Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: What Do You Do When Your Adsense Ads Suddenly Disappear?

Argh! It has been a very frustrating day for me! For some reason, the Adsense ads at one of my other blogs, 3 Dogs, 3 Pigs & a Family, suddenly disappeared. Well, one ad remained - the big rectangle under the header - but it now shows a public service ad.

What could have happened?

I already noticed earlier that the Adsense ads showing on that site didn't match the topic. For goodness' sakes, they were all about bulimia and eating disorders. What has that got to do with dogs and guinea pigs? (I don't want to think that they would connect the word pigs with eating disorders - that's just mean.)

Anyway, I tweaked the subhead and changed the way I presented some of my affiliate links, hoping that this would trigger some recognition of my keywords with Adsense. The situation went from bad to worse. Now there are two huge blank spaces on my sidebar where my Adsense ads used to be!

So all that effort to optimize Adsense seems to have backfired.

I don't know what to do about it. Any suggestions?


Technorati tags: e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work



Online money-making opportunities you can join for FREE: e-gold / SFI / AGLOCO / MyLot / No-Minimum.com / Paid Forum

Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: Optimizing Efforts, Worrying Over eCPM, Tweaking Ad Placements and Adding Affiliate Links

The title about says it all.

I've been wondering over our blogs' (mine and my daughters' - all sharing a single Adsense account) eCPM. (Adsense tells me this is an estimate of how much the blog could earn per 1000 page impressions, but is not a guarantee of actual income.)

It's frustrating to read of how high the numbers can go for other blogs and how ours seem pathetic in comparison. Okay, we've only just started so that can be an excuse. But even among our own blogs, I can't understand how the figures could vary so much.

I spent a lot of time yesterday changing the layout and adsense placements in the blogs. For the first time, I discovered that I could actually move a new Blogger template page element to another part of the page, e.g., as a big rectangle under the header. Okay, please stop sniggering at my cluelessness.

Upon waking up this morning, I found that, with the exact same change to all our blogs, some have improved their eCPM while others remained as they were. Thankfully, there were no lowered figures.

I decided that while learning my way through Adsense optimization I should maximize the blogs' optimization with more affiliate links.

I tried Clickbank but they do not have the Philippines listed among the countries they accept affiliates from. One seller suggested I find someone in the US to accept my commission checks for me. Does anyone know if that's allowed and legal? I would appreciate your advice very much.

In the meantime, I joined Commission Junction. They have a lot of products but I chose only three that I myself would want to try out: Xoom, Freelance Work Exchange and Site Build It!

As I discussed in my post at EarnGlobal, I want to try out Site Build It! for myself. After losing $90 in my GDI experiment, though, I want to at least earn back the money first before I spend on another venture. I'm hoping my being an SBI! affiliate will enable me to join the program soon.

The cost of joining Freelance Work Exchange seems reasonable for me, even in my current tight-fisted mode. I think I will give it a try then give you my feedback.

Xoom, of course, is something I have already read about in various forums, with good reviews. The next time I need to have some money sent to me from abroad, I will ask the sender to try this service.

So that's what I've been doing so far, folks. Now for my well-deserved shut-eye...


Technorati tags: e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work, blog, blogs, blogging, weblog



Online money-making opportunities you can join for FREE: e-gold / SFI / AGLOCO / MyLot / No-Minimum.com / Paid Forum

Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: A Blogaholic's Rationalizations

Yes, I'm a blogaholic. With 6 blogs now running, I have to own up to that :-)

It's a fairly recent affliction. My first blog was just set up last March 22. I've been very busy since then.

It seems like the more I read about blogging and adsense and optimization, the more I had to set up my own experiments for some actual hands-on learning.

I've come to love three of my blogs so much, though, that monetization seems to be just a bonus when it comes to them.

Of course, first on my list is my first-born blog, Manila Mom. I believe this blog will chronicle my growth in this field. I also hope it can help other newbies like me and that, eventually, I become successful enough to be an inspiration as much as those who came before me have inspired me to go in this direction.

Next is my Cafe Romanza blog. It presents my romance writer persona - a very major part of my career. It also reflects my views on love, marriage, relationships and romance, something that's central to my own growth as a woman and a person. I couldn't do without this blog the same way I couldn't do without romance in my life and my writing career.

And then there's 3 Dogs, 3 Pigs & a Family. This was something I had always wanted to write about. I held back initially because it seemed too personal. Who would be interested? Then the blogosphere itself gave me a nudge by linking me up with an advocate of askals (native Philippine dogs andmixed breed dogs). I found a compelling reason to write about how we should love our askals as much as purebred pedigree dogs. Of course, it couldn't not include our other pets and our crazy family life, as well. (Yes, crazy, as in naming our dogs Poop, Booger and Barf.)

My other 3 blogs have been calculated to fit into particular niches. They are more challenging to write for but I like to think of it as a professional challenge. I am my own content provider and, as such, I have to be able to write on whatever topic is called for.

My 2 Centavos Worth focuses on TV shows, celebrities and what's hot on the web. It's entertaining for me, too, in that I get to keep abreast of the entertainment industry.

My Earn Global blog was initially meant to support and drive more traffic to my affiliate business with Global Domains International. Well, the business was a failure but I decided to keep my blog and focus it on various home based web businesses instead.

Earn Global will be closely related to Manila Mom in subject matter although this blog will be more personal and more reflective of my own journey while the other will be more of a review of what's out there.

Finally, there's Credit Ability, my most "calculated" experiment. It is meant to test whether a blog on supposedly highly-searched and highly-paid keywords will succeed.

So there you have it. These are my rationalizations for being a blogaholic.

Wait, I forgot - making this an income-generating attempt also rationalizes the time I spend surfing :-) Now I can call it research!


Technorati tags: e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work, blog, blogs, blogging, weblog



Online money-making opportunities you can join for FREE: e-gold / SFI / AGLOCO / MyLot / No-Minimum.com / Paid Forum

Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: Keeping Ideas Percolating Even Offline

Arghh! This can be really frustrating. Balancing the blogging bug and real life, I mean.

Despite all good intentions to post daily, real life happens, of course, and throws in some unexpected challenges along the way.

There's no contest here. Real life wins. After all, there's no point in having a life online if you don't have a life offline.

It was my mother-in-law's birthday yesterday and we went out to lunch with the family. I told myself I would blog at night. No way would I miss that family lunch.

Then I realized we were taking my eldest daughter to her friend's birthday party that night. It was at Makati - quite far from our place - and it wouldn't be practical to drive back and forth so we decided to wait for her at the mall. I thought the party would end at 10 so I could still have time to blog. It ended at almost midnight. By the time we arrived home I was pooped.

Today I received a text message from one of my major clients in my freelance writing. So I have to go out to their office to pick up my check. (Yey!)

That means I'll have to postpone my posts for my other blogs till we get back.

I'm so worked up by the new inspiration brought on by marhgil's comment on my previous post, though. Do read his Adsense success story and you'll be fired up,too.

Now I have even more ideas cropping up in my head and I'll keep them percolating while I'm offline.

First off, I'm going to heed my good friend's advice for Cafe Romanza. I will be serializing one of my unpublished fantasy romances there. If you'd like to read a Maia Jose Filipino romance novel for free, drop by. I'll start tomorrow.

I'm also itching to continue telling my stories about our askals (mixed breed native dogs) and guinea pigs in 3 Dogs, 3 Pigs & a Family.

As for My 2 Centavos Worth, I find myself mentally tagging everything I read about celebrities and TV shows for possible posting there.

Then, of course,I also keep my eyes open for news on home based web businesses for Earn Global, and on credit issues for Credit Ability.

Blogging means working both online and offline. That's a plus because it means there's no time wasted. Just because you're not pounding the keys doesn't mean you're being unproductive for your blog. The mental work is just as important.

Then again, you really have to make sure you do update your posts as much as you can.

I have to rush off now. See you later, friends!

Technorati tags: e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work



Online money-making opportunities you can join for FREE: e-gold / SFI / AGLOCO / MyLot / No-Minimum.com / Paid Forum

Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: Don't get intimidated by keywords and KEI

I'm sorry for being away the last two days. I was spending more time with the family, it being Holy Week. My intention was to stay away from the laptop. It didn't happen.

It wasn't so bad, though. My laptop is just beside the dining table which faces the TV and where everyone converges during all our waking times, anyway. So I'm always talking to everyone even as I work.

I wasn't posting but I sure was working. I was doing research on the net, reading up on how to further optimize my blogs and how to earn more. (There's so much to read out there!)

We all know about how important keywords are. For newbies like me (or noobs, as my friend, female-gamer, puts it), these are the words directly related to our main topic which we need to include in our blog title, headings and blog posts.

Search engine spiders pick up on these and use them to include us in relevant searches. Google Adsense also uses our keywords to provide us with relevant ads.

I already knew my keywords for each of my blogs. As I mentioned in previous posts, I intentionally targetted certain niches for each one.

Then I read that Google Adsense pays publishers varying rates depending on keywords. In other words, some keywords earn more than others even with the same traffic because advertisers pay more for certain keywords.

I found some sites that list top-paying keywords. (Just search Google for top-paying keywords.) Much to my dismay, my own keywords were nowhere there.

As an experiment (here I go again) I created a new blog based solely on a cluster of some of the highest paying keywords I found on the list. Credit Ability is on credit cards, loans, credit counseling, credit management, loan consolidation and everything else related to that.

We'll see how that blog performs in Adsense.

After I had set up that blog - including finalizing it's look, putting in Adsense, researching and writing a decent post, claiming it at technorati and including it in MyBlogLog - I found out about KEI.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) compares a keyword's popularity in searches to the number of sites using it and competing in the searches. In other words, we should want a keyword that a lot of people are searching for but relatively few sites are using. That means having a KEI of at least 10-100 or, better still, 100-400.

Wordtracker offers a trial use of their software to measure your keyword's KEI, so I immediately put it to work, of course.

I exhausted my list of keywords for all my blogs, including more related keywords that Wordtracker came up with. The result? Most of my keywords didn't even score a 1! Less than 5 scored, well, less than 5 points.

Imagine how depressing that was!

But no, I didn't let it get to me. I thought about the biggest blog networks, B5media and Creative Weblogging. They each have numerous blogs that do not necessarily fall under the top-paying keywords category. Several of their blogs are also on the same topics I write about. So I guess I'm not totally off-track then, am I?

So I won't let myself get intimidated. I'll just keep on writing in my blogs, doing my networking and I'll see how this experiment goes in the long run.

Please, if there's something I'm not getting here, will someone let me know?

Technorati tags: e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work



Online money-making opportunities you can join for FREE: e-gold / SFI / AGLOCO / MyLot / No-Minimum.com / Paid Forum

Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: Launching a New Blog to Widen Your Reach, Get More Traffic and Maximize Your Use of Adsense

I just launched My 2 Centavos Worth - a blog on tv shows, celebrities and whatever's being buzzed about around the web.

This is to follow my own advice on streamlining the topic of each of your blogs to your target niche market.

I felt that I wanted to comment on the hot topics of the day concerning pop culture but it wasn't appropriate to this blog or my Cafe Romanza blog. It needed it's own place for its own audience where it could serve up its own targetted ads.

By expanding to another topic area, I get to reach out to people who may not be attracted to the topics covered by my work-at-home-and-make-money-online blog or my romance-writing/reading blog. I get to draw in traffic that may not have been accessible to me before. Of course, my new blog also has Adsense to monetize this traffic.

I realize I will need to promote this blog, too, by surfing similarly themed blogs and leaving relevant comments. I will have to build a community for it.

Having several blogs on various topics you are interested in and on which you know you can write on regularly is a good way to widen your reach in the blogosphere and maximize your use of Adsense. Make sure you write effectively for each blog and its topic, though, paying attention to the special interests and styles of each site.

This is actually fun for me. It's like writing several columns on different topics for a magazine.

Do come and visit my new blog, too.

Technorati tags: e-gold, make money online, work at home, money, writing, work



Online money-making opportunities you can join for FREE: e-gold / SFI / AGLOCO / MyLot / No-Minimum.com / Paid Forum