Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

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.

Know the history of the tee? How did the t-shirt get its start in the beginning of the twentieth century? How did the t-shirt become an American favorite? We’re now into the twenty-first century, and the t-shirt remains as popular as ever.

T-shirts of yesteryear were nothing like the t-shirts you know today. It was common knowledge that the first t-shirts, as you will learn, were clearly considered something to be worn underneath clothing. Certainly, the t-shirts of old were not part of a stand-alone industry, nor were they a mode of advertising.

Believe it or not, before the 20th century, there was no consensus that underwear should be included as an essential part of one’s wardrobe. Most late 19th century folks wore something like an extended shirt called the “Spiral Bustle.” Then in 1901 the predecessor to Hanes introduced for sale through catalog men’s underwear, a two-piece set.

The birth of the t-shirt appears to be accredited to the navy (and lots of sailors). No one seems to know for certain when the first t-shirt was made. As early as 1913 the U.S. Navy adopted a revolutionary new garment, a short-sleeved, crew-necked, white cotton undershirt. This garment was to be worn underneath a jumper. And what was the purpose of this undershirt? One must avoid scandalous sights, otherwise known as sailors’ chest hairs. The standard issue shirt had somewhat of the silhouette of a “T”, thus the name “t-shirt” was born.

It is also notable that during WWI while European soldiers were wearing cooler, comfy, lightweight, cotton undershirts in the humid, hot summer days, that American troops took notice. These duds were nothing like the American wool uniforms soldiers wore.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary listed “T-Shirt” as an official word in the American English language by the 1920’s. Around the late 1930’s that companies including Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Sears & Roebuck began the marketing of the t-shirt.

As of W.W. II, the Army and 12 million Navy sailors had t-seasy rider,hirts as standard issue underwear. “Skivvies”, these new, inexpensive undergarments became known as. America saw, began to get comfortable with, and reveled secretly, daily news images of their wartime sons, wearing t-shirts (dressed barely, but with pants of course). Underwear was being worn as outerwear. Rules were flaunted about undergarments. Taboos were violated with this show of male sexuality.

Still, by and large, the t-shirt was an undergarment meant not to be seen. In 1934, however, Clark Gable shocked everyone, as he stripped off his dress shirt in the movie “It Happened One Night,” to reveal no t-shirt at all. Women swooned, and men as well. Still, the t-shirt kept itself under wraps, to be worn primarily underneath a work or proper dress shirt.

The idea continued to quickly catch on, and due to simple design, a few years later, with the leave of many sailors during the war, the popular civilian “union suit” was reduced to a “singlet” or “jersey.” In 1938, Sears introduced a t-shirt they called a “gob” shirt (named after sailors). A “gob” shirt cost 24 cents. The t-Shirt would become an empty canvas, which was allowing men to present themselves in an erotic sense and show their gender.

The t-shirt was becoming appropriate to wear as an undergarment or as an outer one. The Marines standard issue white t-shirt was replaced with sage green for camouflage purposes. In 1944, the Army surveyed enlisted men as to preference of sleeves or sleeveless. Most preferred sleeves, due to better appearance, absorption under arms, among other reasons.

The t-shirt would never be the same. Along with worldwide upheaval, WWII brought along as well the first printed t-shirts. On display at The Smithsonian Institute is the oldest printed shirt on record. This t-shirt is from Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey’s 1948 presidential campaign and sports “Dew-It with Dewey”.

After the end of WWII, the t-shirt became the garment able to clearly display and advertise it all: cultural affiliation, class, and sexual orientation. 180 million t-shirts were sold in 1951. The rise of the t-Shirt can be traced back to the movies, and of course those big-screen movie stars: Marlon Brando, John Wayne, James Dean, and a young Elvis Presley who did their part to make the t-shirt, outerwear appropriate, or sexy to say the least.

1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” featured Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Stanley Kowalski, lovelorn, brutish, and primitive, riveting viewers as his buff pectorals and abs revealed themselves as unveiled by a stretched, paper-thin t-shirt. Some felt the picture created was one of a dangerous, incoherent kind of manhood, a sexualized brutality.

1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause” showed James Dean wearing a t-shirt without another shirt overtop. He made the t-shirt cool, a contemporary symbol of rebellious youth. Still, t-shirts were meant primarily for men.

In 1959, Plastisol, a stretchable ink was invented, starting a revolution in t-shirt design. After that came the iron-on transfer, and finally litho transfer. Thus was the birth of the t-shirt industry. Now marketing geniuses, like Walt Disney, “flocked” letters and simple designs onto t-shirts to be sold as souvenirs to both men and women.

Still the advertising evolution of the t-shirt would be slow. The military was first to stencil company and rank on their t-shirts. Also, Ivy League Universities made clear advertisement of fraternities on their tees. Budweiser was the first to do actual “corporate-advertising” in the late 1060’s, when they sported a Bud can on their company tees.

During the ’60s, the hippies abandoned traditional dress for tie-dye. Of course, the t-shirt became one of the cheapest and easiest garments to purchase and dye. Folks began tie-dying and screen-printing basic cotton tees, helping it to even bigger commercial success. In 1969, t-shirt wearing hippies took on the Establishment in Easy Rider. Also, advances in printing and dying allowed more variety and the introduction of muscle shirts, scoop necks, v-necks and tanks into modern fashion.

Throughout the late 60’s and 70’s, the American Tee was in full bloom. Rock and Roll bands began to realize that they could make significant amounts of money selling their t-shirts. Professional Sports caught on and soon the officially licensed t-shirt became hot merchandise. 1977’s “The Deep”, helped to form the sexual revolution of the 1970’s by means of Jacqueline Bisset’s wet tee.

What about the t-shirt in the ’80’s and ’90’s? Remember Don Johnson’s designer-tee and Armani suit combo ala Miami Vice? And what about the most memorable recent tee-film from 1996 “Mission: Impossible”, just a bit of Tom Cruise, clad in tee, doing some serious hanging from a wire. The 80’s and 90’s both saw amazing production of t-shirts with improved mechanics of printing them in increased volume for increased availability. The American t-shirt has now become known as a commodity item. More than one billion t-shirts were sold in 1995.

And now, with the advent of the internet, the t-shirt continues to become even bigger. Tee art symbolizes the cultural and social climates of our generation. Tees tell the story perfectly, and now more than ever, the t-shirt is becoming an even more individualistic mode of personal expression.

Robert Carney is publisher and owner of Old Crappy Tee. To stay informed on the latest t-shirt fashions, visit http://www.oldcrappytee.com

Are you intimidated by interactions with the Arty set? You aren’t sure that you belong or that your opinions on a piece will be taken seriously? Not sure if the price that the gallery is asking is reasonable? Well put all of your fears to rest. Art is a very personal and subjective experience. You do not need a degree in an art or design field to know what you like. A piece of work that takes your breathe away may have no effect whatsoever on the next person who views it. We all come from differing backgrounds and experiences. A piece that has wonderful artistic expression and shows a great deal of talent is not always one that strikes a chord with everyone. Your individual taste and what appeals to you and your price range should be the criteria that you rely on most when choosing artwork to accent your home or office.

Why buy from an On-Line Gallery? You can shop from the comfort of your own home. All of the pieces feature the dimensions. You can measure the intended space without having to wait to see if it will fit where you plan to display your new treasure. Choose the piece that you fall in love with and have it delivered straight to your front door. All you have to do is hang the painting or photo, or place the sculpture in its designated place of honor. Unlike local galleries an on-line gallery can feature artists from all over the country at the same time on the same site. New artists are profiled regularly so the choices are endless, always new and exciting.

The personal touch is only an email away if you have questions about the artist or piece, too. If you prefer to get to know the artist, biographies are available and personal contact is an option at the artist’s discretion. Commissions are also an option. If you have a favorite scene or photo that you would like to see created in watercolor, oil, pastel pencil or other medium for a one of kind original with personal meaning. Choose an artist by reviewing his or her other work to be sure their style is complimentary with your own. A successful outcome can be determined before the piece is started if your taste and the artist’s style are compatible. You can then negotiate a fair price and expected delivery for the commissioned piece. This will assure that you will not be disappointed.

Many people feel safe buying a print of one of the great masters’ works. This may be a safe way to purchase a work of art, but it also limits your choices. Why settle for a print that hundreds or even thousands of others have when you could own an original one of a kind piece? The price range can also surprise you. The price you pay for one of those prints could be more than a talented, but lesser known artist is selling an original piece for. Sometimes the most rewarding experiences in life are the ones that require you to stretch your imagination and do something that is out of the ordinary.

As in any field of endeavor the individuals who choose to participate are talented to differing degrees. Many highly trained artists do not have that indefinable “it” factor that sets them apart from the pack, while self-taught artists sometimes exhibit it in spades. Many times we think that we know what style of Art appeals to us and try to stick to that genre, but we may come across a new or different artist work that speaks to our soul in a whole new way. Also, what you thought was wonderful in your youth may not be what appeals to your taste as you mature. Art is a fluid experience. State of mind and emotional experience play a large role in your appreciation of it during your lifetime. We all know the great masters of the past. Their images flood our consciousness even if we are unaware of their impact. Art enriches us is ways that are not always obvious. When purchasing a piece of Art go with your heart and your emotions, because ultimately you are purchasing the piece to please yourself. You will get more viewing and enjoyment from it than anyone else.

Lori J. Ferreira has always had a love of the arts. She has a B.A. in Theater/Costume Design with a minor in Art History. She has worked in theaters, art galleries, retail and corporate environments. She has created a vehicle to promote artisans and craftspeople online with Lori J Gallery and Lori J Gifts.

You’ve put hours and hours of research, writing, revisions,
editing, proofreading - and really, your heart and soul - into
writing the best how-to book you can imagine. The text is
interesting and informative, the diagrams and schematics
precise, and overall, you have a piece of work in which you can
take pride. You’re well on your way to becoming an author of
note at your local book store, except for one small detail: no
one wants to publish your masterpiece. Thanks to the burgeoning
industry of internet publishing, however, you have another
option: ebook publishing.

An ebook is to the literary world what email is to the postal
system. Ebooks are books that have been formatted for electronic
presentation, and nearly anyone can publish an ebook with
minimal effort and more importantly, minimal resources. Ebooks
do not rely on publishing houses to come to fruition. Most
ebooks are designed and formatted either by the author, or if
you’re really serious, by a qualified designer so that the pages
conform to printing and aesthetic standards. The pages are then
either saved as PDF, html or common word processing files. PDF
files are generally the best way to present your ebook material,
but depending on how you intend to promote your ebook
publication, the other formats may be more appropriate.

Once your ebook is in the works, it is time to launch an ebook
promotion and marketing plan. Traditional marketing strategies
such as advertising in the newspaper may be a good idea if your
ebook addresses a topic of wide appeal, but the electronic
nature of ebooks begs for a similar style of promotion.

The first step in marketing and promoting an ebook should be to
ensure you have great content. A lot of would-be authors mistake
the simplicity of publishing an ebook as an invitation to
present low-quality work. Beware: readers will abandon shoddy
writing whether it is on paper or on screen so make sure you
have well-written, well-formatted prose that has been checked
and rechecked for errors.

The next step to effective internet marketing of an ebook is to
create a dynamite website that will grab the attention of
potential ebook buyers and move them to act. Again, if you’re
not super web friendly, invest in the services of a professional
web designer to help you achieve a polished website that allows
buyers to learn about your ebook, about you and, of course, to
order your ebook. From a consumer perspective, one of the
benefits of buying an ebook is that you can do so from the
comfort of your own home. Keeping that in mind, make sure your
website has instant payment and downloading features. It is also
important to have a website that will show up in search engine
queries. Talk to your web master about techniques such as
publishing fresh content, meta information, keywords, links and
RSS feeds to maintain a high search engine ranking.

Email is another super medium to spread the word about your new
ebook. Create mailing lists (or buy them online), so that you
can send mass messages heralding the arrival of your latest
work. Some ebook authors find it helpful to have an email
notification opt-in feature on their websites so that interested
readers can receive automatic notification of news concerning
your ebook or future work.

So how does one profit from writing an ebook? Just as with
traditional books, ebook material is copyrighted and therefore
belongs to the author. The ebook author can sell individual
copies of his or her ebook; can sell resell rights or reprint
rights to a prospective buyer; or even set up a club or
subscription-type system in which readers pay an annual or
monthly fee for access to material that is protected from the
public internet community.

Ebooks are a fantastic way to tap into the publishing world.
While not yet considered mainstream, ebooks are quickly becoming
more popular. In fact, for some often-changing non-fiction
subjects, ebooks are preferable to print books that rapidly fall
out of date. With an ebook, information can be quickly and
easily updated with the latest information.

Google Inc. is suing a Houston-based company for allegedly clicking on sponsored links to fraudulently boost advertising revenues.

Google filed a lawsuit two weeks ago in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California against Auctions Expert International LLC. Google is accusing Auctions Expert of abusing the Google AdSense program, in which web publishers display Google’s pay-per-click ads and receive a share of the revenues.

Auctions Expert joined AdSense in August 2003, according to the lawsuit. Google later discovered the alleged misconduct, terminating the contract between the companies and refunding advertisers, Google’s complaint states.

“These clicks were worthless to advertisers but generated significant and unjust revenue for Defendants who were paid by Google as if the clicks were legitimate,” the lawsuit states.

Google is seeking an unspecified amount of damages and restitution for the revenue-share payments it had made to Auctions Expert, according to the lawsuit.

Google spokesman Steve Langdon said that the Mountain View, Calif., company uses fraud detection technology to combat click fraud and protect advertisers.

“This lawsuit against Auctions Expert demonstrates the success of our anti-fraud system and that we will take legal action when appropriate,” he said in a statement.

Talk about your all-time wimpy statements. I’m not impressed. All Google did was exercise its right to file a lawsuit. The same right any of us have. Somebody shoot off the fireworks. Woo hoo! That’s some scary stuff right there!

I’m still waiting for Google to flex its considerable muscle. I want to hear a powerful statement from a powerful company. Something to the effect:

“Nothing is more important to us than our customers. They helped make us who we are today, and we will not let them down. We are determined to meet and defeat click fraud head on–no matter how how long it takes or how much it ultimately costs!”

But it will never happen. Why? Because despite its considerable power, Google is a lot like Michael Jackson in some ways. Let me explain:

At one time Michael Jackson was the biggest, most powerful star on the planet. However, as we soon discovered, he was also a wimp who was out of touch with reality.

I view Google the same way. Google is the biggest, most powerful search engine on the planet. But the way its handling click fraud is wimpish and shows it’s out of touch with reality also. These are criminals we’re talking about here. They’re not afraid of a silly lawsuit.

Google needs to get with the program and develop a “gangsta” attitude. Hold a worldwide press conference and tell these punk click fraud thieves in no uncertain hip hop terms:

“Yo, dog, let me holla at you for a second. We are Google, yo. We are the biggest, baddest, most powerful search engine on the planet, yo. Peep this: Do NOT steal from us or our homey’s, fool. Me and my posse have the means, the resources and the resolve to hunt you down like the punks you are 24, 7 and bust a cap in your ass! Peace…we out!”

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

No matter how hard you work to optimize your page, there are going to be times when Google just can’t figure out which AdSense ad to deliver, so it defaults to delivering a PSA (Public Service Ad) instead.

Now I don’t have any problem with charities, but I give to the ones that I choose to give to. Since I don’t have a non-profit license of my own, the goal of my web site is to make money and I depend on Google AdSense revenues to help pay my bills. Someday I want it to fund my retirement as well, so I can’t afford to have non-revenue PSAs showing up on my site.

The good news is the Google understands the human’s basic greedy nature, so it provides us with an alternative to donating our precious web real estate to charitable organizations. That alternative is known as AdSense Alternate Ads.

As strange as it seems, this feature allows you to let Google competitors into your site. Don’t worry, Google is allowing it with their eyes wide open. They even tell you how to set up the alternate ad code to work on your site and they let you do it right in your AdSense control panel.

Once you add the code to your site, Google will pull ads from whatever service you defined rather than serve a PSA. Google will do that even if those ads are coming from Yahoo, or Overture, or your grandmother’s attic.

This goes a long way towards ensuring that you never lose an opportunity to monetize a visitor’s time spent on your site. How nice it is of Google to gives us that opportunity.

Who do you choose?

Ah, now that’s the big question. Most people head straight for Overture or Yahoo, but there are other fish in the sea worth considering. In fact, some of these fish make their living almost solely by serving replacement ads for PSAs. Run this search (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&hl=en&q=google+psa+alternatives&btnG=Google+Search) on Google and you’ll have plenty of options to choose from.

Why bother?

Sometimes Google doesn’t have any ads in its inventory to match your site’s keywords. Sometimes Google gets confused and can’t figure out which ads to deliver, so it grabs a PSA ad.

Google also has a not-so-readily-available list of what it calls “stop words”. When the Google AdSense spiders detect these words on your page they automatically trigger PSAs. Some of the more commonly known words include severe profanity (think: George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on T.V), as well as other words which may very be quite legitimate for your site such as pharmaceutical, drugs, death, dying, abortion, and the list goes on and on. At least we THINK that it goes on and on but no one really knows for sure outside of a trusted few Google staffers.

But no matter what the reason, you don’t want non-revenue ads running on your site. There’s no excuse when Google makes it so easy to keep the revenue flowing.

Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips.
For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com
Email : deeljeabiz@gmail.com

As web publishers there are two main concerns we have. One is to bring traffic or first time visitors, the second is to get the visitors back to our site or we can refer this to repeat traffic. If you have no problems in bringing the first time traffic then you should consider to increase your repeat traffic as well.

The fact is that when you sell something online, it is very rare that people will buy your products or services in the first visit. It is mostly after some follow up or some revisit to your site. One of the best way to attract repeat visitors is by creating specials and promotion offer.

Everyone likes to get a deal. You might consider having a special
promotions section on your web site. You’ll want to change your
promotion fairly frequently and let your site visitors know: “We
change our specials every week. Bookmark our site and keep checking back!”

You might employ permission marketing here as well: “We change our specials every week. [Click here] if you’d like to be notified when we update” or [Click here] to receive our e-specials weekly.” You then lead the visitors to your subscription form.

If you send e-specials via email, make sure you give them a reason to visit your site and provide the appropriate hypertext links in the email.

Make it easy to have your site visitors tell their friends about
your specials. Have a “Tell a friend about this special” button
appropriately placed on the page with your special promotions.
You can leverage the viral marketing with an incentive: “Tell threefriends about our special and be included in a drawing for [something appopriate for your target market]”.

Now you probably thinking what can be your specials offer, you may only sell limited and exclusive products which can not be given a discount or some special deals as you think it will devaluate your products.
Well the easy way is that you can include some other products which include the giveaway or the resell rights in your own product package and make a special deal with the original price but with more value. By adding some more products as addition to your own product will increase the value of your package.

For more resources about some products that you can include with your own, you can visit www.viralmarketingportal.com

Heri Rosyadi is an internet marketing expert with over 5 years of experience in internet marketing. Visit http://www.Mytrafficstrategies.ws
and get a free copy of his eReport on “30 Amazing Advertising Tips” and subscribe to his online newsletter to receive his latest online promotion tips, methods and ideas.

The Mechanism
First a brief glossary of terms:
Adwords: The program advertisers use to make their adverts.
Adsense: The program Website owners use to display the adverts
CTR: Click Through Rate (the number of page impressions the number of clicks on a advert)

The most effective methods of advertising on the internet are Google’s Adwords program and Overture which is now officially called Yahoo Search Marketing but still universally known as Overture. This method of advertising is called Pay per Click or PPC. The concept is incredibly simple; Google and Yahoo provide listings on a Per bid basis. You bid a certain amount of money for your specific keywords when someone types in a keyword and you have the highest bid then your advert shows up. On Google the adverts show up in the Adwords column on the right hand side of the page whilst Yahoo shows them as sponsored links at the top of the page. If someone then clicks on your advert, they arrive at your web site and you are charged the amount you bid. So, for example if you bid $.10 per click on ‘widgets’, and that’s the highest bid, you’ll show up at the top if It’s the second highest bid you’ll show up second etc. If 100 people click on your advert, then the search engine or PPC service will charge you $10.00.

Using Adwords to your Advantage
So now that you know how Adwords work you can use this to your advantage when building websites. If you build a site about a specific subject you can then use specific keywords to attract adverts. The best way to ascertain which keywords to use are by signing up for an Adwords account you will then have access to Google’s Adwords tools which will show you which keywords are highest paying for a particular subject. In addition it will suggest alternative keywords.
At this point it is probably wise to point out it is against Google’s Terms of Service to specifically create a page just to target Adsense, Obviously if the site has lots of unique content then you are entitles to tweak the keywords to maximize your revenue.

Making Adsense pay
There is very little point adding Adsense to a page with no traffic. It is best to build your site and spend a couple of months driving traffic to the site, once you have a regular amount of people being driven to your site by the search engines then it is time to add Adsense. It is not just a case of putting Adsense on your site and waiting for the money to roll in. You should place the adverts carefully to maximize exposure whilst not impacting on the browsing experience of your viewers. Leave the Ads in position for a week or 2 and monitor the performance, also known as CTR. The change the position of the ads and the color and monitor this for any improvements. Publishers have been known to improve their CTR by up to 4 times by employing small changes. So time spent tweaking Adsense is time well spent.

Mark Thompson ran an IT consultancy In London for many years. He has now taken early retirement and spends his time in spain working on a number on online projects including The Income Site

I feel like it’s about time that I paid back to the community for all of the knowledge and help that I received along the way. Hopefully this post will help you get started in the AdSense business even if you have little or no money to spare but desperately want to try your hand at it.

Normally Google won’t approve AdSense applications for free websites, but there is one exception. So if you’re short on cash for hosting and are eager to get started, you might give this a try.

Blogger.com Blogs

Not long after Google bought Blogger.com, they made AdSense available to Blogger blog owners. Blogger is great because it has an easy interface, Google and Yahoo crawl the blogs quickly, and best of all if you’re broke–they’re free, and Google loves to give out AdSense accounts to Blogger owners.

So if you’re looking to get started with AdSense and not spend much money, Blogger is a great way to get started.

Before I talk about how to setup a Blogger blog for AdSense, though, let me tell you what an RSS feed is and how it works. If you already know this you can skip ahead. I make reference to this in the setup instructions, so it’s important to understand.

An RSS feed (as it applies to a blog) is basically a list of all of the recent posts made to your blog. People can use “RSS Aggregators” (software that continually checks up on your RSS feed to see if there’s anything new) to keep up with new posts on your blog. Websites will also want to publish your RSS feed on their sites if your content is good. This gives them fresh content for their visitors. And we all know that content is King in the world of website building.

Blogger blogs come with an RSS feed built-in, and you can use this to your advantage to generate traffic to your blog. I’ll discuss that in a bit, but first let’s get into building the blog.

Create Your Blogger.com Account

Determine Your Blog Topic First

Before you create the blog, you need to figure out what topic the blog will focus on. Think about your skills or hobbies that you’re really good at. You might not be a mechanic, but if you’re really good at working on cars on the weekend, and you love to do it, that would make a great blog topic. Brainstorm your skills and interests to determine what you would enjoy writing about. It’s important that you like to write about it, since you will have to do so to build up the blog!

I will say this: If you have some knowledge on a commercial or industrial topic, this will usually get higher paying AdSense ads. But a hobby blog can do very well also (I know this from experience!).

Create the Blog

Once you have a topic chosen, it only takes about 5 minutes to setup a blog. From the Blogger homepage click the “Create Your Blog Now” link and follow the blog wizard instructions. I won’t get into detail about them because it’s pretty straight-forward, but there are a few points I want to make.

First of all, when you choose your blog URL, make sure that the URL contains the keywords for your topic. For example, if you’re creating a blog about health insurance, “healthinsurance.blogspot.com” is ideal, or “health-insurance” or even “health-insurance-blog” or “health-insurance-12345”. Just make sure that your keywords are in the URL, that will help you be found when people search for your keywords in the search engines.

Also, be sure to pick one of the professional looking templates. I suggest you just pick the plain-white one that is first in the list of templates when you’re creating the blog. Once the blog is created, then click on the “Templates” tab and select one of the nicer ones shown there. I’m not sure why Blogger doesn’t show you all of the available templates in the blog setup wizard, but they don’t.

The Settings Tab.

A discussion of the important points of each settings tab is outlined below.

Basic

On the “Basic” settings tab, set your blog title to the keywords you want to show up for in the search engines. That will help you get ranked.

Give a good, detailed description about the benefits of reading your blog daily. You want to get people to add your RSS feed to their aggregators and websites so you can get traffic, and this will help.

Answer “Yes” to the question “Add your Blog to our listings?”. This will have your blog appear on the main page of Blogger when you make new posts (albeit for a brief period of time), and allow people to search and find your blog using Blogger’s search tool.

One other, lesser known detail about setting that question to “Yes” is that if you set it to “No” Blogger will shove “nofollow/noindex” meta-tags into your blog template header, which will prevent your site from getting crawled or indexed. I believe this was done to fight what Blogger called “spam blogs”.

Publishing

Set the “Notify Weblogs” setting to “Yes”. This will send a notification to Weblogs every time you make a new post. Weblogs is a site that lets people (and search engine crawlers) know when new content appears on a blog. You want the crawlers (and visitors) to hit your pages when you add new content, so be sure this is set to Yes.

Formatting

You can do what you want on this tab–I personally set the number of posts on the main page to between three and five.

Comments

Allow comments unless your blog topic is really controversial and you’re likely to get a lot of flaming (people lashing out at you for what you have to say). Allowing comments is good because it gives more food to the search engines and keeps your blog updating and fresh even when you’re not posting to it.

I usually let anyone comment, and don’t limit it.

Don’t show the comments in a pop-up window, because that will prevent the crawlers from being able to get to the content since it’s javascript-based.

If you’re concerned that people might flame you, but you want to allow comments, enable comment moderation so that you have to approve each comment that is added before it goes live.

If you want to be notified when a comment is made, set the Comment Notification Address to your email address.

Archiving

Set your archiving to daily if you post every day, or weekly if you only post every few days. If you post every day daily is the best way to go, because it gives the search engines more unique pages to crawl and index. More unique content means more traffic to your blog and more clicks on your AdSense ads (I’ll get to adding your AdSense to the template in a bit).

If you don’t do a daily archive (and maybe even if you do), enable post pages so that each post will still have its own unique page even if multiple posts appear on the same archive page. Having multiple posts on one archive page is not a bad thing if you have post pages enabled, since the posts tied all together make for yet another unique page on the blog.

Site Feed

Definitely enable the site feed. If your posts tend to be very short, you might enable full descriptions. But if you have long posts (which I recommend), do not enable the full feed, use the short feed. Here’s why:

If you put the full post in your RSS feed, then the person reading the feed doesn’t have a reason to go back to your blog since they have already read the full post. No visitors to the blog means no clicks on your ads. AdSense has an “AdSense For Feeds” in beta testing, but it’s not open to all publishers yet, so at least for now you need to induce people to visit the blog.

If they can only read part of the blog post, then if they want the whole story they will need to go to your blog. You can plan for this by making sure that your title and the first 255 characters (about the first 50 words) really pull in the reader’s attention. You need to use those first 50 words to make them just have to read the rest.

Also, if your RSS feed appears on websites, you don’t want to give away the farm by showing the whole post. You’re letting websites use your feed so you can get clicks on the posts in that feed and get visitors to your site to build AdSense revenue.

So set the “Descriptions” to Short, write long posts and make the title and the first 50 words count.

The Templates Tab

If you haven’t already picked a nice template from the list, click on the “Pick New” link under the templates tab and select one of the templates that you like and that fits your topic.

If you don’t already have an AdSense account, you can click on the “AdSense” link and apply for one straight from the blog instead of having to go to Google.com to apply. That’s how badly Google wants Blogger blog owners to use AdSense on their blogs!

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to paste your AdSense code into your template. Click on the “Edit Current” link if you’re not already there.

There are two methods of setting up your template. You will generate the most clicks by doing the following:

1) Find the section of the template that looks like this:

2) Paste your AdSense code for a 336×280 large rectangle directly after the second