Adsense – My adsense earnings has been at the highest level for the month of May breaking all previous records– not that the threshold before was that high. This month’s high earnings is brought about by an event that I optimized which brought me in around 200K pageviews in two days. Yep servers were crashing everywhere. lol. You don’t get 25K visitors in an hour and not have consequences. But since I anticipated the onslaught, I have redirected my site to a blogger account so I still was able to take advantage of the huge amount of traffic.

So here’s a tip that some of new newbies at guerilla SEO may not have explored yet. When you’re expecting huge amounts of traffic in any given time, have a blogger account ready and do a 301 redirect. Yes, there’s a plugin for that. Blogger is owned by google so their servers are able to take the kind of server stress that I experienced. Otherwise, your hosting provider will temporarily ban your account.

Adbeans – Adbeans is a dud. After all the email exchanges I had with their representatives on those permalinks and widgets, they couldn’t back it up so yes, I’ve removed them from my blogging network. Twas fun while it lasted folks but yeah, if you want to retain subscribers you gotta deliver. I did earn a little bit from their site before so I guess I’m grateful for that. But it’s time to move on.

Infolinks – What can I say about infolinks? Well it’s no adsense. I’m getting more clicks per day on infolinks than adsense but I’m receiving a fraction of adsense earnings. So it’s not really an adsense alternative, more like a supplement.

Smowtion – Now this is a more compelling argument. Their creatives are really great so I’m seeing some decent conversion from this ad network. This one beats infolinks hands down. I’m excited to see if they’re going to venture into text links. I’d switch to them in a heartbeat.

Kontera – Well just like infolinks. Nothing much there.

Private ad sales – some guy wanted to put in poker links in some of my sites. Poker = gambling. Usually those who have approached me before were willing to pay top dollar (minimum of $300/link) for these gambling type links but I guess those guys aren’t around anymore. I was offered less than $200 for a one year link. Too little money, not worth the risk. So I passed.

Socrates Theme – this is not working for me AT ALL. If you want a great theme for SEO, go with Thesis. At least that one lives up to its promises.

After admiring the amount in my Perfect Money account, I tried looking for ways on how to move the amount to my Paypal account. I looked everywhere and all I see are Russian websites that I had difficulty understanding and there were even a slew of those sites that even at first sight made me want to run away. Too many horror stories I guess. A couple of months have passed and my money was still sitting inside Perfect Money. I thought about doing a bank withdrawal but I was not so sure if I should really upload any personal documentation, so I didn’t.

Another month elapsed and I thought about braving those foreign sounding websites having half-convinced myself that it’s money that I could never touch, only look at. So again I did a lot of research and looked for any website that would convert my Perfect Money dollars to Paypal dollars. Then I got to this link:

magnetic-money.org/en/perfect-money-usd-to-paypal-usd.html

It actually recommended the websites who charges the least commission for converting your Perfect Money dollars to Paypal. I chose n-change.net. I wasn’t really sure if it’s a scam site, but since I’m at my wits’ end on how to get my money out of Perfect Money, I’ll try anything even if it’s a website that I’m not very comfortable with. However, I didn’t transfer my entire money. I thought that if the site turns out to be a scammer, at least I was only scammed a portion of my money. The commission they charged was 8% per transaction with a minimum charge of $4. It was pretty steep but again, I was prepared to bite the bullet.

I had to do a lot of google translate so I can understand the messages I’ve been receiving. After my transaction was said to be successful, I monitored my Paypal account to check if the money would arrive. I checked almost every hour. After a day has passed without any movement from my Paypal account, I was convinced that I’ve been had. I didn’t feel very bad because I was half-expecting it.

However, the following night after I did the N-Change transaction, I got an email from Wow Mine saying that my transaction has been completed and the money is now in my Paypal account. I was skeptical at first but when I double-checked my Paypal account, the promised money was actually there! I was so relieved that right after I got my money, I transferred all my Perfect Money balance to Paypal using N-Change. Now all my money is safely tucked away in Paypal and I couldn’t be happier.

So to folks out there who were in the same predicament as me three months ago, if you have some money in Perfect Money, and you want to move it to Paypal, use N-Change.net. It’s not a scammer site, I’ve used it already in two occasions and everything went like clockwork. This should be a reason to celebrate. Spread the word about N-Change.net!

Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that awards a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone who holds an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on the said banner. So click fraud is the attempt to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income.

There are people setting up sites for the sole purpose of fraudulently generating revenue through Google’s AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.

One of the most complex is through the use of so called “hitbots”. These are automated programs who emulate clicking the links in AdSense banners (there are some that actually click the banners as well).

Google’s AdSense protection scheme is by no means perfect and nearly anyone can find the details of surmounting the protection mechanism, ironically just by doing a Google search.

Another, more rudimentary method is to hire a lot of people in a poor country to click the links on your site. This means these people will actually sit all day and just click links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they’re prepared to do so for just $0.50 an hour.

Of course, there’s a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, the address and the site that had the AdSense banner will be banned, and the illicit behavior might even get the fraudster sued.

To prevent this from happening, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicking. These are basically trojans, located on computers throughout the world (though mostly in the US). What’s even more daunting is that these clicks will appear to originate from an actual computer so such scams are really hard to detect.

And don’t think this happens only in isolated instances. There is a great deal of illegal activity in this domain.

In fact there’s so much that if search engine companies don’t increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.

Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and it has sued those employing such techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there’s certainly room for a lot of improvement.

It is estimated that more then 20% of the clicks that follow an AdSense link are just done in order to get money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe the number of fraudulent clicks to be even twice as large.

There are a great deal more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers clicking each other’s links (which is referred to as “clicking rings”, or spamming people so that they click such links.

Despite Google still holding click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for the advertisers on AdWords, but despite this advertising with Google’s AdSense still remains more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional untargeted advertising schemes.

There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be savvy enough to employ them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network all together for fear of click fraud.

It’s not really about you. Google has standards to which they adhere and there are certain sites that they don’t want their advertiser’s ads on. Check the Program Policies for an exhaustive list of what kind of content sites are not acceptable. For the most part, they do not allow ads to be placed on any site that has excessive profanity. This is probably the hardest one to decipher as the word excessive could mean one thing to a publisher and another thing altogether to the Google Adsense program. To be on the safe side, if you notice more than a couple instances of profanity on a site you are considering using for the Google Adsense program, you might want to consider another site.

Sites that contain ads for beer, liquor or tobacco products are not allowed to participate in the Google Adsense program.

Sites that promote hate or racist attitudes are not allowed to participate in the Google Adsense program.

If the site you are considering promotes gambling, drugs, even prescription drugs then it is not suitable for the Google Adsense program.

A good guideline to go by might be if a site is family oriented. That may not cover everything but it’s a starting place. Again, check the Program Policies for more information.

Why Your Should Not Pay for Your Own Blog Site

If you already have a website that showcases your wares or you’ve been thinking about getting one, that’s great. Since you’re working on building a business anyway, you can only profit more by implementing Google Adsense on your site. As long as it conforms to Google Adsense Program Policies of course.

If, however, blogging is your interest, I say stick with the most popular blogging site you know. Or even two or three of them. Why? Traffic. Lots of it. Blogging on an already populated site versus dreaming up your own blog site is like the difference between 5:00 traffic in New York City and an old dusty country road. Not only do the owners of writingup.com, bloggerparty.com and others like it bring in the traffic, they even help you make money when you bring in more traffic.

Remember what they say in real estate: location, location, location.

1. Traffic Generation: Since the revenue generation from Google AdSense Ads is based on the CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis, the more traffic your have to your website the better are your chances of getting good revenue through AdSense. Most webmasters are fully aware of this fact and employ various tricks to generate high traffic to their website. All such tricks fall under the category of ‘Traffic Generation.

2. Converting traffic to Clicks: Clicks seem to be the best way of increasing AdSense revenue. Prompting the website visitors to click on the AdSense Ads can make a big difference in terms of the AdSense revenue that you earn. A good copy can make the website visitors more confident about your website and hence encourage them to go ahead click the AdSense Ads. Besides the website copy, the website owners apply several other means for getting more clicks. These form the ‘Converting traffic to Clicks category.

3. Attracting High Value AdSense Ads: Besides the traffic to your website, your AdSense revenue is also based on the value of the AdSense Ads. So, some Ads produce more revenue when they are clicked/displayed than the others. This is determined using the Adwords system. Some webmasters develop websites primarily for AdSense revenue generation. These webmasters choose the website topic and orient the content in such a way so as to attract high value AdSense Ads. These tricks form the Attracting High Value AdSense Ads category.

Page impression: A page impression is generally the same as a page view but the number of page impressions can sometimes be different than the page views. This happens when the page is viewed by a visitor but the AdSense code is not executed for some reason (which means that the Ads are not displayed to the visitor).

Ad unit impressions: Whenever you get page impressions, you also get Ad unit impressions. However, the ad unit impressions are dependent on the number of ad units you have on your page i.e. number of ad units that get executed when the page loads on user’s browser. Note that the link unit impressions are also counted as ad unit impressions.

Click: A click (for the purpose of AdSense) is recorded whenever a website visitor clicks on one of the AdSense Ads. Note that a click on a topic in a link unit is not considered as a click.

Click through rate, for the purpose of AdSense, is the number of clicks received by an ad unit divided by the total number of ad unit impressions for that ad unit. So, a better CTR can mean more revenue for you.

Effective CPM: It is calculated as the cost per 1000 impressions. However, do not confuse effective CPM with your earnings. In fact, effective CPM is calculated by dividing your earnings by the number of page impressions and then multiplying the final figure by 1000. Effective CPM is generally used to compare various channels and determine which channels are more profitable for you.

Here are the options that you have for alternate Ads (your choice of content):

Color: A number of people use color for alternate Ads. This involves specifying a valid hexadecimal color code (or you can choose from the color palette provided by Google) for the alternate ad. The choice of color would be such that the ad becomes invisible. This is easily achieved by setting the color of the ad same as the background color of the page.

Image: An image can also be used as an alternate ad. You can either have this image link to some other web page (in such a case you will need to specify an html as alternate ad) or you may just use it as such (for, maybe, enhancing the beauty of your web page).

Another good option is to use ‘Collapsing ad units’. ‘Collapsing ad units’ code will squeeze the ad units that are not utilized (instead of showing the PSAs) on your website. This approach helps in giving a cleaner look to the web page (since the blank areas or non-ad-based images are done away with). It also helps in bringing more emphasis to the AdSense Ads that are displayed on the website.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as adsense text, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

One way in which Search Engines and other pay per click programme providers have attempted to curb the growing click fraud problem is through introducing IP address repetition algorithms. These formulae are designed to pick up on suspicious click patterns emanating from a singular IP address, which can help to uncover the existence of click farms and competitor-led sabotage, as well as identifying potential fraudsters at source.

However, there is an array of problems with this method of attempting to identify the fraudsters. Firstly, fraudsters logging on through a dialup modem, DSL line or cable modem can almost completely bypass this check, as with every new online session, a new IP address is generated. Furthermore, there is an extensive range of software available to alter IP addresses, which again can be used for ‘cheating’ the algorithm. Cookie and session tracking are other methods by which search engines can attempt to uncover potential fraudulent activity, but again there are ways around these for the fraudsters.

More comprehensive software is being developed which profiles and reports on the browsing habits of each click-through to enable companies to track and monitor suspicious behavior, although this could be seen by many as intrusive and ineffective as anything on a small scale is still likely to go unnoticed, based on the vast coverage of ads across the internet.

The problem of click fraud recently hit the headlines with a class action raised against Google, prompting Google to offer $90million as a potential settlement. Perhaps an acceptance of their responsibilities, Google’s offer goes some way to suggest the extent of click fraud, and its vast costs to the internet economy.

There are a number of self-help remedies that can be implemented to keep an organization out of trouble. The first of these remedies is the reliance on search engine optimization and organic listings. If a site is well and fully optimized, it could eventually realize a ranking that another site is willing to pay $2.50 a click for. Similarly, with organically high rankings there are no clickthrough rates, therefore the costs associated with PPC are not applicable. Although the process is significantly more laborious and takes significantly longer to see results, the SEO process is much cheaper in the long run, and with an estimated 25-30% of all clicks being performed fraudulently, an organically high listing can save money which would otherwise be drained by click fraud for more beneficial reinvestment.

Year on year, as the pay per click advertising market continues to grow and expand, surely click fraud will follow suit. Unless an effective means of preventing click fraud is developed and successfully implemented, buyers will steadily lose confidence in the advertising medium and turn to more effective, less wasteful marketing methods, which would seriously hit the search engines and could potentially threaten the online economy as a whole.