whether it makes sense or not.

Hassle Free Data and Files Sharing

Web conferencing also eliminates the need to prepare large models and posters to be display on the traditional easel, and individual copies for all attendees. With file sharing software, files can be shared within seconds. Also, computers can be linked in such a way that they display whatever happens on the host computer, so when the presenter needs to change the screen, it is a trivial matter to reflect those changes on everybody’s screens.

But the biggest advantage is yet to come i.e. the video can be recorded and becomes a permanent record. The presentation can always be printed if anybody desires a hard copy. There is simply no shortcoming that’s even worth mentioning.

Save Time and Cost

There is no need to get a boardroom. No need to dress up formally. No need to wait for a specific member who’s stuck in traffic. No hotel bookings, event planning, food issues. Nothing, nada, zilch.People don’t have to fly to places for a single day to attend a conference, and both parties end up saving their time, efforts, and bucks.

The only setback to web conferencing is that you and your audience require hi-speed internet connection for a fluid presentation and this is not readily available in most countries.

Do you use web conferencing to interact with your clients? What has your experience being like and do you love or hate it? Feel free to share with us.

Farah writes on online business related topics. She’s working for a coupon code website that shares discounts for online services like icontact, or gotomeeting. You can find these discounts at icontact coupon and GoToMeeting Promo .

Continue reading this article @ Top 5 Reasons I Have A Preference For Web Conferencing With Clients.

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How To Make A Hot Mess Of An Online Business Venture

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:01:37 +0000

Someone once asked me “With all the money, newbies to the online business creation niche, spend on Guru generated reports, why is there such a large scale failure rate?”

One of the answers I came up with was that most of us were not thinking outside the box but were rather trying to follow the business models detailed in the reports by the Gurus, while ignoring the fact that with so many people reading and downloading these reports worldwide, niche saturation becomes an evil one can easily fall a victim of.

Niche saturation aside, here are some other reasons why most make money online ventures are destined for doom from the get go.

Getting Stuck In Buying Mode: Keep buying those things! If you are confused by what “those things” are, they are the things you buy, download, and move on from because the next thing is being launched! If you keep buying them and just store them away, or say “I’ll do it tomorrow” you will most definitely fail online.

One thing we fail to realize is that over 90% of these “magnificent” reports from these $20,000 a month earning Gurus, all talk about the same goals but with slightly different approaches.

I was lucky it only took me the purchase of two master reports to realize this glaring fact after which I shut down on buying more reports and focused greatly on implementing the info contained in the reports which I had in hand.

Running with Eyes Wide Shut: With the gurus flashing pictures of their fast cars, amazing apartments and supermodel prototype girlfriends, newbies are sometimes way too keen on making it big FAST without paying attention to the small details that matter such as ad tracking, analytics, shopping cart conversion or abandonment and what have you.

These tiny but great details help us know if we are on the right track in our pursuit of online fortunes and how to stay on it for continued success.

Paying Too Much Attention To Failed Attempts – Not every business idea or approach the gurus throw at you is going to work as you’d be efficient in implementing some and fail woefully at others. Do not waste time trying to turn your failures into wins. Focus on what seems to be working excellently well for you now and only when you can’t perfect it anymore should you spend some time researching how to make your failures work.

In the end, the decision is yours if you want to fail or succeed online. I highlighted the most influential ways that will help you fail at a much greater rate. If you want to fail, keep doing what everyone else is doing.

There are so many other ways to crash and burn in the online business world and I’d very glad to have you share those with me by just leaving a comment below and while you are at it, please do take a few seconds to share this article with friends/followers on Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

“Mr. Business” is a business man (surprise) who tries valiantly to employ humor and sarcasm wherever possible in life. He has long been a fan of literally every non-numeric based business topic (payroll is no fun). Aside from having, a passion for developing businesses, “Mr. Business” also has numerous successful offline ventures ranging from a few fitness centers to a business services company. Visit Easy Affiliate Marketing to learn more about how online business is viewed through my eyes.

Continue reading this article @ How To Make A Hot Mess Of An Online Business Venture.

Six Facts You Never Knew About Hostgator Shared Web Hosting

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:27:29 +0000

Compared to Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting and Dedicated server hosting, shared hosting accounts are relatively cheap and that’s why they are the first choice of many a folk that plan to build a website.

Unfortunately we sometimes focus on the price and features of the hosting package without delving into what really matters.

I’m talking about the web hosting company’s terms of service.

Just like you, I’m guilty of being quick to click "I agree" or "Accept" whenever a terms of condition notice pops up on my mobile phone or laptop computer.

What we fail to realize is that whatever business we are trying to build on the hosting companies servers is bound to be affected by certain rules.

Considering the number of calls/emails I get from folks that want to host with Hostgator, I decided to scrutinize their terms of service for you all so nobody gets caught by surprise like a friend of mine whose website was shut down by Hostgator ’cause it was going through a persistent Denial Of Service attack.

Disclosure: Please note that each time you make a purchase via any referral link on this site, I make a commission. Click here for more info.

SIX THINGS YOU OUGHT TO KNOW ABOUT HOSTGATOR

Account Ownership: Some of you have contacted me requesting that I should help them pay for their Hostgator subscription because they do not have debit/credit cards.

What you guys don’t know is that according to the TOS, whosoever owns the credit card or PayPal account used to make payment is the LEGAL owner of the account. I don’t know how this clause affects first time payments or subsequent payments or both.

Visa debit cards aren’t that difficult to acquire these days and you can go for MasterCard Websurfer or Visa Prepaid Buxz from Zenith. In fact I even hear that Skye Bank’s Visa Prepaid Card is a lot cheaper than these ones (according to Ibraheem Toyin).

Unlimited Disk Space Catch: if you’ve been around the web for some time, you might have heard that unlimited disk space hosting plans don’t really exist and this is somewhat of true.

Hostgator offers unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth on all their shared hosting plans but this is subject to the amount of inodes you use up on the server.

According to Hostgator, every file (a webpage, image file, email, etc) on your account uses up 1 inode thus once you breach the 250,000 inodes mark on your account, you will be issued a warning and if you don’t heed the warning, you account will be suspended.

To avoid this, you are HIGHLY adviced not to host large files on your server and to make sure that your clean your domain’s email box regularly as each email received or sent is 1 inode.

NOTE: All accounts are backed up weekly in case of a disk failure. If you pass the 100,000 inode limit or use up to 20GB of disk space, you’ll be removed from the Hostgator weekly complimentary backup system.

Refund Policy: By default, you are entitled to a 45 day money back guarantee but if you use any method of payment aside from PayPal and Credit cards, such as Wire Transfers, Western Union Payments, Checks and Money orders, you will not get a refund.

Intense Server Resource Usage: at any given point in time, you must make sure that your website is not making use of 25% or more of your server’s resources for longer than 25 seconds and MySQL queries should not run longer than 15 seconds.

Violating the above rule will affect other sites hosted on your server and thus your account will be suspended till you fix the problem.

For wordpress users, a good way to prevent this is to install W3 Total Cache and research plugins carefully before installing them as some of them are hoggers of server resources.

Also avoid running cron jobs frequently. The minimum interval for cron jobs on Hostgator shared hosting is 15 minutes. I violated this policy recently when I installed the mailing list plugin, Newsletter but Hostgator had it reset without alerting me .

NOTE: sometimes, the over usage of server resources might not be your fault as is the case of my friend, whose site was the victim of a Denial of Service attack.

If you’re unfortunate to be a victim, Hostgator would do its best to mitigate the attack and if they fail, your site will be taken down and you’d be adviced to sign up for a VPS or Dedicated server account.

Mailing Lists Issues: In a bid to reduce our expenses online, some websites run mailing lists using the email system of their hosting companies as its free of charge unlike services like Aweber, MailChimp etc.

Do please note that Hostgator runs a Zero Tolerance Spam Policy and thus is against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. You MUST only operate a DOUBLE OPT-IN mailing list on their server and you are only allowed to send a maximum of 400 emails per hour.

Any breach of this policy, would lead to the termination of your account!

Forbidden Types of Sites: you cannot host just about any site on Hostgator servers. Investment Sites (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, Second Life/Linden Exchange, Ponzi, MLM/Pyramid Scheme), Hacker focused sites/archives/programs, Sites promoting illegal activities, Forums and/or websites that distribute or link to warez/pirated/illegal content amongst others are NOT ALLOWED!

To my fellow Nigerians sharing free browsing hacks and what have you, if at any point in time, the mobile networks decide to crack down on such sites, Hostgator will terminate your account INSTANTLY without apology.

You’ve been warned!

For more information and before you sign up for any of Hostgator’s web hosting plan, I suggest you go through their Terms of Service @ http://www.hostgator.com/tos/tos.php and Mailing Policy @ http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy.html

I’ve spent over 2 years with Hostgator with no regrets whatsoever as they have been ABSOLUTELY amazing all the way.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HOSTGATOR OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Continue reading this article @ Six Facts You Never Knew About Hostgator Shared Web Hosting.

Cheap Alternative To Payoneer Prepaid MasterCard Debit Card

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:06:10 +0000

If you don’t live in the US, can’t receive checks reliably in your country and you work for online companies such as Elance, Odesk and 2CheckOut, you’d most probably be aware of Payoneer’s Prepaid MasterCard Debit Card which is how these companies pay folks like you.

With ties to Choice Bank Limited in the US, Payoneer debit cards are designed as an online payment solution offered to organizations to enable them send funds to remote employees without a fuss.

Recently I’ve noticed a trend where people go out of their way to own a Payoneer MasterCard simply for transacting online not paying much attention to the somewhat astronomical fees they are about to incur.

If you’re in the market for a regular debit card for offline and online transactions only, there exists a few cheap alternatives to Payoneer that you’re probably yet to discover.

Forget the notion that a debit card generated by a US bank is more widely accepted online. It’s just a fallacy ’cause personally I’ve made online purchases using two debit cards issued by a Nigerian bank ( Zenith Bank’s Visa Prepaid Buxz Debit Card and MasterCard WebSurfer ) and 98 percent of these transactions went through without a hitch at all.

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll be showing how you can save a fortune by simply acquiring a regular debit MasterCard or Visa Prepaid card from your local bank.

NOTE: The cheap MasterCard alternative in this article is none other than the non-personalized Visa Prepaid Buxz offered by Zenith Bank Nigeria PLC.

Let’s begin:

Card to card fund transfers: With both cards you have the amazing option of receiving money from anywhere in the world from another Visa or MasterCard owner. This kind of transaction carries a minimum fee. The fund transfer initiator or you the receiver is subject to 3.75% charge if using Payoneer’s MasterCard while with Zenith Visa Prepaid a flat fee of $5 applies only irrespective of amount transferred.
Online Payments charges: a minimum of $2 is charged by Zenith Bank per online or POS terminal transaction with a maximum of 1.5%. Payoneer ain’t so clear on this but giving this clause on their site that states thus ** When a Purchase Transaction or ATM Withdrawal is requested, up to 3% above market rate will be assessed based on current foreign exchange rates.*, I’m guessing a 3% fee applies.
ATM Withdrawals: just like online payment charges above, Payoneer ain’t so clear on this either and my deductions say they charge $2.15 + maximum of 3% per withdrawal. Visa Prepaid by Zenith charges 2%, 2.5% or 3.5% depending on if it’s a US, Local or International ATM withdrawal.
Monthly Maintenance Fee: I don’t make purchases frequently online. Aside from the occasional purchase off BlackBerry Appworld, Singing Success, etc my main online purchases at the moment are my Netfirms and Hostgator bills which come around once a year. I don’t pay maintenance fees on my Buxz card but with Payoneer you could end up paying as much as $3 a month if you make less than 5 transactions a month and still maintain funds in your account. Imagine being charged for not making a purchase. Ouch!

Transacting with Zenith Bank’s Visa Prepaid only costs you more when you want to load funds to your card over the counter or renew your card as they charge $3 and $7 more respectively compared to Payoneer.

The info above is provided to educate you a little on what charges you are subject to should you become a proud owner of a Nigerian Visa Prepaid card or Payoneer Debit MasterCard.

Be sure to use it wisely and share the info with your facebook and twitter pals .

Continue reading this article @ Cheap Alternative To Payoneer Prepaid MasterCard Debit Card.

Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) Domiciliary Account: All You Need To Know

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:39:26 +0000

Getting paid for making money online can be quite tricky especially for those of us working with companies that don’t pay via Electronic Fund Transfer or Western Union. These companies pay through check or PayPal (which by the way isn’t available to some countries).

Cashing a foreign currency check (dollar/euro/pound denominated) in a country other than where the check was issued can be quite frustrating but with the right bank, you can’t go wrong.

To clear a foreign check in Nigeria, you would need a domiciliary account which is a current account that’s denominated in either Euros, Dollars or Pound Sterling.

I’ve been clearing my Google Adsense cheques here in Nigeria via Guaranty Trust Bank PLC and here’s how you can do the same too without fuss.

This quick guide sums up what you need and how to open a domiciliary account with GTB Nigeria and what they currently charge per transaction be it deposits or withdrawals.

NOTE: Domiciliary accounts are just foreign currency denominated current bank accounts.

How To Open A GTB Domiciliary Account In Nigeria

If you don’t have an account with GTB or own a savings account with them, you will need the following requirements

3 passport photographs
Photocopies of National I’d Card or Drivers License or International Passport.
Minimum of $100 opening deposit
2 completed reference forms from referrals that own current accounts in any bank in Nigeria.
Utility Bill (PHCN, Water bill) that’s no older than 3 months.
Properly filled domiciliary account opening form

NOTE: the minimum balance of $100 does not apply if you’re also depositing a foreign currency cheque at the time of opening the account.

If you already own a current account with GTB, all you have to do is go to the bank with your check or $100 minimum and fill the required form and in 24hrs, your account is live.

At the time of opening the account, it’s highly recommend that you tick all three boxes for dollar, euro and pound sterling transactions should in case you’ll be receiving checks in all those currencies.

Do please note that as it is with most current bank accounts, if you do not make a transaction on your account within 6 months, it will be deactivated!

GTB Nigeria Domiciliary Account Bank Charges

Like I said earlier as it is with current accounts, you should expect to be charged per transaction on your account.

As at the time of writing this post, GTB charges a flat rate of 1% per transaction with a minimum of $10. What this means is that for any transaction below $1,000 you will be charged only $10 and anything above that amount is subject to the 1% flat commission rate.

How to Fund Your GTB Domiciliary Account Via Wire Transfer

There are three major ways of funding your domiciliary account and they are via foreign currency cheques, travellers cheques or Wire Transfers.

Wire transfers are a type of Electronic fund transfer that take place between two banks. Anyone around the world can deposit money into your domiciliary account via wire transfer.

Listed below are the details needed when receiving US Dollars in your Domiciliary account via the USA. This info should be made available to the person initiating the wire transfer over in the States.

THROUGH CITIBANK NEW YORK:

CORRESPONDENT BANK: CITIBANK, NEW YORK

SWIFT CODE: CITIUS33

ABA NO: 021000089

FOR CREDIT OF: GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC, LAGOS NIGERIA

SWIFT CODE: GTBINGLA

ACCOUNT NUMBER: 36129295

FOR FINAL CREDIT OF :……………………………………( Beneficiary’s Name)

BENEFICIARY’S A/C NO: ……………………………………………… (With GTB)

ANY OTHER DETAIL: …………………………………………………………………

(E.g. Sender’s Name, Reference e.t.c)

THROUGH DEUTSCHE BANK:

CORRESPONDENT BANK: DEUTSCHE BANK, NEW YORK

SWIFT CODE: BKTRUS33

ABA NO: 021001033

FOR CREDIT OF: GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC, LAGOS NIGERIA

SWIFT CODE: GTBINGLA

ACCOUNT NUMBER: 04434658

FOR FINAL CREDIT OF: …………………………………… (Beneficiary’s Name)

BENEFICIARY’S A/C NO: …………………………………………… (With GTB)

ANY OTHER DETAIL: …………………………………………………………………

(E.g. Sender’s Name, Reference e.t.c)

THROUGH HSBC NEW YORK:

CORRESPONDENT BANK: HSBC BANK, NEW YORK

SWIFT CODE: MRMDUS33

ABA NO: 021001088

FOR CREDIT OF: GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC, LAGOS NIGERIA

SWIFT CODE: GTBINGLA

ACCOUNT NUMBER: 000156442

FOR FINAL CREDIT OF :……………………………………( Beneficiary’s Name)

BENEFICIARY’S A/C NO: ……………………………………………… (With GTB)

ANY OTHER DETAIL: …………………………………………………………………

(E.g. Sender’s Name, Reference e.t.c)

For more information on sending USD, EUROS AND POUND STRERLING from banks in London and Frankfurt. do please download this free PDF which contains all the major wire transfer channels for Guaranty Trust Bank, Nigeria.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Though I got the file from a customer care agent at the bank, I strongly advise you verify those details at your nearest branch before sending them to whosoever is going to initiate the electronic fund transfer.

Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question regarding this article by using the comment form below. Corrections are also welcome.

Continue reading this article @ Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) Domiciliary Account: All You Need To Know.

How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Online Business

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:04:03 +0000

PHOTO CREDIT: Deviant Art

Learning how to work the affiliate marketing business arena is simple on paper but somewhat challenging once implemented.

One big question that plagues those planning on going into the business is "How can I walk along the path towards a successful affiliate business online while avoiding the massive mistakes so many marketers make?"

Luckily, affiliate marketing as a business model is extraordinarily simple and it can be easy if you follow a set course of actions and don’t stray from your overall goal of having a successful business online.

Are you ready to learn how to start an affiliate marketing business from scratch? Ok, let’s go.

The beauty of running a business online that is centered around being an affiliate is that you never have to create something to sell…you can just sell someone else’s product. This means all you have to do is find a place to send traffic (your own website) and find a way to get that traffic (through marketing online). Once you have these two things set up and mastered it’s virtually impossible to not make money online and run a successful affiliate business.

Here are the three very basic steps you need to take to start an affiliate business online.

Pick a product/niche

This can be hard to do and feel confident about if you’re brand new to affiliate marketing but trust me it only gets easier with time. Right now you’re probably thinking you want to promote whatever makes the most money and isn’t too competitive, right? Well here are a few things to consider: if it costs too much you won’t get as many sales (if any at all) and if it isn’t competitive that probably means you won’t have much traffic or money coming in. Instead go for something that pays out at a medium level (around $25-$50) and has a medium level of competition. This way you know it’ll make money once you start getting traffic.

Please read Researching ClickBank Affiliate Programs for more details.

Set up a website

This is probably the easiest thing to do. You can either hire someone to make a very simple website or if you know how to set up a site yourself you can do this as well. Don’t over complicate this step. You can set up a simple WordPress blog in a matter of minutes and that will be more than suitable for an affiliate site.

All you really need a domain and website for is to have a “home” for you to send your traffic. Don’t spend hours trying to set up a site and don’t pay someone hundreds of dollars either, it isn’t necessary.

If you’d like to set it up yourself, be sure to Like our Facebook Page via PC and then download the free wordpress setup e-books titled: How To Create A WordPress Blog In 4 Easy Steps and Setting The Right Foundations For Your WordPress Blog.

Get your traffic

Ahh, here’s the hard part. To be honest you have a lot of options for getting traffic and each one of them will take a bit of work to “master.” There are free methods in driving organic traffic to your website (like article marketing, video marketing, social media marketing, etc.) and paid methods (media buying, pay-per-click, banner advertising, etc.)

The choice is really yours and each traffic source should be researched individually so you can get all the details on how to properly drive traffic with your desired channel of traffic. If you can master driving traffic it’s like having an on/off switch for cash flow…so put in the effort to get this down.

That’s all for now. More tips on creating a hugely successful affiliate marketing business online coming soon

John Abrena is a marketing consultant for Serverpoint, a leading provider of dedicated servers and VPS hosting plans since 1998. You can follow him on Twitter @johnabrena.

Continue reading this article @ How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Online Business.

Top 4 Reasons Why Your Google Adsense Earnings Suck!

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:04:09 +0000

My hustle to earn some passive income online has been going on for over 2 years now and of the loads of method I’ve tried, Google’s Adsense for Publishers program seems to be the most consistent earner for a past time blogger like me. No wonder that’s where most newbies focus on when they try their hands at hitting it big online.

Most of these newbies, after following all the "rules in the book", still cry out asking why they aren’t reaping enough to show for what they have sown online.

Well allow me to say that, ya’ all need to start looking beyond the whole create high quality content and drive loads of traffic to them recommendations. Those are just tips of the iceberg.

Here are four important things to take note off before you start anticipating huge Google Adsense earnings

The Make Money Online niche sucks:

Most of us probably stumbled on a site that shared tips on making money online via blogging and we quickly decide to create blogs and offer our own advice on making money online. I’m TOTALLY guilty of that but boy am I glad I was quick to realize my mistake .

One thing I failed to realize was that 90% of visitors to make money online sites already knew that I made money via Google Adsense thus they RARELY clicked on ads.

Also the make money online niche pays peanuts per click unless you’re targeting some specific keywords within that niche.

If you ‘re looking to make it big in Adsense, I highly recommend you check out WordStreams’ infographic/free pdf report The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Google AdWords.

Smart Pricing Is Real:

Google doesn’t really pay the exact amount bidden by an advertiser on an ad. They pay you just a little over 60% of that. Now you may sometimes not get the whole of that 60% if Google feels that click will most likely not end in a sale or a particular action for the advertiser.

This is Smart Pricing in a nutshell.

You’re most likely to be smart priced if the bulk of your traffic is coming from sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Google pays more for clicks made by search engine visitors since they are more likely to buy than social media visitors thus you’re advised to only show Google Adsense to search engine visitors ONLY.

For more on Smart Pricing please watch YouTube – AdSense Smart Pricing.

NOTE: Google Analytics kinda sucks at tracking where Google Adsense clicks came from thus I’ve reverted to showing my adsense to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Not All Search Engine Traffic Rocks:

I just told you that payouts on clicks made by search engine visitors are the best BUT these clicks aren’t equal in value.

To further reduce the cost of advertising for its advertisers, Google categorizes its traffic into traffic from developed countries and traffic from developing and undeveloped countries.

Developed countries tend to have a higher purchasing power than other countries thus Google pays more for clicks on ads coming from developed countries. If you’re blogging for adsense, make sure your articles are targeted at folks in the US, Canada, UK, France, UAE etc.

Example: Generally clicks from Nigerian search engine traffic make publishers a maximum of 10 cents only and this is not just coming from me but from other Nigerian bloggers who have studied their earnings closely.

Text Ads With Large Fonts + Plenty White Space Work Best

To increase your CTR, the text of your ads must be clear thus I highly recommend you stick to Arial Large as it seems to be the easiest to read. It works best with 336 * 280 ads but is a fail for 728*90 and 468*90 thus I use both of them for image ads only while I leave the former to show but text and images ads.

Just because Google recommends we show our top performing ad slots above the fold, some of us make the colossal mistake of cramming three many ads into that location and subsequently our CTR begins to drop ’cause we’ve inadvertently created ad blindness.

I was guilty of this too and have learnt my lesson ever since.

LESS IS MORE and I’ve discovered that one image ad, one text/image ad and one ad link banner works best in the top fold but then again, this would depend on your site’s layout.

Always endeavor to leave an adequate amount of white space around your ads so your readers don’t just gloss over those places ’cause they make their eyes sore.

Final Words

Google Adsense readily offers a tool called One Click Optimizer for Adsense publishers and I highly recommend, ya’all check it out as it has helped me a lot.

Finally do not forget to add Google Adsense’s crawler to your robots.txt file as it helps to ensure delivery of relevant ads on your site.

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

Feel free to share your experience with us regarding how you’ve managed to increase your adsense earnings or ask any questions you’ve got bothering you .

Continue reading this article @ Top 4 Reasons Why Your Google Adsense Earnings Suck!.

Get 50% Off All Hostgator Web Hosting Plans – Black Friday Offer

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:26:30 +0000

CLICK HERE TO VISIT HOSTGATOR AND PLACE YOUR ORDER @ THE RIGHT TIME

Thanksgiving is here and so is Hostgator’s renowned Black Friday 50% Off all web hosting offer.

Hostgator has been hosting this blog for close to 2 years now and has decided to extend the upcoming Black Friday fever to all corners of the globe starting Friday, November 25th, 2011 Central Standard Time (-6 GMT). The special offer will run until 11:59PM CST Friday, November 25th, 2011.

If you’ve been dying to host with an international web host with the best customer service ever, here’s your chance. For those of you looking to make money online reselling web hosting, here’s your chance to do so for the price of regular hosting ($12.48/month)!

This applies to ALL Accounts (Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting AND even Dedicated Servers ) and ALL Term Lengths.

Please make use of the Time Zone Converter to know the exact time when the offer starts and ends in your respective countries/time zones

THIS IS WHAT I CALL A ONCE IN A LIFETIME DEAL!

THIS OFFER RUNS ON FRIDAY THE 25TH OF NOVEMBER 2011.

FOR ONE DAY ONLY!

LIMITED SUPPLIES AVAILABLE

FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE!

DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS DEAL!

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Good Keyword Research Helps Make Money Online

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:22:00 +0000

Keyword Research is a MUST if you ever want to make money online. Bad keyword research leads to little or no traffic online and that in turn leads to no money at all. This is one of the points I was trying to pass across in my last post on No Google Search Traffic Despite Great Content? Here’s Why.

For quite sometime in the early days when I started seeking ways to earn free cash online, I ignored this fact until bored out of my freaking mind I decided to download Courtney Tuttle and Mark Butler’s The Keyword Crash Course.

This free e-book was an eye opener so was the information on their blog. I took time out to study their report and using what I learned on my new posts, I was able to get a few posts into the first page of Google all be it in the 8th-10th position.

Till today, it remains the most detailed free report I’ve ever read on keyword research and I highly recommend you get it.

Being an old yet effective ebook, here’s a link an updated tutorial on making money online via long tail keyword research.

Download Courtney Tuttle and Mark Butler’s The Keyword Crash Course below.

Continue reading this article @ Good Keyword Research Helps Make Money Online.

No Google Search Traffic Despite Great Content? Here’s Why

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:57:04 +0000

Recently our chief admin over at Bloggers Lab launched a BlackBerry group strictly for bloggers and internet marketers and during the course of one of our chats over there, a member asked why despite having created enough content on his site, he still wasn’t seeing any search engine traffic or traffic for that matter.

I’ve decided to share my answer to that question with you my readers.

Well in my opinion the reason for this falls on three key points of generating search engine traffic: Content Originality, SEO and Backlinks.

CONTENT ORIGINALITY

It’s not just okay for you to launch a mobile tech blog or make money online blog and then start creating articles on topics that have been treated over and over again to the extent that the search engines are oversaturated with such info.

You need to add some new twist or perspective to the article.

Example: search for the term how to record a video and you’d see over 1billion pages with info on that. Most of these pages have been around for a long time, have plenty of links all over the web pointing to them and of course they have high page rank. Creating an article on this topic again would be a waste of time ’cause to get to the front page of the SERPs would be a mighty task.

Instead here’s what you should do. Look for the latest video camera that’s selling big time and create an article targeted at folks who own this kind of camera with a title that looks like How to record a video with the Sony HDR-SR12 HDD Camcorder.

By so doing this, you guarantee that your article will be seen by the selected number of people who want to read an article on this and you wouldn’t be competing with other web pages that have loads of backlinks

Click here for more on Keyword Research

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

Quite a lot has been said about this despite folks wondering what’s the use of this with Google’s launch of the crazy-as-hell Panda which unfortunately hit my sites big time . It just ain’t enough for you to create content and push them out into cyberspace. You have to optimize them in such a way that the search engines know EXACTLY what they are all about and thus file them in the appropriate place which of course should be the first page of the SERPs .

SEO is an extensive topic and if you’d like to learn more about SEO for blogs on the wordpress platform, please read WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need and WordPress SEO Tutorial – The Definitive Guide – Yoast.

SEO for blogs on Google’s Blogger platform exists but ain’t so easy to accomplish.

QUALITY BACKLINKS

Backlinks are basically links from other sites pointing to yours. These backlinks are like votes in the eyes of the search engines as they view them as the linking site recommending your site on the web. The more of these links you have coming from top quality sites especially those in your niche, the better for you.

If you’re looking for Google search traffic and you’re yet to master the Content Originality + SEO techniques I previously discussed, you would need some major backlinks.

You could take time out and create them yourself using Viperchill’s tips on How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google or you could just hire some hardcore backlink chaser online to do the job for you (for a particular fee of course)

The problem with hiring people to do the job for you is that, they may use techniques that Google finds offensive and in so doing, they get your domain blacklisted for life meaning no search engine love at all.

If you really work hard at the three tips above, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be seeing your first visitors from Google, Yahoo and other search engines soon.

Some social media marketers might tell you that focusing on traffic from sources like Twitter, Digg and Stumbleupon is the best way to go as Google can one day unleash the Panda on your site and end your stay in cyberspace but the same applies to these social networks too. After a while, when new viral diggs, tweets and stumbles surface, yours would begin to lose it’s magic and the visitors begin to trickle until another power user tweets, diggs or stumbles the post again.

Also note Google traffic is mainly where the money is at if you are looking to earn a passive income via affiliate marketing or google adsense. Hope you’ve read my last post detailing the Top 3 Reasons Why Google Adsense Beats Selling Ad Slots when making money online off your blog or website.

For those that desire tons of traffic from Stumbleupon, be sure to read Getting Mass Traffic from StumbleUpon: A Definitive Guide.

If you’d like to join Bloggers Lab on Facebook, click here now. If you’d like to join us on Blackberry messenger, send me your BlackBerry PIN via email and I’ll invite you to the group.

NOTE: These groups are not meant for folks looking to promote their posts/products or engage in small talk/gossip. It’s strictly for asking internet marketing/blogging related questions and helping others out. Scammers and Spammers will not be tolerated at all.
Punto en Boca.

Continue reading this article @ No Google Search Traffic Despite Great Content? Here’s Why.