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Firefox is a great browser when compared to Internet Explorer. I know, the geek in me likes Firefox but most people are just rolling their eyes and saying

“Who cares about a browser with not much market share? My buyers don’t use it anyway”

Well there are good reasons to use Firefox, especially as a web business person. I look at Firefox as my portal to the internet as well as a research and content cration tool. basically I use Firefox as a very strong tool to build my business.

Here are some great extensions that you can use with Firefox to extend the ability that a browser can give you for internet marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

The old SEO or great content debate. I fight this one myself all of the time. I will of course post to blogs everyday and let other sites that I have given up on languish for moths without any new content but what is the most important thing to do?

I can spend a couple of hours tweaking the SEO on a blog to see if I can get a few hundred posts to rank better or I can add one more post and see if that post will get me more traffic.

This has always been tough for me as I have no problem at all with the tweaking of the PHP, Perl or HTML code on a site and see instant changes in a look or at the outside wait a month or so to see the efforts of my SEO work to see if it makes the difference. The other thing that I do at times is the external SEO where I will post to forums (with a good signature link) or post to blogs (automated name, email, and website) and just add comments. Here is what I currently look as good valid work.

1. Content - I will add content everyday but from now on I am going to be a bit more focussed. I will do some keyword research using WordTracker and other sites to get good ideas for posts that will sell well in Google, I will also start writing more reviews so that at least the pages views can convert ot something instead of adsense.

2. SEO - I have tweaked my wordpress on another blog and am waiting to see the whole follow, nofollow, index, noindex and how well they will work but I am going to actually implement these changes on all of my sites to see if there will be a big change. I will be posting soon enough about my WordPress plugins that work for SEO and pageviews but for now just know that I am doing some of that.

3. Content fixing - I am going to surf through all of my blogs and improve my internal SEO as well by making sure that all my posts are keyword rich and  that I am using H2 and H3 tags to the best that I can.

4. Site optimization - I have done this on other blogs. Not on this one yet but I will get to that over the Christmas break. This includes making sure that I have good affiliate products and that people can notice the affiliate links, Adsense is optimized and that I can get as many RSS and newsletter subscribers to my posts.

5. External links for traffic - Blog post comments and Forum comments can be good for backlinks but I believe that  most of them are nofollow so Google will not notice them. I will do more of these kinds of posting though for other blog owners to notice my sites as well as for other readers to notice my sites as well.

I think I have kind of captured everything that is in my mind but I have a bunch more stuff in my head that I want to post about mostly around processes and planning that I do well sometimes and badly at other times.

I know that one of the keys to success is knowledge and I have over the years gone to a lot of forums and either stayed with them or left them. These are the ones that I have stuck with for now. I hope that you find them as useful and helpful as I do.

The key to working in a forum or messageboard is to see what people are talking about, see the quality of the answers that are coming across and take note of these people with all of the knowledge and then when you have a question try to tag a situation and some info of your own to the question so that other people will learn from your question and be in a better position to answer as well.

And for god sakes do not push products at all hard on an internet marketing messageboard. We all get pitched enough and on a messageboard everyone is even more sensitive to this then in non internet marketing spots.

Here is my favorites list:

A kind of Web 2.0 of tops stories. I just poke around here once a day to see what is coming up
marktd: latest marketing news

Syndk8.net is a Blackhat community that you can learn from but at the same time some of the people are not at all tolerant of people with stupid questions, this makes it quite entertaining.
Syndik8

Joel Comm’s Adsense messageboard has a ton of info on Adsense and is the best around
AdsenseChat.com - Powered by vBulletin

Warrior Forum. Where they talk about making money. This is the second best place on the net for money making info. Also the Special Offers, refered to as WSO in the board are great content and have great sales copy to learn from.
The Warrior Forum - Main Warrior Discussion

Digital Point is the best place for info, products and anything to do with webmastering, selling, affiliates or anything to do with your internet business.
Webmaster Forum - Internet Marketing & Search Engine Forums

I have not been hanging out at Webmaster World Much lately but if you want to know what is going on with Google this is a great place and the people are amongst the most knowledgeable on the internet.
WebmasterWorld News and Discussion for the Web Professional

This is the most edgy board for internet marketing info. I have learned more here in the last year than anywhere else and people do not tend to push products, instead they will mock ebooks and anything that is not very effective.

WickedFire - Affiliate Marketing Forum - Internet Marketing Webmaster SEO Forum - Powered by vBulletin

PlugIM is another one of those spots to find what is hot in internet marketing
PlugIM

Another Web 2.0 type social bookmarking site Sphinn has a lot of people following and is an influencer for new concepts and great blog posts are highlighted using the service.
Sphinn: News, Discussion Forums & Networking For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals

A new and very good Internet marketing forum with a board for each affiliate program and lots of answers to questions.
eWealth.com Internet Marketing Forum - Affiliate Forums

Revenue source is a great forum that i discovered a few weeks ago that has mounds of info and I have only scratched the surface. I was intrigued with all of the clickbank questions and answers that people had so I guess i will be moving this up my list as one of my real favorites soon enough
Affiliate Marketing & SEO Forums

I visit these sites once or twice a day and probably spend about 60 to 90 minutes total on them per day so I find I learn a lot. Also if I am looking for something in particular quite often Google will point me to one of these with the answer.

The only problem with every forum is that reading makes you feel like you are doing and in real life there is no substitute for learning from the actual doing of building sites and sales pages and learning from your own mistakes and tweaks.

Well there is a new player on the block and that is Auction Ads. Auction ads is being pushed by all of the gurus and is a form of advertizing, like adsense, that will pay you for every time that someone clicks on the ad

The idea behind this is that many people are suing adsense but Google is squeezing the return so much that the returns on advertizing books at Amazon is starting to look good.

If you are interested in trying Auction Ads take a look at their website

AuctionAds: Increase the bid on your site’s income!

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

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.

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it.

Considering the money to be made with Adsense, it is no wonder that they would want to get back into it.

It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many people website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?

Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.

As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

Keep your Adsense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own as, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for.

Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

If ever someone you know chanced upon your Adsense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about Adsense and what not to do with them.

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud. Not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your Adsense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google.

Do not be caught in the Google click fraud. Be aware and be wary.