No matter how much I preach about finding a small niche to market to, I still find myself saying to beginners, “Your niche is too broad.” I am a firm believer in “thinking big” with respect to success. However, when it comes to choosing keywords, thinking small is required.

Beginners often understand enough about the process to pick the right path to a niche, but then they stop too soon. Here’s an example: Elroy the beginner loves gardening and chooses it for his new site’s theme. So far, so good!

He even understands (since he reads my newsletters) that “gardening” is too broad of topic. After some consideration, Elroy settles on “vegetable gardening” as his chosen niche. Maybe Elroy is really new to my newsletters since he settles on a keyword term with 1.3 million results for that exact phrase match.

Nonetheless, Elroy proudly comes up with a whole list of long tail keywords he thinks will be great to target. “growing vegetables”, “vegetable gardening tips”, “tips for growing vegetables”, etc. are just a few of his prized keywords. Elroy quit too soon with his keyword research. His chosen keywords are still too broad for someone with his limited skills to succeed with.

Better keyword choices (after some focused keyword research) might be keywords such as, “how to grow tomatoes”, “growing corn”, “buy garden seeds”, “controlling tomato worms”, “when to plant potatoes” etc. Think about your own marketing now.

If your efforts seem stalled, could it be your keywords are still too broad? Micro niche keywords may not max out your host’s bandwidth, but they are a sure way for you to pick up some much needed traffic AND motivation as you see those pages ranking well!

Click Here For My Free AdSense Membership Site 

Tweet This Post

I just received another sad letter from a person who had the “dreaded letter” from Google. Their AdSense account had been terminated! To add insult to injury, according to Google’s terms of service, any money owed at that point will NOT be paid; it is returned to the advertisers. Don’t let it happen to you! Clicking your own links is not the only way to get banned. Also, be careful which “friends” you shoe your sites to. You don’t want any unauthorized help!

Call me paranoid, but Google’s reach is so broad that I am afraid they could make the connection if those friends began clicking my ads. Who knows…but I am not taking any chances! If you violate “minor” rules, they may be nice and just warn you. Or they will just hit the ban button depending I think on the mood of the reviewer at the time.

Make sure you read the rules and follow them! Another person asked me if the way they used pictures near their ads violated rules. If it was obvious to me it was a rules violation; imagine what the Google reviewer would think!

One more example: A person contacted me about their site which was doing poorly with respect to traffic. I took one look and told the owner that the varied content would be seen by the search engines as “spam”. Google is very clear; sites with no real intent of providing a quality experience for visitors are not welcome in the AdSense program. Several weeks later, the person wrote back; they had received “the letter”.

I don’t know if what I saw is what got them banned or not; but it sure did not help. Even though we do create sites with the intent of earning AdSense income, everyone must remember that quality content is a vital component of AdSense Success. …and follow those AdSense rules!

Tweet This Post

Sometimes we all get so caught up in the site creation process, we neglect the very basics of the AdSense setup.

Here is a short list of things you should be doing within your AdSense account.

1. Make SURE you specify in your account the URL’s you approve of for using your AdSense code (this is found in “setup” and “allowed sites”). These will be all the sites you own of course. Here’s what can go wrong if you don’t do this: Someone could copy your page code (it happens all the time) and make their site with it. The code, of course, contains your account’s Adsense code. You do NOT want your code to be active out on other sites like that. There is no telling what types of problems that could create for you. Plus, a competitor could simply copy your code, make a page to put it on, and start clicking like crazy on the ads trying to get you banned! …not likely, but it is possible.

2. Every single ad unit you create should have its own channel. If you don’t do this, and you have 3 ad units on one page, there is no way to know which units are producing well! It makes it impossible to test which units are getting the best clicks.

3. Lastly, when choosing content ad units, do not select the default (images or text) choice. Select either for images or text for that channel. Again, if you use the default choice, you will not know if images or text do better for your niche. Run an ad as text for a while, record the results, and then run an image ad in the same location and test its results. Test, Test Test!

Tweet This Post

Some of my clients have, or are working on, many dozens of sites. Others are focused on just one. Which model is best for you? There is no correct answer which fits every marketer; it depends on individual personalities. There is no wrong or right method. Those that opt for many sites can be just as successful as those who only own one. I will list here some of the pros and cons of each model.

The pros of many sites:

There is safety in diversification. If one site tanks for some reason, no big deal…you have a dozen others to fall back on. – Many of the sites will gain value with time. Many of them will even achieve some page rank. There can be a market for established sites with even a low page rank. – Different Internet marketing techniques can be developed and refined on the different sites. List building, AdSense, Affiliate marketing, and perhaps even selling your own products can be used to monetize multiple sites.

The cons of multiple sites:

More time is required for general upkeep with respect to domain registrations and hosting. – All things being equal (which they never are), X amount of work put into one site will yield more results than X amount of work into ten sites. However, this only applies in general. This negative can be overcome if attention is given to sites which began to get good traction.

The pros of just one site:

It is MUCH easier to stay focused! – The same “X amount of work…” rule stated above applies here. – One site of authority can attract large amounts of attention and offer broader opportunities.

The cons of just one site:

All your eggs are in one basket. It is rare, but a change in algorithm can sometimes hit even a well ranking site hard in the search engine rankings. – If the site’s niche is not large enough, a glass ceiling can be reached which simply can’t be broken through. One site can be limiting unless the market is large. Most of all choose a method which fits you best. Some marketers need help with “focus”.

Others NEED variety. If your dream is to have a thousand AdSense sites, go for it! If your dream is having the best golf site online, then get busy! With Internet marketing you can easily mix and match your own talents, dreams, and personality. I love that part about it!

Click here to join my free AdSense Connection membership site.

Tweet This Post

You probably have heard me talk about planting seeds. Creating small niche AdSense sites is a perfect example of planting a seed and watching it grow. There are no guarantees. Some of the niche sites work great and some don’t. Others take a while to take off.

Here is a perfect example of a slow growing site: I have a little AdSense site about searching for lost people (as in long lost relatives and friends). I created the site (several years ago) back when I knew but a fraction of what I know now. My keyword research methods were very primitive.

Back then I mainly used the free keyword tools to pick the keywords.
I found some PLR content and paid a student to rewrite about 12 pages of it. I bought some pictures from istockphoto for one dollar each to spruce up the site. I submitted it to some directories at that time. Since then I have done nothing to the site.

The site was indexed pretty fast. However, the site only earned about 30 dollars a month for the first 18 months. Hey, I am not complaining! That is 540 dollars and I only spent about 100 dollars for the pictures and the content writing!

Then, about 6 months ago, things began changing. For some reason, all of a sudden, some other search engines were picking it up! Originally it was only showing well in the Dog Pile search engine. Now the site has been earning between $250 and $400 per month! THAT is what I mean about planting seeds!

Join my Free AdSense Connection Memership site for AdSense video tutorials.

Tweet This Post

You all know I hate hype! Too many beginners fall for the sales pages which promise “hundreds of dollars” per day with little work and no experience required. Therefore, I had reservations about just how to promote my product, AdSense Connection.

AdSense is the one thing I do which is almost like free money. You see, I treat Adsense as a hobby; I may go days (even weeks) at a time without doing anything with it.  Adsense is simply something fun I like to be involved with. In return, it pays my mortgage and house insurance each month with plenty left over.

The sites rank well in Google and therefore just keep generating traffic ($$) month after month.

I wish all of my hobbies paid so well!

I have several AdSense sites which earn me a nice little paycheck from Google each month. I created these sites over the past few years or so and didn’t put a lot of work into them…but I did use common SEO techniques to get them ranked well. I don’t pay for any traffic; all the traffic I get is free search engine traffic…mostly from Google.

Like I said, it is as close to free money as I can imagine.

Wow, that may have sounded like hype….But it’s not; it’s just an example of what good niche selection and SEO can do for you.

I have a  video at AdSense Connection  which describes one of my sites in detail.

Tweet This Post