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Friday, August 27, 2010

Troubleshooting Google AdSense and Google Analytics


I had so much trouble linking my Google AdSense and Google Analytics that once I figured it out, I thought I should share my knowledge with the world. First I'll tell you how I was set up, then I'll explain the solution. Or scroll down directly to the solution if you're in a hurry. My journey to earn money from home in the form of a passive income is anything but easy!

I started with a single money making website. I signed up for Google AdSense and Google Analytics. I copied the code from Google onto my site. No problem. Then I started another money making website. So I added an account for the second site and added the code to that site. Then I did a third. Still no problem. But I realized after the fourth, fifth, and sixth money making websites that I didn't want to have to check every account separately.

I decided that what I really wanted to do was see a different "profile" on a single account. In my case, each site was a profile on an account. So I went about building a profile for each site. But then I had these extra accounts cluttering up my Dashboard. And since Google has such awful explanations and practically NO customer service to speak of, I couldn't find much help. 

Sometimes the forums had a helpful lead, but as often as not, it was just full of frustrated people screaming at Google for their lack of help. After countless hours (during which I was not creating content for my sites like I should have been), I figured out a few things. There is still a lot for me to learn, but here's what I've got so far. I can always add more later...


Delete An Account


1. After you sign in to Google Analytics, there is a drop down box with all your accounts listed on the right.
2. Select the account you wish to delete.
3. Then, over on the left is a link that says "Analytics Settings". Click it.
4. Underneath the View Reports dropdown box is a link that says "Overview = > Your Site (Edit account settings | Edit AdSense linking settings)". Click "Edit account settings".
5. Underneath your account information is a small link that says "Delete this account".

I missed that last step several times before spotting it. They sure don't make it easy delete a Google analytics account.


Link Google AdSense and Google Analytics


1. After you sign in to Google Analytics, there is a drop down box with all your accounts listed on the right.
2. Select the account you wish to delete.
3. Then, over on the left is a link that says "Analytics Settings". Click it.
4. Underneath the View Reports dropdown box is a link that says "Overview = > Your Site (Edit account settings | Edit AdSense linking settings)". Click "Edit AdSense linking settings".
5. If you have multiple sites, then here you will see them listed. Check the box by each site to link your Google AdSense t to your Google Analytics.
6. Copy and paste the code into the head of your site(s) if you haven't already.


Find AdSense Information in Analytics


After you sign in to Google Analytics, there is a drop down box with all your accounts listed on the right.
Select the account you wish to see AdSense data for.
On the left there is a dropdown box with the title "View Reports". Select a profile (or website) from the list.
Then, from the list of links on the left, click on "Content".
If your AdSense and Analtyics accounts are linked properly, you'll see AdSense listed as a report when the list expands.
You can stop here since this is the display for AdSense. I always add this report to my dashboard for convenience. Just click the "Add to Dashboard" button in the top left of the chart.


If you you are looking to make money online, then there is no question that you need to sign up for both of these programs. Google AdSense and Google Analytics are not very user friendly like you might expect from such a huge company.

Cheers

MJ

Friday, August 20, 2010

SEO Techniques (Part 2)

Yes, Dear Reader, I'm giving you even more SEO techniques to grow your blog or website to new heights. My generosity knows no bounds. Become your very own SEO expert by following a few simple tips.


  • Start A Competing Site - If you manage to crack the top 10 with one of your pages (or more than one if you're really good), start another site targeting the same keywords and using the same SEO techniques you used to get your first page ranked. In this way you can dominate the entire top 10 spots for your keyword. Then start up 50 more sites doing the same thing. Own the keyword.
  • Add A Sitemap - Having a sitemap can help the SEs find all the pages on your site. Of course they're supposed to craws every link anyways, but giving a little help to the bots can only help you, too.
  • Use .Com - It seems to be true that .com domain names get more love from the SEs. The next best is .net. Going after .biz or .tv is much more difficult and often look like scam sites.
  • Check Your Links - Broken links on your site piss off people as well as SEs. Make sure they all work.
  • Navigation - Some SEs won't even crawl your site without some form of navigation, whether its at the top or on either side of your content. People need to be able to navigate around your site, too, by the way.
  • Forget Flash - SEs can't see flash animation. Use it only for your human visitors.
  • Label Images - SEs also can't see images. If you insist on using them (and lots of people do like them), use a descriptive label to tell the SE what the picture is of. This can also get you some extra search traffic when people are searching or images.
  • Copy The Competition - Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and see what sites are linking to your competition. Then see if you can get those people to link to you, as well. Clearly they don't mind giving out links. Why not give some to you?
  • Don't Stop - If you do manage to make to the top of the pile, you can't sit back with a margarita and relax. The SEs are constantly changing their algoritms, new competitors are emerging onto the scene, people are reading up on SEO techniques (like these here) and are moving up the ranks.
  • Band Together - Join a group or forum of like-minded webmasters to keep up with the ever-changing search engine landscape. There will be plenty of theories about how the SEs are working. Some will be crazy. But you can see trends when many people share their experiences - both good and bad.

Friday, August 13, 2010

SEO Techniques

Here for your perusal, Dear Reader, are some SEO techniques for performing well in the search engines. There any number of ways to improve your performance.

SEO, or if you prefer the tongue-tying Search Engine Optimization, is all about getting search engines (SEs) to find you. If folks type in a keyword or phrase and don't find you, you may as well not have a website at all. Really.

Ideally you should employ SEO techniques before you even set up your site. If you already have a site, you probably should go back and fix some things. Make it a priority.

Some methods cost money. Some methods cost time. Only you can decide what is your priority. My belief is that you can always earn cash, you can't earn or make more time. So I'm willing to spend a little to help further my goal to make money online.

There are a lot of keyword experts out there, but you don't need an SEO expert for everything. There are some things you should do on your own. But remember, its not like flipping a switch. Performing a few of these SEO techniques won't make your site jump to the top of the list overnight. Everything about the search engines (SEs) takes time.

For one thing, brand new sites haven't been indexed yet, so the SEs don't even know you're there. But even after that its not so quick. For one thing the SEs prefer older sites over new sites. Age is an indicator of a known, responsible site. Think of it like kids. As they grow older they become more trustworthy. The SEs are all about trustworthiness.



  • Niche Keywords - Or long tail keywords if you prefer. But ranking for the keyword 'cars' is next to impossible. But 'used cars', or 'used cars in Atlanta', or 'really awesome cars that are also cheap' would be easier. But you're keywords also need to have value so don't pick something that no one ever searches for. I'll write more about keyword selection later.
  • Localize Your Keywords - If you are selling a product or service that sells to the general public on the local level, your keywords should reflect that. Savvy SE users search that way. If I'm not familiar with flowers, I might type "flower shops in Detroit" to get a list that I can actually use rather than just "flower shops" which would return results that are less useful to me.
  • Don't ignore metadata - Metadata is the part of the html of your site that tells the SEs what your site is about. The keywords you're targeting, your description of each page, and the title of your page.
  • Put Your Main Keyword(s) In Your Domain Name - Even if it is a long, clunky name, its better than a domain name that doesn't tell the SEs or your potential customers/readers what your site is about.
  • Sign Up For Google Analytics - Its free and its the best. Learn where your web page visitors are coming from and how long they stay. There is, quite literally, more information here than anyone needs, but you do need some of it.
  • Placement Of Keywords - Use your targeted keyword for each page in the first and last sentence of the page. The SEs give special importance to the beginning and end of a page.
  • Be Aware Of Keyword Density - Too few and the SEs don't know what your page is about. Too many and its barely readable. Don't keyword stuff. Just write naturally and sprinkle keywords throughout.
  • Register With The SEs - This one is controversial. The major SEs have a very simple way to let them know that you've got a new site. After all, they can't be expected to find all of the millions of pages that are created every day. But many SEO experts insist that registering with the SEs somehow increase the length of time it will take to be found... Go figure.
That'll do for now. I'll have another list of SEO techniques that you're sure to love soon...

Cheers

MJ

Friday, August 6, 2010

What I’ve Learned About How To Make Money Online

As you know, Dear Reader, my journey to make money online has had only limited success. I’m a year into the process, and have yet to make it big. To be honest though, for much of that time I was working on the wrong things. I didn’t know much about link building or article marketing and I’ve since learned that those are the main things that will make a site profitable.

The mantra "Content is King" was thrown around so much that I spent all my time writing articles that I thought were very useful. But if you don't land on page one of the search engines (SEs), then you may as well not be there. So, while "Content is King" may be true, you must still divide your time between creating new content and building back links.

What are back links?

Back links are when someone links back to your site. To the SEs, they are votes for your site. These votes say that you must have some good stuff, and that people are encouraging their readers to check out your site for more information about a given topic.

I've covered article marketing and blog commenting briefly in a previous post so I won't belabor the point. But how much time should you spend on these tasks? It seems around 80% - 90% of your time should be spent working on getting links. Writing articles and submitting to article directories, or surfing blogs on which to make intelligent, useful comments. Only 10% - 20% of your time is to be spent actually creating content for your own money making website.

Article Marketing Tips

So if you are submitting articles to directories, be sure to use your keyword as the link back to the page that you are targeting. See, the SEs like deep links. Deep links are links to pages of your site that are not your home page. If you only ever link to the homepage, the SEs will think that's a great home page and may rank it very highly, but the rest of your pages will never get ranked. And each page of your site should target a different keyword.

There is usually a place at the end of each article that talks about the author. This is called the bio box. This is where you will be allowed to put your links. So don't put " 'click here' to see my site." Then you'll be ranking for 'click here'. You'll want to write something like, "For more information about 'your keyword', please visit my site 'your site name'. I've made the text blue for where your links will actually be. 

Link Farms

These are sites that charge you a fee to purchase thousands and thousands of back links. I've only heard bad things about link farms. When a web page suddenly gets thousands of links all at once, it is very obvious to the SEs that it is artificial. I've heard the SEs will ban you if you use them. Don't use them.

Link Exchanges

A link exchange is when you and another website owner exchange links. While this is good, its not the most useful of links. The SEs like one-way links much better. One-way links are an indication that one site is voting for another site. Link exchanges look like what it is - two sites trying to promote each other.

Other Links

The best kind of links are also the kind that are woven into the content of an article. These are the most natural-looking to the SEs, and they also carry the most weight. That's why you see various links scattered throughout my posts. These links are pointing to other posts on this blog. It is a way to build links within my own site! Doing too much of this probably isn't a good thing, but sprinkling a few throughout an article is.

I'll continue to share the things I learn about how to make money online as I gain experience...

That's all for now.

Cheers

MJ


Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Money Making Website

In my quest to earn money from home, I've started more than one money making website. See, my goal is not just to make money online, but to build something that will provide a passive income for years to come. As part of this effort, I'm sharing my experiences with you, Dear Reader, and perhaps you can learn from my failures. Here are some things I've learned.

Blogs and/or websites are the way to go. Writing for HubPages or Squidoo works, but any money your articles produce (by readers clicking on the ads on your pages), you have to split. The tradeoff is that the Search Engines (SEs) know and like the big article sites. They get huge amounts of traffic. And some of that traffic will find your article and possibly click an ad, and thus, provide you with a few cents.

Starting your own website allows you to keep all the money from the ads...provided you can find some readers. Traffic is the name of the game. And trust me, just putting up a site doesn't mean diddly. No one will ever find your site unless you are on page one in the SE pages.

After writing 18 articles for eHow, I decided to go it alone. It is much, much, much harder to do, but I believe the future is brighter doing it this way. Only time will tell, I suppose. Here are a couple of tips I've picked up in my ongoing education.

Link Building

How do the SEs know which sites are the good ones? By the number of websites that link to them, of course! So if I've got amazing, original content and thousands of webmasters put a link on their site telling readers that I've got some really helpful information, then the SEs assume I must really know my stuff. So when someone searches for say, earn money, my site shows up at the top. Almost no one does it this way, though.


Comments

What most people do is to "artificially" inflate the amount of links to their site. One way is to go on other sites/blogs in the same niche as you (we'll cover niches later), and leave a useful and informed comment with a link back to your site. Spam comments just get deleted so don't run all over the internet leaving useless comments. These comments don't carry much weight with the SEs, but they do count.

Article Marketing

A second way is to write articles for various article directories. EzineArticles.com is the biggest, I think. GoArticles.com and ArticleBase are a couple others. I've used all three. The idea is to write an article (around 400 words usually), and submit it to them. They, in turn, allow you to place up to two links in your profile which appears at the bottom of each article.

These are two of the most common ways to promote a website and get backlinks at the same time.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Earn Money - My History

Welcome to my journey to earn a passive income online.

I began in 2009. My wife and I have decent jobs, but both of us would rather be frolicking on a beach in Jamaica rather than slaving away for The Man every day.

I first investigated tons of sites looking for every option that was out there for making money from home. I quickly realized that there are a lot of ways to make money online that require ongoing work to earn money. By that I mean sites like Project Payday or CashCrate. You work – they pay – done. They are legit places to earn money. I'll discuss those more later.

That works for a lot of folks, and if I wasn’t already employed, I may have tried those (or if I suddenly become unemployed, I may yet try them out). But what I really wanted (and still strive for) was a way to earn money while I wasn’t working.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to working…to build something. I’ve put in tons and tons of hours already – studying, writing, learning, etc. I work on this when I get home from my job. I spend weekends working on this stuff. Most lunches are spent researching or writing. But I believe all the work will pay off someday with an income stream that will allow my wife and I to eventually quit our jobs.

My First Online Payout

So the first thing I did was write an article for eHow.com. It was an article related to my work so I felt pretty confident about the content. It was accepted, so I wrote a few more. Eventually I started earning a few cents a month, then a few dollars a month.

When eHow was bought out by DemandMedia, I quit writing for them. I may write with them again, but I’ve been tied up with other projects in the meantime. I’ve currently got 18 articles posted with eHow. It only generates $5 or $6 per month. But it occurred to me that my content is generating revenue that I’m splitting with eHow. I’m giving away part of my money!


So in January 2010, I launched my very own niche website (also related to my job). It gets very little traffic right now. That seems to be the hardest thing. Everyone on the net gives the same advice “Focus on content. Great content will be rewarded with traffic.” Um… no. They won’t. That’s not enough. Money from this site is pitiful. But I continue to write for it and will post how things are going.

I believe I have very good content, but there’s a whole other thing to this online money-making game. And that’s marketing. Getting your name out there. Getting the search engines (SEs) to notice you and rank you well. Getting back links to your site. And on and on.

My Second Website

Notice that there’s no “income producing” in the heading for this paragraph. That’s because no money has yet been earned with it. And it may never produce income. I signed up with Niche Profit Classroom to generate what I thought would be some real cash. I’ll write a review later, but it wasn’t nearly as helpful as I thought. I’ll probably wind up re-building the site and taking another crack at it.

Squidoo

Ever since my early research, I heard about how great Squidoo was at making passive money online. So I finally put up a few pages recently. Traffic is still the problem. No one has looked at any of my “lenses” as yet. I put them up in May 2010. It is now August 2010.

My Next Income Producing Website

Well, at least I hope it will be income producing! I think niche websites is still the way to go. But figuring out the formula is not easy. Of course, if it were, the beaches of the world would be clogged with all of us Internet millionaires.


Building A Website

When I began my research into websites, an awful lot of “experts” out there insisted that learning html was the best way to go. Their claim was that you only had total control over your site if you understood the underlying code and could change anything you wanted. That’s true, but after a couple months of learning and trying it out, I had a pretty ugly site. It worked…but it didn’t look very professional.

I got a beginner’s amount of knowledge into html and css before moving on.

Website Software



FrontPage 2000 


·         My brother loaned me a 10 year old copy of Microsoft’s FrontPage 2000 to try out. In a sense it was much easier to use. I didn’t have to write any code. I could pick out themes and templates, but the fact that it was so obsolete meant that there was nowhere to get help when something went wrong. And something always went wrong.

I’m told that FrontPage 2000 writes poor code for websites anyway. I don’t know much about that, but lots of snooty programmers on the help forums really tore it apart.

·         Dreamweaver

By coincidence, my wife had recently purchased some software, and with it came a program called Dreamweaver. This was better than FrontPage 2000, but probably required more education than I have. I have since seen that there are classes dedicated only to Dreamweaver. If I had that education, it might have gone better for me. As it was, I somehow got some files corrupted and lost the ability to change any of the pages… it was a mess.

·         Wordpress

I finally found something I like with Wordpress

Blogger

You may notice that this site is says blogspot in the URL. That comes from Blogger, Google's blogging software. I thought I'd try it out and I must say it is much easier to use than WordPress. I haven't used it long so I can't say whether it has all the features, but it sure sets up fast and is made for techno-clueless like me.

Ok, that's enough for now. I'll post more as my efforts to earn money produce some sort of results.

Cheers

MJ

Welcome to Earn Money Journey

 

Welcome to 'Earn Money Journey'. Its an awkward title, but that's one of the things I've learned from all the make-money-online gurus. Get your keyword in the title!
This is another one of those sites that tracks someone's efforts to make money online. Most of us haven't made any money yet. Just a few dollars here and there. You can call me MJ.

If you have questions about how to earn money, please feel free to post your question below. If I can't answer it, I may know a place that can. Let's all learn from each other and earn money together!


Cheers!


MJ