Adding Adsense to your blog hosted on Blogger.com is easy. Even if you host the blog on a domain that you own, this will still apply.

First, log in to your Adsense account and copy the code provided.

The following ad formats are the best ones that will fit nicely into the sidebar:

Button (125×125)
Skyscraper (120×600)
Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600)
Vertical Banner (120 x 240)
Small Rectangle (180×150)

Next log in to your Blogger account. Go to ‘Change Settings’ and select the ‘Templates’ tab.

Look for this…

<!-- Begin #sidebar -->
<div id="sidebar"><div id="sidebar2">

… and paste your Adsense code below those lines. Make sure you click on preview to see what the resulting page looks like and then save it.

That’s it. You’re done.

You can also add Adsense to the post section. Look for

 <!-- Blog Posts >

and paste the Adsense code in that section.

Don’t worry if you have more than 3 posts per page. Only a maximum of 3 Adsense blocks will be shown as per Google’s terms of service.

Popularity: 7% [?]

With some taste of success with Adsense, many people are thinking about quitting their day job to become full time online publishers or professional bloggers. There is an interesting article on Search Engine Journal regarding this issue.

No doubt many have considered it but before you take the plunge, it’ll be wise to consider what your other income streams are should your Adsense earnings dry up. If you’re relying heavily on natural search engine traffic, you could take a big hit if the search engine algorithms change and your site drops off the index.

First make sure that you have a steady and growing traffic to your website. You can do this by getting relevant links from other websites to your site. You should also provide good content that people would want to read. You have to give a reason for your visitors to come back to your site. It’s harder to get repeat visitors than it is to get the occassional surfer to your site.

Here’s another idea - write a newsletter. Maintain a relationship with your site’s readers. This is hard work but pays off in the long term.

In short, think about traffic, content, and traffic. Oh did I mention traffic?

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you plan on applying for Google Adsense so that you can make money through showing Google Ads on your blog, I would suggest that you first get your own domain name.

You can start a blog and host it for free on a service such as Blogger but you won’t be able to apply to Google’s Adsense program unless you have your own domain name.

If you’re just starting out, go to Blogger.com and open up an account for yourself. Familiarize yoruself with all the features that Blogger has to offer.

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to do some research before you register your domain name. Personally I use GoDaddy.com which is very cost effective. Dot coms are only $8.95 per year.

Think about the topic that you would like to blog on. It’s easier if it’s something that you’re familiar with or have an interest in. If you’re not interested in the subject, it’ll get tedious since you should be posting to your blog everyday. That will make sure that the search engine robots will come by and index your site whenever you have fresh content. More on that later.

For now, do some research using the Overture keyword tool. There is also this site that shows you both the Overture bid amounts and search volume side by side.

You’ll want to find keywords that get a good amount of searches and reasonable bids. Here we’ll use Overture as a guideline for how much advertisers are bidding on Google. Try to scan the 3rd or 4th place bids. This will give you a rough idea of the value of the keyword. I like to with keywords that have at least a few thousand searches. It may not be a single keyword that gets that search volume but sometimes you have a family of related keywords, each with smaller search volumes but the total is quite large.

Okay, back to registering the domain name. If the domain name is available as a .com, go for it. Personally, I like .info as well.

With GoDaddy, you can either pay by any major credit card or using PayPal. Once you register your domain, you’ll want to get a webhost to host the domain on.

Okay… so the two things that you need to get your own website are:
1. Domain name
2. Webhost

If you’re looking for a good webhost, I recommend NewWebSite which is a great deal at $9.99 with unlimited bandwidth. They use Cpanel for site administration which is very easy to use.

Popularity: 7% [?]

This is an interesting article says the average Paid Search bids rose 9% in March to $1.75 per click. That’s good news for contextual ad publishers, i.e. those publishing Adsense on their websites. This means that if you’re in the right markets, you should see your revenues going up (all other factors being equal such as traffic to your site).

The article includes a table of average click prices from Sept. 04 to March 05 listing a few major markets. The finance/mortgage arena is by far the most lucrative with average bids now at $5.39. The second and third places are for the finance/investing and telecommunications/broadband markets at $1.86 and $1.85, respectively.

Read the full article here

Popularity: 6% [?]