Monetize Your Site

In my travels around the web last evening I ran across a piece of Adsense Intelligence about Adsense Smart Pricing (link to article). The blogger explains that accounts with poor click through rates get bumped down to a second tier pricing structure that Google maintains called Smart Pricing. He states that revenue per click can be about 10% of the real value of the click if your account falls under smart pricing.

I did a quick check and found that my best sites do not measure up to the minimum. I will be looking into this situation a bit more. I have adsense ads on all of my pages. If the situation is as suggested in the article I will need to pull most of those ads and research where the few clicks that I do get come from. I can think of many pages where the likelihood of getting a click is very small. Luckily I do the ads with an include file on my sites, so if I decide to drop the ads completely I can just substitute a blank file. I will be looking for a replacement for some of the sites, as I want to maintain the possibility of a small income to defray expenses even on those sites. The sites where I can identify that I get clicks from some pages but not others will be a bit more hectic, but with a find and replace function in my text editor I will be able to make adjustments where needed.

If/when I make further discoveries about this information I will let you know, but for now, the best recommendation that I can give is to put adsense ads only on well targeted pages on sites where people may be open to buying something. This probably excludes several of my sites.

Last evening I posted an article on one of my other sites that might also be of interest to many of my readers here. I had run across an offer of Free Affiliate Websites. It is a program being promoted, and operated I believe, by an Internet super affiliate. The article can be found on my site: Before You Buy a Website. Check out the article and while you are there poke around the site a bit if you have time. I have a blog there, too. Some of the topics I publish there would be of interest to my visitors here. Just click on the Blog link in the top or bottom nav bar.

I revisited an article by Internet  ScamBusters. This is a two part article. The first part details ten common Internet scams. The second part gives some hints about things to think about when looking an an offer. I found the last three suggestions to contain a lot of meat. To see the full article you can go to their site at:  http://www.scambusters.org/work-at-home.html While you are there you might consider signing up for their ScamBusters Newsletter.

Consider starting your own home-based business.

If you’re really interested in working for yourself, starting your own home-based business can be a great idea. It also involves a lot of work, and much of the time, some investment.

This is not a decision to make lightly, nor should you start a business just because you can’t find a job.

Having said that, starting your own business — if you’re willing to do your homework and do what’s necessary to make it a success — may well become one of the best decisions you ever made.

There are lots of great resources on starting a legitimate home business. (But remember, you won’t receive them via spam.)

Don’t come across as desperate.

You may be in dire straits financially, but it’s worth your while to act calmly and professionally — just like you would in a real-world job search.

Posting messages on forums saying that you are in financial trouble, or desperate to find work from home is a bad idea. Desperation is like blood to sharks — it’ll bring all of the scammers out of the woodwork, and you’ll be inundated with phony offers.

Be patient.

If you’re looking to start a home-based business, or looking for telecommuting work you can do at home, you may have a considerable search ahead of you. There are a *lot* of people in the same boat, many of whom are falling prey to scams every day.

Don’t let scammers use high-pressure tactics to sucker you in. If you’re given a time-limited offer, there’s usually a reason why — scammers know that pressure brings in people!

Even if you’re in dire straits, it pays to be patient… so that you don’t lose money to schemes that never materialize.

And most important, NEVER reply to spam.

Fraudulent offers for home-based businesses or work-at-home opportunities almost always arrive as spam. The better it sounds, the less likely that it’s legitimate.

Scammers aren’t planning to deliver anyway, so what does it matter to them what they promise? Delete and move on.

As we say — if it’s spam, it’s a scam!

There is much more good information on their sites. I believe that the couple that operates this site, as well as several others, has learned how to make a reasonable living from the Internet.