Let’s review the list of currently supported languages, which has grown considerably over the last few years:

Arabic
Bulgarian
Chinese (simplified)
Chinese (traditional)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
Greek
German
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish

If your native language doesn’t appear on this list and you’d like to Google to do something about it, just head on over and post your thoughts on the Adsense Help Forum.

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They recently featured a site called CoolChaser, which is the go-to site for creating personalized MySpace themes. Founder Chao Lam and developer Sachiko Kwan thought about optimizing CoolChaser’s search feature and not surprisingly, ended up with Google.

They came up with the billiant idea of placing the search box top and center on the site’s header, where it sits prominently next to the their logo. Another thing they did was to put another search box at the bottom part of every page. The logic is that after people read the content of the current page, they may find the content lacking and want to search for other pages.

Here’s what CoolChaser looks like:

Last tweak they did was to replace the ad borders’ color with a lighter shade in the the search results page. The effect is that the ads blend better with the site’s other content, so it’s not jarring to look at them. All these changes were pretty simple and can be done in just a few minutes, but from their results so far, the impact is just amazing. First, their daily search queries increased by 40%, and second, site earnings grew by over 100%. Now that’s an improvement (and I sense a lot of people will be running off to edit their blog templates after reading this).

How about your site? Have you had any success with AdSense for Search?

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Are there potential buyers for my ad spots?

Many advertisers are willing to purchase ads on smaller sites and blogs. Some are looking for branding, others for link juice, and others yet buy very large amounts of ads on hundreds of sites because they hope to have them eventually seen. Identify what your site can offer… and go offer it.

Is my site ready for potential advertisers?

Do you keep it updated? Are there any broken links on it? Can any coding problems be detected? How attractive is the current design? Think about these things before you go around offering advertising deals, because no one is going to buy any ads before visiting your site. Hence, you must make sure your prospects will like what they ‘ll see.

Is my “advertise here” page useless?

Of course not! First of all, it’s not totally impossible that a prospect advertiser read it without having been previously contacted by you. Secondly, you can use it to your advantage when you take the initiative to contact potential clients. Here’s how:

• Put on your “advertise here” page all pieces of information that might help a prospect ad buyer make a decision: your site’s typical audience, stats, prices and so on. Then, send emails to your prospects, but don’t repeat all that info. Instead, provide a link to that special page of yours, so your prospects can learn more about your site there. The email itself must be a summary of what matters most to a potential ad buyer (basically, why he/she should buy an ad from you?). Save the details for the appropriate page and also offer to provide more details on request.
• While you’re at it, why don’t you offer a special advertising deal that cannot be found on your site? Point your prospects to your “advertise here” page to show them that the price and/or conditions proposed to them aren’t available to the general public. This way you’ll help them perceive your deal as truly valuable.

Now, go look for some potential ad buyers and show them that your site is ready to promote their products or brands — and/or to give them some link love.

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There are several places where you can find advertisers for your blog or website, but today I’m going to focus on the following ones:

1. Your own site

Yes, your own site can help you compile a list of prospect ad buyers. Here’s how: install AdSense (or other contextual ad network’s code) on your template. Wait a few days, until Google learns what your site is about and starts showing appropriate ads. Now visit the sponsor sites (don’t click on your own ads; type their URLs on your browser) and see if they are indeed relevant to your audience. If the answer is positive, these are ad buyers you may want to offer a deal to.

2. Google

I’m not going to suggest that you simply search for companies in your niche via Google, though you can certainly do that as well. The problem is that you can’t easily guess whether the search result pages will contain companies that are used to buying ads or not. So, I recommend that you do the following: type keywords that are related to your niche and see if the result pages display sponsored ads. If they do, check their sites. The principle here is pretty similar to the one applied to place #1.

3. Competitor sites

Your competitors can (involuntarily) lend you a hand when you’re seeking for prospect ad buyers. Visit their sites and read their “advertise here” pages. Take notes on the prices they charge, overall conditions, stats, restrictions etc. Now visit their current sponsors and contact them to offer better advertising deals. It’s that simple.

Have you ever tried any of these methods? Leave a comment sharing your experiences with us.

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1. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly

Providing an easy to understand, yet comprehensive view of the social media marketing arena, The New Rules of Marketing and PR is one of those “must-have” books. Rich in examples, tips and tricks as well as “how-to” guidelines, it’s easy to get new marketing strategies up and running for your own business.

2. The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media

By examples and not by theory alone – this is the way Paul Gillin used his ideas in the book entitled The New Influencers. Using case studies, actual interviews, and then mixing in his own input, Gillin was able to explain what blogging, podcasting, as well as other social media can do for you, your client and ultimately, your business. Content is well-written, easy to read, and relatively interesting. If you’re involved in marketing or PR, this book is worth checking out.

3. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

This book written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff gives a clear view of the groundswell phenomenon, how it affects your business, and proceeds to give ways on how you can harness it to your advantage. Using human scenarios combined with the numbers game, you are sure to find something in this book that you can utilize for your own business.

4. Plug Your Business! Marketing on MySpace, YouTube, blogs and podcasts, and other Web 2.0 Social Networks

Not all that’s thin are found wanting, and one such example is the book Plug Your Business. With well-written explanations, samples, scenarios, tips and suggestions solidly packed in a quick to read 156-page book, you can immediately put them into action and put your business in high gear.

5. Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules

No, there’s no typographical error in the title. Do It Wrong quickly is a refreshing take on the otherwise daunting topic of online marketing. It’s not about doing Internet marketing the wrong way, it’s about doing something (even if it might turn out to be wrong) rather than nothing at all. And given the quick moving environment of today’s online marketplace, you really just can’t afford to wait for the perfect timing. If you need the push to start your own business, then Do It Wrong quickly will show you the way.

Did I miss out on anything? Let me know.

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1. AdSense Manager

Easy to install and use, the AdSense Manager comes with an extensive instruction on the process of installation, making it a breeze to have it up and running. It generates code automatically and allows positioning with the use of Widgets, within templates, or inside individual posts. You can do on-the-fly changes on your ads: change the color, size, layout and even the ad’s position and see the results with a single button click.

The latest version of the AdSense Manager released on April 2008 is compatible with WordPress versions 2.5 and higher. The plugin allows for managing AdSense ads on your blog. It supports ads from AdSense, AdBrite, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Adroll, Commission Junction, CrispAds, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN and WidgetBucks. Take note, however, that not all available ad networks support the Ad Format/Dimension feature of AdSense Manager.

2. All in One Adsense and YPN

We all know how hard it is to insert your ad code in your every blog post. And if we are talking about hundreds or even thousands of posts, it turns into a gargantuan task. But with All in One Adsense and YPN, inserting an ad in each and every single one of your post is a cinch. It doesn’t matter if you have millions of posts. With this plugin, your ad is inserted automatically in every single one of your blog posts.

How the ad is displayed is customizable as well: you can specify the color as well as the position of the ad. And for an even higher degree of control, advanced can incorporate html and even CSS codes in your ads. The latest update of the All in One Adsense and YPN plugin was released August, 2008. The plugin is compatible up to WordPress 2.6.

3. WhyDoWork Adsense

Used to be known as Shylock AdSense, the WhyDoWork AdSense plugin can show different AdSense ads whenever they reach a certain “age.” For example, a newly created post will have a small banner ad placed at the bottom so that it wouldn’t annoy your regular readers. After a set period of time, this small banner will be replaced with a much bigger one and this time, it will be placed at the start of the article – all of this, done automatically. This way, visitors who found your site through the search engine will be seeing a more aggressive ad incorporated in your article (pretty smart). The plugin was last updated Oct 2007 and is compatible with WordPress 2.5.

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What’s the main mistake made by webmasters and bloggers who sell ads on their pages?

No one will be getting too many interested advertisers while their site or blog isn’t popular. It’s only natural. Most advertisers are interested in either branding or direct traffic. The exception to this rule are link builders seeking for favourable Google rankings, but they’re out of this article’s scope. So let’s go on analysing only the typical ad buyer.

Suppose I’m searching for blogs where I could place ads to promote a new site of mine. Your four-month-old blog happens to belong to my niche and I find it after some googling. I like its header and its overall design. I also notice that the top article’s title look very appealing. But before I proceed to check the content’s quality, my eyes instinctively look for ads. After all, I need to know where and how my banner will be displayed if I buy a spot. Much to my surprise, all I see is a group of four buttons that read “Advertise Here.”

Do you know what I think about it? “Hasn’t anyone bought any of these ad spots yet? Why? Should I really buy any ads here? Maybe it’s not a good place for advertisers.” Oh, I’ve omitted my thoughts about lack of professionalism.

Why displaying several “advertise here” buttons is a mistake?

As an advertiser, all I need to see is one or two links to your “advertise here” page. One of them should be an easily findable text link and the other one can be an unsold button. Show me more than this and you’ll probably make me lose interest in your ad spots.

This is amateurish, people. You don’t want to let potential advertisers notice that you have sold few or no ads. You want your pages to look reasonably attractive to ad buyers. Having unsold inventory is normal and understandable, but there’s no reason to make it too obvious. Otherwise, your site or blog will look more suspicious and less reliable than it could. A prospect advertiser could think that your site is a total failure, or that your traffic numbers (in case you mention them) are fake, or that previous advertisers may have had negative experiences with you, or that you’re so desperate for money that you need to beg for advertisers…

How to fill your unsold ad inventory

Now you must be wondering how you can fill those unsold ad spots until real advertisers show up. Here are some suggestions:

• Exchange banners with friends. But let them know that this is a temporary offer and that their banners will be replaced by advertiser ones as soon as you sell some spots.
• Promote other sites and blogs of yours, as long as they relate to the same niche.
• Use affiliate ads. If they do well, mention this fact to potential advertisers. This way you’ll prove that ads displayed on your pages do convert.

Of course, following my advice isn’t a guarantee that you’ll attract lots of advertisers all of a sudden. But I do guarantee that if you make the mistake mentioned above, you’ll lose ad sales. Don’t let that happen to you. You just never know when your site will be found by a prospect advertiser.

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It serves image-based dynamic ads that you can place on your site using Javascript code. They come in a range of sizes and colors, so you’re likely to find one that fits in with your layout. You should be able to use it anywhere, but Widget Bucks ads seems to be especially targeted towards users of WordPress, Blogger and TypePad.

There’s no problem using it with AdSense, and there’s no limit to the number of Widget Bucks ads you can place on your site. Use it sparringly, though, because several animated ads on a page makes it look cluttered and can hurt your stats. Ad targeting can be manual (choose from a number of categories) or automatic (via ‘MerchSense’, its own contextual technology).   

Perhaps the best draw for Widget Bucks is its promise of $3-$6 CPM, which is substantially higher than the $2 that you will usually get from other ad services. However, take note that CPM results are varied for different blog niches, and like I said earlier, early adopters say that product-oriented blogs benefit most from Widget Bucks. 

Another good things about this program is that the payout threshold is lower at $50, compared to $100 for AdSense. That’s great news for smaller blogs. There used to be rumor that Widget Bucks is a scam when it was just starting out late last year, but that quickly fizzled out when it started sending payment checks to users. Looks like they’ll be here for a while.

Have you tried Widget Bucks on your blogs? How did it perform compared to other ad services you’ve used?

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What went wrong

1. Poor contextual targeting. Several sites, such as Mashable, have reported on ads that are extremely questionable given the context of their feeds.

2. Lower eCPM. A video blog on Center Networks voices out their disappointment with the substantial decrease of revenues from Feedburner ads ever since Google took over, from eCPMs of $10 and above to only a small fraction of it. 

3. Unreliable metrics. With Google’s acquisition of Feedburner, many expected the feed statistics to improve, but a year later there aren’t much improvements to speak of.

4. Feed count gaming. Since a site’s feed count became a status symbol, gaming the numbers followed, with evidence across the Internet.

5. Hard to setup feed ads. From the comments on Google’s AdSense blog itself, people seem to be having a hard time setting up the feed ads, especially with migrating their accounts from Feedburner to AdSense. Google probably didn’t anticipate this much interest, and so:

“Google will soon provide a self-service process to migrate from an account on the original FeedBurner website to a Google Account. We have temporarily paused processing of new manual migration requests; we are working doggedly through the initial queue of requests and will re-open account migration services as soon as the first batch is completed. (If you have already submitted a migration request, please look for an email response from Google once your migration has completed).”

What Google should do

1. One suggestion I’ve been seeing is to create a ratings system depending on the nature of the ads, much like movies and video games. Publishers should be able to choose whether or not to permit mature advertising on their sites or not, which I think would benefit the AdSense program as a whole.

2. Due to the low eCPM, some publishers have been trying out other feed advertising providers. If Google wants to stay on top, it should improve the eCPM, or revive the Feedburner Ad Network via AdSense and keep it public.

3. Use its mighty dollars to fix the feed stats and make it look as professional as Google Analytics.

4. Make the feed count numbers secure and honest. Without this, it would mean next to nothing really.

Conclusion

Even with all its faults, there’s still no denying that FeedBurner provides a great service in delivering site feeds. However, it leaves the door open for competitors to whiz past it by being sluggish in fixing its known issues and what’s turning out Google’s less than stellar monetization program. So, are you sticking with FeedBurner and hope Google fixes the mess, or are you gonna try other services? Leave your comments below.

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1. Article marketing

You choose a good product to promote and select appropriate keywords. Then you write articles optimised for the search engines and publish them on article directories. People will read your articles and hopefully click on the links in your resource box, which will lead them to a sales page on your chosen product.

• This model is somewhat related to the fast money making sites and blogs that I discussed in part 1. However, there’s an advantage to article marketing: your articles are a way to develop a sort of relationship with potential buyers. If they like what you write, you will earn their trust, hence increasing conversions.
• Article marketing can also be used for link building. All of the monetization models discussed in this series might benefit from it.

2. Human-edited niche directories

• These aren’t your typical link shops. You must set clear, strict guidelines for link submission. Unrelated sites should be rejected, as well as sites with little or no content.

• This is a long term business model. By not approving all submitted links, you may lose money at a first moment. However, you will also show that you are serious about your directory, which will help you build a strong reputation. And this is the kind of directory that search engines are more likely to favour.

3. Informational resources

• They are like directories, with a fundamental difference in site structure: you first publish an informative article on a topic; then you place a related link list below it. Repeat this on all site sections.
• By providing information, instead of merely listing dozens of random links, you make your site more authoritative. Internet users will have stronger reasons to visit your directory and to click on links. Therefore, your site will look more attractive to webmasters; they will not only get backlinks, but also direct hits.
• For better results, it’s advisable that all sections on your informational resource deal with related subjects. Avoid general resources. If you want to attract more visitors and webmasters, you can always build more sites for different types of audience.

4. Visitor-oriented blogs and sites

• Why am I mentioning this monetization model again? Because it blends relatively well with other models (see client-catching sites for an example). It can even be combined with fast money making sites, which are its opposite.
• You can build a visitor-oriented blog and fill it with articles that, while relevant and helpful to readers, are also meant to make them take action (click on sponsor links, buy affiliate products, subscribe to newsletters etc.) as soon as they finish reading. This practice is a bit risky; it can harm the blogger’s reputation, making him/her look like a scammer. But it all depends on the blogger’s personality and boldness.
• A visitor-oriented blog or site can easily include a directory/link shop. Depending on the blogging platform you use, it may be especially easy to do, because several platforms allow you to build link lists on separated pages, as opposed to the traditional sidebar bogrolls. WordPress is a good, popular example.

This is the end of this monetization models series. Of course, it doesn’t mean I’ll never get back to this subject. Much in the contrary: you can be sure that on Li’l Engine you’ll always find several monetization ideas and tips.

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