Now here’s some great news for hobby bloggers.

Karin, laid off from her job at a legal firm in New York, moved to St. Louis and started up a food blog writing about restaurant promotions for the area called, STL Meal Deals back in April.

She monetized the blog with Google Adsense and was earning approximately $1.30 per day from the ads. She reported those earnings (a whopping $100 check received 3 months after she started the blog) to the New York Department of Labor.

According to the NY DOL, if you work at least one day and receive compensation for that work, your benefits will be cut a minimum of 25%, and if that compensation exceeds you unemployment compensation, your benefits for the week will be cut to $0.00.

That’s what happened to Karin. Her benefits were cut completely on the grounds that she was “self-employed”, that her AdSense income was reportable and that she was in fact “working” every time she updated her blog.

Karin was smart. She called David Randall at Forbes and told him her story.

David got on the case and phoned the New York Department of Labor several times, then wrote about Karin’s plight on October 7th.

On October 15th, Karin posted a thank-you note on her blog, and adds:

Since the article was originally written, I have been informed that my benefits will, in fact, be reinstated! The final decision was that my blog was not a business and was not being run for profit but instead was being used to help build a portfolio that could be used to apply for jobs in non-legal careers. Since the income generated from the blog is not income generated from “work,” in their defined sense, the Adsense income does not need to be reported. If, however, I ever were to decide to conduct my blog as a business and accept money from restaurants in exchange for putting advertisements on my site, their opinion would change, and that money would have to be reported. Hopefully this explanation puts to rest anybody’s concerns about their own blog, and I haven’t deterred anybody.

That’s excellent news for Karin.

After looking around her blog however, I would hope that Karin would consider becoming a full-time blogger, i.e. moving off Blogger.com and taking paid advertising in addition to Google. She’s a great writer and there’s no reason she wouldn’t be able to match or exceed the $405 per week in unemployment benefits that she is currently receiving.

Go for it, Karin!

I’m terrible about checking my Google Adsense earnings. I occasionally login to confirm that the amount on the check equals the amount reported in the Google Adsense interface… occasionally.

So, when I logged in this morning to review the reports, I was surprised (and delighted) to notice that this month’s earnings are more than triple what my average Adsense earnings have been over the past year and more.

Granted, the checks were markedly larger in both June and July — but I likely put that down as a ‘fluke’, endorsed them and took them to the bank.

As it’s unlikely to get 3 times ‘lucky’, and traffic to the site has actually decreased slightly over the summer, today I determined the cause for the substantially larger checks…

Google Adsense for Feeds

If you visit my feed for this site, you will notice that Google Adsense ads are displayed after every post summary. (Note: if that’s not what you see – keep reading to learn the reason that’s changed.)

What is most apparent is that my clickthrough rate on Adsense for Feeds (across all channels) is considerably higher (2.87%) than the CTR on AdSense for Content (0.39%).

Too, the Page eCPM on Adsense for Feeds is likewise higher at an average of $16.48 (across all channels) than the eCPM on Adsense for Content which sits at an average of 2.36.

On some channels the eCPM ratio between feeds and content is 20:1.

So placing Google Adsense after every feed item is a great tactic if you want to increase your Google Adsense earnings.

But before you rush off to do so, ask yourself the following questions first — especially if you promote goods and services as an affiliate on your site.

• Is earning an extra $100, $200 or $1000 per month (as the case may be) from Google Adsense really worth the cost of diverting traffic away from my site?
• How much more could I earn if those ‘clicks away’ became site visitors who bought the products I promote.
• In other words, am I really willing to trade potential subscribers / buyers for pennies on the dollar?

How you answer those questions really depends on what stage your affiliate site is at.

If you are just starting out as an affiliate and haven’t yet joined too many affiliate programs, then monetizing with Adsense is a great choice.

However, if your site is fully developed — promotes a number of products, services and builds a subscriber list — then you might actually lose revenues with so many Google Adsense placements in your feeds.

On the other hand, even with a fully-developed site, placing Adsense after each post summary may amount to an increase in overall revenue.

Only you can determine what works best for your site, by checking your stats much more often than I do!

Do you place Adsense units in your feeds? Any comments on how frequency of placement has affected your revenue? Please share, we’d love to know!

Want to learn more about how to increase your Adsense earnings?

Check out Stephen Crooks’ Cash Cow Guide which includes his $100 a Day Adsense Challenge Report as a bonus. This was Stephen’s challenge to make $100 a day from adsense within 3 months from a brand new blog.

If you are a visual learner, you might prefer Michael Cheney’s Adsense Videos that show how he completely EXPLODED his Adsense earnings.

How long have we been in the business of affiliate marketing? A dozen years or more? Well you’d figure that merchants with affiliate programs – especially those affiliated with Commission Junction would know better than to place Google Adsense on their affiliate’s landing pages… see the screenshot below.

My advice?

Drop ‘em if you got ‘em!

Placing Google Adsense on your site is a strategy that will put money in your pockets even if your visitors don’t buy.

However, in the same way you need to be smart about choosing lucrative affiliate programs, you also want to do your homework when monetizing topics with Adsense. Here are some important tips…

I like Google Adsense. It contributes a nice little chunk of change to my income each and every month.

That said, I don’t and won’t follow the lead of those whose sites earn only through Google Adsense.

What happens when their Adsense accounts are shut down by Google? It does happen, and they’re left scrambling to replace lost income!

Don’t believe me?

Try clicking on your own site’s Google Adsense links once or twice and see how fast Google shuts down your Adsense account. (No, don’t really do that!)

Does it make sense to build an entire site around financial products to make a few bucks on Adsense clicks, when you can earn up to $40 for a completed credit card application?

Not to me, it doesn’t.

Use Adsense to Supplement – NOT Replace

I use Google Adsense to supplement my affiliate income, not replace it.

Basically, it comes down to value. Value for you, and value for your visitors.

Sites that monetize only with Adsense aren’t getting real value from their site’s real estate.

Too, it’s important to me that my visitors find information of value to them on my sites, and I do that by offering balanced product reviews and articles on the related topic.

If after reading my material, they’re not interested in the product offerings, then perhaps they’ll see an Adwords ad that captures their interest.

Placing Google Adsense on your site is a strategy that will put money in your pockets even if your visitors don’t buy.

However, in the same way you need to be smart about choosing lucrative affiliate programs, you also want to do your homework when monetizing topics with Adsense.

For example, I was recently re-reading some information about under-represented niche topics with huge markets.

Snake Oil

One of the topics suggested as a winner was ‘snakes‘.

I found that hard to believe, so I did my own research.

The term ‘snakes’ showed a predicted count of 4324 on Wordtracker and the keyword ‘snake’ racked up another 1938 searches, so yes, close to 200,000 search per month show a nice interest in ‘snakes’.

OK, but who’s your market? Kids looking for snake pictures for a school project? People who want to buy snakes? Someone who wants to visit Snake River?

What are you going to sell? Snakes? The game, ‘Snake’? A $10 book on which you make a 15% commission? A $60 poster from allposters.com on which you earn a 30% commission seemed to be the best bet, but how many people want to pay $60 for snake posters?

To me, that’s not enough interest or commission potential to build a site around ‘snakes’.

So, what about incorporating Adsense to boost potential profitability?

Well, search Google for ‘snakes’. See what comes up in the Google Adwords column?

NOTHING!

Look for Advertisers with Mega-Bucks

If you want to monetize with Adsense, you have to pick topics whose Adwords advertisers spend mega-bucks per click.

How do you figure out what those topics are?

Easy!

If you haven’t already done so, open up a Google Adwords account and create a new campaign. Add a list of keywords (one niche topic at a time), then click on ‘estimate traffic’. The resulting page will show you the average cost per click for each keyword.

Make note of the most expensive words in that list and optimize your pages for those phrases.

THAT’s how you’ll really profit with Google Adsense.

Warning! Warning! Warning!

Once you find a lucrative topic that is projected to cost you $36,987.57 per day, don’t forget to pause that campaign, or delete it altogether!

This massive ebook was completely revised and updated in 2011, and it contains all the latest strategies for making money with AdSense.

You will also receive lifetime access to the official member site which contains many bonuses. Including videos of Joel speaking on stage, webinars, tutorial videos and bonus reports.

It’s an incredible deal at a really low price.

Get the most popular AdSense ebook ever with of video bonuses.

On the ‘Inside Adsense‘ blog, Google writer Arlene Lee states “After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we’ve found that it hasn’t had the impact we had hoped for” and that they’ll be terminating the program at the end of April.

Or, in other words, the Adsense for Video program hadn’t made enough money for Google within the year it was running, so it gets the axe. Sounds about right — and I’d add that Google has a lot more patience than I, but they also have a lot more money to play with — mine included

The option to sign up for video units is no longer available to new publishers and if you currently display video units, Google recommends that you start removing the video unit code from your pages ASAP. Earnings from video units in the past will still be credited to your AdSense account until the end of April. At that time, any video units that remain on your sites will direct your visitors to YouTube – for which you won’t get paid.

If you currently use Google Adsense referals on your site, you should know that the code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. Unless you change or remove the referal code, a blank space will appear in their place.

Google is therefore encouraging publishers to replace all referral ad code on your sites with AdSense for content ad code prior to the last week of August – which you can get by choosing AdSense for content as the product (under the AdSense Setup tab in your Adsense account).

The other suggested alternative is to join the Google Affiliate Network (which is currently transitioning from the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network) and is specifically for advertisers specifically targeting users located in the United States.

So, don’t waste your ad space. Get those referal ads gone and replaced with money makers today!

On Wednesday, April 16th at 12 noon EST, Joel Comm made the long-awaited 4th edition of Google AdSense Secrets available for download.

Read by more people than any other AdSense book on the planet, it is widely considered ‘the bible’ of all things Adsense. Covering everything from AdSense optimization and case studies to ad tracking and other ways to monetize your site, this ebook has it ALL.

Now more than ever, AdSense Secrets is the definitive guide to generating passive income with Google’s AdSense program, and every website publisher is going to want to read it.

The third edition sold thousands of copies at $97, yet Joel is offering the latest massive 222-page edition of Google Adsense Secrets for FREE. Moreover, there are 4 fast-action bonuses and a 100% money-back guarantee… ergo, you risk nothing by picking this one up and potentially a whole lot to gain when you put Joel’s Adsense strategies and techniques into action!

Followup: Please read the caveat supplied by our good NPT Reader Jamie T. below, along with the other comments… good discussion!

In a comment on the Pepperjam Network Review: Real Change or Just Hype? post, J. Anthony asked the following question about PepperjamAds:

…does this [PepperjamAds] conflict with Google Adsense? Before I add these to my sites, I want to make sure it doesn’t get me kicked out of adsense…

I understand your concern, J., especially if you are already making good coin with Google Adsense. To answer your question, here are the guidelines for Competitive Ads and Services taken directly from the Google Adsense Policy page.

In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

Here is an example of a pepperjamAds block:

Just so my readers won’t mistake these for Google Adsense ads, I’ve changed the color of the Heading to a dark red.

Too, as you can see, the default Pepperjamads layout is distinguished by a thick, solid black line at the bottom and clearly marked with the word Pepperjam in the lower right hand corner. I’d recommend that you leave that as the default, unless you want to choose another color that makes it look entirely unlike your Google Adsense display.

I see that you are typically running 2 instances of Adsense on your pages (including the homepage… ugh!). What I suggest you might try – if you decide to try the Pepperjam widget – is to replace one of those instances with relevant Pepperjam merchants embedded in your PepperjamAds display and monitor the revenue from both closely.

Hope that helps!

I don’t know about you, but my Cash Parking Monthly updates from GoDaddy are always pretty meagre. So meagre in fact, that they’re laughable. In January, I made a whopping 53 cents from 10 parked domains and in February, the earnings were zilch.

If your revenue from parked domains is anything like mine, you might want to check out Chitika’s new parked domain solution which looks like a shopping site with product images. The pages include a listing of well known merchants and an easy-to-navigate category listing.

Here is an image of what the display looks like:

For more information about using Chitika’s updated ShopLinc product as a CPC revenue source for your parked domains, see their “A CPC store for your parked domains” post.

Chitika’s wide selection of ad units got just a little bigger a few days ago, when Chitika announced that it has released its Related Product Unit (RPU) to all its publishers.

The RPU is designed to work exclusively with blogs and news article sites and is a text link format that integrates right in to your content.

According to Chitika, Beta testers of the unit ‘experienced overall revenue increases and enjoyed it’s complete customization features‘. They also state that their publishers ‘love this ad unit because it doesn’t “look” like an ad‘.

You decide. Check out the example at the bottom of this post. Shown is the standard related product unit. Title, text, background and font colors can be customized to match the look and feel of your site. You can also remove the bullets and add channel tracking or an alternate URL.

Chitika ad units include eMiniMalls (as well as one specifically for Facebook), ShopCloud$, Owna, ShopLinc-Linx and now the RPU code.

If you are not yet a Chitika publisher, you can sign up with Chitika to access their interactive CPC ad units.

[tags]chitika, blog, ad, unit, CPC[/tags]