Eric flicked me an email about Google Adsense asking if it was worth the effort and what other alternative information products/services should he look at. Here’s an extract of the email I sent back.

Google Custom Search

~Hi Eric, thanks for the kind words. As you can imagine, it’s hard to know if you’re going in the right direction with a site like this, so every time I get a word of encouragement it gives me a little boost to continue.

I run a few other sites as well as this is/was designed to complement their offerings and also to act as a funnel for material that doesn’t suit elsewhere.

<I noticed you use Google AdSense. I’ve been reading up on it this week and trying to separate the reality from the mire of get rich quick schemes. How’s it working for you? Has it been worthwhile?

Using Google Custom Search To Increase Sales

Yes in the sense that is does work. If you can get a nice stream of traffic to your site, it will bring in revenue. But, to keep it in perspective, I get over 200k page impressions per month on the sites. This generates about 1k USD.

1,ooo USD  is fine but it takes a lot of effort to get 200k people to click around your sites every month.

I should add that I haven’t really tried to ‘optimize’ the site for Adsense as some webmasters do. The ads are there and if you want to click them, then it’s a bonus.

But, here’s a tip!

Looking at the stats, it’s the Search that generates the most revenue, not the ads themselves.

You can create a Google Search box, link it to your Adsense account, and use this as a way to encourage visitors to surf around your site.

And here’s an even better tip!

You can configure the Google Search box so that it searches specific sites only. See www.google.com/cse

How Google Custom Search Works

You can setup Google Custom Search to create a customized search experience for your own website.

• Include one or more websites, or specific webpages
• Host the search box and results on your own website
• Customize the look and feel of the results to match your site
• Provide fast and relevant search results
• Make money with AdSense for Search
• Automatically search across links, bookmarks or blogrolls
• Control branding and enhance results presentation via XML results
• Provide quick indexing of your website via On-Demand indexing
• Embed a Custom Search Element into your website for a highly customized in-line search experience.

In other words, you can limit the search to your site and other sites that you specifically want the visitor to go to, such as affiliate sites or partner sites (you could link up with a similar site and arrange cross-searching).

With that said, it does take time to master Adsense, but if you have a long-term strategy, yes it is worthwhile.

I’d recommend using the Adsense plug-ins you can get for WordPress as these help automate the process. Real time-saver.

Why?

Because other areas are much more profitable!

Such as?

Example of Reliable Affiliate Programs

Method123 have been a winner for us from day 1. There a lot of sites offering affiliate/partner programs but this is absolute gold dust!

Their site is right when it says:

• Our Affiliate program differs from others because:
• We are a profitable company and only do business over the web
• We offer large affiliate commissions
• Our average sales amount is extremely high
• Our conversion rate is also high

So, if can write articles about project management or anything to do with running projects, then you can link to their site, drive traffic over and claim your commission.

Things you could write about might be:

• 10 ways to improve your Business Case
• Learn how to write a Feasibility Study in 24 hours
• What you need a Project Charter
• 7 Ways to develop a Project Office Checklist

It’s pretty straightforward. I use other affiliate programs, such as GoDaddy, aWeber and Paypal. They’re all fine but Method123 has worked very well for me.

FYI – their head office is in New Zealand and you get that nice feeling that you’re working with a real company whereas with other programs you get an auto-responder back and then a relationship manager after a few days.

Darren Rowse has a great article if you’re thinking of getting into problogging.

Before I forget, Amazon has been a total time-waster. When I consider the effort v the results I got back – avoid!

I know others recommend it but if you apply yourself and find a 2 or 3 quality affiliate programs, you’ll do much better.

Can you really use Facebook for marketing? To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about this until I really made an effort to figure out how Facebook works, especially it advertising platform. I was comparing it to Google Adwords and that didn’t work. This course on Shoemoney about Facebook Advertising really helped. It’s not cheap but then the good stuff never is.

How to generate leads on Facebook?

The answer I wanted to know was, ‘how can you take advantage of Facebook and leverage it for your business?’

Here are some tactics that can help put Facebook and Social Media to work.

1. Use Facebook pages as hubs — use your Facebook page to launch different campaigns. Promote it and include it in other marketing activates. Facebook pages work if you regularly publish status updates on other peoples’ home pages. Remember, Google indexes fan pages as these are public, whereas personal pages are not.
2. Be exclusive — Use your Fan page as the hub for social activities. Run offers exclusive to Facebook. Once the word gets out, others will want to join. “Being ‘in’ is a key emotional driver for Facebook users. The more exclusive, the more likely people will flock to join. But it has to be compelling.
3. Use coupons — Customers respond to coupons, regardless of the medium in which it appears. For example, a photographer can easily post an offer on Facebook that gives free sessions for large parties or make it time sensitive.
4. Integrate Facebook into your overall marketing plan — Don’t work on Facebook in isolation. Test it to how well it compliments others marketing strategies. Use it for crowdsourcing, product testing and brand development.

Looking for examples?

If you’re seeking an example of those community-building tenets in action, check out Victoria’s Secret Facebook page. The retailer has steadily built a community of more than 2.5-million fans by offering an exclusive element, special offers and the “street cred” that comes with being a fan.

Conclusion

Facebook is a tool in your marketing arsenal. Like any tool, it works if you know how to use it and keep testing. I lost about 200 dollars before my Ad campaigns kicked in. The problem was that I was focusing on writing slogans, straplines and others teasers that work on Google Adwords.

Wrong.

Facebook is visual. It’s the photos you use that make the difference. Credit to Jeremy for this tip.

I asked the little kid if he wanted to know how I made money. He said Yes. ‘It’s called Google Adsense. It’s real simple…’

Parents who run their own business want to share what they’ve learnt with their children. You want what’s best for them, what you didn’t have growing up. In short, a better life. Did your parents explain to you how to run a business? Ever wish they had? Even secretly?

Ireland – The Way it Used to Be

No one in my family, or even in my extended family, had run a business when I was growing up. They were 9-5ers. Older folks worked for companies like Guinness all their life. You got a job. That was it. A combination of factors disallowed them from improving their situation. Religion, education and our location on the edge of Europe all played a part. But it was more than that, if we were really honest.

USA – The Way it Could Be

I moved to the US in my 20s. California to be precise. Pretty soon I was working at Intel, NEC and other IT firms. Some days I’d wake up and wonder how I’d went from a small town in the west of Ireland to working with some of the smartest people on the planet.

Once I got enough work under my belt, I went solo and started as a contractor.

Then I hired some other technical writers and took on small projects, building up our portfolio and attracting larger clients. We weren’t rich but it was great to have some control of where things were going.

And running my own little business gave that feeling of ‘doing something worth doing and doing right every time’. A feeling I didn’t always get working for others.

How to Share What You Don’t Know

Later when I returned to Ireland I would ‘share’ what I’d learned with my former school mates and family.

‘How did you learn all this stuff?’ someone asked after I told them about going to visit MacroMedia (now Adobe). Again, I shared what I knew. And then it hit me.

You can’t share what you don’t know.

My parents had no experience of commerce, of contract negotiations, of any type of business. Other people did ‘business’. They ‘worked’.

Even if they wanted to – and I’m sure they did – they couldn’t explain to me how to get out of the 9-5 and setup my own business.

How to Share What You Know

There is a scene in the Jim Carrey Movie Liar Liar where all the kids explain what their parents do for a living. He’s a Lawyer/Liar, get it?

I asked our son what he thought I did.

‘Surf the web?’

How do you explain that you sell digital products online to a 9 year old? The next day I showed him some of the things I do online. One was Google AdSense.
‘You put the ads on your site, people click them, and you make money.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

Later that same day he asked me if it was ok to click his own ads. I didn’t get it at first.

What he’d done was copy and pasted my Google Ads into his blog.

Clever!

He was using Blogger.com (but since moved to Posterous as he prefers the interface!) and could add text into the side bar. The Adsense ads were proudly displayed down the nav bar. He sat there waiting for his buddies to click on them and the money to come in.

‘No, you can’t. It’s against the rules.’

‘So, what do you do?’

I showed him how Twitter, Facebook and other sites help drive traffic to the site. The more visitors, the more clicks. I showed him different ad formats. He choose the ones that suited his site best, selected the HTML code and pasted them in. They looked great.

That brought us to marketing and generating traffic.

‘So, can I go on Twitter too?’

And he did and started to ‘encourage’ his buddies to visit his site.

Planting Business Seeds

This story is just the tip of the iceberg. What I got from all this was that you can introduce the principles of business to children if you tap into something they can relate to.

For him it was about financial independence.

Think about it. When you’re a kid, you have to ask your parents for money. And they resent it. They want their own source of income, though they make not be able to articulate it as such.

‘How about if I could make my own money?’

Since then, I’ve introduced him into other aspects of running the business. I don’t called it ‘business’ but phrase things in ways that appeal to him and they he can relate to.

We often talk about pricing strategies, customer segmentation, ecommerce, affiliates, upselling.

This approach allows me to plant the seeds that may come to fruition later on. Or maybe not. As a parent, you have to also keep a distance and tailor your expectations.

But, as long as he keep asking, I’ll keep sharing.

Over to you.

What do you feel are the best ways to introduce business ideas to kids?

Photo:

ShoeMoney gives you ‘skills to pay the bills.’ According to AdAge, ShoeMoney is now the 5^th highest trafficked web marketing site. Since its launch in 2004, it has grown into a multi-million dollar business. 35,000 daily readers, named Best Affiliate Marketing Blog and ranked in Technorati’s top 50 blogs for three years running. It topped $1million in 2009 and will better this in 2010 thanks to the phenomenally successful Shoe Money System And remember, this digital empire is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, not from Silicon Valley or New York.

Who is Jeremy Schoemaker?

Jeremy Schoemaker is ShoeMoney. Let’s look at his background first and then drill down into how he developed this multi-million dollar empire. Jeremy Schoemaker, 36, grew up in Moline, Illinois. As a child he struggled with poor health, most notably weight issues – he was 300+ pounds at age 14 – something he addressed in many blog posts. His solution to constant teasing and the flak that comes with this was typical Schoemaker/ShoeMoney: ‘work that much harder to be that much better than my competition’.

ShoeMoney Timeline on Google News

ShoeMoney Timeline

Before we look at his business philosophy and marketing strategy, let’s look at how he’s developed his business in this timeline.

• 2003 – Started ShoeMoney.com and expanded his ringtone community company, Next Pimp. The site was originally called googleninja.com. This is where he shares information on his life, web marketing, and new projects, such as The Shoe Money System.
  ShoeMoney.com has a very distinct design, especially the logo which is featured on all ShoeMoney products, marketing and TShirts. The site is 100% free to read. Advertisements were added in 2007.
• 2003 – Discovered Google Adsense. One check for $130,000 (one-month earnings from Google AdSense) is the most linked to pages on his blog. His became ‘famous’ in web terms anyway after this check showed his Google AdSense earnings. This photo launched ShoeMoney into the greater public domain and established him as an authority on affiliate marketing and online subscriptions business models. Detractors argued that the photo was digitally altered (e.g. in PhotoShop) and have went to great lengths to prove that he could not have earning this amount from his site. And they’re right, well, up to a point.
  It seems that ShoeMoney runs multiple sites (e.g. networks of automated sites) which have been fine-tuned for Google Adsense. The sum total of these earnings I assume explains the figure. Personally, I don’t care. Even if he didn’t make that amount, kudos for having the marketing smarts to get it out there.
• 2006 – ShoeMoney, with Aaron Wall, Lee Dodd, and Dave Taylor, started a conference called the Elite Retreat. Limited to 30 people and costs $5,000 per person. In 5 events over 4 years (20 events) it has sold out every event. That’s $100k for twenty days work.
• 2007 – With business partner, David Dellanave, launched AuctionAds, an eBay affiliate marketing service that serves eBay auction ads on contextually relevant sites. It won multiple awards and within four months, marketing company Media Whiz purchased a majority stake in it. ShoeMoney says that it made a lot of people a lot of money and “I risked a ton of my own money to start this network and never made a dime off of it until we sold it to Media Whiz.” When sold, it had 25,000 active publishers generating over $2,000,000 a month in revenue. That’s $24 million per year.
• 2008 Launched ShoeMoney Tools – An advanced suite of PPC (Pay Per Click) and SEO tools. Clients include Intel, Microsoft, MTV and Google
• 2008 Launched Shoemoneyx.com — Free 12 week course on internet marketing. This is excellent and I recommend you try it out.
• 2009 Launched The ShoeMoney System — Step by step guide on making money every which way on the internet. This site is targeted at those who want to make money online, not from low-paying blogging activities, but using their site as a platform to run a real web business. There is some overlap with Yaro Starak blog Mastermind system.
• 2009-2010 – ShoeMoney.com generated $1 million dollars from multiple income streams.

How ShoeMoney Really Got Started

Let’s step back a minute and see how he went from a small town in Nebraska to top of the pile.

In 1987, his mother bought him an Apple computer. That was it. From there on he was hooked. Fast forward to 1995 and he landed his first IT job at a local Internet Service Provider. He made one dollar more than he had made in Sears. The pay was irrelevant. This was a chance to work – every day & all day – with all types of technologies.

At the ISP he was thrown in at the deep-end and soon learnt how to use servers, program systems, and built websites. Then, while returning to college, he started to get calls from companies wanting to advertise on his sites. The penny dropped! He could make money doing when he loved.

What ‘s important to note here is that like many successful IT entrepreneurs, for example, Bill Gates, Schoemaker knows how things work ‘under the hood’. John Chow, a business associate of Schoemaker, is similar. Instead of getting other people to teach them, they make the deep dives into the technology, figure out how it works and then get people to teach them how it works. Essentially, that’s it.

‘But many people use AdSense and don’t make a penny’

That’s right, but reading through their sites and you’ll see that their knowledge of PPC, AdSense, Banner Advertising and other monetization strategies is backed up with deep technical knowledge. Web marketers looking for the latest hack, trick, or insight to squeeze the most from AdSense (as an example) read ShoeMoney, John Chow and Neil Patel as they show how they do it.

And, of course, when you see how they do it, you come back for more. This article, for example, shows how to increase AdSense/Adwords click throughs rates with a very clever trick.

Look at the comments under this article and you’ll see why ShoeMoney is so highly-valued. These readers are all experienced web marketers and developers but this Google Adwords trick was totally new to them. High impact articles like this generate incredible traffic, backlinks, live long on the web, and drive subscription rates through the roof.

‘How does this help me?’

#1 Takeaway: instead of writing content that has been discussed 1000 times elsewhere (in some shape or form) create something that really makes your readers go WOW!

This will have a huge impact on your subscription rates and drive repeat traffic to your site, especially if you network on DIGG, StumbleUpon or Facebook. Follow Seth Godin’s suggestion: develop content that is remarkable – something that others can remark on. If it’s not worth remarking on, well…

Ok, back to ShoeMoney…

The dotcom crash in 2002-2003 hit his business very hard wiping out most of his savings. At 28, he was 420 lbs, $50k in debt, and struggling for direction. Luckily, he met his future wife, who, in his own words, ‘showed me that you can get whatever you want if you are willing to work for it.’

#2 Takeaway: ShoeMoney’s business model at this point was based on Google Adwords and other types of advertising. While these business models can be lucrative in boom times, when the economy takes a hit, advertising budgets get cut almost immediately. My reading of this is that when ShoeMoney saw how fragile the advertising business model was, he started to look at other revenue streams. This has come to fruition in the runaway success that is The Shoe Money System

ShoeMoney’s Philosophy & The Coke Theory

His business philosophy centers on three key areas:

1. Embrace New Trends & Exploit Opportunities

His ‘Coke Theory’ best sums up his approach. He gives this example, ‘SMG entered the ring tone market early, captured traffic and has monetized it. Finding angles and exploiting them for profit is a key aspect of SMG. Maximum and diverse revenue streams are built on fairly narrow marketing concepts that are then diversified.’

With the ‘The Coke Theory’, you take an existing product, give it a new twist and then find ways to leverage its position to generate parallel, non-competitive income streams. It’s the same approach Coke use with Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Zero – at the end of the day, it’s just Coke.

How you position the product – and create insatiable demand for its new features – is what matters.

2. Focus On Core Strengths

ShoeMoney’s focus is on product development, marketing and site design in that order. Unlike others who’ve invested in expensive site designs (and re-designs) first, he ‘built his sites on those natural marketing principles while running the backend. Web design was a secondary skill, so he focused on the marketing of the sites, which then built revenue.’

Once these were running successfully, he invested in a professional looking web design.

Since then he has launched other sites all of whom ‘expand their income potential by building a network of sites centered on a central theme.’

3. Small Changes Create Big Revenue

ShoeMoney loves to experiment and this comes through in many articles. The purpose here is to look for ways to fine-tune small areas which, when optimized, generate higher returns.

‘Once the traffic is there, small changes in design and structure can make big changes in revenue. Ad placement, recurring subscriptions and affiliate marketing can add value to a site without disrupting the base of revenue.’

What he’s doing here is classic process improvement. He (and his team) look at areas of the site, make adjustments, perform split tests, and then compare the results. Most of us don’t reach our goals as we don’t do the comparisons, testing and analysis. So, for example, while your AdSense campaigns may be ‘successful’, the hard data isn’t there to refine the campaigns. If you’re interested into this type of in depth analysis, get his free newsletter. And, if that impresses you (and it will!) try out the ShoeMoney system.

Remember the ‘Coke Theory’

He’s not shy about discussing his turkeys (i.e. sites that bombed). See My Top 10 Worst Ideas To Make Money

which, of course, makes him (and his business) more human. After all, most of us have up and downs, so seeing his failures helps us relate to him.

#3 Takeaway: Why ShoeMoney talks about his business failures

He does this for several reasons.

1. You can see his progression over the years. He’s not a flight-by-night operator. He’s here for the long haul. Knowing this, you feel that bit more comfortable and more likely to sign up. Compare this to sites where the About Us page is not about anyone, just generic marketing guff.
2. You empathize with him. Why? Because you’ve been there too. Maybe you’re from a place like Nebraska, have been over-weight, had health issues, or some other disadvantage. Some of this is psychological. If you had a choice between buying from someone you can relate to or some slick perma-tanned type with an achingly perfect lifestyle…
3. We all root for the under-dog.
4. We root for the under-dog because, at some point in your life, you’ve been the under-dog and know what it takes to overcome these obstacles. Maybe you also feel that if he can overcome these obstacles (e.g. poor health), then you can and it encourages you to frame your own efforts.

Why You Should Write The Story of Your Life

Before I forget. Yaro Starak suggests that you write a very detailed life story (his is 5 very long pages) so your readers (and prospective customers) can enter into your world and really connect with you. You can read his life story here.

• John Chow’s life story
• Neil Patel’s (Quick Sprout) life story
• Yaro Starak’s life story

I was skeptical about this until I wrote my own. It’s a very liberating thing to do – and remember, you don’t have to publish it — and based on the emails I’ve received, it does make a difference. Try it.

Target Audience

From a marketing perspective, ShoeMoney.com is an interesting mix. Scanning through the comments on his blog/forum, his followers are made up of newbies (asking how do I type questions) and experienced web marketers looking for very detailed tactics, seo hacks and marketing strategies. While he caters to both, the long-term fans are the hard core marketers & developers than he offers that most value to. These offer detailed information on Pay Per Click (PPC), Click Through Rates (CTR), advertising strategies, and Split Testing.

What You Can Learn From The ShoeMoney Brand

If you’ve seen the T Shirt, you’ll recognize the brand. ShoeMoney has invested in developed a strong brand, great logo with nice clean artwork, and some very sharp packaging. Look at the polished quality you see in his videos here and compare it to most other blog sites that comes to mind. Don’t be fooled by the ‘Home Grown in Lincoln, NE’ folksy feel. ShoeMoney and his team work hard to make this look easy.

Next Steps

The The Shoe Money System should keep him busy for this year. Reading this article on why he chose Clickbank, it’s clear that this was a major investment of his time and the focus this year will be in developing this further.

New Product Launches – Brian Clark (CopyBlogger) released the very successful Thesis Theme last year. Part of the success was due to the select band of A List Blogger recommending this very slick WordPress Theme and pushing it in their marketing campaigns. Chris Brogan has had it on his home page since it started. Others have drip-fed the recommendations to readers since launch.

For ShoeMoney, linking up with fellow web marketers in his space, for example, John Chow, may be on the cards. Both of these are high-trafficked sites with similar audience profiles and demographics. John Chow’s revenue streams are mostly based on advertising (which he’s very successful at) so there may be tools that compliment his and ShoeMoney’s readers.

Books – I don’t see why he won’t publish a book as he has the traffic and following. Most of his peers, such as Chris Brogan, Brian Solis and Darren Rowse have done so with great success. I’d assume this is in the pipeline.

However, one reason he may not do this (for now) is that it could cannabilize his ShoeMoney site and distract prospect customers from signing up. ‘Well, I just get the book and then see…’ Saying that, specialist book, such as ‘Facebook Advertising Models’ might find an audience as this micro-niche has very little quality books or blog on it to date.

If you know of some, please add them below.

Conclusion

That’s how he does it.

What are the key points for you to note about ShoeMoney’s site? If you’re considering developing a real web business, something more than just a blog with AdSense, then consider the following points:

• Product Development – make this central to your business strategy. Developing a suite of tools insulates you from the ever-changing fortunes (and budgets) that undermine advertising-based models.
• Brand Development – invest X percentage in creating a memorable brand that works both online and offline. The T Shirts are a good example of how you can cross the divide between off and online. They work on pretty girls, geeks and cute puppies. ShoeMoney has developed a cult following of sorts; his site is slightly counter-culture, geeky (see his Theme Song competition) and not trying to please the mainstream.
• Engagement – ShoeMoney writes most of the articles on his site. But, unlike other high profile bloggers, he engages with his readers most every day on the blog and in the forum. He’s posted over 4000 comments in the forums. The rewards are obvious. He has developed a rabid fan-base (not actually rabid, of course) who follow him across all Social Media networks. His YouTube page has 745,583 views and 10,000 subscribers.
• Business v Blog – ShoeMoney runs a web business. It’s not a blog. And he’s been at it for 6 years. I need to stress this as you could be forgiven for thinking this is a successful blog with a few cute tools thrown in. It’s not a blog. This is a real business, with real employees, offices, and a defined business strategy. The blog is the axis around which the business is built – but it’s important to see the difference.
• Your Story – Share your story. Everyone’s story is interesting. Read mine. Yours is just as interesting. It’s the one thing people can’t take away from you. AND it’s your one true USP. Add a link to your story below. I promise to read it!

What I’ve learnt.

I didn’t ‘get’ ShoeMoney until I stopped thinking of myself as a part-time blogger and decided that I wanted to run my own web business. That was the turning point. I wanted to run my business, reap the rewards of my own efforts and enjoy my life. Something I knew I would never feel working 9-5 for someone else.

Sound familiar? Do you feel the same way?  If you do, then look at his site from a business perspective.

Ask yourself:

• Why did he build these products?
• What pricing strategy has he adopted? Why does he charge X for his tools but X for his courses?
• Could I develop elite conferences? For example, get ten people in a room at 5k per head and discuss advanced Facebook advertising techniques. 5k is peanuts for Fortune 500s. They just want the proof you can deliver.
• How did he build these products?
• Why does he focus on four main products… and not more?
• Who helped him get to this place? Tip: connect with like-minded folks and work together.
• Where did he get this information? Look at the conferences he attended and go there.
• Why is he so successful? Ask him. Visit the site every week, contribute, and then ask a few questions. He’s a people person. He’ll get back to you.
• How can I catch up? Immerse yourself in one technology or Social Media platform. Don’t be a jack of all trades. Make yourself the absolute authority on one subject. Then, you’ll have a guaranteed following.

Go over to ShoeMoney now, bookmark it, get the newsletter and hang out in the forum. You won’t regret it. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I did writing it. Please let me know what you thought below.

PS – Remember to sign up for our free newsletter and give us a tweet.

This article shows you can increase your Google AdSense earnings by at least 12%. I’ve started to use video-based ads in Adsense (not the text ads) and the results have been impressive.  Split testing showed us that websites with video ads 1) keep viewers onsite longer, 2) increase repeat visits and 3) generate significantly higher AdSense payments than standard plain text ads. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to setup AdSense video, look at different sizes and formats, test the ads, examine the risks and benefits, and also show you how it increased our earnings.

Why Use Google AdSense Videos Format

The first benefit that videos offer is that they increase Google Adsense payments. In our tests, it increased earnings by more than 12%.  When you’re designing your site layout, consider dropping the text ads and insert one large video ad instead. Do some split testing and check the results. Video ads, or video units as Google likes to call them, lets you enrich your site with relevant video content, which can be embedded in a customizable player.

What is Google AdSense Video?

Google AdSense videos are user initiated ads that run on sites that are part of the Google content network. These ad formats provide users with a rich and engaging advertising experience.

How to get Adsense Videos

Sign in to your AdSense account and open the AdSense Setup tab. Click the video units link and setup up your video unit. Add it to you site and see if it compliments your content.

Risks of Using Video Ad Formats

• Risk #1 – the ads may not compliment your product offerings
• Risk #2 – the ads may be too slow when downloading (not everyone has broadband), which will leave the reader with nothing to see but a blank space, i.e. where the ad should be
• Risk #3 – your AdSense earnings will drop. In our tests, they don’t but your experience may be different.
• Risk #4 – while using video ads should lead to increased sales, especially in the short term, web users may try the video ads and then reject the regular text ads resulting in lower sales.
• Risk #5 – video ads may have a negative impact on your Adsense earnings if do not match your sites look and feel, i.e. the overall color scheme. You can’t control the appearance of video ads as you can with text ads.

Which Video Ad Formats are available?

Video ads are currently available in several ad formats:

• 336 x 280 (Large Rectangle)
• 300 x 250 (Medium Rectangle)
• 250 x 250 (Square)
• 200 x 200 (Small Square)
• 728 x 90 (Leaderboard)
• 120 x 600 (Skyscraper)
• 160 x 600 (Wide Skyscraper)

How to Get Started

To display video ads on your site, make sure you are using one of these supported formats and that you are opted in to image ads for that ad unit. If not, the video option will not be displayed.

How to Enable Image Ads

There are two ways to enable image ads. You can:

1. Enable image and text advertising for all of your pages or
2. Enable image ads for individual pages

Warning - Enabling image ads for individual pages overrides account-wide level selections.

To enable image ads across your account:

1. Sign in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the My Account tab
3. Click the edit links next to the Ad Type Preference header
4. Select Display text and image ads in all ad units

If you’ve already generated the code, you can change the ad type of your AdSense unit using the ad management feature:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab.
3. Select the Manage Ads sub-tab.
4. Click Edit settings for the ad unit you’d like to update.
5. Under Format pick your desired ad type.
6. Click Save settings.

Adding YouTube Ads – How it works

If you’ve embedded video from YouTube into your site before, you’ll know what to do. Once you’ve configured the options in Adsense, embed the code as per usual, which display the relevant YouTube content to your site. When selecting content, you can:

1. Choose video categories to target to your site or blog
2. Select content from individual YouTube partners
3. Get video targeted to your site content

Configuration options allow you to blend the YouTube player into your site, customize the color scheme and layout, and choose different player sizes.

How to Test Video Ads on Your Blog

You can test the ad from inside AdSense as follows:

• Enter the URL of a page where this ad unit currently appears to see what the ad unit that you have designed will look like.
• Click Preview on this page
• The test add appears and you can see what it looks like. Pretty impressive!

Tip: If you enter a URL that does not display the code for this ad unit, you will not see any ads in the preview.

Why Can’t I See Video Ads on my Site?

You might not see video ads for a number of reasons.

1. Are you using one of the ad formats that support video ads?
2. Have you opted in to image ads for that ad format - otherwise, your ad unit will not display video ads.
3. Even if you are using supported ad formats, and you are opted in to image ads, video ads may not be targeted to your content for the time being.

Make sure that you are opted in to both text and image ads for these ad units to maximize competition for your ad space.

Split Testing & How Video Increases Your AdSense Earnings

This table shows the AdSense earnings before I added the videos units. Note that 210 clicks generated $77. This is an average for the site performance in March 2010.

Page Impressions – 99,219
Clicks Page 210
CTR – 0.23%
Page eCPM – €0.77
Estimated earnings – €77.14

This is $77 per day across all of March, which is approx $2,310 for the month.

Google AdSense – Search Earnings Without Video ads

This shows the AdSense Search results before I added the videos. Search always pay better. We had 80 clicks which generated $20. Again, this is the average return for the site in March 2010. The eCPM is $26.

Queries – 830
Clicks – 80
CTR – 9.64%
eCPM – €26.51
Estimated earnings – €20.20

This is $20 per day for each day in March, which is approx $600 for the month. Google AdSense earnings for both Page Impressions and Search was $2,900 approx. We also had some small payments from the RSS feeds, but not much.

Google AdSense – Page Impressions Earnings With Video ads

We added the video ads formats across three sites in April. So, these figures are for the first 15 days of the month. Earnings increased by 12%.

Page Impressions (15 days)- 46,986
Clicks Page 118
CTR – 0.24%
Page eCPM – €0.79
Estimated earnings – €43.01

Google AdSense – Search Earnings With Video ads

This shows the AdSense Search results after I added the videos. Its earnings increased by approx 10%.

Queries – 410
Clicks – 39
CTR – 9.84%
eCPM – €27.15
Estimated earnings – €11.88

Conclusions

There are a few things to note. Adding the video formats to Google AdSense made no difference to traffic or at least not yet. We didn’t expect it would. It did increase the earnings though, but about 12%.

1. Page Impression earnings increased by 15%~.
2. Two ads formats performed very well. The first was the Skyscraper video down the right side of the page. However, we also placed Google Ads (with video) embedded inside the article near the top-left. Looking at the heatmaps, it’s clear that visitors ‘enjoyed’ these ads as they clicked on more of them as the month progressed. More testing over the next 6 weeks should give us better feedback.
3. Search earnings increased by 7-10%~. This increase may be related to the close proximity of the video ads to the search box.
4. The Search box is placed in two places on the site. At the top right of the page and also in the Footer. Tests have shown that many users scroll to the end of the page (seeking more information, perhaps) and use this Search box to look for the information rather than scroll back up to the top or hit the Back button.
5. Total earnings for both page impressions and Search increased by 12% approx. Is this good enough? Well, our tests were for a 15-days period in April. As we use video more, our earnings should improve
6. 12% over twelve months should generate an extra $4,000 revenue, which isn’t a bad return for 30 minutes work!

Over to you.

Have you tried the AdSense video formats? If so, what results did you see? If you didn’t, what was the obstacle or issue that stopped you for using video? Let us know below.

PS – Remember to sign up for our free newsletter and give us a Tweet!

Would you take $740 if I gave it to you? Most people would say Yes. My Google AdSense check came today. It’s for 548.65 euros, about $740 dollars. I get this check every month; payments range from $700 (low) to $1200 (highest). But, I’ve decided to stop using Google Adsense. Here’s why.

Google Adsense is Not a Business Strategy

I’ve decided to phase out Adsense for different reasons. Here’s the background:

• When I started my online business, I had no products. Google Adsense was the simplest option. It acted as an interim solution until I had my own products.
• But it does work. I took this course from this guy and learnt how to really use Google Adsense. It paid for itself many times over.
• Earnings rose from $3 per month to over $1200 at its peak.

So, why stop? Here’s the problem.

What is Google Adsense? Well, it is not a Business Strategy. It’s a deluxe affiliate program. And a very good one but…

• Strategy – My long-term aim is to develop my own suite of digital products and earn from these. I want greater control.
• Ownership – I have no control of Adsense. If it disappears tomorrow (unlikely, but I’ve been bitten before) all my efforts is wasted. In the meantime, I could have developed or explored other options.
• Competition – While Adsense does very well, split testing with other products has shown that some of these earn as much, if not more.
• Customers – they have little interest in the ads and do their best to ignore them. Many complain that it’s irritating and/or visual pollution.
• Traffic – strangely enough, split testing pages with and without ads made little difference traffic wise. BUT, it reduced the number of comments on the site. When I removed the ads, the interaction improved, resulting in visitors staying longer. Banner Ads and other in-page adverts irritate users; I’ve never met a customer who asked me to put ads on a site.

Criteria for phasing out affiliate products

This creates a small dilemma. Do I phase out and/or remove Google Ads?

1. At what point do I phase out an affiliate products?
2. How long do I give an under-performing product before reviewing, pausing and/or removing it from the site?
3. What criteria do I use to judge the performance of a product? Sales is the simplest/crudest indicator but, and this is my concern, if I switch the position of Adsense (i.e. place on the website) with another product, its sales numbers are negatively impacted. And the replacement product often performs better.

How To Use Google Adsense For Maximum Effect

Let’s not thrown out the baby with the bath-water. My current solution has been to:

• Placement - Move the ads to the lower left navigation. This space allows ‘skyscraper’ ads to appear there. These have high clickthru rates, i.e. higher payments. Position = rates.
• Video – This position also allows video ads to appear. Again, these have high click-thru rates.
• User Behavior – Articles that discuss high end products, such as digital cameras benefit from these skyscraper ads. These are rather eye-catching and, it seems, when people scroll to the end of the page, they click on the largest (i.e. easiest) option available. In this case, the skyscraper video ads work very well.

So, for now, we have reached a happy medium. I still use Google Adsense, even if it’s less prominent than previously.

Adsense Highest Performing Ad Sizes

Update: Google published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 inline rectangle
• 160×600 wide skyscraper

I’d recommend the 160×600 wide skyscraper as it doesn’t distract the reader from your main content and sits nicely in the side of the page.

Which brings us back to Business Strategy…

Defining a strategy means choosing the most effective way to run your business. Google Adsense is ideal for those starting an online business – but you need to (and can) aim higher. Ultimately, you want to wean yourself off from low-performing affiliate programs and develop your own products, which of course, you can then market to your own army of affiliates!

See the difference?

Next week, I’ll show you how I’ve started to develop a strategy for a new small business site. It has no Google Adsense and no advertising – 100% digital products. If you’re interested, please bookmark this site and see how it works.

Do you agree with what I’ve done? Would you have done it different? Let me know below.

Does writing a blog constitute work? Forbes reports that the New York State Department of Labor recently declared a laid-off attorney ineligible for unemployment benefits as she was bringing in $1.30 a day from blog ads.

In April, Karin started a blog, called STL Meal Deals, where she wrote about local restaurant promotions. Since she received no payments from the businesses she mentioned, Karin decided to try generating some income by signing up for Google AdSense.

Google sends bloggers checks when their earnings hit $100–a level that took Karin three months to achieve.

Here’s what happened when the first check arrived:

Lawyer’s Unemployment Benefits Yanked Over $1 a Day From Blog http://www.forbes.com

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

Before I start!

If you have any questions about how to develop a writing career online (which is more appropriate for me these days), technical writing or working as a consultant, just drop me a line.

Eric flicked me an email a few days back about Adsense and asked if it was worth the effort and what other alternative information products/services should he look at. Here’s an extract of the email I sent back. Hi Eric, thanks for the kind words. As you can imagine, it’s hard to know if you’re going in the right direction with a site like this, so every time I get a word of encouragement it gives me a little boost to continue.

I run a few other sites as well as this is/was designed to complement their offerings and also to act as a funnel for material that doesn’t suit elsewhere. www.wordtipsandtricks.com and www.klariti.com are the other two babies I take care of.

I noticed you use Google AdSense. I’ve been reading up on it this week and trying to separate the reality from the mire of get rich quick schemes. How’s it working for you? Has it been worthwhile? FWIW Tom Johnson is also worth reading www.idratherbewriting.com as is Seth Godin sethgodin.typepad.com <I noticed you use Google AdSense.

I’ve been reading up on it this week and trying to separate the reality from the mire of get rich quick schemes.

How’s it working for you?

Has it been worthwhile? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that it does work.

If you can get a nice stream of traffic to your site, it will bring in revenue. But, to keep it in perspective, I get over 200k page impressions per month on the sites.

This generates about 1k USD.

Now, 1k is fine but it takes a lot of effort to get 200k people to click around you sites every month. I should add that I haven’t really tried to ‘optimize’ the site for Adsense as some webmasters do. The adds are there and if you want to click them, then it’s a bonus.

But, here’s a tip! Looking at the stats, it’s the Search box that generates the most revenue, not the ads themselves.

You can create a Google Search box, link it to your Adsense account, and use this as a way to encourage visitors to surf around your site.

See  http://www.google.cn/webmasters/tour/tour1.html And here’s an even better tip! You can configure the Google Search box so that it searches specific sites only.

See  http://www.google.com/cse Google Custom Search in 30 second

You can setup Google Custom Search to create a customized search experience for your own website.

• Include one or more websites, or specific specific webpages
• Host the search box on your own website
• Host the results on your own website
• Customize the look and feel of the results to match your site
• Provide fast and relevant search results
• Make money with AdSense for Search
• Automatically search across links, bookmarks or blogrolls with Custom Search on the fly
• Control branding and enhance results presentation via XML results
• Provide quick indexing of your website via On-Demand indexing
• Embed a Custom Search Element into your website for a highly customized in-line search experience.

Sounds impressive, no?

In other words, you can limit the search to your site and other sites that you specifically want the visitor to go to, such as affiliate sites or partner sites (you could link up with a similar site and arrange cross-searching). With that said, it does take time to master Adsense, but if you have a long-term strategy, yes it is worthwhile.

I’d recommend using the Adsense plug-ins you can get for WordPress as these help automate the process. Real time-saver.  Why No? Because other areas are much more profitable! Such as? Method123 have been a winner for me for over 4 years. See: Method123 Project Management Templates There a lot of sites offering affiliate/partner programs but this is absolute gold dust! Their site is right when it says:

• Our Affiliate program differs from others because:
• We are a profitable company and only do business over the web
• We offer large affiliate commissions
• Our average sales amount is extremely high
• Our conversion rate is also high

So, if can write articles about project management or anything to do with running projects, then you can link to their site, drive traffic over and claim your commission. Things you could write about might be:

• 10 ways to improve your Business Case
• Learn how to write a Feasibility Study in 24 hours
• What you need a Project Charter
• 7 Ways to develop a Project Office Checklist

It’s pretty straightforward. I use other affiliates, such as GoDaddy, aWeber and Paypal.

They’re all fine but Methds123 has worked very well for me. FWIW – their head office is in New Zealand and you get that nice feeling that you’re working with a real company whereas with other programs you get an auto-responder back and then a relationship manager after a few days.

Darren Rowse has a great article if you’re thinking of getting into blogging. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/10/successful-blogging/ 13 Things I’ve Learned about Successful Blogging [My 5000th Post on ProBlogger]

Before I forget, Amazon has been a total time-waster.

When I consider the effort v the results I got back – just avoid! I know others recommend it but if you apply yourself and find a 2 or 3 quality affiliate programs, you’ll do much better.

Regards, Ivan

Yesterday we looked at how to setup a strong password and how to test its strength. What I’d like to cover today are the type of mistakes people make when creating passwords and how to avoid this. If you’re planning on opening a PayPal account or use eBay to buy and sell, then I think you should read this.

How to avoid weak, easy-to-guess passwords:

1. Avoid sequences or word or repeated characters.

Examples of these are “12345678,” “778899″ “abcdefg,”

2. Letters on your keyboard that sit next to each other are also a mistake. For example, qwertqwert.  These are very weak passwords.

3. Avoid using look-alike substitutions of numbers and symbols.

This means that you don’t replace an ‘i’ with a ’1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd. These are too easy to guess.

However, these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in upper and lowercase, to improve the strength of your password.

4. Avoid your login name.

5. Don’t use any part of your name, birthday, social security number.

6. Avoid words taken out of the dictionary.

7. Tools can guess passwords based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and substitutions.

8. Use multiple passwords

If any one of the computers or websites using your password is compromised, then all of your other information protected by that password will be compromised as well.

So, try to use different passwords for different systems.

9. Don’t store your password online.

I know this sounds obvious but, if others find your passwords stored online (or on a networked computer), they have access to all your information.

Takeaway tips:

• Long passwords are stronger than short ones.
• The more characters you add to your password, the more you increase its level of protection.
• Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or more is ideal.
• Strongest passwords combine both length and different types of symbols.
• Use symbols by holding down the ‘Shift’ key and typing a number are very useful in developing strong passwords.
• Choose symbols unique to your language.
• Use the space bar in passwords.
• Combine letters, numbers, and symbols.
• The greater the combination you use in your password, the harder it is to guess.

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com

Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

PayPal Donations is a very nice way to let people donate a small amount of your site, usually as a thank you for providing quality information, tips or advice.

You can use this to collect donations from a PayPal Donation button on your website, or even using it as a link in your email. PayPal won’t automatically place the button code on your website, but it’s very easy to copy and paste the code into your blog or website’s code. The PayPal Create Button designer screen also lets you customize the look and field of the button, set-up  donation amounts, currency types, and other options. You can also create a library of buttons and re-use these rather than starting from scratch every time.

Benefits

• Easy to implement – no programming experience necessary. Jus copy and paste the code.
• No up-front costs – same low fee schedule as other PayPal payments
• No hidden charges – PayPal don’t charge for this service. There are no
  hidden costs
• Reports – PayPal maintains detailed transaction records so you can track your donations
• Flexibility – your donors can choose to give an amount of their choice
  (recommended) or you can set a fixed amount

To add PayPal Donations to your website, follow these steps:

The webpage you use to design the buttons has three sections. You only need
to use the first one: the others are optional.

1. Choose the button type and enter the payment details

2. Save your button (an optional step)

3. Customize the advanced features (also optional)

Let’s get started.

1. Log in to PayPal or setup a new account.

2. Click the Profile tab.

The Profile Summary page opens.

3. Under Selling Preferences, click the My Saved Buttons link.

The My Saved Buttons page opens.

4. Click Create New Button.

The Create Payment Button page opens. This is where you will create the
actual button.

How to Choose the button type and enter payment details

Let’s get started and choose the button type we want to use.

1. In the Accept payments for dropdown menu, select Donations.

2. In Organization name/service, enter the name of your organization

3. In Donation ID (optional), enter a unique number if you want to track the donation.

The next step is to customize the button. In other words, do you want a
simple image with only the word ’Donation’ or do you want to add credit cards to it?

You can also upload your own image, which can be useful if you want to blend
it into your site’s color scheme.

4. Click the blue triangle next to Customize appearance.

5. Click the PayPal button box.

You now have two options:

• Customize the PayPal button or
• Upload your own.

6. If you want to customize the PayPal button:

6.1 Click Use smaller button – if you want a Donate button without any
branding or credit card logos.

6.2 Click Display credit card logos – if you want display credit card logos
such as Visa and MasterCard.

6.3 Select the Country and language for button.

FYI: I recommend United States – US – English.

When you change the settings, a preview of your image appears in the Buyer’s
View pane.

7 If you want use your own image.

7.1 Click Use your own button image.

7.2 Enter the URL of where your image is located on the web. At the moment, you can’t upload an image to PayPal directly.

Note: PayPal will not show your image onscreen when you use this option. But, when you create the code later on, it works fine. You can always go back and change it, by the way.

Next you’re going to select the currency.

8. Choose a Currency from one of these:

USD AUD GBP CAD CZK DKK EUR HKD HUF ILS JPY MXN NZD NOK PLN SGD SEK CHF.

Again, most of you will select USD (US Dollars but you can choose what you
want).

Tip: If you choose a currency other than USD you run the risk of people not
making a donation. People don’t want to get tricked into paying with a currency they don’t understand. If you make them go check the currency rate, they might have second thoughts on paying.

Keep it simple. Use the USD option.

Next up is the contribution amount.

9. In Contribution amount, select one of the options:

9.1. Click Donors enter their own contribution amount.

Let people choose to donate 1 dollar of 1 million. It’s their choice. Never under-estimate how generous people can be if you provide really
useful content (like this!)

9.2. Click Donors contribute a fixed amount.

I’d avoid this. It’s a bit ham-fisted and forces people to pay when you think
they should, under-mining the principle of making a donation. To me, this looks more like a pseudo-payment. I’d suggest you avoid it. But, hey, it’s your site. Don’t let me stop you.

10. Next, enter the email address where the donations are sent to. Usually you’re PayPal account email address.

Step 2 and 3 are optional, so you can ignore these for now. Take a peek if
you want or you can skip ahead and create the button.

The final step is to get the code for the button.

11. Click Create Button at the end of the screen.

This opens the Button Code page.

12. Click Select Code to select the HTML code.

13 Copy the code (CTRL+C for Windows and CMD+C for Mac)

14. Paste the code into your blog or webpage (Ctrl + V)

We’re not finished yet!

15. PayPal also gives you the option to add the button to emails. Fantastic
if you’re selling things via email or are big into good ol’ web marketing.

Just copy and paste the link into your email. Send a few tests to yourself to
check that it works. Also try the link in Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail to check that everything works fine with these.

Now you’re finished!

Other things you can do on this page

• Click Create Similar button if you want to use the button you just
  create as a template for your next button. Nice time-saver as you can use the same configuration settings.
• Click Create a new button to create a new button from scratch.
• Click Create Similar button if you want to create another button, withall the same/similar configuration settings as this button

I hope you enjoyed this article and that is made the whole process of
creating PayPal buttons a little easier.

Next week, I’ll show you how to use more advanced features in PayPal, like
setting up a Thank You page or sending customers to a download page
automatically.

To setup a new PayPal account, please go here.

Yesterday we looked at different ways to protect your PayPal account. We looked at how to setup a strong password and how to test its strength.

There are a few other things I wanted to add to the last article so I’m adding them here. If you’re going to open a PayPal account or use eBay to buy and sell, then I think you should read this. There is no point making a successful online business if others can highjack your account.

How to create a strong password:

1. Write down a sentence that will form the basis of strong password. For example, “My son Ivan was born on May 7 1998.”

2. Check if your computer supports pass phrases.

If you can use a pass phrase (i.e. spaces between characters) on your computer, then use this approach.

3. If the computer does not support pass phrases, convert it to a password.

For example, take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new password.

Using the example above, you’d get: “mstwbom71998″.

4. Combine uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers to add an extra level of complexity.

You can further strengthen this by adding letter swapping and misspellings.

For instance, in the pass phrase above, consider misspelling Ivan’s name (e.g. Evan), or substituting the word “seven” for the number 7.

Remember: the longer the sentence, the more complex your password will be.

Your pass phrase might become “My sOn evan waS bORn on MAy 7 1998″

5. Add special characters.

Use symbols that look like letters, combine words, remove spaces between words to make the password more complex.

Using these tricks, we create a pass phrase of “MysOn ev@n waS b#Rn o% M*y 7 1998″ or a password (using the first letter of each word) “MsewaSbMAy71998”

6. Test your password with Microsoft’s Password Checker

This is a non-recording password checking site that helps determine your password’s strength.

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

Test the strength of your passwords: Enter a password in the text box to have Password Checker help determine its strength as you type.

Note: Password Checker can help you to gauge the strength of your password. It is for personal reference only. Password Checker does not guarantee the security of the password itself.

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com / Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

Yesterday we looked at different ways to protect your PayPal account. We looked at how to setup a strong password and how to test its strength.

There are a few other things I wanted to add to the last article so I’m adding them here. If you’re going to open a PayPal account or use eBay to buy and sell, then I think you should read this. There is no point making a successful online business if others can highjack your account.

How to create a strong password:

1. Write down a sentence that will form the basis of strong password. For example, “My son Ivan was born on May 7 1998.”

2. Check if your computer supports pass phrases.

If you can use a pass phrase (i.e. spaces between characters) on your computer, then use this approach.

3. If the computer does not support pass phrases, convert it to a password.

For example, take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new password.

Using the example above, you’d get: “mstwbom71998″.

4. Combine uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers to add an extra level of complexity.

You can further strengthen this by adding letter swapping and misspellings.

For instance, in the pass phrase above, consider misspelling Ivan’s name (e.g. Evan), or substituting the word “seven” for the number 7.

Remember: the longer the sentence, the more complex your password will be.

Your pass phrase might become “My sOn evan waS bORn on MAy 7 1998″

5. Add special characters.

Use symbols that look like letters, combine words, remove spaces between words to make the password more complex.

Using these tricks, we create a pass phrase of “MysOn ev@n waS b#Rn o% M*y 7 1998″ or a password (using the first letter of each word) “MsewaSbMAy71998”

6. Test your password with Microsoft’s Password Checker

This is a non-recording password checking site that helps determine your password’s strength.

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

Test the strength of your passwords: Enter a password in the text box to have Password Checker help determine its strength as you type.

Note: Password Checker can help you to gauge the strength of your password. It is for personal reference only. Password Checker does not guarantee the security of the password itself.

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.

Regards,

Ivan

Twitter: @ivanwalsh

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanwalsh

Templates: http://www.klariti.com / Tips:  http://www.ivanwalsh.com

Personally, I don’t use PayPal Buy Now or Donations when sending out emails. There are a couple of reasons for this.
1) it’s too hard sell – selling directly through email rarely works.

2) spam filters will pick it out and send your lovely email to the spam filter, adding your email address to the ISPs blacklist in the process (which you can’t undo) and

3) many people (myself included) turn off images in their email.

In other words, I never see any images when I use Yahoo or Hotmail. This means that my emails download faster (less bandwidth required) without images and most are just eye candy with no value add.

To quote Ken Brockman – Just my 2 cents.

There is the easy way and the hard way to do things in life. This is one of the easy ways. You can use this trick to setup Blogger so that it automatically adds a snippet of Adsense code to your Blogger template. This saves you the hassle of cutting and pasting Adsense into each post or other workarounds that eat up your time.

To get Adsense to appear between the Blogger post title and Blogger post body:

1. Log into Blogger.

2. Open the Template page.

3. Click the Edit HTML tab and select Expand Widget Templates.

4. Search for these lines in the HTML code.

Search for the line <p><data:post.body/></p>

5. Add these lines of code (depending on how you want your ads to appear)

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘>
Place Your Google Adsense Code here
<p><data:post.body/></p>
Place Your Google Adsense Code here
<b:else/>
<p><data:post.body/></p>
</b:if>

6. Click Save.

Your Google Ads will now appear above every post you make.

Take a look at http://ivanwalsh.blogspot.com/ to see how it works.

Can I use Wordles for...

May I make money off of Wordle images?

You must first display your Wordle at the desired size, then take a “screen shot” or “screen capture”. Here’s a link to a web site that gives instructions for creating screen shots on various kinds of computer. By linking to this external site, I do not endorse it: take-a-screenshot.org.

How is Wordle licensed? May I embed your applet?

Creating a strong password helps in protecting your account information and, if you run an online business, access to your financial data. For example, if you decide to open a PayPal account and want to buy and sell stuff online, then you need to think carefully about the type of password you’ll need to use. So, here are some tips and guidelines on setting up a super strong password. We’ll also show you how to test the strength of your password.

What makes a strong password?

A strong password must use a random string of characters.

In other words, using the following string – LiVerP8%%L- is better than Liverpool. You can see straightaway how complex the password is
and the effort it would take to open.

Use the following as when creating your passwords:

1. Long passwords are stronger than short ones.

2. The more characters you add to your password, the more you increase its level of protection.

3. Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or more is ideal.

4. A 15-character password – made up of random letters and numbers – is 33,000 times stronger than an 8-character password composed of characters from the entire keyboard.

5. If you cannot create a password that contains symbols, make it very long to get the same degree of protection.

Symbols are characters such as @,#,$,%,^,&,*,),_,+, and |.

6. The strongest passwords combine both length and different types of symbols.

7. Use the top keys on your keyboard (@,#,$,%,^), not just letters.

8. Use symbols by holding down the ‘Shift’
key and typing a number are very useful in developing strong passwords.

9. Choose from all the symbols on the keyboard, including punctuation marks not on the upper row (top) of the keyboard,

10. Choose symbols unique to your language.

11. Many IT systems now support use of the space bar in passwords. This means you can create a phrase made of many words (a ”pass phrase”).

12. Combine letters, numbers, and symbols.

The greater the combination you use in your password, the harder it is to guess.

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Regards,

Ivan

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