It’s a pleasure to say that I just signed a lease for a luxury apartment in New York City, and I can honestly say that I’m pumped! However, for those of you who don’t know, I use to live in the Beverly Hills area in California. After my lease was up I headed back to the town i grew up in outside of Philadelphia for a few months until we got some Bevo stuff sorted out. Although the move back home wasn’t permanent, it was definitely relaxing and enjoyable.
When I got back to Philadelphia, I needed to decide where my next move would be. I honestly think California is an amazing place. Perfect weather, very eventful,young and energetic. I loved every bit of it. I thought it was going to be a no brainer to go back long term. That was until one of my good friends from college contacted me about a job he just received in NYC, and was pushing hard to get me to sign a lease with him. At first I shot down the idea entirely. But throughout the summer, I’ve visited and went out in the city quite a few times (including Affiliate Summit East), and every time I had a blast. I slowly began to reconsider.
Another factor to point out is that I knew so many people in the NYC area, whether it’s friends I know from college (Syracuse alumni’s love NYC), people I know from when I played sports, or people I networked with in the industry. The amount of people I know in the NYC area compared to California is substantially higher.
The thing that really sold me was when I went with my buddy to check out the apartment he wanted to lease. It was absolutely incredible, and although it was very pricey, walking around in there definitely sealed the deal for me. Its in a perfect location, I can bring my car, and am in a prime location for networking. Being said, I still think that I will end up in California long term, but as that famous “Just Wear Sunscreen Song” quotes:
“Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.”
And thats exactly what I’m going to do 
Here are some pics of the apartment:
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I developed the following guide to help give advise to those webmasters out there trying to make the most for their ad placements.
Banner Ad Placement
Even if your site is bringing in plenty of traffic, impressions alone do not guarantee riches when using the CPC advertising model. Obviously, clicks are all that matters. Of course, impressions are not limitless, so what we really are looking for when using the CPC model is a high click through ratio (CTR). A high CTR means that the banners on your site are getting clicked on frequently and thus bringing in more revenue. Throughout this article we will focus on the small details that can impact your CTR in a very positive way to earn you more money.
Placement
A variety of scientific studies have been conducted looking into the eye pattern of a person viewing a web site. Google, in fact, publishes a hot-spot diagram which documents the areas of the screen user’s look at the most. While getting user’s to look at your ad is important, many webmasters fail to realize that the real trick is to convince a person to actually click on your ad. There are two trains of thought on how to approach the “appeal” factor:
1 – Ads that stand out
I’m sure that you have seen the flashy ads on websites which flash neon colors or shift back and forth to imitate movement. Having ads stand out is one strategy that has seen success in the past. Although people may complain about their intrusiveness, it is often these people who are the ones clicking on the ads. One caveat with making ads stand out is that this strategy worked well in the early days of internet advertising, but today’s web surfers are much more cognizant of your advertising intentions.
2 – Ads that blend in
Our current preferred strategy is to make ads blend into your site as much as possible. The goal is to make web surfers think that your ads are actually part of the content on your site. It may sound like a deceptive tactic, but if your ads are targeted to your content, you will be doing your users a service by connecting them with products or resources they may be interested in.
The first step in making ads blend in with your site is to match the ad’s text color to the text color of your site’s content. Likewise, match the link color of the ad to the link color of your site. In this way, your ads appear to be an extension of your content.
In addition to making ads look like your content, you can place ads in strategic points on your site to increase the odds of getting clicks. Placing ads “above the fold” is one very basic rule you should try to stick to unless you have a very strategic area at the bottom of your site. “Above the fold” means that ads appear towards the top of the page so that a user does not need to scroll down. If a user has to scroll down to see your ad, this is considered “below the fold”.
Other strategic ad placement includes near the top “X” where you close the page or to incorporate ads near your navigation. Again, our goal is to get clicks, so if an ad blends in with your content and appears near where users would click normally, this can lead to a higher click through ratio and more money in your pocket.
At the end of the day, blending your ads as much as possible will earn you more money, and hopefully help your users be directed to targeted resources.
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Earn Money by Blogging
Although there is a lot of money to be made in search marketing, blogging affords another great
opportunity to earn money. Blogging is great because it does not require as much time as a website, yet can still capitalize on all three of the advertising models.
Step #1 – Pick a Niche
The first step in becoming a profitable blogger is to determine a niche that you feel comfortable
blogging about. There are three ways you can go in regards to making a decision about the niche of your blog. One method would be to choose a topic you are very familiar with and maintain some type of expertise in. Obviously, it’s easy to write about what you know. Another method to choose a topic would be to pick a topic that has high paying keywords and offers. A final method you can use to pick a topic would be to create a blog based on what is popular. Using Google Trends, at trends.google.com, you can see some of the most popular searches in the Google search engine.
If you go with the first method, you most likely will not need much additional research, as you are an expert on the topic. With the other two methods, it is important that you perform indepth research.
Research is extremely important because you will not keep many readers coming back to your blog if your content is just BS – quality content is the key to generating profits from your blog.
What to write about?
As mentioned previously, content is the most important thing to being a successful blogger. Sumner Redstone, a media mogul, says that content is king in the entertainment industry.
Don’t think on a high level about a topic. Instead, take your niche and peel down to the deep questions people interested in that topic would care about. Controversial topics are always a good way to draw back visitors.
Step #2 – How to Get Readers
Bringing readers to your blog is done in much the same way as luring visitors to your website. Search Engine Optimization is the first and foremost thing you should keep on your mind.
Pick a domain name keeping your SEO tactics in mind. Once you have your domain, you will probably want to install a blog script. We recommend using WordPress. WordPress is easy to install and has a number of plugins to use later on as you become better and better at blogging.
Some bloggers attempt to make a small amount of money with a large number of blogs. The reason is that using advanced methods, such as content scrappers, you can automate blog posts across a number of different blogs. Instead, we suggest building up one blog to be a big money maker. The reason for this is that you will learn the whole process of being a profitable blogger by building up one strong, profitable blog. Once you learn all the concepts first hand, you can then experiment with creating many more blogs later.
Step #3 – Make Money
Once you start bringing in visitors to your blog, you will want to focus some of your effort on monetizing the traffic. You can do this by using a variety of advertising methods, including CPA, CPC, and CPM ad models. CPA offers are especially useful if you can find a tactful way to promote a product in one of your blog posts. CPC and CPM ads are good to use on the side of your blog to capitalize on the traffic you bring to your blog.
It’s all about building connections with your readers. If you can build a relationship of trust, readers will return again and again to read your blog. Additionally, trust makes it much easier to sell some of your CPA offers.
A final pinnacle to making money with blogging is to gain so much trust and respect that web site
owners ask you to review their website on your blog. Often, web site owners will pay enormous sums of money to bloggers for a few paragraphs reviewing their website. Keep to the basics – quality content and gain the respect and trust of those who read your blog, and you will see a large revenue stream through blogging.
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The Ultimate Quality Score Guide
Things sure have changed a lot over the years as far as AdWords search is concerned. Receiving a lot of exposure used to be a lot easier in the past than it is now, simply because there weren’t as many variables involved. Back in the day, if your CTR was high enough, you didn’t have to worry about anything else and were in a great position to milk the keyword(s) in question.
There’s a lot of money on the table, you need to understand that: Google remembered the fact that search represents an extremely important part of their business model and acted accordingly. If you’re interested in making a lot of money via AdWords Search, you need to start by understanding:
Why Changes Were Implemented
A lot of people who are new to the game ask themselves: why bother with all of this Quality Score nonsense? If you think about it for a moment though, the reasons are definitely logical.
Google makes money because people use the search engine on a daily basis. Why do they use the search engine? Because it helps them find answers, because it’s useful. The sponsored listings occupy a lot of each page’s “real estate”, so what would happen if the ads bring people to nothing but useless websites? Exactly, their user experience would end up being anything but pleasant and they would start considering alternatives.
As you can see, they would have been sacrificing long-term profits for short-term gains by not making Quality Score a part of the equation. They didn’t do it to make your life harder as an affiliate marketer, they did it so that the sponsored listings are relevant to each query.
Making Quality Score Work in Your Favor
The fact that the rules are stricter does not necessarily have to represent a disadvantage. Why not make quality score work in your favor? Always keep the following aspect in mind: Google wants your ad and website to be as relevant to each query as possible, so if you can make that happen or at least trick Google into thinking your ad and website are extremely relevant, the war is practically won.
It’s not as complicated as you think it is. First of all, there are things that you can implement right away (ad copy and page content). On the other hand, there are things which only show their effect in time (a great link profile). Let’s start by finding out how you should:
Play the Ad Copy and Page Content Game
In case you haven’t noticed by now, Google highlights each and every “exact match” instance of the keyword found in your ad copy. For example, if someone searches for “cheap cars” and you have “Find cheap cars now” in your ad copy, “cheap cars” will be highlighted. The result: a visual advantage which increases the chances of your ad getting noticed, the chances of you having an excellent CTR. There are also direct Quality Score benefits associated with using exact match keywords in your ad copy but they’re not as important as they used to be.
Google always crawls the destination page in order to make sure that it is relevant. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that keyword stuffing is a great idea. It might have been a couple of years ago but not anymore. Google has the technology necessary to “make connections” such as “cheap cars and inexpensive vehicles are terms which practically represent the same thing”, so keep it natural and you’ll be just fine. Alright, let’s move on and go:
Back to the SEO Drawing Board
If you want a great Quality Score, you have to “prove” that your website is relevant and you can do that via link building. In most cases, some basic SEO should be enough. If you have a decent number of links with relevant anchor text pointing to your website, you get the message across that you’re here to provide value to the person who searches on Google and will be rewarded with a good quality score.
At the end of the day, it’s a fine balancing act. Doing it right is a lot more complicated today but it’s definitely not impossible. You simply need to think about it from Google’s perspective as well as from the perspective of the people who perform the searches. If your ad is relevant and attractive enough to generate a high CTR, if the destination page is relevant and if it also has quality links pointing to it, you’re good to go.
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