Free Glide

I own several sites and make a nice sum each month from Google’s popular Adsense program. It took some time and experimentation to maximize my revenue. There are literally hundreds of articles and web sites dedicated to the topic of search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords and the placement of adsense ads on your web site. I have read many of these articles and resources and have implemented many of their recommendations.
Did you know Google has two different ad formats? Ad Units and Link Units are very different and produce very different result.

Ad units look like this:

www.bestcars.url

While link units look like this:

Ads by Google: Cars New Cars Car Fact Buy Cars Cheap Cars

I employ both type of adsense ads on my sites, and I assign channels to each ad so I can see which type of ad gives the best result. I try to incorporate the ads in my sites so they have a natural look. I like the link units best because they look like just another link on my site. I usually position them in a space that fits in with the other links on the sidebar of my sites.

I seem to get much better Click Through Rates (CTR) on these ads. People don’t seem to be as intimidated by the LOOK of the link unit.

But the CTR is not the most important statistic, money is. In my experience I receive higher revenue from Ad Unit vs. Link units. I assume this is because the Ad Unit serves higher price ads than links units do. I have no proof of this, but it does make sense.

The important lesson to learn is to use adsense channels, and experiment with both Link Units and Ad unit. I use both on all my sites. If you are only using Ad Units at this time, I highly recommend you intelligently employ link units for added revenue.

By Bill McRea publisher of http://www.free-marketing-info.com and http://www.24hour-info.com For more information about this topic take a look at my sites to see how I’ve used adsense to maximize revenue at my sites.

Web site traffic promotion on the cheap is labor intensive but quickly mastered if you know where to start. Free web site traffic doesn’t mean massive submission to search engines or traffic exchanges. Carving out a web site promotion strategy following basic guidelines will bring the targeted web site traffic you need to have a successful online business.

Keys to web site promotion

Search engine optimization (SEO)

The first step to online web site promotion is ensuring that your web site is optimized for search engine traffic. Every page of your website needs to be worked with strong targeted page titles, heading tags and original content rich with key words chosen to reach your niche market. If you are a self-directed learner then your best bet would be Jill Whalen’s Nitty Gritty of Writing for Search Engines. http://www.wahmconnections.com/nittygritty.htm

If you need more support and would prefer learning search engine optimization in a classroom format then I recommend Cricket Bailey’s SEO class found at GNC Web Creations. http://www.gnc-web-creations.com

Ezine (Online Newsletter) Publishing

Newsletter publishing is a powerful way to stay connected to visitors to your website and help generate repeat traffic to your online business. By creating fresh content and strong readership, your newsletter will be forwarded to others leading to a growing subscriber list. Strong design and subscriber interaction, a newsletter will generate regular traffic that over time will build your credibility and name recognition ~ Branding.

Business Blog

Blogging for online business is quickly becoming one of the best web site traffic generators you can find that doesn’t have to cost you anything. You invest your time learning how blogging works for business then you set up your blog and start using the information you have learned to generate targeted traffic to your website. The most popular free online blogger is Blogger.com which although is owned by Google does not have any extra perks for search engine traffic generation and the initial traffic you draw is to someone else’s site ~ Blogger.

If you have your own website that you have control of your c-panel then check to see if you have Fantastico which allows you to set up your own blog. If you set up your new blog within your own website then your blog is essentially free unless you need to upgrade your hosting to accommodate the increase in bandwidth used with higher traffic but that is a good thing!

A blog with strong titles, quality content and strategic pinging plus rss feeds will be your key to fast search engine indexing, traffic to your blog that can funnel traffic directly to your business website.

Article Writing

Writing articles with a strong resource box is your best free web site traffic generator. Due to its viral nature on the internet, articles that are published on websites and in newsletters of other ezine publishers will bring your website traffic. With each new article and publishing, your articles will reach more people building both traffic and branding You as an expert. With each article you write, your first stop is EzineArticles which is a high traffic article database used by webmasters and newsletter publishers to find fresh content. EzineArticles (http://www.ezinearticles.com) also publishes your articles in a search engine friendly format that lets internet surfers find the information they are seeking.

Every business website owner should take these keys to web site traffic seriously. The energy put into learning SEO, newsletter publishing, business blogging and article writing has a high return on investment.

Creating fresh dynamic articles in your area of interest and expertise will help you build up your website, fill your newsletter and draw traffic to your business blog. Submitting your articles to other webmasters and ezine publishers will further build your reputation beyond your own website.

Learning how to write and publish your articles on your website and your blog in a search engine friendly format means that you have covered all the bases.

Free web site traffic is initially very labor intensive but the investment of yourself in these four areas will bring you the success online you are striving to achieve.

Tammy Ames is the owner of WAHM Connections http://www.wahmconnections.com - Building your home internet business resource site with a weekly online newsletter Work at Home Connections Ezine http://www.wahmconnections.com/current.htm

Google is the most popular and most used search engine that
is used in this day and age therefore it is important to increase your link
popularity to your website with links that are pointed to your site which will result in increase a of your website traffic and your Google page rank. How do you do this? Is the question you are most likely linking of well is will tell you how and the best thing it is free.

Here is a definition of page rank:

Page Rank aka PR is one of the methods Google uses to
determine the relevance or importance of a Web page. Page Rank is a vote, by all
the other Web pages on the Internet, about how important a Web page is. A link
to a Web page counts as a vote of support. If there are no incoming links to a
Web page then there is no support.

To Increase Your Page Rank And Web Traffic for FREE

The best way to do this is to submit your website link to
as many websites as possible the most popular methods is usually submitting your
website link to web directories such as
www.Sorve.com. There are millions of directories that you can submit your
website to and they are mainly free for you to submit to.

Another method is link exchange. Link exchange is where you
add a website link to your website and they will add your link to there website.
This is usually occurs by a agreement by you and the webmaster or owner of the
other website. This is a good way of increasing link popularity. There are
websites out there that make link exchange easy and free such as
www.linkmarket.net also you can get a link exchange script for your website
that will automate the process.

Usually if someone likes your website they will usually
tell someone one about it and recommend it to them. The best thing is if that
person owns a website they may want to tell the visitors of there website to
visit your site. You can encourage this by adding a link to us page to your
website. This page will consist of pre made html codes of your link just like
this:

This will make adding your link to there website less of a
task and you will have the proper alt text to your site that you want.

These are several method for you to increase your website
traffic and also your Google Page Rank. Link popularity is very important for
all types of websites and for many search engines to rank your websites highly
in there results.

Martin has been in marketing websites online for over 5
years and now has his own newsletter that is published fortnightly to help
webmasters and website owners with different issues such as search engine
optimization, internet marketing, website development and many more. Join
Martins Newsletter For Free
http://sorve.com/newsletter/?p=subscribe&id=2
Also Add your website link free to Sorve Directory

You have probably seen the Total Gym 1700 infomercials on late night television. You have probably even wondered if exercise equipment like that would work for you. Customer reviews indicate that it would.

The fact that a number of clubs have purchased this Total Gym model to add to their facilities is a unique form of review in and of itself. The Total Gym company, though, has an interesting history that contributes to the creation of the Total Gym 1700.

The beginning of something great

In 1974, Tom Campanaro, Larry Westfall, and Dale McMurray created the Total Gym using the concept of performing functional movements we use every day against the force of gravity. At that time, many people were not interested in exercise. However, with the fitness boom of the nineteen eighties, the market for home exercise equipment exploded, and the partners began selling more and more of their new machines.

In the late eighties, Chuck Norris became the spokesman for the product. He had been using it for the past twenty years. Both professional athletes and home fitness enthusiasts enjoy using the Total Gym 1700 series.

Total Gym 1700 Features

There are more than sixty exercises you can do with this piece of equipment, and changing from one exercise to the next is neither difficult nor complicated. It is made to last with a solid steel construction. The Total Gym 1700 even comes with media materials including videos and books to help you get your workout off the the right start. This particular model features a Pilates bar to add some depth and change to your workout.

With the Total Gym 1700, you will also find a larger glide-board for your comfort, a wider tower to add to the stability of the machine, and auto-lock height adjustment for safety reasons.

Your Commitment to The Total Gym 1700

Spending just fifteen to twenty minutes per day three to four times per week with your new Total Gym 1700 will help you begin to see the results you desire from this product. You will find you have a new energy and a new patience with exercising.

Dean Iggo is a keen fitness enthusiast and home gym user. He is also the webmaster of home-gym-buyers-guide.com a website providing unbiased home fitness equipment, reviews and tips.

Content

One of the best ways to encourage website owners to link to your website is to provide good quality, relevant content on your website. As the content contained within your website grows, more and more website owners will consider your website a good source of information. As they add content to their own sites they may refer to related information on your site and therefore create an Outbound Link (OBL) to your website.
But what content should you add? It is important to keep the content relevant to the overall concept of the website. Most websites however have a core subject matter about which the website owner should have a certain level of expertise.

• Writing short articles explaining the basics of the core subject is often a good starting place.
• How To? Articles are often easy to write and useful.
• You could write ‘review’ articles.

And the list goes on. Once you have some good quality content, you then need to encourage other website owners to link to you. The first thing you could do, although it sounds counter-productive, is to allow other websites to publish your article.

Publishing Articles on other Websites

Writing good quality articles and getting them published on other websites can be a good way of generating inbound links and increased traffic. There are many websites dedicated to publishing articles on all manner of topics. Almost all of them allow you to include a brief biography about the author or the authors’ business which also allows for a link to your website.

Publishing articles in this way is good for your website for many reasons:

• Good quality articles will establish you or your business
• The article pages usually have few other links on them so the IBL to your website is better for your Page Rank than a link from ‘links’ page.
• Websites publishing articles often have high levels of traffic so publishing articles on them is a good advertising method.

Provide a Service

Providing a useful service on your website is not only a good way of encouraging repeat visits to your website but is also a way of encouraging other website owners to link to that service.

Getting Reciprocal Links.

If you have followed the advice above and provide quality, relevant content and services then encouraging website owners to link to your website should be relatively easy. You will find that many website owners link to your website without any encouragement, but a little pro-activity will go a long way.
E-mail webmasters of websites which compliment your website and ask to exchange links with them. Most webmasters will agree to exchange links as it will be mutually beneficial. It is often useful to add a link to their site before e-mailing them and then in the e-mail you can direct them to the page that contains their link. You should also mention the connections between the two sites and the mutual benefits of reciprocal linking.
Generating, adding and checking reciprocal links can be time-consuming. It is however possible to add automatic reciprocal link pages to your website. These programs allow other webmasters to automatically add their link to your website. A good reciprocal link manager will allow you to verify the links before adding them to your site, will check that the website has included a link back to your site and will also periodically check the links to ensure that they remain active.

Submit your Website to Web Directories.

There are literally thousands of web directories out there, some like Yahoo and DMOZ are very generic in their coverage, others may be small and very specific. You will be able to find directories related to your websites particular subject as well as regional directories. Most allow you to submit your website free of charge, although some will require you to add a reciprocal link to their directory from your site.

Post in relevant forums.

One really good way of generating traffic and inbound links is to become a member of and contribute to web based forums. Once again there are forums on almost every subject imaginable. Some forums are very specific in their subject matter others more generic. Find some that are relevant to your website and post in them. You may even find you enjoy the online ‘banter’. Most forums will allow you to enter a ’signature’ that will be shown at the bottom of every post you make. Make sure that you include your website address in this signature to create an inbound link on every post you make to the forums.

Post in relevant Newsgroups.

As with forums, there are newsgroups on every subject imaginable. Many newsgroups are also published on the web and can therefore be used to generate IBL if you include your web address in your signature file.

Use your e-mail Signature File.

Use your e-mail program to set up a signature file that includes a link to your website. Whenever you send an e-mail the recipient will then be able to click on the link to access your website. This won’t increase your Page Rank, but is a useful way of encouraging real visitors to your website.

Webrings.

The importance of IBLs means that there are now many websites dedicated to nothing other than the sharing of links between websites. Webrings work by connecting relevant websites. Each member of a webring displays a small banner on their site which includes a link to another relevant site. In return for displaying this banner a banner directed to your website will be displayed on the websites of the other webring members. If you can’t find a webring relevant to your particular subject, it is possible to start your own.

Alan Cole runs http://www.pixelwave.co.uk, a one-person web design studio. His aim is to provide cost effective website design production and maintenance by offering professional web solutions that stand out from the crowd.

When you load a site into your browser and see small advertisement blocks here and there with “Ads by Google” appearing nearby, you probably know that when you click on them, someone receives a credit for payment under Google’s AdSense program. AdSense is a pay-per-click (PPC) scheme that benefits marketers, buyers and the webmasters who display advertisements on their sites. By bringing together a buyer looking for specific products or services (by entering a term or terms in a search engine), sellers of those products and services and encouraging webmasters to provide the medium by which this happens (their sites), everyone in the equation benefits. It’s a truly win-win situation and a brilliant concept.

Because I use AdSense advertisements on my site, but have not yet optimised my income from them, I have been researching ways to do so. I knew that some people were making quite reasonable supplementary incomes from Google AdSense and that it has the potential to add more significantly to my income if I could find out how it’s done. Like everyone else, I want a bigger share of the pie.

During my research I found Codrut Turcann’s ebook, “AdSense Confessions” which promises to tell you … How 9 Average People, Not Gurus, Cracked The Code To AdSense Income Boosting And How You Can Copy Their Money-Making Tactics! Plus… Discover How You Can Quickly Catapult Your AdSense Earnings By 450% Or More Using A Powerful, No-Fail Marketing Arsenal.

What’s in this ebook?

“AdSense Confessions” consists of 101 pages detailing the success stories of nine people who have, to varying degrees, mastered AdSense sufficiently to earn regular incomes. Each from a different perspective tells his or her story about how they came to AdSense, tested, retested and eventually mastered AdSense to realise a greater income. One or two are still working on improvements to the AdSense aspects of their businesses to earn even greaterlevels of income.

As everyone knows, duplicating the models successfully used by others is a shortcut to success … medical practitioners use it daily, so do marketers. There is every reason to believe that if you follow the proven methods used by the nine people whose stories are told in this ebook, you will have a similar degree of success. Interestingly, the nine contributors do not only discuss AdSense, they also discuss matters such as search engine optimization, keywords, web design, link management etc, all of which is good advice and makes this ebook even more useful. Evidence of earnings is provided as are numbers of examples of sites with AdSense adverts showing successful placement of AdSense ads.

Although most of the content confirms what I already know, for someone new to Internet marketing, web design or using Google AdSense, Codrut’s ebook will save them a lot of time and effort in getting to the income earning stage.

Is it value for money?

The price for “AdSense Secrets” is $69.97 USD and it is downloaded almost immediately. Included in that price are the following bonuses:

1. Ebook, “101 Quick Tips to Increase AdSense Income in 30 Days”
2. FREE Profit-Pulling AdSense Site Critique and One-On-One Support By E-mail - Anytime You Need Help or Have An AdSense-Related Problem!
3. “AdSense Profit Shortcuts” - Monthly eLetter
4. A mystery bonus (value not known)

Value for money is a personal thing depending on so many variables that I can’t answer that question for you. What I can say is that I find $69.97 quite a steep price (especially given the Australian exchange rate which knocks me about). However, if you can use the bonuses, especially bonus two of a free AdSense critique, it could represent value for money. The free critique and one-on-one support could be worth thousands … if you make sure you use it.

Also, there are numbers of links within the text that lead to free utility programs etc that add value to your purchase.

And the Negatives?

In my opinion the only negatives are that the ebook isn’t as professionally presented as it could be (given the price) and that the downloading process is convoluted. Having said that, if you are looking for content and don’t care if the format and layout is ordinary, then presentation of the ebook won’t matter. As for the downloading, it involves completing a subscription box and sending an email from a post-payment page to retrieve a link to another page from which the downloads can be made. But before the final download step, one has to confirm the email details. All of this could be prevented if the download page presented immediately after purchase.

Conclusion

If you want to learn how to establish or increase an AdSense PPC stream of income, this book certainly delivers the goods and will give you a good start.

There are dozens of things you can do today to generate income almost immediately. Add to that the bonuses, especially the one-on-one support and you will be well on your way to joining those of us who earn income from AdSense for doing nothing but placing links on our sites.

I’ve already begun to improve some of my AdSense strategies and will be monitoring income increase throughout the next three months at which time I’ll write an article detailing my findings. Watch this space!

Copyright Robin Henry 2005 | First Published 30 December 2005

Robin Henry is an educator, human resources specialist and Internet entrepreneur. He helps small and home-based businesses and individuals improve performance by applying smart technology and processes and developing personally. He runs his business Desert Wave Enterprises from his home base at Alice Springs in Central Australia, although at present he is working in the United Arab Emirates.

To find out more about “AdSense Confessions”, please go here:
http://www.adsenseconfessions.com/discount.html

Have you recently been receiving a high percentage of leads or customers from countries you are not targeting from Yahoo! Sponsored Search?

If you’ve been using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines, you will probably know that Yahoo! Search Marketing (formally Overture) is the industry’s leader. Although there are many PPC search engines on the market which are less expensive, Yahoo! reaches a far greater audience which is why it’s been a personal favorite advertising source for the past 3 years… until now.

Although Yahoo! Sponsored Search has constantly produced great results for me personally, the past 3-4 months has seen a major increase of leads coming from other countries. Even though I’m targeting a U.S. audience with “Advanced” and “Content Match” disabled, 45% of leads I now receive are from outside of the U.S. This results in lower upgrade conversions for the services I’m promoting.

Overture used to produce a small percentage (about 5%) of Non-US leads, but this was probably due to having Content Match enabled which I no longer use. These results even remained constant after Overture and Yahoo! combined their search marketing products in April 2005… until recently that is.

After contacting Yahoo! support about this problem, it was suggested that I modify my Titles and/or Descriptions to target a particular audience. While this would probably work, this shouldn’t have to be necessary with having a U.S. account that targets a U.S. audience. I don’t expect 100% of the leads produced to come from the U.S… no PPC system can produce such results, but 45% of leads now being non-US is calls for concern.

Why is this suddenly happening? I’m not entirely sure but I will be monitoring this situation very closely. If Yahoo! cannot rectify this problem… and it is a problem, then they could possibly lose some advertising customers because of it…

What is the point of having country-specific targeting if it’s clearly not working as expected?… and how many clicks are not converting because of it? This then leads me to other, more serious questions: Am I now susceptible to click-fraud, for example - but that’s for another day. In the meantime, I just hope things improve.

Derek Jones is the owner of Mirage Home Business Systems, a service that’s geared to helping people start a profitable Home-Based Business online. For more details on starting a Work at Home Internet Business and to join our Free Home Business Tips Newsletter, visit: http://www.HomeBusinessCreation.com

You probably have already heard about the new marketing tool from Google.com on the Internet. Their advertising service is called “Adwords” and allows you use Google.com for marketing. Your ads will be displayed on Google’s website when people initiate a search. Your ads can also be displayed very targeted among many thousand websites that partner with Google in a program called “Google AdSense”. Adwords is the Google.com version of a pay-per-click advertising model. That means users click on your ad and will be redirected to your website or a specific URL that you have selected when creating your ad campaign.

What do you need to know about Adwords? Adwords is a way to spend a lot of money on advertising very very fast. BUT - Adwords is also a way to spend marketing money very selective to a targeted audience. Adwords can be very expensive for the advertiser if not properly planned and tested.

When you setup a Google Adwords ad campaign, you choose certain keywords for which your ad will appear on search results on Google.com. You also specify the maximum amount of money that you are willing to pay for each click. Remember - the Google Adwords program is a PPC (Pay per Click) model and you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and hence visits your website.

It is very important to select the right keywords for your business ad. Going with too generic keywords that everyone will not be very effective and very expensive. Play a little bit with the Adwords keyword and campaign settings just to get a feeling how expensive the generic keywords for your business and industry are. You will realize soon that you need to be creative and careful with the usage of keywords.

Google recommends using different spelling variations and plural versions of your keywords to reach the best target audience. This is a good approach, as not every one of your potential new customers will search for a keyword in the same way as everyone else. Some people will use plural versions and others will use singular versions.

Exact matching of keywords in Google user queries requires you to place square brackets around your selected keywords. Example: [web hosting]. Your ad will now only show when users search exactly the phrase ‘web hosting’. Your ad will not show if other words are included in the search string or the words are entered in a different order.

Another keyword matching option is the phrase option. This is very similar to the exact matching of keywords in a search in the sense that the keywords must all be present and in the right order. However your ad will still show up in search results even if other words are present in the search. To make use of phrase matching you must include your keywords in quotes. Example: “web hosting”.

Negative matching is the final option available for your Adwords advertisement. This option allows you to block your ad being shown if a certain word is present in the search query of the Google user. This allows you to reduce the number of possible clicks on your ad in non-relevant searches and therefore to keep your cost low. It also helps you to make sure that your ad is not shown to users who will not be interested in your products. If your keyword is ‘web hosting’ but your web hosting is based on the Linux operating system and not based on a Windows Operating System then by using negative matching you can choose to have your ad not shown for search queries with ‘windows web hosting’. In this case ‘windows’ would be your negative keyword. You simply place a dash in front of your negative keyword to use this option. Example: -windows

Using the here described ways of selecting keywords will help you to be more successful with Google Adwords. Google also allows you be very specific for which geographic area your ads will be displayed. You go from global to country and even state or city specific settings. Especially local businesses now will have it much easier to use Google Adwords for their specific local markets.

Well, you got the idea how to be very specific how you select your keywords and combinations of keywords. But how do you actually select the right keywords? In order to get the most out of Adwords, you must have a list of great keyword and phrases. If your keyword list is not good enough, you will be punished with paying too much for your advertising. Write down the top search terms that you can think of. Ask friends and family how they would use Google to find your product (without searching for the business name itself).

A competitor of Google actually offers a free tool, which will allow you to find out how popular the keywords are that you selected. Find this free tool here and use it for your advantage:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Create a list of the most popular keywords. Now add words to the actual keywords. Use words that would describe your specific product or service. Now use these phrases or word combinations when setting up a Google Adwords campaign to find out how much you would have to pay per click to get your ad onto the first page on a Google search.

If the keywords selected by you are very expensive to use you should consider rewording or using different combinations. Maybe concentrate on a certain niche to find lower priced keyword options.

When testing new campaigns make sure that you limit your exposure by amount of money you want to spend per day as well as you should set a date / time limit. It’s easier to activate a campaign again if it works just fine for you. If you fail to set limits you might spend lots of money in a very short time - money you can’t get back. It is gone ….

Another way to save money on your Adwords advertising campaign is to wait for the end of the month. It’s funny, but many folks follow a plain rule to start their advertising in the beginning of the month. By the time the 25th of a month is there they have spend most of their money on their campaigns already. For you this means that the prices for many popular keywords might be more affordable for you.

If you are advertising specific products with your ads, link to the specific product page and not to your homepage. 95% of the people who click through to your website will not really be willing to start another search on your website to find the product mentioned in your ad.

Conclusion

Frequently revisit your campaigns and compare prices and results. The Internet is a fast changing environment. What works one day, might not necessarily work the next day. Keep track of everything - maybe create a spreadsheet.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is provided. (this note can be removed as long as a link from the author’s resource box is provided)

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com

From:babytime.blogware.com

A baby shower is a merrymaking or festivity that comes about some months prior to the birth of a new baby. The party is characteristically set by a best friend, close family member, or co-worker of the expecting mother. Nearly all visitors bring gifts and money for the mother and baby. While the vast majority of baby showers are attended by women, a small percentage of men do go to or have their personal men’s only “daddy showers” of their own. Customarily, baby showers have been for the first child only, but a few parents decide to have baby showers for second and even third babies.

Seeking Ingenious Baby Shower Gift Plans-n-Ideas

A baby shower gift can be the simplest mode for you as the gift donor to be ingenious, and prove the individual you’re giving it to the extent you think about about them. In place of one big gift it’s better to shell out a surplus of trinkets, toys, and other pleasurable items, wrapped together in a beautiful package which, in itself, due to can be a dazzling thing to receive. A trendy idea whilst purchasing a baby shower gift basket is to make the company who makes it fashion the wicker basket as a bassinet, within which are all the things you want to bequeath upon the new child, turning your gift twice as solicitous and apt. On top of it, there are so scores of companies proficient in manufacturing such commodities; therefore, albeit you’re not precisely a connoisseur yourself, an unknown craftsman will make it appear awesome.

You’ll, for good, want to contain the nitty-gritty, those simple bare requirements in the baby shower gift basket- teddy bears and or dolls are certain, as any parent will know a young child can never have a sufficient amount of teddy bears. If you desire to be gender specific, you can gift the standard pink or blue shades to please a baby girl or a boy respectively, but many persons currently are avoiding such black and white notions of sex, hence the best way is to be as neutral as possible. This also means that you can go loony and embrace almost everything to be termed as a toy that you want to gift to the baby. Superman toys-n-mannequins no longer imply a boyish toy only. Similarly, so many brats can be seen playing with a Barbie doll toy. Consequently derive gain of such autonomy in creating a truly unique and baby shower gift. The ideal way is to contain both the practical in addition to the sentimental. In other words the gift must be able to please both parents and children alike.

If you’re one of the many online marketers currently using Google Adsense to earn money from your website you may - or may not - have noticed that Google has now turned on their “Advertise On This Site” feature. This places a small text link on the ad blocks on your site - it’s similar in size and appearance to the “Ads by Goooooogle” link that has always been there. Advertisers can click on the new link to find out about advertising on your site.

Any advertiser who clicks on the link will be transported to the Google Adwords “Onsite Advertiser Sign-up page” - also known as the “landing page”, where they are given details about Google Adwords in general and advertising on your site in particular. It’s possible for you to customise the landing page associated with your site - to a certain extent.

You can upload a logo, change the colour scheme of the page, the text and the links to match that of your main site. You can also edit the text message that the potential advertiser sees - possibly explaining a little about your site, the sort of areas it covers - at the moment and in future, who your target audience is, whether or not you have a newsletter etc. If you really want to, you can even turn the option to have the “Advertise on this site” link displayed off.

Here’s how to modify your landing page from your AdSense account:

1. Click on the “My Account” tab, click the “Account Settings” tab.
2. Scroll down to the “Onsite Advertiser Sign-up” section at the very bottom and click “edit”.
3. The “subscription” is set to include the “advertise On This Site” link by default. If you want to turn it off then just uncheck this box.
4. If you are leaving the link on then you can now upload a logo for your site - max size 100 X 100 pixels, in JPG, GIF or PNG formats only.
5. Decide whether you want to retain the default description or create your own custom text to highlight the main features that you think advertisers should know about your site(s).
6. Choose the colour scheme for your landing page.
   Use the “Preview page” button to check how your new landing page looks.
7. When you’re happy click on “Save changes”.

Currently you have only one landing page for your Adsense account - so if you have more than one website you may need to stick with a generic design. Possibly Google will introduce “channels” for your landing page in future.

This feature is very new and only time will tell how best to use it. However, previous results from Adsense have shown that webmasters who take a little time to customise Adsense code for their websites tend to do (much) better than those who just use the default settings. So it seems likely that some degree of customisation is desirable.

Hamish Hayward
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