Building an AdSense Business With Free Blogs

I feel like it's about time that I paid back to the communityfor all of the knowledge and help that I received along the way.Hopefully this post will help you get started in the AdSensebusiness even if you have little or no money to spare butdesperately want to try your hand at it.Normally Google won't approve AdSense applications for freewebsites, but there is one exception. So if you're short on cashfor hosting and are eager to get started, you might give this atry.Blogger.com BlogsNot long after Google bought Blogger.com, they made AdSenseavailable to Blogger blog owners. Blogger is great because ithas an easy interface, Google and Yahoo crawl the blogs quickly,and best of all if you're broke--they're free, and Google lovesto give out AdSense accounts to Blogger owners. :)So if you're looking to get started with AdSense and not spendmuch money, Blogger is a great way to get started.Before I talk about how to setup a Blogger blog for AdSense,though, let me tell you what an RSS feed is and how it works. Ifyou already know this you can skip ahead. I make reference tothis in the setup instructions, so it's important to understand.An RSS feed (as it applies to a blog) is basically a list of allof the recent posts made to your blog. People can use "RSSAggregators" (software that continually checks up on your RSSfeed to see if there's anything new) to keep up with new postson your blog. Websites will also want to publish your RSS feedon their sites if your content is good. This gives them freshcontent for their visitors. And we all know that content is Kingin the world of website building.Blogger blogs come with an RSS feed built-in, and you can usethis to your advantage to generate traffic to your blog. I'lldiscuss that in a bit, but first let's get into building theblog.Create Your Blogger.com AccountDetermine Your Blog Topic FirstBefore you create the blog, you need to figure out what topicthe blog will focus on. Think about your skills or hobbies thatyou're really good at. You might not be a mechanic, but ifyou're really good at working on cars on the weekend, and youlove to do it, that would make a great blog topic. Brainstormyour skills and interests to determine what you would enjoywriting about. It's important that you like to write about it,since you will have to do so to build up the blog!I will say this: If you have some knowledge on a commercial orindustrial topic, this will usually get higher paying AdSenseads. But a hobby blog can do very well also (I know this fromexperience!).Create the BlogOnce you have a topic chosen, it only takes about 5 minutes tosetup a blog. From the Blogger homepage click the "Create YourBlog Now" link and follow the blog wizard instructions. I won'tget into detail about them because it's pretty straight-forward,but there are a few points I want to make.First of all, when you choose your blog URL, make sure that theURL contains the keywords for your topic. For example, if you'recreating a blog about health insurance,"healthinsurance.blogspot.com" is ideal, or "health-insurance"or even "health-insurance-blog" or "health-insurance-12345".Just make sure that your keywords are in the URL, that will helpyou be found when people search for your keywords in the searchengines.Also, be sure to pick one of the professional looking templates.I suggest you just pick the plain-white one that is first in thelist of templates when you're creating the blog. Once the blogis created, then click on the "Templates" tab and select one ofthe nicer ones shown there. I'm not sure why Blogger doesn'tshow you all of the available templates in the blog setupwizard, but they don't.The Settings Tab.A discussion of the important points of each settings tab isoutlined below.BasicOn the "Basic" settings tab, set your blog title to the keywordsyou want to show up for in the search engines. That will helpyou get ranked.Give a good, detailed description about the benefits of readingyour blog daily. You want to get people to add your RSS feed totheir aggregators and websites so you can get traffic, and thiswill help.Answer "Yes" to the question "Add your Blog to our listings?".This will have your blog appear on the main page of Blogger whenyou make new posts (albeit for a brief period of time), andallow people to search and find your blog using Blogger's searchtool.One other, lesser known detail about setting that question to"Yes" is that if you set it to "No" Blogger will shove"nofollow/noindex" meta-tags into your blog template header,which will prevent your site from getting crawled or indexed. Ibelieve this was done to fight what Blogger called "spam blogs".PublishingSet the "Notify Weblogs" setting to "Yes". This will send anotification to Weblogs every time you make a new post. Weblogsis a site that lets people (and search engine crawlers) knowwhen new content appears on a blog. You want the crawlers (andvisitors) to hit your pages when you add new content, so be surethis is set to Yes.FormattingYou can do what you want on this tab-I personally set the numberof posts on the main page to between three and five.CommentsAllow comments unless your blog topic is really controversialand you're likely to get a lot of flaming (people lashing out atyou for what you have to say). Allowing comments is good becauseit gives more food to the search engines and keeps your blogupdating and fresh even when you're not posting to it.I usually let anyone comment, and don't limit it.Don't show the comments in a pop-up window, because that willprevent the crawlers from being able to get to the content sinceit's javascript-based.If you're concerned that people might flame you, but you want toallow comments, enable comment moderation so that you have toapprove each comment that is added before it goes live.If you want to be notified when a comment is made, set theComment Notification Address to your email address.ArchivingSet your archiving to daily if you post every day, or weekly ifyou only post every few days. If you post every day daily is thebest way to go, because it gives the search engines more uniquepages to crawl and index. More unique content means more trafficto your blog and more clicks on your AdSense ads (I'll get toadding your AdSense to the template in a bit).If you don't do a daily archive (and maybe even if you do),enable post pages so that each post will still have its ownunique page even if multiple posts appear on the same archivepage. Having multiple posts on one archive page is not a badthing if you have post pages enabled, since the posts tied alltogether make for yet another unique page on the blog.Site FeedDefinitely enable the site feed. If your posts tend to be veryshort, you might enable full descriptions. But if you have longposts (which I recommend), do not enable the full feed, use theshort feed. Here's why:If you put the full post in your RSS feed, then the personreading the feed doesn't have a reason to go back to your blogsince they have already read the full post. No visitors to theblog means no clicks on your ads. AdSense has an "AdSense ForFeeds" in beta testing, but it's not open to all publishers yet,so at least for now you need to induce people to visit the blog.If they can only read part of the blog post, then if they wantthe whole story they will need to go to your blog. You can planfor this by making sure that your title and the first 255characters (about the first 50 words) really pull in thereader's attention. You need to use those first 50 words to makethem just have to read the rest.Also, if your RSS feed appears on websites, you don't want togive away the farm by showing the whole post. You're lettingwebsites use your feed so you can get clicks on the posts inthat feed and get visitors to your site to build AdSense revenue.So set the "Descriptions" to Short, write long posts and makethe title and the first 50 words count.The Templates TabIf you haven't already picked a nice template from the list,click on the "Pick New" link under the templates tab and selectone of the templates that you like and that fits your topic.If you don't already have an AdSense account, you can click onthe "AdSense" link and apply for one straight from the bloginstead of having to go to Google.com to apply. That's how badlyGoogle wants Blogger blog owners to use AdSense on their blogs!:)Once you've done that, it's time to paste your AdSense code intoyour template. Click on the "Edit Current" link if you're notalready there.There are two methods of setting up your template. You willgenerate the most clicks by doing the following:1) Find the section of the template that looks like this:2) Paste your AdSense code for a 336x280 large rectangledirectly after the second tag. Be sure to format the colors of the AdSense to blend inwith the background of your blog for maximum resultsIf they agree to exchange links, make sure that you have themlink to your site using the keywords that you want to rank for.For example, if you want your blog to rank well for "Home MadeWidgets", be sure to have them use the link text "Home MadeWidgets".You can manually insert the webmaster's link and descriptiontext into your blog by modifying your template. I try to put itin the left or right hand column just below the archive links.To do this, modify your template and look for this code: And finally, below the links, add this:Every time you make a new link exchange with a webmaster, justgo in and repeat the code with the new link and description just above the tag.The more competitive your blog topic is, the more links you willneed to get to rank well. But if your posts are informative,witty and humorous where appropriate, word will soon spreadabout your blog and your traffic will grow as people link to youwithout you even asking for a link. Growth in traffic meansgrowth in AdSense revenue.Concluding CommentsI hope this tutorial will help some of you who are on arestricted budget and just getting started with AdSense to startmaking some money by creating quality blogs at Blogger.It takes some time and effort to make good informative posts,but once you have learned to create one successful blog you canrepeat the process and create another, and another, until youachieve enough success to start putting up your blogs at yourown domain name instead of "yourblog.blogger.com". Blogger letsyou do that, too, but that's a subject for another post. :)Here's to your success!Generate additional revenue from your site. Display ads relatedto the content on your site. You'll earn revenue from qualifiedclicks: http://publisher.yahoo.com