advertising your blog- Google

We've all heard about Google advertising and are eager to become part of hosting their ads on our site.

The fact is that Google gets over 60% of the search engine business. You've seen and hosted their ads. The Google network is the largest in the world.

You're going to pay a bit more to advertise with Google but, you'll definitely get more hits.

Here is how it works- according to Google.

You create your ads
You create ads and choose keywords, which are words or phrases related to your business.
Get keyword ideas

Your ads appear on Google
When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. Now you're advertising to an audience that's already interested in you.

You attract customers
People can simply click your ad to make a purchase or learn more about you. You don't even need a webpage to get started - Google will help you create one for free. It's that easy!

Expand your reach through the content network
With hundreds of thousands of high-quality websites, news pages, and blogs that partner with Google to display AdWords ads, the Google content network can reach users all over the web to help you drive conversions. Choose from text, image, and video formats to communicate your message.

Target the right user in the right context
Using your keywords, Google's contextual targeting technology can automatically match your ads to webpages in our content network that are most relevant to your business. For example, an ad for a digital camera may show up next to an article reviewing the latest digital cameras. If you want greater control, use placement targeting to hand-pick specific sites or sections of sites you want your ads to appear on.

Measure and optimize your results
With the Placement Performance Report , you have visibility into where all your ads appear. Review your ad's performance on a site-by-site basis to see impression, click, cost, and conversion data, and use this data to identify well-performing sites to target more aggressively and low-value placements that require content optimization or exclusion. Be sure to sign up for analytics as you can use advertising and analytics together.

Google partners put you in front of more potential customers. Their partners include AOL, Ask.com and more.

Google allows you to Set your budget
There's no minimum spending requirement--the amount you pay for AdWords is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad. I never hit my daily budget. To ensure that I don't I'll pay a certain amount each week for my advertising and when it runs out for the week, it runs out until I feel like adding more.

Pay only for results
You're charged only if someone clicks your ad, not when your ad is displayed.

Payment options vary by country and currency.

Tips:

Start your budget low- $10 a week
Keep checking on how much you are paying per click. If it seems like you're getting too many clicks, you can lower the amount you bid until you feel more comfortable.
Look for coupons. Sometimes you can get them from hosts.
Check your analytics to see which keywords are working best and where the hits are coming from.

Guest Blogger- Shakespere

Shakespere Smith (he says it's his real name) calls himself a "small time writer for a small time publication". In the Blogger world he is known as the author of Stufftoblogabout.com . We are taking turns as guest bloggers on each other's blogs.

There has been quite a bit of chatter lately about Google killing off their adSense and most importantly, the blogger's ability to make a few cents through paid per click advertising.

My question is, won't the change to cost per action hurt Google as well?

According to flipboard, there are around 210,000,ooo blogs world wide. Technotari says they are "currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media." The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

The average blog may get 10 hits a day. This is taking into consideration that there are long time blogs getting 200+ a day and a large number of bloggers that quit after the first month.

Blogger promoted, prior to this past week, the use of AdSense in blogging. What a great idea. They run their clients ads on blogsites and if someone clicks on it Blogger has to pay the host a very nominal fee for hosting the ad. On an extremely very odd occassion, if someone actually clicks on an ad on a blog and follows through with a sign-up or purchase, the blogger would make a few (maybe $5) bucks. Before the blogger could get paid they would have to amass $100. For many blogs- that could take 6 months to a year. This makes for a good chance that they would never even meet the $100 mark. Google AdSense actually had a good thing going.

Someone seemed to be getting a bit greedy.
As of August 31st, Bloggers will need to run a new kind of ad on their blogs and will only get paid if someone actually signs-up or purchases something because they clicked on the ad. What are the chances of this actually happening? The best part is that Google won't have to pay the blogger until the blogger amasses $50 per advertiser.

What is to keep bloggers from running to other forms of advertising?
Smart bloggers will be looking around and the result will ultimatly be fewer blogs carrying Google ads. Such an amazingly technological company has made a poor decision. The end result could be a loss of incentive for blogging. Bloggers will take a step back and use their blog as a web log diary just like in the old days.

-Shakespere-

And the uproar continues: retiring AdSense Referrals

In case you haven't heard, Google posted this in their adsense blog yesterday
Inside AdSense: We're retiring AdSense Referrals
They want publishers to believe that they are better off using cost per action advertising rather than referrals. There have been many comments to this posting. Most of the commentators seem disappointed while a few do not seem to understand the situation. Those who do not unerstand are probably the ones to suffer the most from this new announcement.

The possible implications to bloggers of no more referrals can look like this;

1. More advertising on blogs as bloggers try to make up the difference
2. Less income for bloggers as you'll only earn for actions and not for clicks
3. If you still must hit $100 to get paid, heck it could take a decade to get paid if you're only getting 20 hits a day on your blog.
4. Fewer bloggers as the incentive of earning money will be gone.
5. Flashier blogs as the new ads will be images
6. Blogs that take longer to load due to images
7. Less credibility of the blogger due to flashier and more advertising
8. Free advertising space will be given out as you place an ad on your site that probably won't generate an action.
9. Fewer advertising spots given to Google advertisers as bloggers look elsewhere.
10. Blogging as we know it could change as a result.

The number of AdSense successes- defined as earning a living solely from AdSense, with bloggers is far smaller than the number of bloggers just earning a few bucks. What's the Sense?

AdSense Changing from Cost Per Click

There are going to be some angry small time publishers using AdSense to make some money. Google has announced changes to the program that include eliminating the cost per click which is how many bloggers made their money- usually in small amounts.

In case you did not hear, Google acquired the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate operations in March 2008. In what Google says is a way to "improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers" they are retiring AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

• Google Affiliate Network: What was DoubleClick, will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. The Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.
  
  
• AdSense for content ads: Google says that if you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.
  

AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August.

How will this change affect Bloggers?
It was so easy to add AdSense to Blogger. There has been no announcement on how this will change however, gone will be the days of payments for clicks.