http://www.SXC.hu – And no – it’s not all in hungarian, it’s in english…
Sometimes, you want to just randomly grab an image for something, maybe to shock someone or to present some cold hard facts, and it’s nice to grab a related image to spruce up a blog post, website or even a facebook post… I know one Facebooker who seems to post relavent funny images every day on FB…
Anyway, I wanted to take a few seconds to share my favorite resource. I’ve been using this service for about 8 years, since before iStockPhoto bought them out back when they were just their own little thing and they had something called StockXpert for the paid images. Their paid images were always cheaper than iStockPhoto and it’s pretty rare that I can’t find what I need in their free pile.
So yeah, the main area of millions of high quality high resolution images are completely free…
Check it out:
So your considering installing Google Adsense as a way of generating revenue for your website… Many have heard the over-hyped conversations about Adsense and what it’s capable of generating for your pocket book. I imagine some of us were even lured in by Shoe Money’s Google cheque or even maybe Markus Frind of Plenty Of Fish’s both of course from Adsense Revenues. But how did they make over $900,000 in one month from Google Adsense, and what does it take to do that?
Placement…
This is a super quick template that I drew up in photoimpact to demonstrate proper placement of Adsense Ads. A huge percentage of folks place their adsense on the right side where the opt-in and blog features go, or in the bottom or even the body of the article or information section… Some again place it in the navigation on the left hand side, but all of these areas are wrong and do not get maximum value & response. The goal of course is to get CLICKS.. Though there is some cash for impressions, clicks are where the real money comes from.
The highest value and most amount of clicks will come from that region above the article content section and below the headline section. This section should be visible to the user even BEFORE they scroll down the page. Your adsense Ads shouldn’t look like ads and their color scheme and placement should match your website’s color scheme, font and overall look and feel. If they appear out of place, they won’t seem like a natural part of your site and click thru rates will go down.
Guys like Markus use the section above the article and they do it for a reason, it works.
Trustability…
Google’s running the show and writing the Adsense checks and we all know they do TRY to have a high level of integrity in their work. So… Some of the other things that folks have eluded to that can actually affect your Adsense payouts are things like having real contact info and a physical address (even if it is a p.o. box), having an email address on the site, having a phone number… Having a sitemap and being easily indexed and crawled.. All those things can affect your ePC(roughly translating to the value each visitor provides you).
Topic Of Choice…
There’s no doubt that Google Adsense is tied directly into the Google Adwords program and as such, the advertisers are forced into a bidding system where it’s based on whom ever pays the most (and has the most effective click-thru’s) wins. Now, this bidding system forces a market value pricing scheme. For example, for years Mesothelioma was the highest paying Adsense keyword… Lawyers would pay a killing for that word because anyone who GETS Mesothelioma has a case. Mesothelioma is the cancer caused by asbestos exposure.
Choosing keywords that are industry popular, have search volume and have strong DEMAND within the business community will get you bidders that are willing to pay a descent amount per click and of course, being that Adsense is a revenue share program… It greatly increases your cut.
Traffic…
Yes, It’s probably the harder uphill battle you’ll face of all the others I mentioned. Yep it’s easy to get good trustability, good keywords and good placement within your site & content… BUT… getting traffic to those pages is hard… Even if you have good content, EVEN if you know most of the proper SEO strategies and even if you write a press release, getting the right amount of traffic isn’t easy. Markus Frind did well because he had a tool (An online dating site) that folks really liked. Jeremy did well because his sites were easily found for good keywords… It’s too much to post on here, but if you have a site that only gets a few hundred hits a day… Adsense may not be that profitable considering other strategies…
Is Adsense Really Worth It?!?!
That’s my final point I want to bring you to… Is Adsense something you should add to every website you own? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Why not? Adsense is a distraction and it’s not pretty. It’s advertising and it’s a form of interruptive media. It’s getting in people’s faces with things they may not wanna hear. Because the ads are usually contextual (in context to the topic of the page) they’re not ALWAYS unrelated but they are a disruption none-the-less.
Adsense pays you pennies per customer in most cases… For many non-competitive niches, the bid prices are so low that you won’t get more than pennies per click, and for those pennies.
Adsense makes your customers leave your website, and go somewhere else… Somewhere away from your marketing, your material, your message and your social media campaigns… If your first goal is to educate and inform, and your second to sell those web visitors… does Adsense help you accomplish this? No.. Not at all.
In many cases, you’re better off to have either affiliate offers you’ve chosen with a high commission OR a strong opt-in box with at least a 10% opt-in rate that keeps visitors ON your website and keeps building up your funnel of leads to market and educate to for years to come. Collecting email addresses is a long term strategy that guarantees some form of insurance.
If your pay per click gets to high, if Google drops your web page from the search results, email addresses will still be there to mail to and market to and earn money from.
But Dan, you have some sites with Adsense!
Yes, yes I do. When I do not feel like chasing affiliate offers, and when I don’t have time to email market to a list or especially if I don’t care how much money I earn from a website (Because i may not be writing it for the money) I’ll put Adsense on there. However, If I want to actually build a successful and strong long term website, I place an opt-in box on the top-right corner and I spend litterally days crafting a killer opt-in bonus freebie and choose select ads for individual pages when an ad seems necessary.
Please, pass this post on, like, Facebook, share it if it’s helped you or you gained something from it.
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I had to blog and email everyone about this ASAP… Why?
When people on Facebook “Like” something, they click a like button next to it on Facebook and it lets all their friends know that they “Liked” something. When people read their profiles and status updates, they see which things their friends liked and they can like it as well….
Sorry for the ugly photoshopping but I was in a hurry and beauty wasn’t my concern… See this? It shows social proof and it also shows up on their profiles!!!
GAIN Instant Exposure with ONE CLICK… You Do Nothing…
If you put a Facebook “Like” button on your blog posts, and someone clicks on it and “likes” it… Not only do you get the social crediblity that people like the website and your post, but it also shows up on THEIR Facebook Profile… So say that person who likes your post has 500 friends… All 500 get to see your website’s link in their friend’s status updates… How cool is that? I suggest you install it on every post ASAP.
Facebook gets more traffic than Google.
It’s a well known fact (facebook gets more than google), and many marketers are finally starting to see the light on this. It’s an incredible exposure tool…. Fact is that branding starts with awareness, and memory and repetition. Seeing your ad 20 times on Facebook even if they never buy and never click can still cause someone to feel comfortable with it and buy when they’re at the store or in another situation…
In fact it wasn’t a few weeks ago that the top story on TechCrunch and other leading journalism sites in the tech sector were reporting HitWise stating that Facebook is officially the most popular website in the entire united states of america!
Simply visit this page you see above (Facebook Like Button Code) and add that text to your wordpress blog or HTML page and rock and roll… Your done! In wordpress, i’m sure you noticed the HTML tab…. Navigate within your blog post text to where you want your like button and then just switch back to the HTML tab and paste this code in there.. and poof! Instant Facebook Like button on your blog 
OF COURSE!! I’m going to ask you to click the like button on this post… Please?
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Join my newsletter on the top right corner of this page for more free & juicy tips as I discover them. I don’t spam and I rarely if ever sell anything.
Until Next Time,
Daniel J Deyette
Until I began using the most recent version of Wordtracker, I have to say that Google Adwords external keyword tool was my 2nd home. It was the place I went for every double check… Every question I had..
Every… “Is there a market for…” I went there.
Now there seems to be a new look & feel to the interface with many new features (keyword clustering on the left) use synonyms has been re-worded for dummies… Take a test drive and see for yourself if you like it…
It now also has the ability to show you stats for mobile search… That could be quite interesting although I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you. Given the types of searches mobile users typically type on phones your likely to find higher search volume for “Pizza” and other local services than you will “niche markets” but if your looking to boost a local brand’s search volume… head there straight away!
I find it to be faster, if you too (like me) stopped using Google Adwords Keyword External tool, maybe it’s time to give the new interface and design a second chance…
All the Best!
Remember, you heard it here first – signup to the newsletter to get frequent updates if your not the type to come back to this blog all the time!
Daniel J Deyette
You heard it here first, folks. They are truly and totally dead.
I used to think of these old school mediums as backup plans. Maybe if I couldn’t get a client traffic from the web, or the web wasn’t as effective as first hoped, there was always plan B. Plan B could easily be executed by leveraging old media (Print, Radio, TV, Direct Mail, Telephone) to drive traffic to the website.
Obviously the website should always be that main goal as it has a much more affordable maintenance plan behind it. If you think about it, in man cycles (man hours for layman’s terms), a call center, an office and even TV and radio take more human hours than say.. email marketing or blogging or any other medium.
Today, A report was released (with so many insights I can’t share them all here…) revealing the most surprising facts you’ll ever hear. Remember, sign up to our newsletter if you wanna catch an eye of this stuff.
(C) HubSpot 2010 - I borrowed this without permission so here's a link to the full report that includes their opt-in (hope that makes them happy)
It’s beginning to be more obvious that these old school methods of marketing and peddling a product or service are going to die a slow and painful death as those 50 some aged folks who can’t let go of things slowly realize these are disappearing and can’t do anything about it.
It costs MORE to execute direct mail and telemarketing and other such strategies than it does to market them on the web. But that’s not the only issue here.
Inbound Vs Outbound Marketing.
Outbound… Beg the customer… Phone them, knock on their door.. Mail them something, drag them through a trade show and yell at them… Old school.
Inbound… Customer searches the web for something and YOU jump in front of them already knowing what they need and provide it! You jump into the conversation when they’re actually thinking, talking and interacting ABOUT your product… New School!
Other game changing and interesting revelations…
- 434% more indexed pages for companies that blog
- 97% more inbound links for companies that blog
- 55% more website visitors
- 30% more sales when blogging at least once a day
- Company blog & twitter are two top best recommendations
Anyway, they include 50+ Charts in this eyeball popping report. I strongly advise you read it. This isn’t a suggestion…
Daniel J Deyette
Twitter is becoming an interesting force… One thing it does have over Facebook and many other social networks is the complete “open” feel. Your page with all your statuses or “tweets” in this case, are all on display for the world to see, whether they are your friend or not.
I won’t get into the ramifications of this particular setup for a social network, but today’s post is about TRACKING. Why would you want tools to track twitter with?
Twitter is growing at a rapid pace. Humans are lazy.. (efficient is a nicer word) and we like simple things, easy things… and Twitter is much easier than starting your own blog and easier than email marketing etc… Tracking trends on Twitter may actually allow you to…
- Notice when a particular industry trend occurs
- Jump into the conversation when your industry topic gets tweeted about
- Reputation and brand manage if anything bad is said about you or your products or services
- Stay in the groove on your favorite topics…
- Heck even listen for earthquakes in your area
- Crowdsource if your planning a new product and haven’t come up with any ideas yet…
TweetBeep – Is like the Google Alerts of Twitter. This thing keeps track of all twitter tweets around certain keywords. Those words could be your name, your brand, your website URL or Competitor’s URLs… Or both if you wanna really keep an eye on things…
Monitter - Like Digg’s famous screen saver, this one has a really cool visual ability to watch conversations and track keywords and specific hash tags. (Hash tags are those #topic things that allow people to better organize conversations on Twitter.)
Trendistic – If you actually searched Google for “Twitter Track Tools” you most likely meant this one! It’s like Google Trends but much handier. Curious what the hot topic in the last 30 days was? How about what time of day would be best to join in on a Twitter conversation about… work, celebs, babies, weight loss or any niche? Use this to find out!
Hashtags – If Google designed a twitter tool, I bet it would look exactly like Hashtags.org does. Incredibly sparse, and utilitarian and incredibly simple – yet powerful.Not as many features as one might think, but probably useful if that’s ALL you want to do is track a hashtag (A specific twitter conversation).
Tweet Grid – Aww, didn’t get enough info overload with your RSS feeds today? Too bad, but this tool can certainly accomplish it in 30 seconds or less! Basically all this thing does is load up to 6 real time twitter results on search words you choose at the same time…. Like any human could really read that much data!
Twitter Grader - If you want to see a graph of your account or another user’s account, or get an idea of how well they rank against 6 million other users, consider this the Alexa of Twitter tools. It’s pretty much like that, really good to see… hey did this twitter user become a rising star over night? Or did it take years? The user follow history will graph that for you…
Twitter Charts – Apparently… I tweet most often on Tuesdays at 2pm and 10pm! Wow that’s cool! Enter someone’s twitter username (or your own) and see how often they tweet, and at one time… Competitor spy tool? Me think so!
What The Trend? – Yeah, they called it that… Anyway this thing tells you which hash tags (conversations) are rising in popularity.. Cool stuff?
Twitter Analyzer – Very nice graphic presentation, probably a bit too much pretty – but still info packed with stats about individual twitter user names none-the-less. This is a nice dashboard style look at someone’s account, what they tweet about who they are etc… and of course what time of day too.. Not quite as nice as the twitter charts.
Tweet Stats – Gives some pretty impressive numbers on an individual twitter account, takes a bit to load though but it has some features that I really like. It shows who they @reply to most often, what interface they use the most (Im surprised I use web more than Blackberry!) Also interesting is who’s stuff I re-tweet most often… Wild!
TweetSheep - Creates a tag cloud of a given username’s most used words… I can think of a few things you could use that for… Appeal to the interests of a popular Twitter-er by observing their favorite topics… Easily..
Tagalus – What’s that twitter hash tag mean? What’s #seo mean anyway? Find out here. The dictionary of hash tags.
Bit.ly – Tracks many URLs used on Twitter, shows the realtime stats of how many clicks each has received. Very cool that it not only shows stats for your own URLs (website addresses) but other people’s too!
TwitterFall – A neat Digg screen saver like completely customizable twitter feed you can watch in your web browser.
TweetVolume – Enter a few words and see how often they appear on twitter in general, quite interesting to use this as a form of keyword research for your next writing assignment…
TweetMeme – I use this on my blog to show the tweet count you see on each of my posts… But what is it, really? Besides a fancy “tweet” counter, it also shows the stats of shared links on Twitter. What’s more impressive than it’s Bit.ly like counter is the fact that it separates links by audio, video and news. Bit.ly only shows hits and impressions etc.
GTrend – Someone’s made a “trend” tracking account to track Google trends, that’s kind of neat. Follow him to keep an eye on interesting Google search trends.
TweetEffect – What last tweet gave you that big rush of followers? Was it you announcing you were going to go walk the dog? Or that monumental post about your website? TweetEffect, claims to have the answer.
Tinker – Tinker claims to be watching 7.5 million people on Twitter and Facebook at the exact same time, and offers stats, insights and also a feature to integrate their engine into your website. Worthy of further investigation.
Splitweet – Manages multiple twitter accounts and monitors your brand so you can reply from various accounts all with one simple engine.
Tweetizen – Ever wished that your social media gurus were in a separate live feed on Twitter than the friends at the office? And the save money and coupon ones… They should be in their own separate feed, and what about that guy who announces earthquakes in your area? Now you can do that. Seems like a feature that should have been included since day 1… Like lists & retweets.
TwitLinks - Monitor all the techie and popular technology authors from one place.
Twistory – Take Google Calendar (or your calendar app) and your twitter account and smash them together to see a real time timeline or actual calendar of tweets. For those who really wanted their tweets of given days in their calendar it’s almost like automated journaling…
Tweetzi – Probably the only twitter search engines that has it’s own set of search operators. Search operators are commands besides just the keywords you enter. For example you could enter a “?” and find tweets asking a question, or ” 
” and find negative topics vs ” ” where you would find positive topics.
Twendz – Sorry, but the “twendz” interface is about as cheesy as their name itself. However, some may find the engine nice for monitoring hash tags in real time and watching conversations unfold… But really you could do that with the existing Twitter, just not as pretty as this!
That’s all for today,
All the best
Daniel j Deyette
I should hope they are!
In fact – I hope the folks that read my content are true parasites, although I’m sure you know I don’t really mean like Mosquitos and fleas, but more like “The Mistletoe Bird”. This bird feeds on the seeds of the Mistletoe plant, and interestingly enough, when doing so releases the seeds. The plant needs this bird to ensure it’s survival, and likewise the bird needs the plant…
What’s that got to do with website visitors? Well… I imagine a perfect website needs visitors to be worth existing, to pay bills and pretty much exist. It wouldn’t exist long without an audience…. Vice-versa, if the material isn’t any good, folks aren’t going to keep visiting it, and thus… If it’s REALLY good material, maybe they couldn’t live without it at all…
Feed into staples of life.
Here’s some interesting facts sure to stir up some controversy and interest!
FACT: Humans can’t survive more than 3 hrs exposed to extremely low temperatures.
FACT: Humans can’t survive for longer than 3 days without water
FACT: Human’s can’t live more than 3 weeks without food.
When you write material for your website, consider the basic survival needs of your target audience. A blackberry or cell phone website might write about getting maximum signal strength, myths and misconceptions – Like a cell user could live without that!
Feed into addictions.
Does your target audience drink beer? What about gambling, sports or some other incredibly addictive activity. There’s folks who’ve made millions by writing books on farmville, the Facebook addicting game that has folks building fake farms on global online communities. I find it humorous that you could make more money collecting pop bottles on a desolate road in India than by playing unlimited hours of Farmville & Mafia wars on Facebook. But perhaps this is a good topic to write on for traffic?
The REAL goal behind this post…
I wanted to use some extremely engaging writing and wording to pop your eyes out of your skull and get some creative juices flowing. Truth of the matter is there’s a ton of ways to think outside the box and dive deep into the subconcious layers. Into the internal workings of the human mind and start actively poking and prodding for new ways to gain their attention.
That’s what advertising and marketing are really all about, gaining attention — and keeping it as long as you can! Once you have someone on your email list, you can actively correspond with them and get as much eyeball time as possible, provided your interesting, engaging and entertaining… and can find ways to help fulfill their lives in someway while ensuring the survival of your website, business and online ventures.
All the best,
Daniel J Deyette
Imagine shouting in outerspace for a sec, bet your SEO efforts can sure feel like that. The emptyness, not even an echo as you words ring out.
Funny thing is you really shouldn’t feel so empty once you UNDERSTAND the emptiness. Astronauts can feel completely at home in outer space, because they know they’re coming home… are you?
I know, this is a strange analogy, so lets get to the meat & potatoes. I bet you’ve written some amazing content, added pictures, added the human touch… It was one of those posts on your website that you were sure was going to get tons of hits, tons of links and just a earth shattering server breaking level of traffic.
But… Come time to get it all up on the site, Digg it, Tweet it and everything… Nothing… A week later.. Google’s not pickin’ it up, and no mad rush of traffic!
There’s a few key areas that can make this happen and understanding is half the battle.
#1. Market Space
If you’ve just gotten started and your site is young… and your in a super competitive space, I mean like Viagra, Real Estate, Money & Credit, Weight loss, you can expect that it’ll be years before you see great rankings. In fact i’d say roughly 3 years to be exact unless you REALLY know what your doing and hit the gas pedal hard (and spend lots of money).
Picking less competitive markets is the key to really getting those overnight success stories happening to YOU. You really want to rank for those 100,000 hits per month phrases, but it’s not going to happen overnight for weight loss terms… But it might for an area like Brazilian neck ties.
Figuring out what markets are non-competitive and easy to rank for is no easy task, but my blog does offer a free book in our newsletter that helps you figure that out pretty quick… “unstoppable keywords” now free when you sign up to our newsletter.
#2. Domain Age & Link Juice
Yes, if you have an older domain name with trusted links pointing to it, some might see that as having a high pagerank like PR5 or better, while others may realize that just a few really trusted sources like CNN or even lesser trusted sources like about.com linking to you can help get you there. I won’t dig deep into what makes a trusted domain because that in itself would be a book’s worth and too much time to write.
#3. General Popularity
If social media and other small time bloggers pickup on your stuff, it can quickly provide the authority juice necessary to rank, if that doesn’t happen, no matter what you say won’t get found on a Search Engine…. Networking with related sites and asking them to link to you or offering them something for linking to you can definitely help here.
#4. Topical and keyword relevance
Having content that’s so well optimized (in some lightly competitive markets) can help gain the traffic your looking for. Using tools like the synonym finder and such can help you theme your content properly while using proper keyword tools like wordtracker in combination with Google’s and 7Search and other tools can give you the info you need to ensure your not writing about topics no one cares about.
Conclusion
In most moderately competitive niches (exercise, finance, computers, cell phones, travel) even if you’ve picked a super niche-specific area to write about where few others write, you still may find it tough in the first 3 years to start gaining any traction.
I bet you feel pretty frustrated by that and most people would. The old fashioned strategies play best here until the Search Engines realize just how valuable your content really is…
Assuming you already have amazing content, the next pieces to be focusing on while the search engines do their magic are:
* Join niche clubs and membership sites in your market space.
* Talk in related forums and get your name out there
* PPC advertise and contextual ad advertise if it’s within your budget to do so
* Join Twitter and tweet your good stuff and also spark conversations with related persons on Twitter using the @reply format.
* Slowly build up your newsletter list and offer way more content than you do advertising, in fact try not to sell anything if you can.
* Answer questions on Yahoo Answers related to your niche
* Sponsor events, organizations and other things… Even if you don’t get a link from it as long as you get the name recognition from doing it.
* use parasite hosting – yes that sounds ugly and it too is a book or post within itself.. But let me summarize parasite hosting from a good standpoint.
Using Squidoo, Youtube, Hubpages, EzineArticles and getting material on THEIR Domains to rank for your keywords with YOUR material (link or no link) to get your brand and tips and resources out there helps build brand awareness.
A parasite requires the larger organism to survive. That’s how it gets that name. Parasite hosting is when you post content on an older more reputable domain name that already has juicy link power and get a page on THEIR domain to rank for your phrases. Then leverage that traffic.
Those are just some of the strategies you can use while your site isn’t yet ranking for the terms you desire.
Daniel j Deyette
P.S. we don’t advertise or sell hardly anything but try to deliver insane value in our newsletter. Signup – It’s free!
This guy actually used Google to get TV spots on late nite TV for less than $100 each!
Not for some demographics, but if your product works well to the average couch potato, it might be worth looking at!
If your product DOES cater to a WIDE Audience…
Then many traffic channels that would be unprofitable for other people would be strongly profitable for you. A classic example of a wide audience product might be like soap or toothpaste.
Would this benefit your SEO? Yup!
Strong indications from all over the web indicate that brand exposure and high levels of brand search are known to increase your rankings and also increase links to your site thus increasing SEO (search engine) exposure.
Careful with those URLS
Fact is if your website addresses aren’t super simple to remember (With no dashes!!) and nothing hard to spell for the average 8th grader… Your TV ads aren’t going to turn into web traffic… And an easily rememberable 1800 number could help too.. If you even have that feature.
Thanks, David Neale @ Web-scape.com
Adobe’s going to launch the CS5 package, seems lately like all they’re doing is churning out more and more versions of their package suite… AND they’re getting more bloated! The last one was awful close to 8GB in size. Took 4 DVDs to install… Crazy! But has anyone else noticed that they’re coming more regularly too? It used to be a version of photoshop would be the top knotch (with many updates) for a few years or more.
Now, updates come in the form of new versions..
But, this version does come with some pretty sweet features… One such feature was announced yesterday and has created a HUGE webmaster buzz on Youtube. If you haven’t seen the “content aware sneak peak” – even if your not a web developer or Photoshoper type person, you should STILL watch it. They’re about to give some amazing juice to the uneducated photoshoper…
But, that’s not what compelled me to write this post, although that in itself is pretty killer news… What impressed me the most was their launch website. It’s incredible! It’s a perfect (yes – a word I usually can’t use) example of how a launch should be done. Twitter integration and live communication, YES! Count down clock making everyone dying for it to finally be the day.. YES! BRILLIANT!
