RSS, (Really Simple Syndication) has become so popular today and is being referred to by internet users as "Pull" Technology rather than "Push" Technology.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone who logs on to the Internet has not heard of "Spam." Most, If not all Internet users are inundated with these
advertisements, that we did not ask for or request.

For those of you that may not be familiar with the term, rest assured we're not talking about canned meat here. LOL! Rather, it is unwanted advertising from people that we neither asked for or requested to recieve. Spam is "Push" technology. "Pushed" in your face and inbox, wanted or not.



Many believe this brand of "Push" technology is or will be, the death of email. Yet, as long as there are individuals and companies that continue to use the illegal spam process, email will be around for
a long long time. The irony being, companies are raking in millions, selling spam solutions, to people and big corporations, that are Not Working!

RSS, is the Total Opposite of the above "Push" technology. When subscribing to an RSS Feed, subscribers "Pull" information into their RSS Readers and can only be done so if someone voluntarily subscribes to a particular RSS Feed. If they find it's not the information they want, they can simply unsubscribe and never have to recieve another message from the owner of that particular feed. Hence the term "Pull" Technology.

Utilizing RSS "Pull" technology has become a popular source of income for webmasters that use RSS Feeds on their websites. Here's How:

Let's say, you set up a one page mini-site or you could even set up a Blog. A Blog would be a quick and easy
alternative.

You can then host ads from either Google Adsense or the New Yahoo look alike Google Ads. When someone visits
your page and clicks one of your ads, You Get Paid.

If you've followed along and done the steps above, you've created a good starting place. You're going to need to
make sure your pages are optimized properly. This will ensure you get your page ranked high in the search engines.
Like any site or page, the more targeted traffic you get, greater are the chances that someone will click your ads.
Which increases your Income.

Now, by using the power of RSS you increase your pages earning potential. When you add an RSS Feed
to your page, you convert it into an ever changing, dynamic web page. Bringing you an abundance of visitors who, in all probability will return to read it.

Especially if you add 10 or 15 RSS Feeds to your page. You will create a dynamic, ever changing, self updating page. Providing valuable content that readers will want to read, over and over again.


Any web page can be turned into a dynamic web page. Just use the free RSS creator software called "Carp" This is one of the most popular free versions and can be downloaded here: http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

After you set the program up on your website and added the proper code to your website, then you will
need to collect RSS feeds that relate to the topic of your web page.

You've got your web page, It's topic is about writing articles. Go to Google News, Get their RSS Feed Code, Insert it into the designated Carp Coding, then make the necessary changes found below: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=writing+articles&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

Same with Topix.net, adjust the code like this: http://rss.topix.net/search/?q=writing+articles&xml=1

Once you've got your web page uploaded, It will automatically pull in fresh content from Google and Topix about writing articles.

Do these things for any web page and watch your search engine ranking soar and also your Income!

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CTR is short form of click through rates. A higher CTR means , the ads are being clicked by more and more blog visitors and more clicks mean more income.This is the reason why a blogger monetizing his/her blog with adsense should be serious about CTR.In this post I will talk about some tips to increase CTR of adsense ads.


But before I start with my tips , I would like to tell about CTR in some detail. Mathematically , CTR can be calculated as-

CTR= No. of clicks /No. of visitors * 100


So, if a blog or site has been visited 100 times and 10 ads has been clicked then CTR will be-

CTR= 10/100* 100 = 10

Most of the blogs have a CTR below 1 and on an average a CTR of 3-5 % should be regarded as decent. Although there are some reports that some site owners have got a CTR in double figures but there are no evidences in support of this.


With so much of background , I will now quickly jump over to the point , tips to increase CTR.

CTR depends on following factors-

1. The ad positioning or ad placement
2. Ad relevancy
3. colours of the ad
4. No. of links (both outgoing and incoming) on the page
5. Reader type
6. Season
   

Ad positioning or ad placement-

Ad placement is a vital factor which affects the CTR. Cleverly placed ads can increase clicks thereby adsense income.Furthermore, there are no hard and fast rule for ad placement. Better ad placement varies from blog to blog and also from page to page.It is a matter of research and you have to research to find what placement fetches you most.

In general, ads at the top ,left and near the blog content has higher CTR.

One of the things which you can do to research your ad positioning is to create a heat map of your blog.Heat map of a blog or any site can be created using Google Analytics.Note following points-

1. Average time spent on your blog- If people are spending more time on your blog or your posts it means that they are really reading your whole content and in this case it is probable that ads placed at the bottom of your post will be clicked.
2. What are the top entrance and top exit pages- Top Entrance pages should contain links to specially adsense optimized pages and top exit pages should have ads placed on the top and in the top of the sidebar.
3. Where people are clicking-Anaytics can show you what are the areas where links has been clicked.Placing ads in the areas where links are being clicked can increase CTR of adsense.

Ad relevancy-

Relevant ads are more oftenly clicked than irrelevant ads.So, a blogger should apply some of the tricks to get relevant ads from adsense.Here I would like to talk about a point.Adsense bot (mediabot) is a sub-division of google bot and so, it crawls the pages in similar way as googlebot.

This means that if you are making your keywords bold or italic , using your keyword in the title and using your keywords time and again in your post you will get relevant ads.These are basic SEO techniques which also work to get relevant ads from adsense.

There is one more tec hnique which makes use of section targeting.In this you tell mediabot , what is important and what is not by inserting a small piece of code in your content.I will talk about this in a bit more detail when I discuss ad relevancy in detail in some other post.


Ads colour and design-

There is a long article available at google adsense help centre on coloue of ads. I recommend you to go through that article.But in short, I will discuss three points-

Blending- Here you choose the ad colour in such a way that it matches with the background and margin of your blog.

Stand out- Here you choose the ad colour which is contrasting to your background.

Complement- Here you use a colour which is already present in your blog.

You can get the details here.
You should research to find what colours are bringing higher CTR and use the same.


No. of Links-

More no. of links mean more options to click and less links mean less option to click.The adsense optimized pages should contain no or fewer links especially outgoing links.I know some of the folks who don't provide any link on their adsense optimized pages , so, visitors have the a few option of either closing the window or,hit back butoon or click some of the ads which sounds appealing to them.


Visitor type-

A blog with more number of repeat visitors experience lower CTR than a blog with new visitors. The reason is, repeat visitors or loyal readers get well acquainted with your ad position and so, there are lesser no. of clicks , a phenomenon called as ad blindness.If you have more number of repeat visitors , you should frequently change your ad positions and colours to negate the effect of ad blindness otherwise you should stick with what is working best for you.


Season-

This may sound incredible for some but it is true.I myself has experienced this on one of my travel blogs.I have seen a rise in CTR in summer season on that blog.


I have just guided you towrds the right path to get higher CTR.But higher CTR can only be get if you research and observe what is working best for you.I would once again repeat that CTR varies from blog to blog and from page to page , so, you must research yourself to see what is working for you and what is not.

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One of the factors that can skyrocket your adsense income is the high paying ads.I must say this is not the sole factor which operates to generate income from adsense program but this is clearly one of the important factors which can make a great difference to your income and money making potential of your blog.Here in this post I will talk about some tips to get high paying adsense ads on your blog.



Before I start with my tips , I would like to tell you a bit about the the procedure google follows to deliver ads to your blog.The ads appearing on your blog comes through adwords.Upon signing up for adwords program advertisers has to choose certain keywords related to their websites, products or services.After choosing the keywords they have to bid on each keyword they have selected.The bidding amount is the amount they will pay when somebody clicks their ad.



So, if you are targeting a keyword with high bidding amount then the amount you will be paid will be higher.This is the basic concept of getting high paying ads on a blog.Now, million dollar question here is , How one could know what keywords will fetch high paying ads? I will answer this question in the paragraphs that follows.



I have found three sites that provide you with the list of high paying keywords also called as PPC keywords.These are-

1. Google Adwords keyword tool
2. Rumler Internet Services
3. Keyword Country

Google Adwords keyword tool-

This tool was originally devised for advertisers but a publisher can use it for his advantage.Upon entering a keyword this tool produces a list of related keywords with average CPC values, advertiser competition and search volume as shown below in the image.

(Click to enlarge the image)

For getting high paying ads you should target a keyword with high average CPC.In the image above you can see that the avg. CPC for keyword "SEO" is $4.18 and for "SEO Companies" it is $7.45. So,by targeting the keyword "SEO companies" you will be able to get higher paying ads than targeting "SEO" as your keyword.

Apart from average CPC you should also pay attention to 'Advertisers competition' column.This column gives you an idea about number of advertisers who are targeting a particular keyword.You should target a keyword with higher no. of advertisers.



Rumler Internet Services-

This is little known website but they have got a giant list of high paying keywords listed in alphabetical order.They also tell about maximum CPC of a particular keyword which adwords keywords tool doesn't tell you.

The only disacvantage I find with this website is that they don't provide you with a list of related keywords at one place.Sometimes it becomes time taking to use this tool.



Keyword Country-

This is the best tool to find high paying keywords for your blog because it provides many information which you won't find anywhere else.It will suggest many high paying keywords, it tells exact or near exact number of addvertisers who are targeting a particular keyword and much more.

The biggest cons is that it is not free.You have to pay to make use of their services.


Using the above mentioned tools you can get a list of high paying keywords.Remember keywords decide what ads will appear on your blog and it is again keywords which will decide what amount you will get when someone clicks ads on your blog.So, pay a particular attention to keywords, do keyword research if you wish to get high paying adsense ads and earn more money from this program.

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Earlier in of my posts I have told you about the five factors that increase adsense income.The five factors ,I talked about are-

1) Blog traffic
2) High paying adsense ads
3) Ad placement
4) High CTR
5) Ad relevance

In this post I will talk about ad relevance and how to get relevant adsense ads on your blog. Relevant ads help in increasing CTR and thus income your b log generates for you.But before I tell some tips to get relevant ads ,I would like to say some sentences about how ads are delivered on a site through adsense program?

How adsense delivers ads on your blog?

Once you install the ad code on your blog the adsense bot (popularly known as mediabot) visits your site and crawl it. After crawling, the bot gets an idea what your blog is all about.It analyzes different words and phrases (Keywords) and based on those keywords it delivers ads on your blog.
Furthermore, adsense bot is a subdivision of the google bot and thus, its basic algorithm is similar to that of google bot.

How to get relevant adsense ads?

As I have already said, adsense bot is a smaller division of google bot and thus, the basic programming of both these robots are similar.So, to get relevant ads you should-

• Use your primary keyword in title- As you might be knowing, google bot takes a close look at the words or phrases in the title.Similarly , adsense bot determines gives utmost importance to the things in the title.
• Make use of html tags to make your keyword bold and italic.
• Use your keywords time and again to get the preferred keyword density of 3-6%
• Don't make use of frames and javascripts as robots are blind to it.
  

Make use of section targeting a tool provided by google to get relevant adsense ads-

Section targeting is a method provided by google to tell the mediabot what is important on your blog.It simply tells the bot about the sections or part of your content that should be focused upon to deliver ads.

You can get the details of section targeting at help page of google adsense.

Although google says it can't guarantee relevant ads through this or it may take a couple of weeks to crawl any changes in the pages but most of the times it works quite fine. In addition ,you should include a significant amount of content inside the section to get relevant ads on your blog.

Relevant ads are one of the determinants that increase your adsense income and so, it should be particularly taken care of.Traffic and high paying adsense ads are of no value if the ads are not relevant to your blog's theme.

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Without any introduction and undue delay lets come to the point. I will start this post with a small question.


How adsense works?

I am sure most of you are able to answer this question.But let me answer this question for someone who don’t know the answer of this question.


“When a site/blog visitor sees an appealing adsense ad and clicks it you earn a share of money that advertiser pay google once ads are clicked.”


I think most of you will agree with me.( because there is no point to disagree in this !!)

OK, lets go one step further.Now I will extract some of the words from the answer I have given above.



1) “site/blog visitor”-

This is important as it is visitor who will click the ads and more visitors mean more clicks and more adsense income. In internet language we call no. of visitors as web traffic or blog traffic. So , more traffic means more income in general.


2) “sees”-

A visitor will click an ad only when he/she is able to see it first. If you have placed ad at some corner where visitor seldom scroll then that ad will not be seen, will not be clicked and you don’ get single penny. So , you have to place ads at a place where people are focussed.Placing an ad is referred to as ad placement.




3) “appealing ad”-

A visitor will click an ad only when he/she finds it appealing. An appealing ad is one which is on a subject or topic in which visitor is interested. In general if you have a post on dogs then your ads should also be about dogs. The idea is a visitor is on your page because he is interested in dogs , so , an ad on dogs will be appealing for him. In technical terms we call it ad relevance.



4) “Clicks”-

You will be paid only when some visitor clicks on your ad.So, if you are able to increase clicks you will increase your income.In technical terms we call it click through rates ( CTR).



5) “money that advertiser pay ”-

All ads don’t fetch you equal amount of money .Some ads pay you more and some less. Actually what you will be paid for a click depends on keywords you have used on your blog. So, if you are targeting a keyword for which bid amount is more you will get more money per click.The cost that advertiser pays for a keyword is called Cost per click (CPC).



So, now I think you have a fair idea about adsense and how to increase adsense income.To sum up the things-

1) Build traffic to your site.
2) Place the adsense ads properly.
3) Get relevant ads
4) Increase click through rates.
5) Target keywords for which average CPC is high.

You have to take care of all these five points in order to make handsome income from adsense. You won’t see results if you omit even one of the above mentioned point.


I will come up with details of each point in my upcoming posts so, check back soon or just subscribe to my feeds.

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If I have to define 'Paid Reviews' , I will define it as- " Easiest and Deadliest way to make money from blogs."

I call it 'easiest' because the only criteria your blog has to fulfill is to be around for at least three months with average posting frequency (generally 2 posts a week will do). While in other programs like adsense you need decent pagerank and decent traffic on your blog to earn money.


I call it 'deadliest' way to make money because it can cause stunting of growth of your blog.The more reviews you will do the more stunting it will cause.



Most of the bloggers ,particularly, newbies fall prey to this trap because their attention is towards 'easy money' and they are just ignorant or overlook the darker side of paid reviews.If you are a person who has been reviewing sites for money or planning to do so, just halt here for a moment and take a look at the darker side of paid reviews as I am going to list some of the cons of paid reviews in the paragraphs that follows.

• You may loose credibility as a Blogger by writing paid reviews-

This is the 'deadliest' cons of the paid reviews.Most of the times you are asked to talk about only benefits of a website or product you are reviewing.Suppose you published a review post listing all benefits of a rotten and ugly website.Now since you have talked only about benefits of the reviewed site or product ,so, your visitors will see it as recommendation from you, only to find later that you have misguided them.Imagine ,how seriously it can hurt your impression as a blogger.

Your visitors will say you 'good bye' once you start hurting them by recommending wrong websites to them.This will cause stunting in your blog's growth in terms of traffic and subscribership.

• Paid reviews are too cheap.

Most of the times you have to give away at least three links back to the advertisers website.Next you have to keep those links permanently on your blog.Look at these sentences which has been used on the rules page of Blogsvertise and Smorty.

Your blog entry must remain online and be a permanent entry in your blog.

All blog posts MUST BE PERMANENT. Bloggers who remove posts after being paid will automatically be declined and will no longer be accepted into the Smorty network.

So, you placed some links which will always remain there on your blog and what you are paid is a one time fee, usually a few dollars.Isn't this cheap , I mean, a one time payment for something which will remain on your blog forever.

Also giving away links will cause bleed in your pagerank and will cause stunted growth of your blog in terms of pagerank.

• Sometimes you may review an off topic website or product

It is not always that you will find advertisers related to your theme of blog.This is the time when bloggers review something which is in related category but not exactly matches your blog theme.


Imagine a situation when someone landed on your blog in search of "dog breeds" and finds a review on "cat breeds".You can guess what impression you and your blog would have left on the visitor's mind.

• Google may slap your blog by penalizing it and removing it from its index.

I have already said earlier in this post that you have to give away links back to advertisers site.My point here is you are paid not just for reviewing a site but also to give away links.This is virtually link selling.

Google is against buying and selling links and there are instances when google has actually penalized websites indulging in buying and selling links.Now if somehow google finds that you have been selling links on your blog, it may penalize you by removing your blog from its index.



There are many other cons of paid reviews but those listed above should always be considered while you decide to review a website to earn money.Don't overlook the darker side while making a decision.


If you seek my advice on the issue then I will say you to refrain yourself from doing paid reviews.Paid reviews can bring some bucks in your pocket but in the long run they will never help you.Think big and see far !!!

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