Friday, January 10, 2014

Buy An AdSense Website

Actually, you shouldn't buy a website for AdSense. At least, you shouldn't be buying one that was made for the sole purpose of putting ads on. Those types of sites are created by sellers just for placing ads on them, and they're considered by AdSense to be "MFA" sites. That means "Made for Advertising" and AdSense has no interest in monetizing sites like that.

There was a time that sites of that nature prospered with AdSense and other online advertising, but AdWords advertisers are no longer interested in paying to have their ads displayed on sites whose contents just don't provide any value to visitors. No value for visitors, usually results in providing no value to the advertiser as well. So more than a few years back, AdSense stopped accepting MFA sites, and started disabling ad serving to MFA sites.

Most likely, you'll still find some of them around, but many of them (particularly newer ones) don't last very long with AdSense. Publishers who work hard at creating original, and useful content really don't want to compete with MFA sites either, so good publishers will report them when they find them, and on their own, AdSense continues to review every publisher's websites that carry AdSense ads, so if you end up buying an MFA site and add it to your AdSense account, you may find that ads won't stay on the site for very long.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Adsense, Copyright, and Fair Use

Are Google Images Free to Use?

Google Images are not images owned by Google, so they give no permission for the use of images shown on Google Images.  Google images is nothing more than a search engine that indexes images that can be found on the web.

That does not mean you have permission to use them. Every image is protected by copyright unless it's listed in the Public Domain (must say so); or unless it's licensed as Creative Commons (in which case you must follow the licensing terms) or, unless the copyright holder (ie: the owner of the image - the artist, the photographer, the creator) has listed it as free to use.  The same would hold true for any image search engine (like yahoo or bing) - since they do not own the images, they cannot grant you usage rights for the images. The only one who can give you authorization to use the images is the owner/creator of the image.

And there are, in fact, quite number of websites that offer free images for bloggers and website owners, incuding some of the more popular micro-stock sites (Shutterstock to name at least one). They require you to sign up and you are restricted to certain uses and to the images they offer weekly/daily for free, but they are images produced by professional photographers. There really is no excuse for using images without permission when many sites offer them for free. Even Flickr has a multitude of images licensed for use under Creative Commons. You just have to read the appropriate licenses and follow them.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Reapplying For Adsense - YouTube and Blogger

Due to some of the recent changes at AdSense publishers are finding it impossible to resubmit their application for Adsense using a new blog URL or a new YouTube Channel. Some folks are calling it a "bug" although I'm not entirely sure it is a bug. If it is, it has been ongoing for some time now.

There is a process for submitting a new URL, but what you can't do is change the URL in the application you already submitted. When you try to apply with a new or different blog in your Blogger account, the application is automatically submitted with the same URL you submitted with your first application. The same is true if you try to apply for Adsense using a YouTube Channel - if you applied for Adsense with a blog or website (and were rejected) before you applied from YouTube, the URL from your old application may automatically be submitted to Adsense, instead of your channel.

In either instance what you'll need to do is first create a new Google Account and a new Gmail account for that new Google Account.  WAIT!  No, you don't have to delete your current Google/gmail accounts and no, you don't have to create a new Blogger or YouTube account to do this.

The first step is to log out of your current Google Account. Then create your new Google and Gmail accounts. Once created and verified, log out of that new account you just created.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Time for AdSense, Blogger and YouTube Updates

In the last several months there have been quite a few changes for Adsense users. Over the next few months I'll be trying to explain some of the changes and give you my own thoughts on them or if I can, offer some answers. The Help Center has been updated with a new look and navigation system, and the dashboard in your AdSense account has been updated as well.

Recent additions include the Scorecard, which for some people seems to have created a small panic. The Scorecard really is just a way to see where you might be able to improve your site(s), and your AdSense earnings or traffic. Suggestions made in the Scorecard are just suggestions.


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Putting AdSense Ad Code on Your Blogger Blog

If you're new to blogger, new to web publishing, or new to AdSense you might need a little help getting your ad codes onto blogger. For those of us who have been using this platform since it came out, placing ad codes seems like a simple thing, but for newbies it can be confusing. Particularly since blogger seems to be constantly changing the way things are done.

With blogger, there are multiple ways you can get your codes onto your blog. There are several types of gadgets that will work, or you can use the earnings tab, or you can even paste code directly into the text area. Keep in mind, pasting code into the text area may not always work. It will depend on the type of template you are using for your blog - usually a standard blogger template works best for that. If you use third-party free templates, or blogger's dynamic template, posting ads in the text area may not work at all. The instructions below are for using normal blogger templates (standard ones, not the dynamic ones).

Page-Level Ads