Helpful Information for Newbies

Adsense, Blogger and the DMCA Notice

2011-10-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

With the recent push by Adsense to ensure the quality of publisher websites, it has become even more important that Adsense publishers are vigilant about protecting their copyrights.

I've already written about some of the ways you can protect your contents on this post back in 2009 about duplicate contents.

There is a new one also out there called "EmbedAnything". Personally, I would not use this, and not having used it, I don't really have any recommendations for it.

My personal opinion is that Embed Anything might be fine for those who wish to share their contents, but it not an option for those who do not. I also don't believe it would provide much in the way of actual protection.

Anyone can copy from your website, even if you disabled the right click function (which is totally annoying to most visitors as the right click context menu contains many functions that people use while viewing a website, not just the copy function) people can still copy your content. A couple of ways. Firstly, Firefox will show a notice that the right-click function has been disabled on that website, however, Firefox will still let you highlight and copy the text, rendering the "no right click" codes entirely useless.

And if someone really wants to copy your text, they can simply view the source code for your page, and highlight the text block they want, then copy it. Disabling the right-click functionality doesn't work in source code view, so pretty much any browser can still allow people to copy your work.

What's left then?

Besides the free registry places I listed in my old article (which still apply), you need to file DMCA notices to get your copied works removed from the sites that copied them. Keep in mind though - if you had previously given someone approval to re-post your content, you should not file a DMCA notice. You've given them permission and that means it is not a DMCA issue - they posted with your authorization.

The other thing you need to be clear about when filing a DMCA claim is that you actually own the content. If you've copied a bunch of images off someone else's website...you don't own those, and you may not file a DMCA claim for things you don't own.

Lastly, in filing a DMCA claim, you need to file it with the correct agency. If the person who copied your content has a website and paid webhosting, you will want to find out who their webhost is (do a "whois" search for that) because that's who you want to file the claim with. If they are also using Adsense, you can file a DMCA claim with Adsense. If they are using Blogger, you'll need to file a DMCA claim with Blogger.

You need to complete the forms fully and correctly, and from some of the DMCA notices I've seen on Chilling Effects...some people don't understand how to fill out the forms. Below are copies of the DMCA notices for Adsense and Blogger, with instructions on how to complete them correctly (click the image to get a larger view).

Adsense DMCA Notice - Online Form

Sample

Blogger DMCA Notice - Online Form

Sample

Please remember - do not complete a form unless you are the original owner of the contents.

New Adsense Approval Rules - Explained

2011-09-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

At the end of August this year (2011) Adsense instituted a new Approvals Process for publishers applying for Adsense. I made a quick note of this with a link to their blog post in my last article, but for some reason it appears to be causing a lot of confusion for people who are applying for Adsense. I am not sure why, because if you actually take the time to read the approval email, it explains the steps pretty clearly.

In an effort to expand on that a little, here is a copy of one of the approval emails for the new process, along with explanations of what occurs. In all honesty, if you don't take time to read these steps when they are sent to you, you will be creating a host of problems for yourself.

Welcome to AdSense!

You now have access to your new AdSense account and the AdSense code that you need to place ads on your site. To activate your account and get started with AdSense, follow the steps below. Or, for a detailed walkthrough of everything you need to know as a new AdSense publisher, visit Newbie Central: http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=1045789&sct=app-12156.

I believe the paragraph above may be one of the things causing confusion. While it is important to read the "Newbie Central" section on Adsense, with this new approval process you cannot actually do everything they list in Newbie Central. You can get the code (as described below in this email), and place it on your website. That's about it though. While you can access and see other things in your account, you won't be showing impressions or earnings right away, until your account goes through the final steps of approval.

We have completed a partial review of your application, and you may begin placing AdSense code on your site. In order to help you begin using Google AdSense as fast as possible, we will conduct a further review after you’ve placed the AdSense code on your site. We will notify you of full approval or disapproval within four (4) business days.

This paragraph above is, I think, where people are beginning to get confused. While you do get to place ad code on your site, it isn't actually going to work until the final review is completed. That paragraph says "4 business days" but given the actual time this takes, I wouldn't count on that actually happening within four days all the time. It can take four days, or it might take a week or more, depending on just how many sites and applications they have to review. They'll be trying to get through them all in four days, but these people are (contrary to some opinions) just human and can only do so much in a day. They don't work 24-7.

Please note that initially, instead of live ads, you will see blank ads - the ad unit box will blend in with the background of your webpage. This occurs because your account is still under review. We cannot complete our review of your application until you have placed the AdSense code on your site and are sending us ad requests.

This is another paragraph in the new process that seems to be causing confusion - I'm not sure whether it's just because people aren't bothering to read it, or if it's because someone has past the "four days" noted in the above paragraph and they just expect the ads to work.

When you first place the ad code on your site, you may actually see live ads for a few minutes but you probably won't see them for very long. Once the crawler visits your site it's going to discover that your site isn't yet approved to display ads, and those ads will disappear, but the ad code will still be in your site, and that's the way it's supposed to be until you pass through the final stage of the review process.

Without having the ad code in your site, these folks won't know which sites to review, so the ad code has to be there, but the ad itself doesn't. That's because you aren't going to get paid for any ads until after the final review process, and Adsense has it set up so they can review the site with the code, but you aren't expected to display advertising you won't get paid for, so the ads aren't visible to anyone.

If you don't get the codes on your site, it won't go through the final review process, so getting the code in place is an important part of this new process, but don't expect the actual ads to display until you receive a notice saying you received approval.

Once you have been fully approved, we will notify you by email, and you will begin seeing live ads appear on your site. You will not need to take further action to start earning revenue.

If you placed two or three ad codes in your site during the initial stages of the approval process, and you make it through the final stages and are approved, then those ads will automatically begin displaying again. At that point, you will begin earning revenue. If you only placed one code and want more than one ad, go to your account and get started creating other ad units (there is a maximum of three ads allowed on any one page).

Once the approval is received you may want to check your site to ensure that you are happy with the ad placements and that they aren't in spots where they overlap your content, or where your content or menu overlaps or covers part of the ads.

From this final approval point onwards, you can make adjustments and fine tune the ad placements, create channels and track your stats in your adsense account. It is important to ensure you understand the rules and policies associated with being an Adsense Publisher, so make sure you follow the instructions in the balance of the email (see below) and read all information associated with Adsense in their help center.

And don't forget - NEVER click your own ads, and NEVER ask anyone to click them, and NEVER tell people to "visit your sponsors".

Good luck with your Adsense account...and happy blogging!

The balance of the email publishers will receive during the new approval process is noted below:

Even after approval, we continuously review all accounts for compliance with our policies. If any violations are detected, your account may be disapproved or ad serving to your pages may be stopped. If at any time you are not seeing ads appear, we recommend that you log into your AdSense account and examine any messages that may appear.

STEP 1: Access your account.

Visit http://www.google.com/adsense?sct=app-12156 and sign in using the email address and password that you submitted with your application. If you've forgotten your password, visit http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1054302&sct=app-12156. Please also make sure that you have valid contact information in your account.

STEP 2: Create an AdSense ad unit.

Visit the "My Ads" tab, confirm the product selected is "Content" and click "New ad unit."

STEP 3: Display AdSense ads on your pages.

After you create your ad unit, we'll give you the ad code to paste into the HTML source of your website so that you can show ads (after approval). For help adding the code to your pages, visit our Code Implementation Guide at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=28893&sct=app-12156. If you don't have access to edit the HTML source of your pages, please contact your webmaster or hosting company.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

* Once ads begin to appear, please don't click on your ads, even to test them -- doing so isn't permitted by the AdSense programme policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies).

* You can add the AdSense code to a new page or site that complies with our programme policies at any time. There's no need to inform us or apply for a new account when you do - once you have been fully approved, you may place the code on as many pages that you own as you wish. Please make sure our crawler can access any webpage you place ad code on - see http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/answer.py?hl=en_GB&answer=10532 for details.

Have more questions? You can find answers in our Help Centre at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/?sct=app-12156, or the AdSense blog athttp://adsense.blogspot.com?sct=app-12156. In addition, you can post your questions to the AdSense Help Forum at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense?sct=app-12156.

Yours Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Messages from Adsense - Part 1

2011-08-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT NEW ADSENSE ACCOUNT APPLICATION PROCEDURES:

Just released on the Inside Adsense blog is a note about new application procedures. If you were a recently approved publisher who suddenly find their account showing a red notice that the account is under review again, please read this article from Inside Adsense on the new procedures.

One of the things many publishers seem to dread is mail from Adsense. Partly, that's because they're afraid that the mail will be one that disables their Adsense account, and partly because they often can't understand the information contained in the message, and partly because they aren't sure the message is really from Adsense.

While it is important to be careful when responding to emails from anyone, emails from Adsense can usually be handled with relative safety. If you aren't sure the mail is "safe", note any links included in the mail, and check them out separately without giving out personal login details.

Often you can go separately to your account and login and reply from there, without having to reply from your email, and without having to login through an unsecured source. If any email from Adsense asks for your personal login information, or your address or phone number, or verification of any other kind, do not reply to it without first checking things out.

If you have posted a request for help in the Adsense forum and an employee responded that they would contact you by mail, and you are expecting that mail, it is probably safe.

In many cases, messages directly from Adsense can be found in your Adsense account too, under the "Messages" tab. Any messages there that require you to respond are safe to respond to directly from inside your Adsense account.

We seem to get quite a few questions asking "what should I do" when people find these messages in their accounts.

Well, you should do what the message says of course. Following are a few examples of the types of messages you might find, and what to do with them:

Required Action General Payments Issue - Please contact AdSense Support to resolve this hold.

What does it mean? That's something we can't answer. Sometimes it's a random spot-check to reconfirm a mailing address or to update your tax information again, but there are numerous reasons they might want you to contact them directly. We can't say what all those reasons are because...well, we don't know. The reasons may differ from publisher to publisher.

What should you do? This is one of the simplest - what you should do is what it says. Contact Adsense support using the link in the message. Once they've received your contact, they'll contact you with an explanation - that can take a day or two, or even as long as a few weeks.

Your pages are displaying blank ads (or Public Service Advertisements) because you haven't yet verified your PIN and/or phone number. See the Payment History page for more details.

What does it mean? It means you need to verify your PIN/Phone number. Publishers have a set amount of time (4-6 months I think) from the time they cross the verification threshold to verify this information. If you haven't verified your account during that time, your ads will be blank

What should you do? If you have not received your PIN within the specified time, and/or haven't yet verified your phone number, you can post in the Adsense forum for help. Fairly often the PIN time-requirement can be reset, allowing you time to complete these tasks.

Your ads have recently appeared on websites you haven't authorized. To avoid lost revenue, make sure to authorize any sites where you display ads by visiting your account settings.

What does it mean? It means you are using the allowed sites list in your Adsense account and that some non-allowed sites have been displaying your ads. In many cases, these sites will be search engines - the various entities of Google (google.com, google.ca, google.in, google,pk, google.whatever etc.) will all show up separately, so every time someone uses their country's local Google search to find and access your site, you'll see another site show up in the non-allowed list.

Of course, it may not always be search engines that appear under the non-allowed list, but this is one of the most prevalent appearances on this section of your account. Sometimes it will be google translate, or google webcache - this occurs when someone views your pages using the google site translator, or finds a cached view of one of your pages from a search.

What should you do? For the most part, major search engines and mostly all of the google.whatever local search engines can be added to the allowed sites list, as can the translate and webcache pages.

If you aren't certain of the site, don't add it.

These messages display in your account for up to a week after the event, or after you add them to the safe list, so don't be confused when you've added them to your safe list and you still have the message displaying. Eventually (after a week) the message will disappear.

As well, keep in mind that these messages will appear regularly in your account, but most of the time these aren't cause for concern. Simply check the Allowed sites page, check the non-allowed sites that show up and decide whether they are safe to add or not.

I can't really remember when the last time was that I didn't have this message in my account. I do not add every site that displays my pages to the safe list because all of them aren't safe, such as proxy sites. I have a few visitors who view my site using a proxy site - perhaps to hide their IP address, or maybe they just prefer to be anonymous. Because I don't know who that person is, and don't know the proxy site in question, I won't consider that a safe addition to my Allowed sites. I only get a few of these a month, so it's not like I'm missing out on a lot of income. It's always wise to check any site you add to your allowed sites list BEFORE you add it.

Next Time: Messages from Adsense (Part 2)!

Listen Up...

2011-07-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, today just a very short post. This is really a reply to some seriously stupid people - and yes, there are seriously stupid people out there in the vast world of the internet.

This little gem (below) I received today, in my gmail box:

First thing - I've never heard of "Google Account Alert" (who it is supposedly "from")

Second thing - "mailnorewly(at)gmail(dot)com" is not my address (though it insists it was sent to mailnorewly, is not even close to my address, and is spelled incorrectly anyway.

Heads up to the phishers out there - if you can't spell even a simple word like "reply" don't waste your time.

Third thing - nobody in their right mind would ever even try to reply such a dumb, stupid email.

Please people, if you're going to try and phish something out of me, you better learn to spell, and get way more creative than this.

For the rest of you, my readers - I am pretty sure none of YOU are going to even blink as you reach for the "spam" button in your gmail account, right?

Just about the only good thing I can say about this email is that it tickled my funny bone for about one-tenth of a second. It actually got a smile out of me,.

Hey folks - it's Friday. Have a great weekend...

Adsense Ads Took Over My Website...or Why Did My Blog Disappear?

2011-07-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

It's time this situation was addressed...long past time actually. I guess I've been a little lax lately. Each week we see at least a couple of publishers in the forum asking why their website or blogs have disappeared, and been replaced with a page full of adsense ads. Mostly, these are new publishers who assume that because they've purchased a domain name for their site or blog, they should use Adsense for Domains.

Wrong!

Why? Well, because Adsense for Domains is only for "undeveloped" domains. An undeveloped domain is one that doesn't contain a website or a blog...basically, it is nothing more than a purchased domain name. You would only use Adsense for Domains if you don't have hosting for a website, and don't have a blog to redirect your domain name to.

For any website or blog with actual contents on it, you must choose Adsense for Content, not Adsense for Domains.

Adsense for Content is for any regular (not mobile) website, or any type of blog (again, not a mobile enabled site). So it doesn't matter if you are using a free blog like Blogger.com, or a self-hosted wordpress blog (not a free wordpress blog) - you still would choose Adsense for Content, even if your Blogger or Wordpress blog has it's own domain name.

If you've already set-up Adsense for Domains and can't find your website any longer, you'll need to follow the instructions on the Adsense Help Center page to remove your site from Adsense for Domains (please read the instruction page carefully).

Once you've completed the restoration of your domain settings, your website will be available again. At that point, you can sign in to your Adsense account and then select "Adsense for Content" to set up your ads.

For anyone just starting out: please read the product instructions before you select the product you want to use. The descriptions contain information on where to use these products, as well as the individual program policies for each of the different Adsense Products.

Adsense, Blogger, Gmail and Google - Disabled Accounts

2011-05-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

In recent months we've seen a couple of round of wholesale account removals by Google. Their automatic spam procedures have nuked hundreds (possibly thousands) of accounts; some rightfully so, and some in error.

How it works isn't something I'm going to go through in-depth, but if you really want to understand how this happens, read this article by one of Blogger's most prolific Top Contributors. He explains how the spam detection system works, and why some ordinary blogs and/or accounts get caught in the filter. He also explains how to get your account back, but - the final review is...the final review. If your account is still deemed as spam and not restored, it will be because humans have reviewed it manually and still found it meets the qualifications for spam.

When you login to your Google, Gmail or Blogger account and see this:"Your account has been disabled" you need to click on the "contact us" link provided. That should take you to a page explaining that your Google account has been disabled. Read the information on the page, and follow the instructions - follow the instructions precisely. In other words, review the Terms of Service and be absolutely certain your account(s) follow those terms before you submit any other form. There is a contact form at the end of the page - if your account meets the terms, use the contact form.

If you were caught in the spam filter accidentally, there's a pretty good chance you will have your account restored.

On the other hand, if your blog contained any of the things Blogger considers outside of their policy, or is seen as spam, you won't get your blog(s) back, and you probably won't get your Google account back either.

Some of the things considered to fall outside of the terms of use on Blogger/Google are also some of things Adsense considers to be unsuitable for displaying ads, so if you use Blogger and Adsense, then you need to pay attention to this. If your blog contains the following type of content - you may be caught in the next round of Google nukes.

Affiliate marketing.
Content created with scripts and programs, rather than by hand
Auto-generated contents
Content or links referencing GPT, PTC, PTS, 'Make money from home', 'Make money fast', or other referral-based activities
Link Farms
Content scraped from other sources, duplicate contents
Copyright Infringement
Large blogs with multiple, unfocused / unrelated subjects.
Links to Illegal Downloads / Streaming / Torrents.

An explanation of Blogger's Content Policy is found here: Blogger Content Policy

If your blog contains these types of content, you better start cleaning them up now. Sooner or later, Blogger or Adsense, or even Google will remove your accounts if you don't.

WHY LOSING YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT CAUSES BIGGER PROBLEMS

Losing a Blogger account usually means...well, you lose your blog. Losing an Adsense account means you can't monetize with Adsense any longer, but you might still have your blog or other Google Services. Losing your Google Account is a much larger problem.

A Google Account is like a giant umbrella over all of your other services provided by Google. The Google Account login allows you to login to any Google service you've signed up for - it's much like the key to the filing cabinet. Without it, you can't get any of the filing drawers to open.

If you lose your blogger account, and only your blogger account, you may still have access to your other Google services.

If you lose your Google Account, you literally lose access to any other services you had under that umbrella. This is important - so pay attention. This is not just "when Google disables your account". The same thing occurs if YOU delete your own Google account.

We see this frequently in the Adsense forums. Someone decides they want a new Google Account (for whatever reason) - to use a different name, or to only use some of the products, or just to organize their accounts a little better.

The first thing they do is go "delete" their Google Account.

Then they wonder why they can't access any of their other Google services. They can't, because by deleting the Google Account, they've just thrown away the key to the cabinet. Without the Google account, you now have no access to anything else under that umbrella.

If you plan to move your blogs, or gmail or adsense account (or any other Google service) to a new account, you need to request help in the appropriate help forum BEFORE you delete your old Google Account.

Optimizing Ad Placements

2011-03-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

In recent months Adsense has done a complete overhaul of the Help Center files. While I haven't found all of these changes to be helpful, in some cases they might be useful for newbies.

The Newbie Central section has changed quite a bit, but it highlights some of the most important things newbies should know, and understand before getting the ads onto their sites. The introductory page gives you a short list of the places where you should start - just click the picture or link on their introduction page (linked) and start learning.

Adsense has been adding some other basic help pages for those just beginning with Adsense. Two of these useful sections are the Ad Placement Optimizers: the One-Click Optimizer, and the Optimization Lab (which is not just for newbies).

One-Click Ad Optimizer

The one click optimizer offers suggestions for ad placement for a variety of site types: news sites, classified sites, game sites, forums and blogs. Possibly because these are the types of sites we most frequently see questions about, though most of us helping in the forums don't seem to use these different types of sites.

Before creating these optimizers, Adsense spends a fair bit of time learning what works well for certain types of sites - so there is some research behind these ad placement suggestions. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they will work for your site, it means they should. Every site is different, and sometimes the best ad placements for your own site might not be the same as what they've suggested. Placements that work will depend on your site layout, and your contents, as well as your visitors. If you already have a visitor base, then you need to pay attention to what your visitors want.

If your site is fairly new, then it might be a good idea to check out the optimizers and see how your current ad placement lines up with what Adsense says is effective. You may want to try some of their suggestions on different pages of your site. If you decide to do this, then make sure you create channels for these new ad placements so you can track their effectiveness yourself.

The Optimization Lab

The Optimization Lab has more help for getting the most out of your ads. There are simple instructions on how to increase your CTR and increase the CPC on your websites, however, if you are a newbie you will also need to pay close attention to the policies.

One of the possible ways to increase the CTR is to wrap your text around an ad unit. The Adsense Optimzation Lab gives instructions in the form of a div code to do this, but keep in mind that if you implement this, you really need to have more than "5" pixels of space between the ad and your text. This is especially true if you are using a lot of images close to the ad placement, or if you are using text ads with no borders in your text area. The ad unit must NOT be mistaken for part of your text.

What it doesn't give you are the instructions for using that div code everywhere. Basic websites built with html can put their ad codes within their text areas, usually without much problem. That allows them to use just this div code supplied by Adsense to set the ad to the right or left side within their text. But most blogs will not not accept the adsense code within the text areas - at least blogger will not. And some wordpress blogs may not either.

In order to do this, you'll need to parse the adsense code for blogger (do a web search - lots of blogs have already written about this). This parsed adsense code is then placed in between the two div codes given by Adsense and inserted into the correct spot in your blog's TEMPLATE, not in the text area.

What happens then is that the ad will display in that spot on each post you have without you having to place the code each time.

Also be aware that if you have your blogs set to display more than one post on a page, you will not be able toplace ad units in your sidebar (use link units instead), header or footer areas because each of your first 3 posts will already have an ad in it, and you are only allowed to display 3 ad units.

If you normally display more than 3 posts on a page, also do not use this method for displaying your ads. If you have 5 posts on a page, this code will try to display 5 ads - one in each post. Adsense will then only display one public service ad, and no other ads.

This method of inserting the code into the template is really only good if you have your blog set to display one or two posts per page, but it will work fine for static websites (ie: sites that are all individual pages, rather than a blog with multiple posts on a page).

There are other things in the optimization lab you might want to look at - and a few to be careful about.

In the "Boost Impressions" section one of the things they list is to use Adwords to increase site traffic. Please, please, please do NOT run over to Adwords and start buying ads to increase your traffic.

Adsense and Adwords used together can cause publishers a lot of grief. Most new publishers signing on at Adwords have NOT taken the time to understand how these work together, and what you need to do to MAKE it work. If you are considering using Adwords to drive traffic directly to a page loaded with Adsense ads, then forget doing that. The purpose of Adwords isn't to get people to go click on your ads. It's purpose is to advertise your SITE, PRODUCT (which is NOT adsense), or SERVICE.

The page that your Adwords ad leads to must meet certain quality guidelines (available at adwords), and your website must also meet certain quality guidelines...if it doesn't, you can lose both your accounts. As well, your ad itself must not be misleading. If your ad says "get a free laptop" it better lead to a page where someone gets a free laptop. So how many free laptops have you got to give away? Oh...none? Well then that ad is misleading. Change the wording so it says "sign up to get a free laptop", in which case the page it leads to has to have a spot for someone to signup for a free laptop.

There are many misleading advertisements that end up on our websites as publishers. I don't know about the rest of you, but I report these ads when I find them, and so do many of my readers. If my readers click an ad for a free calendar template, it's because that's what they're looking for and if the click doesn't take them to a page with a free calendar template they're gonna complain.

Make sure well before you sign up for Adwords that you understand all the requirements from both the Adsense side and the Adwords side, otherwise you may be risking your account.

Invalid Clicks? How, Where, Why?

2011-01-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

An excellent place for most new publishers to begin understanding policy and issues that may cause invalid clicks is the "AdSense Policies: A Beginner's Guide" page in the AdSense Help Center, and well worth taking the time to read for some established publishers. You might be surprised at some of what you'll find on this page.

One of the first things AdSense mentions in the "Clicks and Impressions" section is that they monitor these very carefully. There's an unspoken idea there, and if you think about it long enough you might understand what that hidden message is.

If AdSense is monitoring clicks and impressions "very carefully", it's probably a good idea for you to also monitor these yourself - "very carefully".

Monitoring the activity on your website or blog is one of the ways you can help to head off a lot of ad clicks that AdSense may consider to be invalid. You monitor site activity using Google Analytics, and any third-party site analyzer that records IP addresses, visitor activity, and times, and if you pay for webhosting, most hosts will have some sort of server logs for your site. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with some of these - simply do a web search for website statistics or counters and read through some of those available. Select one that fits your needs and learn how it works, and put the necessary codes on your site. Keep copies of logs or statistics, because these will be useful in analyzing your site and monitoring your traffic.

When you analyze your stats there are things you should watch for:

one visitor clicking multiple ads in one visit (1 or 2 ads, probably okay. 7-10 or more ads, probably not okay but don't panic, just report it - 30+ ads clicked by one person...start panicing and remove your website from the allowed sites list, also report the IP addresses and times to adsense)
many visits coming from a single IP address. This can cause problems with Adsense if those visitors are also clicking ads.
many visits coming from the same referrer and you don't know why. Check out the referrer and find out why the visitors are originating from that site. Someone posted your link to a blog or group, that's probably okay depending on the purpose of the group. Someone posting your link to a link farm or link exchange - not okay. Contact the site and get them to remove your link.
visitors coming from your own IP address and clicking ads. Definitely not okay. Even if it isn't YOU, it is someone in your household. Or, if you use a wi-fi connection and don't lock it down, it could be anyone close enough to logon to the internet using your IP. Make sure you password-protect your wi-fi logon, and don't share it with anyone. You may also want to check your connections even if you are using cable or dial-up. We ran into a situation where a neighbour had cut another neighbour's cable near the pole and inserted a splitter box. The neighbour was then able to use the cable connection belonging to someone else without paying for the services...and causing the other neighbour to have enormous internet bills.

If you discover anything you find suspicious or unreasonable on your stats, then you will want consider reporting this instance to AdSense. Please, please don't go reporting single unidentified click - that's not what we're talking about here. And you don't need to report every single click you aren't certain about. If you pay attention to your site activity, you'll soon be able to recognize things that are unusual or out of the normal ranges of your site activity.

You can report these using the Invalid or suspicious activity form, found on this page in the Adsense help center.

On the "AdSense policies: a beginner's guide" page you'll also note a small paragraph about traffic: "Be aware of how your site is promoted". Read it carefully, and follow the links in that paragraph because you may find that reading will save you a great deal of grief.

While AdSense doesn't tell you that you can't promote your site, there are certain types of promotional opportunities that AdSense frowns upon - things like traffic exchanges and link farms whose sole purpose is to send people to your site to register impressions or clicks. If you are planning to buy any sort of advertising to grow your site, you'll need to be very careful about what you buy, where you buy it, and what your purpose is for purchasing it.

If you are buying "traffic" ONLY to get your AdSense ads seen and perhaps clicked, then that's a very bad idea. For the most part, you will probably pay more for the advertising needed to do that than you would get in return by way of clicks. If you are purchasing advertising because your site has a product or service you want to promote (ie: that service or product should certainly not be AdSense, nor should it be any sort of illegal product) then purchasing advertising might be of some value to you outside of AdSense.

In any case, garnering traffic through purchases means the advertiser (in this case you if you are buying traffic/ads) who also uses AdSense must following the Google landing page quality guidelines given to AdWords advertisers, even though you may not be purchasing your advertising through AdWords. These guidelines include a quality component that says landing pages (ie: the page your advertisement leads to on your site) must contain:

original and relevant content (so, don't advertise free websites if you aren't indeed giving away free websites on your site/page and don't have content copied from other sites or RSS feeds)
AdSense lists things like making sure the purpose of your site is clear to visitors, and that your content is not copied from other sites.
transparency - the user should be able to find out about your company or website easily (about us page) or be able to contact you easily (contact info), you should have a clear privacy policy, your site should not download anything automatically to any user or visitor, if you have a "download" button or link the user should know what they're downloading (clearly stated on the page) and the download link should begin a download, not route them to multiple other pages.
navigability - the navigation should be clearly displayed on your page and should be simple for visitors to find; all the links should work and go to the correct page.

The landing page guidelines are quite clear on the fact that originality is what they expect - "relevance and originality are two characteristics that define high-quality site content." I don't think they can be any clearer than that. Users should easily find what your advertisement states and they should be able to find that on your landing page, and you should not have content that is not original (created by you).

There are many other valuable hints on landing page quality for AdSense publishers who wish to use advertising to promote their websites: such things as browser behaviours, collection of personal information; using too many popups, popunders, floating box elements and the like; fast loading pages, portal or doorway pages, etc.

Here's where things may take a little twist. How does all of the above apply to publishers who are disabled for invalid activity? Almost any violation of policies, including those above, could widely be construed as invalid activity. If you are not in compliance with all policies that AdSense and Webmaster Guidelines list (and the Landing Page Quality Guidelines), then any earnings you accrue could be considered invalid. In otherwords, clicks on AdSense ads on pages that are not in compliance with policy could possibly be listed as invalid clicks.

Having an account disabled for invalid clicks doesn't necessarily mean AdSense thinks you've clicked your own ads - of course you may have, in which case you'd already know that you did. But for those publisher's who have no idea what these invalid clicks are (or where they came from), the email they receive is a rude awakening, and often comes much too late. Even if they are able to discover the cause, the chances of getting the AdSense account re-instated are almost nil.

Minor policy violations (like no privacy policy, or inadvertently placing an ad too close to content) may receive a warning notice, however, this warning should be taken very seriously.

Publishers should not only correct the issues listed by Adsense in the warning notice (throughout their entire site, not just on the page given as a reference), but should very carefully review their sites to ensure there are no other issues. Besides carefully studying the AdSense Program Policies and Webmaster Guidelines, if you have purchased traffic or signed up for free traffic, you'll want to consider the quality of that traffic as well. When it comes to traffic, all is not equal. Traffic from sources unacceptable to AdSense is worse than no traffic at all and can also lead to invalid clicks.

These are only a few of the possible causes for invalid clicks, but some that AdSense Publishers can exercise some control over.

AdSense's Unacceptable Content Rejection - What is it?

2010-10-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

It seems like this is the question everyone's asking right now. There are more and more of these rejection questions showing up in the AdSense Help forums, and most people seem uncertain about what this rejection means. For the most part, Adsense isn't all that clear about what to do in order to correct this, and won't spell out precisely what the issue is.

In some cases, the unacceptable content is easy to spot when you compare the person's website against the AdSense Program Policies, but it isn't always as simple as that - particularly when English is not the publisher's native language.

Some of the reasons for unacceptable site content that we've been able to come up with in the forums are as follows:

- content that doesn't meet adsense policy (read the policies here: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182)
- content that doesn't meet the webmaster guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769) Although the Webmaster Guidelines are listed as "guidelines", AdSense publishers are required to follow these guidelines, making them as important as the Adsense Program Policies. When you are applying to become a publisher, or when you are a publisher, the Webmaster Guidelines are no longer guidelines - they are a requirement, so you'll need to consider these as rules you must follow.
- content that isn't original (articles and content you didn't write). Since the inception of "Caffeine", AdSense has been systematically disabling blogs and websites with copied content, auto-written contents, contents of little to no value (re-purposed content from other websites), written content that doesn't make sense or reads as gibberish, and has been rejecting blogs and websites of this nature in the last few months. If you apply with a blog or website with contents such as this, be prepared to receive a rejection notice. What you need is original content that you've created yourself.
- no content, or very little content. AdSense requires each blog or website to contain sufficient content. If you have a blog with one or two posts, that's not going to be good enough for AdSense to approve. If your website has only one page, then you'll probably get rejected, unless it's a very big place with a LOT of original content. If you apply with a site that has "no content", then your "content" is non-existent, which makes it unacceptable content.
- blank pages in your website. AdSense doesn't want to see your proposed website, or a website under development. They want your website to be complete, and easy to navigate. It shouldn't have a redirect for the domain URL (unless you've used a 301 redirect), it shouldn't have a frame on the URL that calls the website from another URL (it needs to be a direct URL), it shouldn't have links that don't work or are broken, and it shouldn't have links that lead to blank pages with no content, or with only "ipsum lorem" text. That's the latin text you often see on template pages when you purchase a template or get a free site template. That text is nothing but gibberish - it's meant as a place holder, and you need to replace that with your own text.
- copyright infringements (images or other contents you don't have permission to use). Adsense expects it's publishers to "go the extra mile" and create their own unique contents, including images. If you can't create your own images to use with your text (websites and blogs need text, not JUST images or videos), then they expect you to get permission from the image owner BEFORE you use the images, and you'll need to give credit to the image owner. Images specifically marked as being in the public domain don't require permission for use, but you do still need to have a site with mostly original contents, so using a site full of public domain images and nothing else is likely to get a rejection.
- a website that isn't six months old and doesn't have six months worth of original content. Adsense requires sites from many countries to be six months old before getting approval, and although we don't have a list of specific countries to point to, it appears that there are many more countries AdSense has added this requirement for.

While there may still be other reasons for unacceptable content, these are the most common ones we've come across. It's up to each publisher to ensure their content follows the guidelines and policies set out by AdSense and Webmaster Guidelines so if you receive this rejection, you'll need to spend some time going through your website or blog and digging through your content to find the areas you'll need to amend, remove, or add to.

If you have taken the time to study your site and the policies and still can't figure out what's wrong, then you can ask in the AdSense Help Forum to see if someone else can see the issues at hand, but it's really the publisher's responsibility to at least try to figure out the problems first. Help is always available, but learning how to decipher your site's problems will help you keep your account in good standing in the future.

AdSense Stole My Money!

2010-09-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

Wow, I bet that got your attention!

No, AdSense didn't steal my money, but we are in fact seeing a lot of posts like this in the AdSense forums. And there is a reason for it. Since about April of this year (2010) there have been some display issues with some of the reports pages within your AdSense accounts. Those of you who get cheques every month and don't actually check your stats all that often may not have noticed these issues at all, but they are probably there, in your accounts. In the past month or so a second display issue has cropped up, also relating to earnings, but on a different page.

The first issue (the one from April) is on your Payments History Page. When you open that page it displays the "default" view, which is usually for the past three months. The earnings displaying at the end of the previous month (right now since it's Sept. that would be earnings for Aug. 31) are probably wrong - some are off by only a little bit, while others are off by a larger amount.

What we're finding in the forum is that people are looking at the default view, and seeing earnings over the payment threshold (that's $100 US) but aren't getting their cheques or payments...and of course wondering why. In order to see your actual earnings (ie: the correct earnings) on the Payments History Page you'll need to reset the view method from the default 3 months to "all time". To do that, select "all time" from the drop-down box at the top of the Payments History Page and let it load. Now check your earnings for the end of August (or the last month earnings are recorded for). There's a good chance that it is under the $100 threshold - in some cases it might only be a few cents or a few dollars under, but being under at all means you won't get your payment until those earnings are at least $100 or more.

The second more recent issue appears on the Reports Overview Page. That's the page you land on when you enter your AdSense account. If you are noticing the earnings in the "Since Last Payment" option disappearing and re-appearing and fluctuating wildly from hour to hour or day to day, then you are probably being affected by the display issues for this report. And it is a display issue - when your earnings are validated at the end of the month and posted to your Payments History Page, they will be the actual earnings. Unfortunately, at the moment, you really can't hang your hat on the "since last payment" report on the Reports Overview Page.

These issues can be found, with their work-arounds, on the "Known Issues" page for AdSense. Publisher's should bookmark this page, or add it to their Google Reader and check it regularly - particularly if you are seeing anything unusual in your AdSense account. If other publisher's are experiencing the same issues you are, you may find the answer on the Known Issues Page in the AdSense Help Center. Even though the issue might still be inconvenient, you'll probably be relieved to find you are not the only one experiencing it...and that AdSense is aware of it and working on it.

The two display issues mentioned above are being worked on by the techs and engineers. It's probably pretty easy to think the one that began back in April should be fixed by now, but the AdSense systems are fairly complicated and getting the same thing to work the same way for everyone probably isn't as easy as we think it should be. The "Known Issues" page will also tell you when these issues are corrected, so don't forget to check it.

Important Reminder for AdSense & AdWords Users!

2010-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote an article about protecting yourself and your AdSense account from phishing attemps. Well today, I want to remind AdSense publishers NOT to click on any email link unless they are absolutely certain the email has come from AdSense or Google, and never REPLY to any of these type of messages with personal information.

The other day I received an email which wound up in my spam box; the email indicated it was from "Google Team" - this was the first red flag for me. Emails to me from Google or Adsense have not ever come from "Google Team".

When looking at the "Re" line of the mail, the word "your" was misspelled "yuor google Account". This was the second red flag. The third red flag was all the spelling errors in the body of the email, and then there was the fact that this email expected me to reply with:

My User Name
My Login Password
My Current Country

No contact I have received from Google, Gmail or AdSense has ever asked me my current country - they are in fact already aware of this information. Had I requested an address or change of country from them directly, I would expect that question, but not in an unsolicited email.

This email also indicates that I need to "update to a fully supported browser". My browser(s) are supported, and are already updated, and updating my browser would have nothing to do with my account unless I were having problems accessing it...which I don't. I also don't use the Chrome browser, and it is not listed under my services and products in my Google account.

Finally, when checking the email headers, the sender address and the email reply address are not at all related to AdSense, or Google.

Anybody who responded to an email such as this one would soon find all of their accounts associated with their Google account compromised - this includes Gmail, AdSense, AdWords, Blogger and any other Google product and service you use under that particular Google Account.

Emails such as this are the reason people sometimes find themselves unable to access their AdSense, AdWords or Blogger accounts.

Be very careful before you give out any information such as your User Name, Login Password and other personal details. Never, ever give this in an email you are not sure about. If you receive an email and you don't know or aren't sure if it came from Google or AdSense, then use the help forums and ask someone to confirm it's validity.

You'll note...the date on that email was Saturday, August 10th. Here it is Thursday Sept. 2nd...and my accounts are perfectly fine without having completed this "validation" and my gmail account hasn't been deleted, either.

UPDATE!!

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!

Well, it appears that the above noted "phishing expidition" just wasn't enough for some folks. I guess they weren't all that happy with my decision to ignore them.

This morning (Saturday, Sept. 11 - an interesting date choice for this) I received yet another of these mails. The text of the mail is below:

from   newsdatainfogoogleaccount@gmail.com
to
date   Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 5:27 AM
subject   Final Warning
mailed-by   gmail.com
signed-by   gmail.com


Our technology & science team has recently launched Google web software to protect and secure all Gmail Accounts. This system also enhanced efficient networking and fully supported browser. You need to upgrade to a fully supported browser by filling out the details below for validation purpose and to confirm your details on the new webmaster Central system.

Account Name:

Password:

Country:

Note: Your Account will be deleted permanently if you failed to provide the details below within 72hours. Gmail will not be heard responsible for your negligence.

The Google web Service.

Just to be clear - Google did NOT send this if you received one. GMail did NOT send this. Nobody associated with Google sent this - IGNORE it. Mark it as spam and DO NOT give these people ANY of your information.

AdSense Alert - New Formats Need Attention!

2010-08-15T04:55:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the new AdSense ad formats yet? If not, you can find out about them and see them in the official "Inside AdSense" blog. You'll definitely want to pay attention here folks.

If you haven't looked at your own site lately, you might want to go and ogle your own ads. Last week I noticed the leaderboard ads on my site were in the new format, but it gave me something of a shock to realize that this new format (which I wasn't expecting) made the ads look too much like the content on my site. That's because I use a blended palette for my text ads, with no border. The background is the same colour as my site, so is the text and title, with the links being the same colour as normal site links (blue). I realized right away that I'd need to change my ad colour selections because of this new format that AdSense has released. Am I happy about it - nope, not at all. I would much rather that adsense release the ad format, but gave publishers a choice of whether or not to use it, or to stay with the old style ads. As it stands now, if publishers don't pay attention to their ads on their own sites, they may end up being disabled for having ads that look like content, which is against AdSense Program Policies - or at the very least, receive a warning about their ad style. I would hope that AdSense would issue warnings to publishers, since they are the ones who instituted this change with no prior notice to publishers.

So, my warning to ALL publishers is to check your sites and look at your ads carefully to ensure they don't look like your content too much, and also double check the new formats to ensure they don't look like the ads from other advertisers. In the image posted on the Inside AdSense blog, the square ad formats appear to resemble ads from at least one other ad serving platform - a fair bit more than they did before.

It's up to publishers to ensure their sites, ad styles and ad placements do not contravene policy, so spend some time this week checking your own sites for this new ad format - and take action before they have to issue you a warning...or worse, simply disable your account.

Build & Customize Your Blogger Site Using Template Designer!

2010-08-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

Since Blogger has come out with "Blogger in Draft" and their new Blogger Template Designer, I figured it was way past the time when I should update my old "how to build a blog" articles with a new one, focused on the template designer and how to use it. If you haven't yet tried the new blogger template designer and wonder how it works, this post if you.

When you login to your blogger dashboard, you'll see a list of all your blogs under your login.

To get started, I'll use a blog I began only as a sample to give new bloggers a start on setting up a blog. It uses an old template, and today we'll convert it from the old style blogger template to one of the new ones that you can "redesign" in the blogger Template Designer. Oh don't worry - it's really not difficult.

First thing to do is select the blog you want to convert and click the "Design" link for that blog from your dashboard. (If you don't see "Design" in your list, then look for "layout" and click that instead).

When your page loads you'll see your page layouts for your current template. Look at the top and you'll see the link for the template designer. When you click that link you'll get the template designer page, which shows your current blog design in the bottom frame, and the template designer in the top.

If you try to make any changes to an old template, you'll get a notice in the template designer that the changes aren't applicable for this template. Before desiging your own blog layouts in the template designer you need to select one of the new templates.

The old templates no longer have the ability to be changed using blogger - the section where you could change the colours and text style of the background, header text and so on no longer exist for these old templates. If you love your old template, then you can still continue to use it - but you can no longer edit it in blogger, except by using the "Edit HTML" function. If you aren't very good with that, you can download the template from blogger (from the edit html page select "download full template") and save it. You should be able to edit it manually if you know how, or use a software like alley code or nvu to edit the codes.

Okay, lets go back to the template designer. We're going to select one of the new templates so we can make it our own.

When you click one of the template designs in the "Templates" tab it will load the template as a preview, showing you what your blog would look like with the basic template design you clicked on. One thing I've run into only recently is when I want to preview a different design, I sometimes have to click the "live on blog" button before it will reload the blog with the new design. If you click through the templates and find they aren't showing the preview in the bottom frame, click "live on blog", then reselect the template you want to preview.

For now, we're going to stick with the template "Simple" by Josh Peterson. Both Simple and Asesome Inc. by Tina Chen are easy to edit and customize, and I personally tend to use one or the other when editing a blog design. You can select anyone you find suitable. And, of course, there is no reason to edit the design or colours if you LIKE the pre-set template that you select. You can simply leave it as it is and continue blogging with a new design.

If you want to edit the template for your blog, read on. Once you've selected a template, the next step is to edit the background. Click on the background tab in the template designer. Here you'll be presented with a set of colour co-ordinated theme colour choices. If you like any of them, you can select one of those.

But you aren't limited to these, and can make individual choics in the Advanced tab. Also in this background tab you'll see an area titled "Background Image". Click the little arrow and you'll be presented with some choices for your background image. You can look through all the categories, click on images and see them on the background of your blog.

I generally select the option "no background" because I prefer simplicity on the backgrounds and prefer to let my blog contents be the focus of my pages, but for this sample blog, I'm going to upload one of my own free abstract background textures. To upload your own photo, click the "upload image" button. Images should be a minimum of 1800 X 1600, and can be larger. Click the browse button and find the image on your computer. Select it and wait for blogger to load your image.

If you're happy with your upload (or any image you find in the list) click "done". Once your back in the template designer, you can change the alignment of your image, or select tile or don't tile, or have the image stationery, or scroll with the page.

Because the images are often not as long as a full page, when you select the tiling method you'll see the demarcation line between the bottom of the image and the top were it begins again. The same will happen horizontally if your images aren't large enough. If you can upload a "seamless tile" image for your background, you'll avoid this.

For now, I'll leave my background image this way so we can move on with the design.

The next step is to decide on the layout you want for your main post, widgets and footer. Click the layout tab and you'll see three options to the right - "Body Layout", "Footer Layout" and "Adjust Width". We'll start with Body Layout.

Looking at the sample layouts you'll note the one that currently on the blog (that one came with the Simple template we selected), and options for changing to a "no sidebar" layout to different layouts for multiple sidebars. On the whole, I prefer a simple layout with one main panel for posting and a right or left sidebar. For this blog, I'll select the fifth option with a center pane for posts and a single sidebar on either side.

When you select one of the layouts, you'll notice that this will show in your blog preview pane with your widgets set into the various spots. You can arrange these widgets when you are back in the blogger design page.

Now, select your footer choices. Click the footer layout tab and choose one of the footer options (single, double or triple footer where you can place gadgets like text or images or whatever else you can get with a gadget).

Next, select the "Adjust width" option. Here you can select the width of your post template area, and the width of the sidebars.Play with those adjustments until you like the layout. Now we're ready to move on to the Advanced Tab.

When you select Advanced you'll see a list of options where you can make changes to your blog design, like the page text, and backgrounds of various sections, you can create "tabs" for your "pages", adjust the text and text colours. Ready?

Okay first section is the page text, but I have a tendency to start with "Backgrounds" because once I've selected background colours for areas, then it's easier to decide what colour text works best. So let's ignore the Page Text for the moment and click on backgrounds. You have three choices - outer background (this is where we uploaded our image, so if you have an image, you'll want to leave that alone). If you didn't set a background image, you select a solid colour background here - white, blue, black - pretty much any colour your heart desires. Only select this if you don't have a background image, or if you have chosen a transparent background image, or if you selected a colour these set and want to change it.

The main background in this template is set to white, but I've decided to set this to transparent. Not so much because I like it, but I want to show you how to get a transparent background if that's what you want. This works best for fairly plain backgrounds and very simple background images - not so good with the background I've chosen. To get it, select "Main Background" and in the little coloured box next to the current colour choice (white/fffff) select the small arrow and you have the ability to decide on exactly the colour you want with the colour editor, or you can select transparent from the bottom of the colour editor.

Now that I've decided on the background colour (or no colour), I'll go back up to the Page Text and set that. You can choose your font (this is for the main text of the blog), the size, whether it's all bold or all italics, and you can also select the colour. Find something you like and set it. Move on to the Links tab and set your link colours for the link, the visited link and the colour you when you hover over a link.

By now you should be growing familiar with these settings. Along with the ability to choose your exact colour, you can also choose from the list of suggested colours below each option. So go ahead and set your blog title text and colours.

Now we move on to the Tabs Text. The "tabs" are part of the "pages" function on blogger. These tabs appear as a menu, either under your header, or in your sidebar. Depending on the colours you choose, this menu can resemble a simple menu from a website. Select your font and font size, and select the text and text colour. Then move down to the Tabs Background. Here you can decide what colour the menu "buttons" are, and what colour they are when you hover over them.

You may have noticed as we click through the advanced options that there are dotted lines around some sections. These dotted lines outline the area you are selecting options and colours for. Click on the "Post Title" tab and you'll see that the outline only goes around the posting section - because what we are setting options for here is the post title - the font and the font size. Complete the choices for your Post title and post footer sections and then click on the Gadgets tab.

You'll notice all the gadgets these options include will be surrounded with the dotted lines. You can select the title colour for the gadgets.

Almost finished with the layouts - for images, unless you really want some sort of colour in the background and as a border, you can select transparent as the background and border colours, the same way as we chose a transparent background above. Otherwise, set the background and border colours to your taste, as well as the colour used for the image captions.

The last thing we'll do is set the accent colors - the accents are those thin narrow lines that separate your sidebar areas from your post area. You can set these to one of the colours in your blog, or you can make them transparent if you prefer a clean look.

And, unless you are comfortable with CSS changes, for the moment we'll leave the very last section alone. That's where you can your own CSS styles to make your style changes to the CSS.

At this point, you are basically done with your design. You can go back and change anything you like before you apply this design to your blog.

If you're ready, click "apply to blog" in upper right corner of the template designer. In a few seconds you'll see a short notice at the top of the page that your changes have been applied to your blog. Now click "back to blogger" at the upper right.

Anyone who has used an image in their header will probably need to replace the header image because most often the size will be a little different. You upload your new header image the same way you did with the old templates - click the edit link on the header gadget to remove the old image and upload your new one.

Now you've converted your blog to the "blogger in draft" Template Designer templates, but it sure doesn't look like the "Simple Template" we began with - it's entirely your own!

Here's the old blog converted using the Blogger Template Designer (you can visit the page to see it action here on blogger):

Any questions? Post a comment with your question and I'll do my best to answer it.

Copied Content Syndrome (Or Why I Got Disabled/Rejected for Adsense)

2010-07-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks we've seen an increasing number of AdSense publishers in the forums with disabled accounts. While we see disabled publishers pretty often, the number of publishers being disabled for having blogs with no original content is increasing.

AdSense has been cracking down on the copied content issue - or so it seems. So why is copied content an issue?

COPYRIGHT

There is of course the obvious reason; content copied from other authors and bloggers is copyright content. If the blogger or author has not given permission, and has not licensed their article using the Creative Commons designation, then the author has every right to expect exclusive rights to their work. That means you can't just borrow or re-use, re-purpose or redistribute the work that someone else has done. Authors discovering their work on someone else's blog will find it necessary to file a DMCA complaint, and this entails work for the author as well as investigation on the part of AdSense (or Blogger) staff. It's time that shouldn't have to be spent when bloggers and webmasters respect each other's creative work. For the author who writes their own original work, it means that they may be subject to having their AdSense account disabled because of duplicated work - in other words, even though they've written their own articles if others have copied their article to hundreds of different places, they may face disablement due to someone else's behaviour. Generally, if an author can prove their work was original they'll have a decent chance of retaining their account, but it causes a great deal of trouble for the authors of original work to have their work copied.

From the AdSense Program Policies (which all publishers must adhere to) we have this excerpt:

AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on webpages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Please see our DMCA policy for more information.

PLAGIARISM

When you use someone else's work without giving that author credit for the work, that's considered plagiarism. Although you may not directly place your own copyright or name name on the work, omitting the credit for the original author is seen as taking credit for the work yourself.

Not only does this put you and your AdSense account at risk, it gives you no credibility at all in terms of knowledge or experience. If you have a blog full of articles about marketing, then you need to have marketing skills and experience to write about it. If you don't, and you are simply copying what someone else has written, how do you know the information you are providing to your readers is even correct? As an example, I have seen many blogs written by AdSense publishers - some of those have little experience with AdSense, or are new to AdSense and some of the "advice" they offer is not only wrong, it can get a publisher disabled.

ADSENSE POLICY

Regardless of the foregoing, AdSense sets the rules for the type of content they want to see in a publishers blog. By that, I don't mean they'll tell you what you can write about - that's up to you, but they do get to choose based on content whether or not a publsiher even gets approval for an AdSense account.

AdSense expects it's publishers to work for their income - nobody gets money for nothing in today's world. They look for original work - whether it's articles, artwork, photos or other types of information, they want their publisher's to add something original to the internet, rather than just regurgitating someone else's work. They want your own unique thoughts and articles - and most likely, so will your readers and visitors appreciate a thoughtful article you've written yourself over some canned article from an article catalog.

One of the items in the AdSense Program Policies is a link to the Webmaster Guidelines - publishers must also adhere to these, and AdSense expects publishers to read them, and follow their suggestions.

An excerpt from those guidelines:

Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It's worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

This doesn't mean that you can't use an article, or a part of an article as a reference in your own written work (as I've done here by quoting the guidelines directly), it means you can't simply "scrape" the content from other sites and expect AdSense to accept that. Using a paragraph from someone else's article (with references & authorization) is an acceptable method of including content you'd like to highlight or discuss from other sites. Just don't make your entire blog from non-original work.

REJECTIONS FOR CONTENT

Besides the active publishers being disabled for copied content, we are seeing more and more rejections from AdSense for sites that appear to have no original work. For those of us who write original articles, we can only see this as a good thing. It means that AdSense is beginning to value originality...or more likely that the AdWords advertisers (they pay the bills, so they do have a say) are beginning to demand their ads not appear on sites will a lot of copied stuff.

But whatever the reason, AdSense is rejecting applications more frequently for sites whose contents are nothing more than articles copied from other sites. If you are having a problem getting an AdSense application accepted and you are submitting a site that you've filled up with work that you didn't create then you might try writing a blog full of your own articles, and submitting that instead.

References:

Webmaster Guidelines
AdSense Program Policies

AdSense: How Do I Protect Myself?

2010-06-18T04:39:00.000-07:00

We often see publishers in the AdSense Help Forum asking us to help them because their accounts were disabled. For many, the policy violations on their sites preclude us from being of much assistance. You must follow the AdSense Program Policies and the Webmaster Guidelines. If you don't, there's a good chance your account will be disabled.

Other publishers have had accounts disabled for reasons such as "invalid activity" and many ask us how this can be when they haven't clicked their own ads.

You don't have to click one (or more) ads on your website to have invalid or suspicious activity. OTHER people can cause this, and while it isn't your fault they've done so, it is your responsibility as a publisher to do everything you can to protect both the advertiser (who is the one paying the bills) and your account.

So...I can see the wheels spinning already. The big question is "well how do we do that?".

Adsense itself provides very little in the way of options that offer any sort of "protection". They offer no blocking mechanism to stop people from visiting your site or clicking your ads (notice I have no ads on this blog? Can you figure out why?)

But because they don't hand you a method to do that doesn't mean there aren't ways to look out for problem areas in your account and on your websites.

The first step: do not place adsense ads on your website and then forget about monitoring them. We've seen many publishers who placed ads on their site(s) and then didn't bother checking their sites after that. Once in a while they'd check their AdSense accounts to see if they earned any money, but never really kept track of what was actually happening on their websites.

The second step: track, track and track. What that means is that you should find a third-party (ie: not one provided by adsense) statistical tracking code and install it on your website(s). Third party trackers often provide useful information that AdSense and Analytics doesn't - for instance, the IP address of all visitors and what those visitors looked at (what pages) while on your site, and what they clicked on . And this is information you need to help protect your account.

Warning: there is a word of warning that goes along with using third-party stats. These third-party scripts CANNOT, CANNOT, CANNOT (I'll repeat that just in case you didn't get it, CANNOT) tell the difference between a valid click for adsense and an invalid click. In a lot of cases, third-party stats register clicks that don't actually occur. I won't get into the hows and whys because that's a technical issue that would take way too long for me to explain, so you'll have to trust me a little on this. DO NOT expect these stats to show you the correct ad clicks for AdSense. What AdSense records as a click and what third-party trackers record as a click WILL NOT likely match. If that is going to freak you out some, then don't use third-party trackers. Unfortunately, this is likely going to be the only way to protect yourself. If you can ignore the differences in click records (just don't look at them in a third-party counter) then get one onto your site.

The third step: visit your third party stats and your adsense stats DAILY, or at the very least every other day. If you only look at them once a month it would be too late to head off any problems, or to institute control over any website that has become the target of some malicious "click-bomber".

HOW THE STATISTICS CAN HELP YOU

In the help forums we have a long-time publisher (known only as Publisher1) who has suffered through a very long bout of malicious behaviour from one visitor. His problem was spread out over many weeks and involved many, many fraudulent and invalid clicks, among other things.

Publisher1 still has his AdSense account though. And he was able to oust the click-bomber by taking a pro-active stance and by taking charge of the situation. How did he do that? I'll let him tell you the story, because he very kindly posted two articles to the AdSense Help forum that explain HOW to protect yourself against stuff like this. You may not be able to stop it from happening, but the steps you take when it does are what will help you keep your Adsense account.

FACING AND BEATING A CLICK-BOMBER'S ATTACK

The Crash Course Emergency Strategy for Click-bombing Attacks

Please, please, please go and read the information provided at those two links, and then bookmark them. You'll be doing yourself a big favour. Some day, you may need this information to keep your AdSense account alive.

Oh - one more thing. Remember to thank Publisher1 for sharing his experience to help others.

AdSense Name Changes - What's In A Name?

2010-04-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

What's your name? No, I mean your real name...the name on your identity papers, birth certificate or passport?

Well, when you apply for a personal or individual AdSense account, this is the name you must use. That's what AdSense would consider your payee name. When entering your payee name for AdSense on your account application, it's vastly important that you get it right. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Apparently it isn't as easy as that. I can't even begin to tell you how many people come to the forum trying to find out how to change their payee name after they've been approved.

AdSense doesn't allow complete name changes. Only in a very few areas they allow you to edit your payee name if you've made a spelling mistake on the application, and they allow changes if you've married and had a name change. Other than that, you simply can't change your payee name in your account.

Changing the payee name from your name to your brother or sister's name would be considered an account transfer, which AdSense doesn't allow.

It appears that now most areas (with the exception of a few) don't have the ability to even edit their payee name to correct a spelling error.

In an AdSense account the payee name will have a link next to it to allow you to make corrections. If this link is not active, doesn't appear, or is grayed out, then you have no way to edit your payee name yourself.

The AdSense Help Center has a form that explains how to change a payee name, and includes a list of countries where payee names cannot be changed at all. From what we've seen lately in the forums, there now appears to be more countries that can't make these changes, but AdSense doesn't seem to have added them onto the listing yet. What that means is without a way to correct your name, you would still have to follow the instructions given, even if your country is not spelled out on the list.

Changing the payee name for countries or accounts who can't access the edit link is time consuming and often frustrating. Which is why it is so important to get your payee name right on your application - get it right the first time and you won't need to go through these steps.

To change your payee name if there's no active edit link you must first cancel your current AdSense account. Yes, cancel it. To do that, you must use the cancellation request form - do not simply delete your account. That will cause you all kinds of problems. Follow the steps on the cancellation form. If you have already accrued earnings in your current account and those earnings are over $10.00 US then AdSense will forward those earnings to you - they are usually issued 90 days after you cancel your account.

Account cancellations are permanent. Once you cancel the current account you cannot get it back and will need to open a new account.

Once you have received notification from AdSense that your current account is closed, you need to apply for a new AdSense account, making sure your payee name and address details are correct.

I'm sure some of you are wondering how so many people get their names wrong in the first place. Some are simply due to typing errors; some are due to the characters of different languages; some people apply with their user ID instead of their real names; and many are from invalid account acquirement. Some people have others apply for them, some people try to buy AdSense accounts because they can't get their own - the people actually applying for the account are not the people who will own the account, and very often the payee name is not entered correctly. Some are simply trying to "snow the system" by using someone else's name to get an account, thinking they can change the name later.

These latter reasons and people are the ones you have to thank for AdSense not allowing name changes - too much fraudulent activity in the past and even in the present time is now increasing the list of countries that can't make changes to their accounts - or at least it appears that way.

Although the question has been asked (what countries have been added to the list) AdSense has not issued a new list, nor given any indication that other countries were added, so we're left to guess.

So no matter where you live, getting your payee name right when you apply is crucial if you don't want to have to go through an account cancellation and reapplication later on.

AdSense - It's Not An Entitlement

2010-03-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

Did the title get your attention? Good. It was supposed to.

AdSense is a free program operated by Google, but that doesn't mean everyone automatically gets to use it. Because it's free doesn't entitle you to have it.

Even free programs tend to come with some "strings" attached.

This one has guidelines and rules, and requirements for quality. If you don't meet those, you won't be approved.

And yes, they do have to approve you.

And no, they don't even have to tell you why they haven't approved you.

AdSense and Google are like any other business, or any other customer you may approach. They can choose to hire you or choose not to. They don't have to provide you with a reason.

Let's say you cut lawns for a living. When you knock on a person's door and offer to cut their lawn, they can say yes or no. If they say no, do you ask them why they said no? Unless you are really aggressive, you probably won't. You'll just move on to the next possible customer.

Why is AdSense any different then? It really isn't.

AdSense does send emails with a variety of reasons why you may not qualify, and it's up to the applicant to figure out why.

If an applicant takes the time to read the whopping amount of information available in the Help Center, they'd probably be able to figure out why.

To get an AdSense account you must meet the quality guidelines, you must have a viable website or blog with lots of content, in some countries you must have six months worth of content, you must not have had a previously disabled AdSense account, you must not have large amounts of copied content, you must not have copyright infringements, you must not have adult, gambling, drug or firearms content or links...and the list goes on.

Preparing for an AdSense account is work. Free doesn't necessarily mean "easy".

Every success comes from working hard. People seldom prosper by doing nothing.

If you want an account and haven't been able to get approved, there is help. The Help Center contains all the information you need. The Help Forum has a myriad of volunteers willing to help.

Just don't go into AdSense with an attitude of entitlement. Nobody is entitled to it. Everyone can apply for it.

Whether you succeed or not is up to you.

Read the official adsense blog for ideas on what really works - Inside AdSense

originally published by me at Qondio

The AdSense Test - Part 2

2010-03-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

Answers to the Test Questions

1. If you don't know what a URL is or where to find your URL, then you aren't ready for AdSense.

A "url" is the address that appears in your browser's bar when you visit a website. The url will start with "http://".

2 & 3. If you don't know what html is or how to access it, then you aren't ready for AdSense.

"Html" is a coding format that you'll find on most websites and you may see it designated as xhtml1. To see this code (or the code any website is made up of) you can use your browser's tool bar. Click on "View" and then look for "source" or "page source". When the dialogue box opens you'll see a bunch of stuff that may not make much sense to you, but makes sense to the robots who crawl and index these sites.

In order to be able to add AdSense codes to a website, you have to be able to edit this html code. You can't do that using a browser (unless you are a web developer and have the proper tools). Most people would use the same tool they used to build their website in order to access their code.

You don't need to know a lot of html or have a lot of coding experience, but you need to have enough to follow the instructions given to insert these adsense ad codes into your website correctly.

Blogs usually have a different method for adding the code, but you still need to understand some basic html.

4. If you don't understand how to copy and paste from one page to another, you'll have trouble inserting the code into your website.

5. If you don't have your own website or blog, you won't be able to access the html or apply the AdSense ad code to a page.

You can't place codes on anyone else's website without permission. All those sites you see that say you can earn money putting links on sites for AdSense are just plain wrong. It doesn't work that way.

Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and other similar communities cannot be used as your website.

6 -10. AdSense is designed for websites that are completed, or blogs that have a lot of content and are regularly updated.

If your website isn't launched, then you don't apply for AdSense.

If your blog doesn't have 6 months worth of original content, then don't apply.

What you can do is spend time creating content. AdSense requires publishers to have created their own content. The Webmaster Guidelines say we must have "considerable original content". Original content means content that you create, not content that you copy.

Many countries must have a website or blog that is 6 months old and has 6 months worth of content. An empty blog that is 6 months old does not qualify.

Websites and blogs without at least some visitors will do very poorly with AdSense and may take months before you have enough visitors to see any earnings at all. Placing ads on a website nobody sees is not good for the advertisers who pay for the ads, so it's not good for AdSense.

Putting ads on your website does not bring you visitors. You must have the visitors first.

11. Sites displaying AdSense must not contain, nor link to sites that have illegal content, such as pirated movies and music, hacked or cracked software (open source software is fine), copyright material such as photos and artwork. If your blog contains any of this, or links to sites that contain any of this, then it isn't suitable for AdSense.

12. While there is no reason you can't use embedded videos from YouTube on your blog or website, a blog or website that contains nothing but videos will not get you an AdSense account.

This is not considered "original" content, unless you created these videos yourself. Videos must not contain copyright infringements, like music or movies, or cammed/copied TV programs.

13-15. Since all publishers are required to follow the rules of the program and it's policies, and must agree to the terms of service, it is imperative that you understand what you've read, and yes you must, in fact, READ them. If you don't, it would not take very long for you to lose your account and whatever earnings you accrued.

These policies are your "warnings" - they explain what is expected from publishers, and what happens if you don't follow them.

16. There are thousands of sites and blogs on the internet that purport to have the "secret" to AdSense, and for just $1.97 (similar amounts in different places) they'll send you a free trial of their program. What they don't tell you is that after they send you that "free" trial, you will be charged every month to the tune of about $79 or more.

What they also don't tell you is that nearly all the information they'll provide is information you can find for free - at the AdSense Help Center, or by reading the hundreds of "real" bloggers out there who give you the information you need for nothing.

What You Can Do if You Didn't Pass The Test

Go to the AdSense Help Center and start reading. They have a section called "Newbie Central" that gives you some idea of what the program is about.

Read the AdSense Program Policies, the Webmaster Guidelines and the Terms of Service.

Ask questions in the help forum (after you've read the material).

Sign up for a free blog on Blogger.com and start working on your first blog. Or learn how to build a website using free online tools - just search for "how to build a free website".

Pretty soon, you'll be ready for AdSense.

The AdSense Test

2010-03-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

Are You Ready for AdSense?

Contrary to many articles you may find scattered across the internet, Adsense is NOT for everyone. At least, not until you understand a few things and are prepared to follow the program and it's rules.

Are you ready for AdSense? Take the test and find out.

1. Do you know what a URL is?
2. Do you know what html is?
3. Do you know how to access html code?
4. Do you know how to copy and paste?
5. Do you have your own website or blog?
6. Is your website complete and launched?
7. Do you already have a stream of visitors to your website or blog?
8. Is your blog full of rich original content?
9. Did you write all your own articles?
10. Did you copy articles from other people?
11. Do you have free movies, music, or software links?
12. Is your site full of other people's videos?
13. Did you read the AdSense Program Policies and understand them?
14. Did you read the Webmaster Guidelines and understand them?
15. Did you read the Terms of Service and understand them?
16. Did you pay anyone for an AdSense "program"?

I'm sure some of you are probably thinking this is a joke, but it really isn't.
These are the sort of things we find ourselves answering in the AdSense Help Forums every day. Many people ask what a URL is and where they find it, or how to get one. Many more never bother to read the rules. Hundreds are taken in by websites selling a "product" related to Adsense. The fact is, you don't need to pay anyone at all to use AdSense.
Stay tuned for the Answers and explanations in The AdSense Test - Part 2

note: originally published on Qondio

Phishing for AdSense - or How Not to Get Hacked

2010-02-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

In recent weeks I have noticed an increase in spam email coming into my mail accounts. In particular, these emails are purported to be from:

AdSense
AdWords
Blogger
Google

To date, none of them have actually been from any of those places, except the most recent one. They have been from spammers and scammers who hope someone will click a link in the email. Once clicked, the link will take a person to a page that is most likely set up to resemble a real page from any of those places, however, any sign in information you enter will be captured and used by the scammer.

How Will a Spammer/Scammer/Phisher Use My Information

If you use AdSense, they'll have the information to login to your AdSense account and redirect your earnings to themselves, or the information close out your account, or to do anything you can do in your AdSense account.

If you use Blogger, they'll have access to all your blogs. This means they can edit or change them, including putting their own adsense codes on your blog and removing yours. Most likely they are hoping your blogger login information is the same as your AdSense login. And it probably is.

With the Google account they can login to any service you use under Google.

What To Do When You Get An Email From any Google Source

The first thing you should do - don't panic. These guys often send emails saying your AdSense account has been disabled, and telling you to click the link to have it restored. The same sort of email is also used for Blogger accounts. Whatever you do, don't click any links in an email, even if you think it's from AdSense. Find out first who it's really from.

AdSense may indeed send you an email that your account is disabled, if it really is. And they do contain links, but usually the link leads only to a page on the AdSense Help Center.

The next thing you should do is check the header information. If you use gmail for your login you can show the header information by opening the email.

If you use the newer version of gmail, there is a link near the top and off to the right a little that says "show details".

When you click that, gmail will display the information in the email headers.

Check the information in the "From" and "Reply To" fields, as well as the "mailed by" and "signed-by" fields.

If you are still not certain, go the help forum and ask for help deciphering whether or not it's "really" from AdSense or Google or Blogger. Be sure to use the appropriate forum - if the email says it's from Blogger, use the Blogger help forum, if it says it's from AdSense, use the AdSense help forum.

When you are unsure - under no circumstances should you click any link in the email.

You can check the link by using the google safe browsing diagnostic page for the link. You do that by typing this string in the search bar and appending it with the page named in the link below - the link below is using the url for the blog you are reading now:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://helpfulinformationfornewbies.blogspot.com/

Change the part in red to the page url in the email link.

The linked page in the email used in the example above can be seen below:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http//:www.google.com/adplanner

This tool will tell you whether or not the site is hosting any malware or has been seen in the past to hold any malware.

Other things you can do are to copy the link from your email and enter it into your browser search bar. This will take you to the page that the link goes to, where you can see the information on the page.

Look at the page carefully and note it's location displayed in the browser. In the case of the email I used as an example, the browser displays the following URL ("x" replaces the real information to protect the innocent):

You can see that this URL goes to a secure google accounts login page for the Google Ad Planner.

If you are still uncomfortable about clicking anything on this page, then leave the page and navigate on your own to your Google Accounts page the way you normally would. Click on the service link from your own Google Accounts page (for wherever the email is from - Blogger or AdSense) and login from there.

Take Charge of Your Own Security

Never click links in an email without first ensuring it's security.
Use safe browsing ad-ons or plug-ins to avoid phishing or malware sites.
Use pop-up blockers to prevent scam ads from showing.
Read and investigate things before you sign up or click any links.

Places You can Find Help with Security Issues

"What The Tech Forums" - trustworthy and helpful with useful free software listings

"Safer Networking Forums" - also trustworthy will some excellent free software on site

"Google Search Help" - helpful information in their Help Center for safe surfing & browsing.

AdSense and India

2010-02-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

Today's post is directed at prospective publishers from India. I have debated with myself for some time now whether or not to address this issue in my blog, mainly because picking out any one group of people might give the wrong impression. Hopefully, I don't offend anyone with this.

I chose to write this post because we have been seeing some questions in the AdSense Help forums lately that should be addressed.

Please keep in mind, I don't work for AdSense (or Google) and I do not represent them, so these answers are not to be considered "official", but are based on what we've seen, or read in the official AdSense Help Center or the Inside AdSense blog.

The first question of concern is this one:

"Is It True That AdSense is No Longer Accepting Applications from India?"

As far as we can tell, this is not true. AdSense is still accepting applications from publishers in India.

Like any propsective publisher who fills out an application, publishers from India must meet all the qualifications in order for their application to be accepted.

Whoever is telling people that Indian publishers are not being accepted anymore at AdSense because they are from India, is wrong.

The next "most asked" question is this:

"Is it true we can't use a blogspot address and must get a domain name if we are from India?"

The answer again, is no - this is not true.

Any publisher may apply for an AdSense account using a blogspot address. There is no requirement to purchase a domain or webhosting to get started, so don't let anyone talk you into buying a domain name before you are ready, or before you can afford it.

Blogspot addresses are perfectly acceptable to AdSense, providing the blog you use to apply for AdSense with meets all the policy requirements.

The last big question is:

"Why does a publisher from India have to wait 6 months?"

This one is harder to answer. It's one that we can only guess at, based on some of what we've experienced in helping Indian publishers.

The official statement in the AdSense help center says "In some locations, including China and India, we require publishers to have owned their sites for 6 months. We've taken this step to ensure the quality of our advertising network and protect the interests of our advertisers and existing publishers." (notation: quoted directly from the AdSense pages linked above.)

This means that the six month stipulation is not just in India and China, but it does include India and China. To my knowledge, there is no "official" list for the countries, so "in some countries" could mean any country AdSense chooses to include. For the most part, we are noticing this seems to be applied to many Asian countries, not just India.

My own observations seem to show that there are enormous numbers of people from India trying to get AdSense accounts, and trying to do so before they understand what is required of them in order to get approval.

I'm not sure why this is, though in some cases it might be differences in language and how well a person understands what they have read when they signed up for AdSense. (This is not, of course, limited to Indian publishers but to a lot of publishers for whom English is not the native tongue.)

Another thing I have noted with publishers from countries outside of the USA (keep in mind that I am not in the USA either) is that many of them do not understand or even are aware of the differences in legal requirements between their own countries and the USA.

In the USA, copyright infringements can cause all sorts of problems, and many non-US publishers don't seem to understand why they can't use copyrighted items, or why they can't give away things like illegal software.

There are many websites I have reviewed for publishers (many from India as well as other areas) that contain illegal software, movies, music and wallpapers, and this will be one of the reasons for not getting your application approved.

And it's one of the reasons you can have your account disabled too - no matter where you live.

If you read the Terms of Service for AdSense, down near the very end it says that AdSense is bound by the Laws of California and the USA and since they must operate under those laws, any publisher must also conform to those laws. This is an important bit of information that a lot of publishers miss seeing.

Webmaster Guidelines

One other thing that many new or applying publishers miss is the Webmaster Guidelines. These go hand-in-hand with the AdSense Program Policies, and all publishers are required to adhere to both of these.

Webmaster Guidelines indicate that a publisher must have "substantial original content". I suppose "substantial" will mean different things since it's a little subjective, but it really means you must have "enough" content to be accepted for AdSense. So what is "enough"? Since they don't actually give us any stiplulations about what "enough" is for AdSense, we have to guess at it. My own opinion is that you should have at least 10 lengthy posts (175 to 200 words or more per post) in your blog before you apply for AdSense. 20 would be better. And they should really be written works of your own, not articles you've copied from someone else, or from somewhere else.

Other Important Considerations

Other things of importance you need to consider when applying for AdSense.

You MUST use your own identity - your own name and address and country, and personal details. Otherwise, when it comes time to get paid, you won't be able to.

Publishers in many countries may not change their payee name, nor their country. AdSense simply does not allow this.

This means you would be required to cancel your approved AdSense account, and then apply for a new one all over again, using the correct information, so make sure your application for AdSense has the correct name and the correct country. This is very important if you want to get your payments, so don't try to get quicker approval by using a different country. You can't change it later.

If you have any questions about your application before you submit it to AdSense, post a question in the AdSense help forum - don't be afraid to ask for help. If it's a question we can answer in the forum, we will do our best to help you.

If you want to ask a question here, please feel free to leave a comment, and we'll address your question as well as we can. We aren't perfect, and we aren't AdSense, but we are certainly willing to help you have a successful AdSense application.

One final note: there seems to be quite a lot of rejection emails (for everyone, from just about anywhere) for "Domain Ownership not Evident" when people apply with a Blogger blog.

That's because blogspot URLs are considered "subdomains". In order to have adsense approve that blogspot URL, you MUST submit an application to Adsense using the "Monetize" link on your blog's dashboard.

That lets adsense crawlers know that your blog is a blogspot blog, and not just a regular subdomain.

Editing the HTML in the Blogger Template

2010-02-05T05:36:00.000-08:00

NOTE: For information on editing and creating your blog using the Blogger in Draft, and the new Template Designer, please see this OTHER (newer) post!

Here we are, on the last step of the basic editing process for your blogger. This option can be found in your Layout section under "Edit HTML", and it looks like this when you get to the page:

The first thing you want to do is backup your template, so click the "Download Full Template" link and save it. If you are using a basic blogger template and haven't made any customized changes to the HTML then you probably don't need to do this, but it's a good habit to get into.

You will also want to backup your blog itself, so go to the Settings Tab and Select Basic. Right at the top is an option to export or import a blog. Select the Export option and save the blog on your hard drive. If anything goes wrong when you edit the html of your template you now have the data in your blog (the blog backup) and the original data from your template (the template backup) so you can restore your blog.

Editing the HTML is really not such a good idea if you don't have any experience at all with coding or html - blog templates contain CSS codes too, and if you aren't familiar with this, making a change in one place of the CSS can horribly affect something else, or can have no affect at all, because something needs changed elsewhere within the template.

Since the instructions I am giving are for total newbies (ie: people with no blogging or website editing experience) covering this sort of html change would take much more than a few simple instructions.

What I will show you is how to add things like the verification code for webmaster tools, or google analytics, or third party statcounters.

It's usually fairly simple since they actually give you the code and instruct you where to place it. The verification code goes in the head section of the template (see the blue text below), and you can also edit your blog description in the meta content (see the orange text), as well as adding additional keywords (see the red text). These are very simple edits, and as long as you keep your additions between the brackets and the quote marks, you should be fine. Note that you can add codes to the html/javascript widgets also and some codes require that they be added at the end of the body section, so be sure to read the instructions for whatever code you are planning to use.

Be careful when adding extra keywords. Keywords should only relate to your blog's content and subject matter. Trying to put keywords here that you think are "highly paying" but have nothing to do with your blog will actually lose you results in the search engine. Keep your keywords to a reasonable number - between 7 and 15 is usually good. Too many and your site could be considered spam, or could be penalized in searches because of keyword stuffing. Sometimes more is not better. The same can be said of the description field - don't make this too long, and make sure it describes your blog and it's contents.

The last thing you'll notice in the code above is one I added for a favicon - that's the little picture that displays beside the url of your blog in your browser's search bar - for standard blogger blogs, it's usually Blogger's white "B" in the orange square, but you can have your own if you want.

The first thing you need to is create the icon file. If you don't do image or graphic stuff at all, you could just do a web search for free icons, and find one you like that matches your blog, but they aren't hard to create. Many free image software programs can create an icon file from a picture. You will need to crop and resize your image file to 32 X 32 pixels, so make sure whatever you choose can actually be seen and recognized at that size. Then you need to save the file with a .ico extension, so make sure your editing software can do that.

You need to upload that file somewhere that you can link to it - photobucket, imagecave, your own web server, or even a picasa album.

Insert the code for the icon file into the html of your template (see the green code). Where the example shows this url reference:

http : //photographyofgrace.com/ favicon2.ico

You need to remove that (unless of course you plan to use my favico) and replace it with the url to your own favicon file. The balance of the code remains the same.

If you look around the internet, you'll find other easy tweaks you add into the head section of your template's html - things that can help with SEO for instance.

If you really want to edit the design portion of your template, the wisest thing to do is download the template and play around with it in an editor (try NVu or AlleyCode - they're both free). Once you have something you like, you can upload it (after backing up everything) using the "Upload a template from a file on your hard drive" option on the Edit Html page.

That's also how you upload any free template you might find on the web.

That pretty much concludes the basic editing for blogs, and getting started with Blogger.

Remember the blog we first started off with? Well, it's had some changes over the course of this little series, and now it's finished and ready for someone to blog their heart out (have a look):

Building a Blog With Blogger

Editing Your Blogger Design & Layout

2010-02-03T08:15:00.000-08:00

NOTE: For information on editing and creating your blog using the Blogger in Draft, and the new Template Designer, please see this OTHER (newer) post!

Carrying on with the instructions for personalizing your blogger design, this post will explain the functions in the Layout tab.

Under the main layout tab you'll find a series of other pages: Page Elements, Fonts and Colours, Edit HTML and Pick New Template.

Page Elements

The page elements tab is where you'll find things like gadgets (other blogging platforms like wordpress call these add-ons "widgets", blogger calls them gadgets). Depending on the Blogger template you are using you will either have a "sidebar" on the left hand or right hand side, or in some cases you may have one both sides, with the post template in the middle. These instructions are for use with templates available directly through the "pick template" function in Blogger. If you've uploaded a custom template, these instructions may work the same.

In the following image you'll notice a couple of errors on the page - it doesn't say "error" but I know it is one. In the right hand column there is no "ad gadget" link at the top of the column, and there should be. If you follow the sidebar column to the bottom, you'll notice that it is cut off, with no access to any of the gadgets beneath the last HTML/Javascript gadget.

I have no idea why this occurs, but it has ocurred in my blogger account for a long time now. The way I get it to correct is to click the "view blog" link in the menu at the top of the page.

This loads the blog into the browser. In the navbar there is an option to customize your blog. If you click that, it takes you back to the layout page, but shows the correct editing functions now. This may not be necessary for everyone - many blogs seem to work properly, but if you find yours giving the same errors, try the fix I've posted.

To add different things to your sidebars, or above or below the main posting template you click the "add gadget" link for the area where you want to add that item. There are numerous gadgets available - a text box for just adding text, a link gadget for adding lists of links (in the sidebar of this blog you are reading, the menu was created using a links gadget), a picture gadget for adding pictures, an HTML/Javascript for adding things like codes (and javascripts, like adsense or others), there's even an adsense gadget.

When you click the add gadget link, a box opens with a bunch of gadgets in a list that you can scroll through and select the gadget you want to add. When you select a gadget to add, if it has parameters for you to set (like links to add, or a picture to add, colors, etc.) the gadget opens to allow you to make these entries, and when you click save, the new gadget appears in your sidebar.

Adding gadgets to your footer, below your header or at the end of the posts template works in the same way.

To make changes to your header, like replacing it with a picture or changing the title that displays, select the edit button on the header (right below the navbar). If your template allows images to display instead of (or behind) the text for your header the option will be here to upload an image, and to decide if you want it to be instead of the title, or behind the title. If you have a header image that you've already added text to, then you would want choose "instead of", but if you just have a picture and still want to see the title of your blog, then you would select "behind".

You can make changes to the colour of your navbar so that it more closely matches the colours selected for your blog, or so that it contrasts. Click the edit button on the navbar and select the choice you want for your navbar color.

Fonts and Colors

To go beyond just adding gadgets, you can set the fonts and colours in your blog by choosing the fonts and colours tab. The opens an editing box above your blog. On the left you'll see a list of the items you can change the colours for in your blog. Different template choices allow different options - some allow changing the background colours, while some don't. As you make the colour changes the results will display in your blog below. Once you are satisfied, click save.

Edit HTML

This one I'll leave til the next post.

Pick New Template

This option allows you to browse and select the standard blogger templates to preview how your blog would look before opting to change it. When you click the Pick New Template link, the templates page opens. To preview a different template, click the radio button in the one you want to see and then select the preview link below it. It will show you how your blog will look using that template.

The Wrong Way to Get Adsense

2010-02-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of wrong ways to get an AdSense account - any time you are asked to pay for anything related to an AdSense account approval, think twice before you do.

Why? Because AdSense is free to those whose websites fall within the appropriate guidelines. If you try to buy your way into AdSense, then in the end, you will find your account disabled because your website wasn't compliant with AdSense policies. Buying yourself an adsense account will do nothing except part you from your money, and you probably won't have the account long enough to collect any earnings from it.

Sites like this one will do you no good at all, and simply cost you money. ADSENSE DOES NOT HAVE ANY AUTHORIZED "resellers or redistributors" for AdSense. So if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. I'll say it again 'ADSENSE IS FREE TO THOSE WHO QUALIFY' and useless if you can't maintain a website that qualifies, so buying an account is not going to help at all.

Recently on the AdSense forums we've seen a number of complaints from publisher's about low earnings from clicks. In many cases earnings are based on so many factors that's it is difficult for us to know why - sometimes the advertisers are paying less, sometimes the person's site is in a niche that just doesn't pay high click rates, sometimes the quality of the site is lacking or has a lot of copied content, and sometimes the visitor rates are so low that a low CTR and ePCM might have a hand it in. There's a lot of factors for low click rates. NOBODY likes getting paid 1 cent for a click, but there isn't always an easy way to change that.

Beware of people asking for money in order to help you. If you decide to contact a reputable online company for help with SEO to get your websites in better shape, that's up to you. If someone approaches you first with an email that reads something like the one below - think twice, and maybe three times before you part with your very hard earned money. Promising a specific number of clicks per day just smacks of fraud - such as those found in "click-rings" (adsense bans accounts involved in click-rings or paid for clicks), and nobody can guarantee you a specific amount of earnings in a day. Not with adsense.

Nobody can guarantee you approval at adsense either - only AdSense has the right to issue AdSense accounts, so here's a big warning - DO NOT PAY FOR ANY.

Tell your friends to avoid suspect behaviour like the ones seen in the email below. You'll be doing yourself and your friends a favour by keeping your account in good standing and avoiding any sign of suspicious or fraudulent activity.

Hi friend,

I am (XXXX) from (XXXX), an online marketing and revenue generation professional
working on development and marketing to a lot of websites and blogs.

as you see today in the adsense forum there are too many questions like
"why my earnings are getting reduced suddenly"
"the number of visits and the clicks are same but revenue is very less, why?"
"the e CPM of my page was around 0.80, but now it has gone below 0.20, why?"
"i am literally seeing clicks and pagevisits, but no revenue generated? why?"
etc.etc.

people are finding it very difficult to understand the reasons and a few blame
google for their loss in revenue generation. But if you are able to concentrate
a bit and do certain things that are very well acceptable by google's policies,
and follow certain important instructions, you can ofcourse increase your
traffic and ofcourse i can guarantee you of clicks and revenue not less than
a eCPM of 0.90 per click and atleast a revenue of $40 to50 per day.

I assure you of the following
1. 75 to 100 clicks per day

2. Increasing the eCPM to 0.90 (i shall give you a small training on what to do
to increase the click though rates, that is the revenue you generate per click
will be 0.80 to 0.90 cents instead of just 0.02 or 0.03 per click)

3. Assured earnings of $45 to $50 per day.

Apart from the above package, you can also write to me for any customised
needs and requests and i am ready to help you out.

I do take a minimum charge for the above service. You can also contact me
to get a new adsense account approval also. This can be done within a week
and all the services are 100% safe as per google adsense policies and rules.

thanks

Editing Your Blogger Settings

2010-02-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

NOTE: For information on editing and creating your blog using the Blogger in Draft, and the new Template Designer, please see this OTHER (newer) post!

Well, as it turns out this is rather late, and most of you will already have figured out where to go and how to change your templates after you got set up.

For those that haven't - following is some simple changes to help you personalize your blog.

SETTINGS TAB

When you select the settings tab, you are first presented with the Basic changes page. Along the top of the menu bar, just below the settings tab you will see a series of other links, like Basic (the page you will be on first), Publishing, Formatting, Comments, Archiving, Site Feed, Email & Mobile, Open ID, and Permissions.

Basic

When you login to your dashboard, select the settings tab to make changes to your blog's title and description, and whether or not your blog is displayed in blog listings, or if your blog can be found by search engines, whether or not your blog is family rated or contains adult materials, and you can also select which blog editor you wish to use - the "old" one or the updated one.

You can also enable trasliterations for your blog as well - the languages covered are Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

And finally, if you decide you want to delete your blog, you can do it here on this page as well. Another helpful option here is the ability to import another blogger blog into the one you are working in. In order to do that, you would first need to export the other blog using the export function, and then selecting the exported file to import into this blog.

Publishing

The publishing page allows you to select some options for the publishing of your blog by giving you an option to point your own custom domain name (which you would need to purchase) at your blog, changing it's URL from a blogspot address to a .com, .net, .org address instead, depending on what type of domain address you purchase.

WARNING: for those of you using adsense on your blogs, this DOES NOT mean that you will need to change your ad set up to AdSense for Domains. AdSense for Domains is ONLY for domains with no website or blog - it is for an empty domain. If you change the domain settings following AdSense for Domains instructions, then your blog will disappear. Simply leave your current AdSense for Content ads on your blog.

Formatting

This page allows you to set the number of posts that will display at one time on a page. I believe the default setting is 7, which is usually too many. Most readers will not want to be confronted with that much at one time. I generally set my own to 1, but an average display runs between 3 and 5.

If you are using adsense between your posts, a good number is 2 or 3 - any more than that can affect whether or not ads will display in your sidebar since AdSense only allows 3 ad units on a page. If you set your blog to display 5 posts on a page, you may get 3 ad units between the posts, and none on the sidebar, unless some of your ads are set to link units.

On this plage you can also set the formatting for your date and time, your time zone, your blog's language, whether or not you want the title fields displayed.

Lastly, at the bottom of this page is a box that will allow you to post a line or paragraph of text or code that you want to have displayed in every single post you make. See the little "add this" bookmarking button at the top of the posts in this blog? Well the code for that is what I entered into the post template. Now, whenever I create a new post, that little bookmarking button is already at the top of each post. (by the way, you can get that great little social bookmarking button from AddThis.com, free)

Comments

This section allows you choose whether or not comments are allowed or displayed, whether you want to moderate comments or not, and whether or not you want the back links to show.

Archiving

This page allows you to set your archiving options - monthly, daily, weekly or no archive. It also allows you to set post pages. Setting post pages allows each post your make to have it's own unique webpage, so it's a good idea to do this. Whether or not you are allowed to set post pages will depend on the way you have chosen to set your comments, so you may have to move back and forth between the post page and the comments page until they are set correctly.

Site Feed

Here you can set your preferences for your site feed, and if you use another method for burning feeds, then you set the redirect url here as well. If you have a message you want to place for each post feed, there is a message box at the bottom of this page that allows you to place codes for advertising or other messages.

Email & Mobile

If you want to post to your blog via your email, or by mobile you can set up those functions on this page.

Permissions

Allows you to set permissions for your blog - who can see it, who can post it, etc. Here you can invite other authors to participate in making posts to your blog.

How to Start a Blog Using Blogger

2009-11-24T03:29:00.000-08:00

Since I've had a number of requests for help getting started with blogger, I'm going to do a "step-by-step" with pictures and text for those who have never ever even looked at or know what a blog is.

Before you start a blog, you need to decide what your subject will be - what you are going write about and put in your blog. What it shouldn't be is something you have no clue about: if you aren't doctor or nurse or paramedic, don't write about medical stuff. If you've never earned a penny doing something online, then don't write about earning money online. Select a subject you have some knowledge about, or something you enjoy. If you have a hobby, like diecast toys or antiques, then write about that. If you are simply a mom whose kids have given her tons of hilarious things to write about (like Erma Bombeck), then write about that. Whatever it is you choose, you have to be able to write from knowledge and experience. Don't think you can start a blog and copy stuff from all over the internet. That just won't fly for AdSense.

So, now that you've picked a subject you have to decide on a name for your blog. Think of a couple that match your subject matter, mainly because someone else may already have a blog with the name you pick, so you want to be ready with a second choice. Or, you can simply use your name, like "Gracey's" or "What Gracey Thinks".

To begin you have to sign up so you type www.blogger.com into your search bar and find the home/sign up page. Then, you sign up for a free account, and when your registration is complete you'll be presented with a "blogger dashboard" (click the images to see a larger view).

On the dashboard, you can select your language, and click the "create a blog link".

Next you'll be presented with a page where you name your blog, and select the URL (blog address or web address) that you'll use for your new blog. When you type in the blog name and URL (the url can be the same as your blog name if nobody is using it) click the link to check if it's available. If so, you can continue and fill in the captcha letters. If someone else is using it, you have to pick a new one and try again.

Once you click the "continue" button you'll be presented with a page where you can pick a blog template - this is the design or the way the blog will look.

Select a design by clicking the button under it. It doesn't really matter much what you choose to get started with - changing the template later is easy, and takes nothing more than clicking a button. Customized template designs are something for those with a litle experience, so we're starting with the basics offered in blogger.

Click continue and you'll get a page like this:

So now the basic layout and setup has been finished and your blog is ready for you to start typing in. Click the start blogging button and it takes you to a page where you can enter your first post.

This is the "blog editor" or "wysiwyg editor". It's what you'll use to enter information and images, even videos into your posts.

Across the top of the editor are options like "font" (in a drop down box) where you pick the type of lettering you want, next is a large and small T with an arrow - when you click that you make your text bigger or smaller.

The "b" lets you make bold text (highlight the text by clicking, holding down your mouse button and dragging across all the text you want to make bold, then click on the "b"); the little i gives you italic text (done the same way as you get bold).

The T with the coloured box changes your text colour; the small globe with the chain link across the top helps you make links.

The next series with all those little lines let you decide whether your text starts at the left (left justified), or is centered, or is right justified, or is justified across the entire page.

The small lines with numbers next to them lets you make a numbered list, the ones with little squares lets you make a bulleted list.

The quotation lets you make a block quote, and the ABC with the check mark is a spell-checker. Next to that is a tiny picture - click that to insert an image from your computer or an address on the internet. The next little picture lets you add a video, and the last icon - is an eraser that removes formatting from a specific selection of text.

Okay, so now you know it all. Well, not exactly, but you should have an idea of how to get started.

To write your first post, you simply start typing in the editor's text box. It works like most text boxes.

When you are finished entering your article, or story or text, you can add labels for your post. This helps search engines and readers find your content - labels work a little bit like keywords do. Then, you click "publish post" and you can click the "view blog" link at the top to see your blog with it's first post.

There are a lot of things not covered here because this post is already very long. The next one will cover the settings in your blog, and how to change the header to use an image, how to change the colour of the the navbar (that bar at the top), how to add gadgets to your sidebar and other fine-tuning details of setting up a blog that not only has good and interesting articles, but that looks good too.

Until then, make some posts and explore your blogger options. Oh - one thing - don't mess with the templates html unless you know what you are doing, and DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT try to monetize your blog at this point. Leave that until you've got some content worthy of having advertising on it.

AdSense Privacy Policy - Adding it to Blogger Blogs

2009-11-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

In the last few months or so I’ve had to make use of the google help forums and discovered that there is a never-ending stream of questions coming into the help centers. Some quite simple, but others much more complex. What I also discovered is that help can sometimes be as simple as pointing someone to the right link in the vast network of google help links.
I am no expert on google or it’s help systems, but for the most part I have learned how and where to find help when I need it. What you’ll find though, is that getting a direct answer from any person who actually works for or is approved by google is difficult, at best.
Any email to support generally results in a form-letter reply directing you to a help forum for the area you are asking about. Considering the shear number of emails that must head towards google help centers every minute of every day, that really isn’t all that surprising.
I doubt any one entity that large could respond with personal emails to that volume of mail. But the help centers can be very useful once you learn how to navigate them.
While not related to all the google categories where you can find help, I’ve created a tutorial to help bloggers out a little bit – it walks you through the steps to add a Privacy Policy to your blogger blog, using written instructions as well as pictures in an easy-to-follow step-by-step manner.

Please note that this .pdf tutorial was updated Dec. 6, 2010 to include using your privacy policy on a static page on blogger with the pages gadget.

Adding A Privacy Policy to A Blogger Blog

(please note: unfortunately due to people trying to link directly to the server to to allow this to be downloaded from their own sites, I've had to password protect the tutorial. The password to open the file is: getthisfromgracey)

Links to Help Forums

Google Help Centres – all one page for all your google services

SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY TEXT

Privacy Policy

We take your privacy seriously. This policy describes what personal information we collect and how we use it. (This privacy policy is applicable to websites falling under the primary holder fill in your website(s) and urls here.)

Routine Information Collection

All web servers track basic information about their visitors. This information includes, but is not limited to, IP addresses, browser details, timestamps and referring pages. None of this information can personally identify specific visitors to this site. The information is tracked for routine administration and maintenance purposes, and lets me know what pages and information are useful and helpful to visitors.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Where necessary, this site uses cookies to store information about a visitor's preferences and history in order to better serve the visitor and/or present the visitor with customized content.

Advertising partners and other third parties may also use cookies, scripts and/or web beacons to track visitors to our site in order to display advertisements and other useful information. Such tracking is done directly by the third parties through their own servers and is subject to their own privacy policies.

Controlling Your Privacy

Note that you can change your browser settings to disable cookies if you have privacy concerns. Disabling cookies for all sites is not recommended as it may interfere with your use of some sites. The best option is to disable or enable cookies on a per-site basis. Consult your browser documentation for instructions on how to block cookies and other tracking mechanisms.

Special Note About Google Advertising

Any advertisements served by Google, Inc., and affiliated companies may be controlled using cookies. These cookies allow Google to display ads based on your visits to this site and other sites that use Google advertising services. Learn how to opt out of Google's cookie usage. As mentioned above, any tracking done by Google through cookies and other mechanisms is subject to Google's own privacy policies.

About Google advertising: What is the DoubleClick DART cookie? The DoubleClick DART cookie is used by Google in the ads served on publisher websites displaying AdSense for content ads. When users visit an AdSense publisher’s website and either view or click on an ad, a cookie may be dropped on that end user’s browser. The data gathered from these cookies will be used to help AdSense publishers better serve and manage the ads on their site(s) and across the web. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Some third-party avertisers used by Google may use a different cookie. You may opt out of most-third party advertising cookies by following this link and visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page, or by visiting this Consumers page to opt out of all advertising cookies.

Contact Information

Concerns or questions about this privacy policy can be directed to fill in your contact information here for further clarification.

(originally posted by the writer, me, on one of my other sites)

How Much Money Can I Make With AdSense?

2009-10-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

Now that is a question that everyone would like a solid answer to. The problem is, there really is no standard answer. You can make a few cents a month to a few thousand dollars a month, but there's a whole lot of difference between the two, and how to get from one to the other is a long, hard job. At least if you do it honestly.

There are very few "ordinary folks" making thousands of dollars a month, and almost nobody who is new to AdSense will make this kind of money. Forget what you've read all over the internet - especially in those blogs that are all about making "easy" money.

Ordinary people (like me, and like you) can and do make a few thousand dollars a month (I don't), but not by sticking some ads on a couple of half-finished or just started blogs. THAT kind of money takes work, and usually multiple websites (of the dot com kind, seldom blogs), as well as long hours of hard-earned knowledge on the correct way to optimize for search and get real, organic, non-paid traffic.

There are organizations (such as large media sites, for instance) that do make thousands of dollars on their advertising, but many of these have been invited to be a "premium publisher" due to the sheer volume of daily visitors. That's a hard thing to come by, so while you might set your goals toward becoming a premium publisher, it isn't something you should count on early in your AdSense career. Work towards that goal, but in the meantime, don't forget to be realistic about your earnings.

The average blogger who writes their own articles (not copying work from elsewhere) once or twice a week (every week, regularly) can earn some pretty nice pocket money - anywhere from $100 to $500+ a month. But ONLY WITH WORK AND TIME invested in the project at hand. You can't open a dozen blogs with two or three posts on each one and expect to earn much more than a few cents a month.

Part of the reason people don't earn much (or in some cases almost nothing at all) is the advertiser's and what they are willing to pay. If you don't have much of an interest in your blog/website, the advertisers probably aren't going to be willing to put their ads on your site. Those that do may be some of the lowest paying advertisers, and of course, with very little content to interest visitors, you won't get much traffic and without traffic you aren't going to have much chance of getting anyone whose interested in any of the ads.

Getting started the right way can help you build up to a better income. The right way is not to create a blog just to earn money from. That might work for a month or two months, but there are so many "made for AdSense" blogs (blogs/websites designed around nothing but the advertising or earning fast cash) that sooner or later the traffic peters off to very little. Why? Because there are thousands of blogs out there doing the very same thing. The ones that are successful are the ones that really are making their income the right way, and have learned the best and most honest ways of keeping that income. All the rest who are riding along on the coat tails of those types of sites usually fail after a while. Partly because the author's of the blog aren't actually making much money and partly because they copy articles from other more successful blogs.

Copying articles from someone whose work is successful doesn't guarantee you the same success. After all, the original writer is already getting all the traffic you are hoping for, and that isn't likely to change.

You need to provide something other people aren't, or at least provide something fewer people are doing.

So when we see questions like "how much am I going to make on average" in the forum, the answer is essentially "nobody knows". How much you might make depends on how much work and time you are willing to put into it.

If you aren't willing to work for your money, you aren't going to keep getting it for long. There is no free money, and very little easy money. Nobody is willing to pay money for no work these days, not even AdSense.

How to win? Stay on the right side of the AdSense policies and terms and conditions, work hard, produce original content and articles, research SEO techniques, stay away from paid links, and work hard. (Yes, I know...I said that twice to make a point.)

Why You Need "Alt Text" Tags

2009-10-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

What exactly is "alt text"? AltText is something you may have heard of, but aren't sure what it is, or what it's purpose is. When you upload an image to your blog, the "alt text" is the stuff you normally won't see, but it describes your image to those who can't visually see your image.

And there are other purposes - a search engine bot (robot) is what crawls through your website or blog and indexes your pages and posts. These bots can't "see" images, they only read text. If your image doesn't have alt text, the bot doesn't know it's there, so your article or website might look like it has a lot of big spaces to the bot, and very little actual content.

This is particularly a problem for those whose sites contain a large number of images - such as mine do. If you want to be indexed properly and have your sites and pages show up well in search engine results, you need to optimize your images by using alt text. It also makes it difficult to get approved for AdSense if you have a lot of images, but no alt text tags. After all, AdSense wants sites or blogs with a lot of good, original content. If it can't see your pictures, then there could be a lot of content "missing" as far as the AdSense bot is concerned.

Another good reason for using alt text is your visitors themselves. Some people still do have dialup connections, and some can be pretty slow when they need to load a lot of images. Because of this many dialup users turn off image loading in their browsers, which means they will only see a blank page if you have no text, or very little text and a lot of space where the images should be, or simply a bunch of boxes with red "x"s in them in place of your images. If you use alt text, these browsers will see that text so they will at least know what the image is.

And then there are those browsers who are blind, or classed as "legally blind". And before you ask, yes the blind do surf and enjoy the internet. At least when people consider them and use alt text for the images. There are voice programs which read text on internet pages that are used by the blind. Their computers read to them, but this software can usually only recognize text, just like a search engine bot. If there's no alt text, there's nothing for the software to read.

Lastly, if you own the image (and you should if you are uploading it) or if the image is being posted with permission of the owner, you can also add this text in the alt text area so people are given proper credit for the images.

Those who don't use alt text as often as they can could be missing out on a lot of visitors.

So, how to put the alt text on your images? If you use a blog service like wordpress, they have a box right in the imager uploader where you can type your alt text. Blogger doesn't have that, but it doesn't mean you can't still add it. You just have to use the "edit html" tab to insert it.

upload your image
click html tab and find the image code
type description between alt= " "

One you've found the area with alt=" " you type your information in that space and you're done. You've suddenly added a great deal more content for search engine optimization and other visitors.

Make your blog or website more accessible by using the Alt Text whenever you upload an image!

(note: originally posted by me on another of my blogs)

Using the AdSense Help Forum Effectively

2009-09-24T03:22:00.000-07:00

If you want to get answers that help resolve your problems or questions in the AdSense Help Forums, there are some things you can and should do before you start posting to the forums.

First, you need to read the AdSense Support Forums Terms of Service. You shouldn't post profanity, or advertising. You also must not use your website address as a signature. This is considered advertising. You can, however, use your Google Profile to list your websites if you so choose. Posters can access your Google Profile from your nickname on the forums. (You may post your website url in your question if it's necessary to the question, just not as a signature.)

Next, at the Help Forum "home page" you'll see a list of discussion categories. These links will bring up questions in each category, filtering out other categories. It's helpful to read through other postings, because often your question will already have been answered in someone else's post. On the right side of the page is a listing of "popular" discussions that may already answer your question as well.

At the bottom of the home page is a link to "browse all discussions". When you click on this you get all the discussions and threads in the forum, including some you should check before you begin a new post. At the top of the help forum discussions are "pinned topics". These are topics posted by AdSense/Google Employees, and often will include things like current problems (ie: "Known Issues"). If there are system bugs that many publishers are experiencing, you will probably find it here in the pinned section, unless it has already been resolved. Many duplicate complaint posts could be avoided if people would check the pinned topics first.

Another thing to do before posting your own topic is to search the forums. Just think about where you are. You are in a forum hosted and run by Google. And who are Google? They're the people who are pretty well known for their search engine, which means they do "search" extremely well. You should make use of this. Type your problem into the search bar at the top and click the "search help" button.

Look through the results and see if your problem (or a similar complaint or question) is there, and if it has been answered or not.

After doing all of that, if you still have a question that hasn't been asked or that is more specific than what's listed, then go ahead and post your question. Click the "post a question" link on the left menu.

How to Post an Effective Question

If you want an answer to your question, then you need to post a question that addresses your issue as clearly as possible and contains details. Questions like "I can't get approved" or "What's wrong with my website" or "Why?" are really not going to get you helpful answers.

Don't:

post questions unrelated to AdSense problems
post the full question in your title
post one word questions (why? when? what? help!)
post the same question over and over again (simply edit your question or post a "bump" and it will move back toward the top of the forum again)
post "bumps" every minute
post without checking the help articles (link is in left sidebar)
post in any language except english (there are help forums available in other languages - down at the bottom of the page linked here is a drop down box with the avalilable languages for help forums)
post spam (this will get you banned from the forum)
post your email address, publisher ID or personal details
post your website address unless the help you are asking for is AdSense related
post personal insults and profanity
post links to pornographic websites
post adlinks in the forum

use a title related to your question
post a full explanation and question within the body of the post. If your question doesn't make sense, we can't answer it properly without asking further questions.
use the search function before posting
read the help articles before posting
include your website url if you think people need to look at your site to offer help (this is necessary for questions on ads that won't display, help with disabled accounts, ad placements, ads that aren't related to your content etc.)
check your posts for answers instead of posting again
try to be patient. There are a lot of questions every day and not that many of us to answer them.
try not to take your anger a frustration out on the people answering your questions. Almost none of them are employed by Google or AdSense. Most of them are volunteers who are publishers, just like you. Unless a responding poster has "Google Employee" by/under their name, they are just ordinary folks trying to help others.

If you post a question and can't find it later, you can check your profile and see a listing of your questions. In the menu bar at the left is a link for "My Discussions" this will take you to your profile where all the questions you've asked are listed. You can click the link for the post you want and it will take you to that thread.

If you post a question that doesn't get answered, amend your original question to bring it back to the front of the forum where people can see it again. Posting the same question multiple times simply makes everyone annoyed. There are some types of questions that we just can't resolve in the forums, so you may not get an answer.

Please note that questions related specifically to how to place your AdSense code into your website are often more related to:

the specific website creator you are using
the webhosting or blog service you are using

than they are to AdSense. Unless one of the volunteers has used your specific website builder, questions of this nature may not get answered. Your best choice for questions relating to your website is to ask at the webhosting help center, or the web builder help sections.

Please try to remember that as AdSense publishers most of the volunteers have experienced similar problems and have experienced the same frustrations as you have. Please don't come into the forums with a nasty attitude towards those who are trying to help you. All this will do is make the volunteers reluctant to try and help you.

You can express your frustration, just don't make it a personal attack on your helpers. That won't resolve anything.

If your question is related to other Google services (YouTube, gmail, google search, blogger, etc.) then you need to ask your question in the help forum for the related product. You can start here at the "Getting Started with Google Help" page, or if you want to look at all the help forums and groups available for Google services and products you can do that here.

Frequently Asked Questions...With Simple Answers

2009-09-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

These are some of the questions we see over on the AdSense Help Forum on a pretty regular basis. In most cases, the answers are mostly simple and can be found in the AdSense Help Center pages by doing a search - a topic which we'll cover in another post.

1. How long does it take to get an Adsense account?

Although the AdSense sign up pages say that you should receive a notice from them in about 48 hours, over the past year that has changed. While some applications might actually get reviewed as quickly as that, most do not. Currently it can take anywhere from a week to a couple of months.

1(a) - Why is it taking so long?

This is because the influx of applications has grown tremendously over the last year. The growth of "get rich quick" sites and scam sites using AdSense and Google to further their scam earnings has created an enormous backlog and constant increase in applications for AdSense accounts.

Along with this, the fact that the economy all over the world has taken a nosedive over the last year and half means that individuals who would not have thought about using AdSense previously are all trying to get in on "the money", which many websites tell you is "hundreds" or "thousands" of dollars a week. Which is a very large misrepresentation.

Because of the thousands of applications every week (perhaps even every day), it now can take anywhere from a few days or a weeks, to longer than two months. The wait time is long, and you'll need to have patience.

2. How old do you have to be to have an AdSense account?

AdSense requires that you be 18 years of age to have an account. This is because in most US states you must be 18 years old to legally enter into a contract. Agreeing to the AdSense Terms of Use is considered entering into a legal contract.

3. How many times can we click per day?

Yes, we do get questions like that.

The answer is NONE. Publishers are not allowed to click on ads on their own websites. Ever.

If you are visiting another publisher's website you should only click on an ad if the ad is something that you are looking for or interested in. One click is enough. If you see more than one ad you are interested in, visit the site a little bit later and view the ad then.

4. Can I use AdSense ads in my e-mails?

The answer is NO. AdSense policy does not allow AdSense code to be place in an email.

You can, however, place a simple link to your website in your email signature. You mustn't use this for sending unsolicited mass emails; that would be considered email spam and sending email spam can get your email account disabled.

5. Can we ask visitors to click ads?

Again, the answer is NO. AdSense publishers must not draw undue attention to their ads in any way.

You may not write "please support us and visit the advertisers", "please click the ads to help me" or anything similar.

You also may not write things like "please don't click the ads" because that draws as much attention to the ads as asking someone to click them.

6. Is there a phone number for AdSense?

I'm sure there must be one, but it's not one that we get to know about.

A simple search for a telephone number for Google or AdSense will get you a phone number, but the phone call would be very short as it's highly unlikely you'd get past the answering receptionist.

There really is no telephone support for AdSense publishers. Many have tried, and many have failed.

7. What is the email address for AdSense?

The email address to contact AdSense can be found throughout the help pages on the AdSense website. Unfortunately, the only reply you will probably get is one directing you to their help forum, so you might as well start there and save yourself the aggravation of waiting for an email reply.

8. Can I use other advertisers on my pages with AdSense ads?

Yes, AdSense allows it's publishers to use other advertising and affiliate programs. They do have rules for other ads - these other ads must not be formatted to look like or be confused with Google AdSense ads.

You can find out the details about AdSense requirements for using other advertisers on this page.

Why Was My AdSense Application Rejected?

2009-09-19T05:59:00.000-07:00

There can be many reasons for having a rejected application - from incorrect personal data, or a typing error in your website address (url), to poor navigation on your website, or content that's not suitable for AdSense.

Application Details

The details you fill in on your AdSense application must be correct, and complete. Your name will be the name your payments go to if you are approved for an AdSense account, so you need to make sure this is correct in your initial application. The same thing goes for your address, and other personal details.

AdSense applicants must submit their website url when they complete an application. The website url is the part that looks like this: http://helpfulinformationfornewbies.blogspot.com/ or www.google.com .

Your website url must be correct because AdSense reviews your website to ensure it fits with AdSense policy, and contains the type of content their advertisers want to place ads on. If you type the url incorrectly, or if your website doesn't yet exist, then AdSense is likely to reject your application because they can't access your website.

Double check all the details in your application before you click the submit button. Once you send it, you can't edit it. You'll have to wait for them to review it (this can take anywhere from a few days to a few months) and send you an email. At that point, you can edit your application to correct any errors and resubmit it again.

To learn more about the AdSense application, visit their help center.

Website and Content Issues

When AdSense rejects an application, the email they send is usually pretty generic. It might say "wrong page type" without giving any further details, or it might list "poor or no navigation", or "under construction" or any one of a host of other reasons, most of which aren't very detailed.

The best place to get help in determining the actual issue(s) will be at the AdSense Help Forum. Volunteers and "Top Contributors" deal with questions like this every day, and most of them are pretty good at being able to tell you what the reasons will be, and can sometimes offer other suggestions to help you get your application and website "AdSense ready".

Page Type issues can mean anything from content that isn't acceptable to AdSense and doesn't comply with their policies, to not enough content.

In the forums we constantly see applicants whose blogs or websites have almost no content - one post or article is not "content". It's a beginning, but it's not enough to satisfy advertisers, so it's not enough to satisfy AdSense.

For some areas of the world, AdSense requires that a blog or website must be 6 months old - this actually means they want you to have six months worth of content. If you open a blog or website in January, make one post and wait six months you probably still won't get approved. The blog might be six months old, but there is still no content.

There's a saying over at AdSense... "Content is King".

Content must also be useful to people, and interesting. A blog full of posts that aren't going to interest people, or provide some useful information isn't likely to interest AdSense either. The sort of content that's going "out the door" (ie: getting less approval) at AdSense are sites that are built specifically to earn income with "get rich quick" schemes, or money making sites that have no purpose other than to accrue income from AdSense.

All content on your website or blog must adhere to AdSense policies. If it doesn't, you probably won't get an approved account. To see what the content policies are, you can visit the AdSense Program Policy page.

Poor navigation issues can be anything from having "flash only" navigation, to having no navigation, or to having navigation or menu buttons that don't link to any page, to broken menu links.

All flash navigation is difficult for the bots to follow, and if they can't follow a navigation link, to them, it's broken - they may be able to follow some of the links, or none of the links. On top of that, many people still don't allow flash in their browsers, so those people can't use your website. You need to create text links as well as flash links. You can put the text navigation in your website footer or sidebar, or create a sitemap with text links and link to the sitemap with a text link on your home page.

Menu buttons or links that are meant for future pages should either be removed, or should link to the page. Don't leave incomplete links in your navigation menu.

One of the biggest navigation problems we see are with blogs. Everyone thinks because it's a blog, it already has navigation. In some cases, this is true, it does have a form of navigation...but only if you have a bunch of posts. It's the posts and their pages that create navigation in the form of the archives on most blogs. If you have only one or two posts, you really don't have much in the way of navigation.

You'll notice in the sidebar of this blog, the first thing is titled "Pages". That was created using a blogger gadget, and the blogger pages function. You could also use the links gadget to create a menu. In the links gadget you can enter a url (in this case, the url of the page with the post on it) and a website title (instead of a website title, I use the post title) - everytime I make a new post, it is added manually to that menu. Anybody visiting my blog doesn't have to hunt through the archives looking for a subject they want. It's in the post menu. As a blog grows and has hundreds of posts, you won't want to use this method. You'll need to do something else, like only include important posts. You should always have an archive listing in your sidebar for navigation, and a text sitemap can be very useful as well.

Under Construction might seem like a pretty specific reason, but for many it is anything but. We see lots of people in the forum whose websites aren't under construction, but that's the reason they are given.

We see this a lot with websites that contain mostly graphics or images, and very little text. Landing pages or home pages that have an image and no text are another problem, as are photoblogs and videoblogs (nothing but videos in a blog is not considered good content for AdSense).

Photos and images should always have "alt text" tags so they can be "seen" by the AdSense bots and crawlers. They can't see an image if there is no text, so a website or blog of nothing but photos will look completely empty. A bunch of pages with nothing on them is a website under construction.

Websites built entirely of flash can create problems too - sometimes they can crawl them, and sometimes they can't. The best flash sites I have seen are the ones that also have a plain html version of the site for users without flash in their browsers. Some of the worst sites I've seen are those that require you to use a specific browser, like IE only sites.

Language - AdSense has a list of supported languages, and if the language your website was built in is not on that list, you won't be able to get an approved AdSense account. You can learn more about the languages AdSense supports at the AdSense Help Center.

In the end, there are some websites and content that are just not suitable for AdSense advertisers. Not everyone is granted an AdSense account.

Google Green?

2009-09-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

No sermon here today, folks, but thanks to one of the "Top Contributors" (Dan) over on the AdSense Help forums, we're going to shoot for taking a news article and video the "viral" route.

What that means is, grab the link for the article, and post to your blogs - everybody. This will help get the word out that not every website who talks about Google or AdSense is on the "up and up".

You know all those "almost scams" and "google scams" we've been talking about? Well, here in this article at the link Fox News tells it like it is. Let your friends know there are places they need to be careful of- especially if they are thinking about signing up for AdSense.

Fox Twin Cities - Investigating Google Green

Remind your friends, if they want to apply for AdSense, then they should do it right at the Google AdSense homepage and not anywhere else.

Getting Started with AdSense and Blogger

2009-09-11T05:36:00.000-07:00

Everyday on the Google AdSense forums you'll see lots of questions about using AdSense with Blogger blogs. Today's post will help you get started using AdSense on Blogger. More complex questions will come later, and of course you can always post a specific question to the comments, or use Google's AdSense Help Forum.

1. Can I use AdSense with Blogger?

yes, Blogger blogs accept AdSense code very easily.

2. What's the best way to sign up with my blog?

Blogger has a "monetize" link which many people use to get an AdSense account, and currently, if you try to apply for adsense without using this monetize link, you'll get rejected for "domain ownership issues.
Adsense does not accept "subdomains" for their applications, so signing up at the Adsense home page with a blogger URL will get your application rejected because a blogger URL is a subdomain. To avoid that, you need to apply using the monetize link.
Using the monetize link in blogger lets Adsense know that this is a blogger URL, which is acceptable to use for Adsense, so please do not try to sign up at the Adsense homepage for your blog.

3. My Adsense account for my blog was approved. How do I add the code to my blogger?

There are different options for adding AdSense code to your blogger. You can use the monetize link to place the ads, you can use the Adsense Gadget in Blogger, or you can use a Text Gadget and add code you generate from your AdSense Account.
See this step-by-step tutorial (includes snapshots and text) for the ways you can place your code on blogger blogs.

4. Why don't all of my ads show up on my blogger? I have all the code, but you can't see all the ads.

The main reason for this is that you probably have too many of the same kind of ad on one page.
AdSense only allows for 3 ad units, 3 link units and 2 AdSense for search boxes on one page.
When you choose to have the AdSense ads display below each post, the number of posts allowed to display on a page has something to do with this problem. Many people leave the "posts per page" set at the default, wich I think is 5. That means there may already be three ads on the page (one ad after every 2nd post). What happens is that any other ads of the same type you put on your page won't display.
There are two ways to remedy this. Set your post count per page to 1, 2 or 3 posts per page. This will result in one or two ads being displayed leaving you one ad of the same type for another spot. Or you can change the add type. You can use ad units between your posts, and ad links in your sidebar, or vice versa. This allows you to display 3 ads between your posts, and 3 ads in your sidebar (or below your header if you choose).

5. How much does it cost to use Blogger and AdSense?

Nothing. Google provides both services freely. If anyone asks you pay anything for a Blogger blog or an AdSense account, then you are in the wrong place.
There are many websites on the internet that ask you for money in exchange for providing information about earning money with AdSense, and they trade on the Google name, but they aren't associated with Google, and their practice is not condoned by Google.
Information about AdSense or Blogger is available freely from their respective home pages at Google. You should never pay for something that is offered free. Any payments you might make to these other sites go to them, not to Google and Google cannot help you get your money back, nor will they refund you something they didn't charge you for.

Using "No Right Click" Codes - For Those Who Think They Need It

2009-09-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

Lots of people seem to want to use the "no right click" on their web pages. The code is simple, but for the most part, it's a fairly useless protection against image thieves. Anybody who really wants the image will know how to get it (even I can do it) even if the code is present.

About the only people it will deter are those casual surfers who might happen upon your site and think "oh, pretty pic" and hit the right click - they'll get the "right click not available" and move on to somewhere else. Even then, if they want to use it in a blog or something else bad enough, they'll try a screen capture, and there's not much that will stop that.

For those who just have to use it (be aware that "no right click" also means that none of the functions in the right click menu work - none - when you use this you disable all of the right click functions, not just the copy).

So here's a code provided by WebmasterTools 3 (the free version - rather old, but still useful) which they also provided online (last check I couldn't find the site). The part that says "Right Click Not Available" is the part the viewer sees when they try to right click on the images on that page - that text can be changed to anything you want to use.

The script below gets inserted between the head tags of your webpage.

For those asking for instructions on using the code - it's as I mentioned above - place the entire code as shown between the head tags on your web page (the head tags look like this: <> (the beginning of the header section and < /head > (the end of the header section) ). To see the tags you need to be able to access the html portion (the code) of your web page.

Don't Let Your Work Become "Duplicate Content"

2009-09-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

In at least one of my recent endeavours I've come to realize that taking time to protect your work online can be pretty important for some things.

Not just images, graphics and photos, but your written work, like blog posts and articles, stories and poetry. Pretty much anything you put on the net.

Some folks won't worry much about whether someone has copied their blog post or photos, but for those who are concerned, there are some steps you can take that help. While there is no real protection for anything you put out on the internet, making the effort can do two things - offer protection from those who just don't know any better, and help to educate them about copyright and plagiarism.

Anyone who follows any of my free blogs will already know that I'm pretty happy to share much of what I do with others. That's just my nature. What I'm not happy to see is other people claiming my work as their own. While none of these methods shown here will really stop anyone who is out to copy your work and put their name on it, some of them will help you find any work of yours that's been used elsewhere.

Copyscape is a service that will search the internet for written work. They offer a free service (limited, but it works) and paid programs for greater coverage. You simply put in the url of the page where your work is displayed (a blog page or website page), hit enter and wait. It will search around the net looking for whatever article or written work is on your page and then list places it found it, if any.

CopyrightSpot works essentially the same as Copyscape, though the service is at present, completely free. It is, however, still in "alpha testing", but it does seem to work reasonably well. Like copyscape, it is designed for the written word. You can also use their logo to show that you check your work against their service on a regular basis. While this won't stop someone out to purposely copy your stuff, it might give them pause if they realize you will eventually find them.

For images, the same folks who put out CopyrightSpot have MyFree Copyright. Here, you can upload a small version of any image or graphic and create a footprint for it, then get a registration number to place on your images, along with the logo if you want. This service also works to protect a file of written work, or text whether it's a web page or pdf or other form of written work. It too is provided freely. Each item you register generates an email to your account, showing the date of registration and registration number. While this is not the same as registering work with the Registry Office, it can provide a "time stamp" for your work, so if it's necessary to provide proof that someone else copied the work from you, this can be helpful. Like any other service, it doesn't stop unauthorized uses (nothing really does), but it has it's uses.

And one more place where you can upload files, including chk sums and other details and get it time stamped to help protect your ownership of your work. Copyclaim is also free, so those who write articles, poetry, tutuorials or upload .pdf files might find it useful. Note: it looks like Copyclaim is defunct.

TinEye doesn't actually offer protection, but it can help you find your images on the internet. It's still in beta, and has a ways to go before it will become really useful, but it too works if images are used in a lot of different places. TinEye is essentially a "reverse lookup tool" for images - you can upload a low res version of your image and it will search around the net and list places where it's found. If you prefer not to upload an image, you can use the Firefox browser plugin, where you simply right click on your image, and it will search from that. Note that with the browser plugin, this won't work if you are using the clear gif method of protecting your image, because all TinEye will see is no image and a clear gif. There is also a version for macs.

The image bank TinEye uses to search is still somewhat limited, so if it doesn't find your image, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't in use somewhere else, it just means that wherever the image is, TinEye hasn't indexed that particular site or space yet. The more people who use TinEye and submit sites for indexing, the better it will get.

Get the TinEye Plugin for Firefox here.

Get the mac version here.

While there are other similar services for protecting your copyrights, many are paid services. If you earn your living with imaging or writing, you might want to invest in a paid service, and/or register your work at the Registry Office for your country or state. But for the average blogger who might have a need to prove the work belongs to them, these free services should be sufficient.

(originally posted by the writer, me, on another of my blogs)

How to Add A Privacy Policy to Blogger, and Privacy Policy Text

2009-09-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

NOTE: The .pdf tutorial has been updated (Dec. 6/2010) to include instructions on putting your privacy policy on a blogger static page, or a blogger post.

In the last few months or so I’ve had to make use of the google help forums and discovered that there is a never-ending stream of questions coming into the help centers. Some quite simple, but others much more complex. What I also discovered is that help can sometimes be as simple as pointing someone to the right link in the vast network of google help links.
I am no expert on google or it’s help systems, but for the most part I have learned how and where to find help when I need it. What you’ll find though, is that getting a direct answer from any person who actually works for or is approved by google is difficult, at best.
Any email to support generally results in a form-letter reply directing you to a help forum for the area you are asking about. Considering the shear number of emails that must head towards google help centers every minute of every day, that really isn’t all that surprising.
I doubt any one entity that large could respond with personal emails to that volume of mail. But the help centers can be very useful once you learn how to navigate them.
While not related to all the google categories where you can find help, I’ve created a tutorial to help bloggers out a little bit – it walks you through the steps to add a Privacy Policy to your blogger blog, using written instructions as well as pictures in an easy-to-follow step-by-step manner.

Adding A Privacy Policy to A Blogger Blog

NOTE: Unfortunately since a large number of people have been hotlinking to this tutorial, I have had to protect it by locking it with a password. The password to open the file is getthisfromgracey.

Links to Help Forums

Google Help Centres – all one page for all your google services

SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY TEXT

Privacy Policy

We take your privacy seriously. This policy describes what personal information we collect and how we use it. (This privacy policy is applicable to websites falling under the primary holder fill in your website(s) and urls here.)

Routine Information Collection

All web servers track basic information about their visitors. This information includes, but is not limited to, IP addresses, browser details, timestamps and referring pages. None of this information can personally identify specific visitors to this site. The information is tracked for routine administration and maintenance purposes, and lets me know what pages and information are useful and helpful to visitors.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Where necessary, this site uses cookies to store information about a visitor's preferences and history in order to better serve the visitor and/or present the visitor with customized content.

Advertising partners and other third parties may also use cookies, scripts and/or web beacons to track visitors to our site in order to display advertisements and other useful information. Such tracking is done directly by the third parties through their own servers and is subject to their own privacy policies.

Controlling Your Privacy

Note that you can change your browser settings to disable cookies if you have privacy concerns. Disabling cookies for all sites is not recommended as it may interfere with your use of some sites. The best option is to disable or enable cookies on a per-site basis. Consult your browser documentation for instructions on how to block cookies and other tracking mechanisms.

Special Note About Google Advertising

Any advertisements served by Google, Inc., and affiliated companies may be controlled using cookies. These cookies allow Google to display ads based on your visits to this site and other sites that use Google advertising services. Learn how to opt out of Google's cookie usage. As mentioned above, any tracking done by Google through cookies and other mechanisms is subject to Google's own privacy policies.

About Google advertising: What is the DoubleClick DART cookie? The DoubleClick DART cookie is used by Google in the ads served on publisher websites displaying AdSense for content ads. When users visit an AdSense publisher’s website and either view or click on an ad, a cookie may be dropped on that end user’s browser. The data gathered from these cookies will be used to help AdSense publishers better serve and manage the ads on their site(s) and across the web. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Contact Information

Concerns or questions about this privacy policy can be directed to fill in your contact information here for further clarification.

(originally posted by the writer, me, on one of my other sites)

Get Yourself a Website, and Avoid the Scams

2009-09-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

If you are fairly new to web technologies, this little info package is designed to get you started. I won't build your website for you, but this will help you understand where to go to get one, and what you should ask yourself before you start - also, what not to do.

These days we get a lot of questions on how to get a website (usually they are after "free" websites), or how to make your own website. The fact is, if you don't know anything about web design and don't understand anything about coding, then the easiest way to get started is with a web host that also provides web building tools.

Where you start is going to be entirely dependent on what you want in a website. If you just want to share your experiences with the world, then blogging is the perfect platform for you. Most free blogs are "ready to go" services. You select a template design (the look and colours of your blog), add "widgets or gadgets" (things that let you add stuff to your blog) and start typing.

If you don't intend to add any advertising sponsors to your site, then you can use Wordpress or Windows Live, LiveJournal, or one of many other blog platforms (just search for "free blogs"). If you think you might want to add some paid advertising in the future, opt for Blogger.com

If you are out to build a "website" as opposed to a blog, then you need to look for a webhost that offers free websites. Here's a list of free website offers that appear to be reasonably popular to the "free website crowd" to have a look at:

For those looking to setup photography sites, or photographic galleries there are offerings like SmugMug and Redbubble, among a bunch of others that offer similar things. Not all of them allow advertising either.

Of all the above sites, I maintain an account at Redbubble, and have an account at google sites, though that is yet undeveloped. Not having used any of the above, I can't give any real recommendations, I only know quite a few people recently have tried these sites.

Then there are places like Squidoo, Hub Pages and Google Knol. In essence they are one page "shorts" that you can build on just about any subject. Simple and easy to start.

And, if you really don't want a website or blog, there are all kinds of community/social sites that allow you to share things in little short snippets, like Facebook or MySpace (I don't care much for MySpace - there's way too many users who spam), or orkut (don't care much for this one either) and a host of others you can look up. Then there's the ever popular "twitter", though for the life of me I can't see why it's so popular. Everything on twitter runs about as slow as molasses, and became so frustrating I canceled an account within days of opening it.

Regardless of which option you choose, there are things you'll want to consider - whether or not you intend to use sponsored advertising, or if you want to sell your own advertising.

Many free hosts already do place their own advertising or banners on your free website, so you'll want check whether or not advertising by the website owner is allowed. Many forms of advertising require you to be able to access the code or html for the site, or require the use of widgets, gadgets or plugins, so giving consideration to your future plans when you select a free webhost is something you'll want to do before making your final decision.

Once you've decided, and signed up an account for your choice of spots, then you start filling it with interesting stuff.

Now, if you surf around the net a while you'll see a lot of places that carry the same content, things like news aggregators, and articles on a huge array of subjects, but...many of these same articles, very nearly word-for-word, can be found on hundreds of different websites. That's known as "copied content". Copied content isn't all that interesting to most people.

Let's face it, if I want to know about a Nikon camera, I'm going to start at Nikon and from there, I might look for some user reviews, but I would be more likely to read a camera review from someone whose used it, than someone who copied their review from another website.

What you need to write, is something of your own. A lot of you are probably asking "what do I know that's interesting?" Think about this for a moment. Is your life an exact duplicate of anyone else's? You might have similar stories, or been through some similar things, but you as an individual are unique. You probably won't see everything the same way anyone else does.

The easiest things to write are those things that have a personal impact on you - your thoughts and ideas on anything from politics to health, to raising a family or remaining childless. What ever it is, it should be something you can write about from your own experience. Imagine if Erma Bombeck had never sat down to write her tales of family life? I'm not saying every personal blog will be an instant best seller, but writing what you know is the best start you can give yourself.

Once you have experience with your website or blog, you can branch out. Research things that are of interest to you, and then write about them. Share things like family recipes, or "how-to-s" if you have hobbies or a home business.

Do anything, except copying "canned, pre-written" articles.

Right about now, there are thousands upon thousands of websites carrying "information" on finances, stocks, forex, news, and technology. And the majority of them carry the exact same articles, and the exact same information. People are getting tired of those. Very tired. They want something fresh, something new, something unique. Don't get caught by thought of easily filling up your space with these free articles. For the most part, nobody really wants to see them again and again.

And here is a very big "what not to do". Don't get caught in buying into these "make money on the web schemes". There are almost none that will win you any income, save a very few (and they do not advertise with big flashy web pages or ask for money up front) and most will cost you a great deal, both financially and emotionally.

Scams play on the need for money - who doesn't need money today? They practically guarantee big returns, instant cash and lots of it. They nearly always offer you a "free info package" all you have to pay for is shipping (anywhere from 99 cents to $1.79 or $2.29 etc.)

The catch is in the fine print - and yes, it really is there if you read it. This free information pack or free trial costs you a fee every month (usually $59.95 to $79.95 or so) if you don't cancel it within a certain number of days (usually 7 to 15) - the biggest trick of all is that the "free trial" often doesn't get to the purchaser within that specified cancellation time.

Even worse, most people don't bother to read the fine print, and may not discover til a month (or many months) later that they are paying these fees. By the time they try to find the website they got the free trial from, it may be gone entirely, making it very difficult to the find the trail to cancel the "program". What often happens is the consumer ends up having to file a dispute for the costs with their bank or credit card, then having to cancel bank accounts and credit cards and setting up new ones.

If you are interested in earning money online, regardless of where you find the original offer, don't ever sign up for
anything until you've done some research.

After all, would you buy a car without checking it out, or a pair of pants without making sure they fit? Buying into anything online is no different, but it's a lot easier to find out information online, all you need to do is run a websearch for the name of the program or website and check out the search results. When you see a lot of bad reviews or information, back away quickly.

It's time for consumer's to take responsibility for what they do. If we all learned to do that then these scam sites would go out of business pretty quickly. Consumer's online need to educate themselves.

For most, all it takes is to be scammed once. What surprises me are the ones who sign up for one scam - discover after paying for it all that's it's a scam, and then a couple of weeks later sign up for another.

If you don't learn after the first time, you deserve what you get the second time. Yeah, that's harsh, but folks, we are supposed LEARN from our mistakes.

Now...go have a look around the net for a place that feels like home, and build your website.

(originally posted by the writer, me, on my other blog)

What Is Adsense? And How do I Start?

2009-09-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Basics - this is a very basic explanation of AdSense and how it works. More details and further explanations can be found at the AdSense website, and you should be sure to visit that to gain a better understanding of the program.

What is Adsense

Adsense is a marketing and advertising platform that serves up advertising paid for by the businesses, companies and individuals who advertise using the Google AdWords program.

If you qualify to use AdSense you are allowed to place these advertisements on your website and collect earnings for ads that display. The advertisers who use Google's AdWords program buy advertising through the program, and they pay Google to advertise for them. These ads are then served to prospective customers through the AdSense program, using third parties to display the ads (that's the AdSense Publishers - people like you and I).

Effectively, the advertisers pay Google, and Google takes their cut, and then pays us.

Does it Cost Anything to Get An AdSense Account?

No, AdSense is free to apply for, and free to use on your website. Google does not charge the publisher any fees at all.

Does Google or AdSense Provide Me With a Website?

No, AdSense is not in the business of providing pre-built websites or hosting websites. Google does provide free site space and a free blog platform that you can sign up for, but you must build the site yourself using your own content. google.sites is a website building platform that you can use for free, and blogger.com is a blog platform that you can use for free.

How Much Money Does AdSense Pay Me

How much you can earn using this program depends on how much time and effort you put into maintaining and updating your website, and how much traffic you have, and how much the ads on your website pay. There are a number of factors that go into earnings.

Don't let all the hype you see on the internet take you for a ride. Average publishers do not make thousands of dollars a week, or even a month on this program. It's more like a couple of hundred dollars a month. There are quite a few publishers who can pay most of their monthly bills using this program, but to get there is hard work, and takes time to grow your site holdings. If you just want to plunk some ads on your site and forget about it, then the program isn't for you...not if you expect to earn a lot of money doing it.

See more information on the AdSense website about earnings.

How Do I Get Started with AdSense?

AdSense has requirements that each prospective publisher must follow in order to qualify for an AdSense Account.

You must first have a website. One that is already established, and has already started to draw traffic. You don't have to have traffic in the thousands to get started, but a site with zero traffic isn't ready for AdSense. Your website should also have a lot of good, originally produced content. AdSense isn't really looking for sites that are simply made in a hurry in order to make money. Some get accepted, but most are in error, and large numbers of these sites lose their accounts. Original content is "stuff" you produce yourself - whether it's stories, articles, tutorials, photos or other images, wallpapers, videos - original content has more value because it can't be found in other places.

If you have your website built, then you need to find out if your content would qualify.

Your website must also have content that follows the AdSense policies - no adult content, no content relating or linking to things like drugs (prescription or illegal), weapons, illegal software, music or video downloads, no content that is considered a copyright infringement, no sites that are nothing but big long lists of links, among many other things. All of the policy requirements can be found on the AdSense site, under the Help section in the AdSense Policies subsection. It's important that you make yourself aware of these, and it's also important that you read and understand the Terms of Service before you get involved in AdSense.

There are a lot of rules, and it's important that you do more than just read those rules, you also need to understand them. If you don't understand something, then don't be afraid to ask for help.

Once you have gone through the policies and you are sure your site is ready, then you fill out the AdSense application and provide them with the url of your website. Then you wait for them to review the site and application, and when they have, you'll receive an email from them. If you are accepted to the program, you are off and running - but attention should always be paid to the policies when adding things to your site.

What if I'm A Business Who Just Wants to Advertise?

If you want buy advertising, then you would sign up for the AdWords program, rather than the AdSense program.

FAQs About This Blog

2009-09-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS BLOG?
A. Mostly because in the AdSense forums (where I answer questions) we see the same questions over and over again and I got tired of typing out the same answers over and over...especially when they require more than one or two lines (as you can already tell, I can be a little long-winded).

I started the blog so I could type out long answers here, and then just link a person to the appropriate post from the AdSense forums.

HOW MUCH DOES ADSENSE OR GOOGLE PAY YOU?

A. Pay me? They don't pay me. Not anything. At least not for answering questions or posting answers in the help forum. That's volunteer work. Either you like to help out or you don't.

There's no payment, no favours, no protection from being disabled for helping out on the forums. My account and sites get the same scrutiny as everyone else's, and could be disabled at any time if I didn't follow policy.

YOU DON'T HAVE ANY ADS ON THIS BLOG? WHY NOT, AND WHERE CAN I SEE YOUR SITES WITH ADS?

A. No, there's no ads on this blog...for a reason. I need to link this blog to the forums sometimes. I couldn't do that if there were AdSense ads on it - that would be considered unfairly promoting my own blog and sending people there to earn clicks.

Secondly, my own opinion is that a blog about AdSense is difficult to maintain when it contains AdSense ads. For this blog to be any use I need to be able write things (answers) in it without worry about whether it meets policy or not. This blog is meant to be informational, it's not meant to earn money...at least not from AdSense. Someday in the future it might be useful to place other advertisers or affiliates on, but if I do decide it's ever ready for that, I probably won't be using AdSense.

Where can you see my ads? Um, that's not something I'm willing to post for the world to see. People who help in the forums often get more than their fair share of click-bombers, harrassment, and stalkers (cyber types) because of the answers they sometimes have to give.

But for those who think because there's no ads here I don't use AdSense, the answer is I do use it, but not on all my sites. Only on those I feel are suitable for AdSense.

WHY DO YOU HAVE THOSE WEIRD CARTOON PEOPLE?

A. Ah. Well, AdSense is a serious business for some people, and their problems or frustrations sometimes seem insurmountable, so the stick people keep the blog on a lighter note, while still allowing me to provide useful information.

They were created for my grandchildren as t-shirt designs, hence the childlike art.

HOW DO I GET TO BE AN ADSENSE PRO?

A. Why are you asking me? I don't work for AdSense or Google. AdSense Pros are employed by Google. That really has nothing to do with my blog.

HOW COME YOU'RE SO MEAN?

A. How does one answer that?

HOW DO YOU FIND ALL THE ANSWERS?

A. The answers to what? I don't know all the answers...like the meaning of life (still looking).

In fact I don't know all the answers to every question, but I do know how to use the Google search function, and I know how to perform research. That's pretty much all it takes to find a lot of the answers people ask questions to.

Some I know from experience. Others, I look for.

Privacy Policy

2009-09-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

Privacy Policy

We take your privacy seriously. This privacy policy describes what personal information we collect and how we use it. (This privacy policy is applicable to websites falling under the primary holder "Photography of Grace" at http://photographyofgrace.com, and encompasses Gracey's Free Stock Photos, Gracey's Free 3D Textures, Photography Blography and Photography of Grace, and Helpful Information for Newbies, all under the ownership of J. Gracey Stinson.)

Routine Information Collection

All web servers track basic information about their visitors. This information includes, but is not limited to, IP addresses, browser details, timestamps and referring pages. None of this information can personally identify specific visitors to this site. The information is tracked for routine administration and maintenance purposes, and lets me know what pages and information are useful and helpful to visitors.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Where necessary, this site uses cookies to store information about a visitor's preferences and history in order to better serve the visitor and/or present the visitor with customized content.

Advertising partners and other third parties may also use cookies, scripts and/or web beacons to track visitors to our site in order to display advertisements and other useful information. Such tracking is done directly by the third parties through their own servers and is subject to their own privacy policies.

Controlling Your Privacy

Note that you can change your browser settings to disable cookies if you have privacy concerns. Disabling cookies for all sites is not recommended as it may interfere with your use of some sites. The best option is to disable or enable cookies on a per-site basis. Consult your browser documentation for instructions on how to block cookies and other tracking mechanisms.

Special Note About Google Advertising

Any advertisements served by Google, Inc., and affiliated companies may be controlled using cookies. These cookies allow Google to display ads based on your visits to this site and other sites that use Google advertising services. Learn how to opt out of Google's cookie usage. As mentioned above, any tracking done by Google through cookies and other mechanisms is subject to Google's own privacy policies.

About Google advertising: What is the DoubleClick DART cookie? The DoubleClick DART cookie is used by Google in the ads served on publisher websites displaying AdSense for content ads. When users visit an AdSense publisher’s website and either view or click on an ad, a cookie may be dropped on that end user’s browser. The data gathered from these cookies will be used to help AdSense publishers better serve and manage the ads on their site(s) and across the web. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Contact Information

Concerns or questions about this privacy policy can be directed to gracey at photographyofgrace.com for further clarification.