Sundance

If you are blogging with the intention of making a few extra dollars or pounds on the side (or becoming a millionaire) the following tip will be worth bearing in mind.

If you are using Google Adsense to monetorize your blog then you might well have noticed that, unless your entire blog focusses on a single, narrowly defined, issue, that Google doesn't immediately post relevant ads.

Earlier I was trying to see if I could make the ping module work and I have to report that my experiments have been inconclusive.

I searched through weblogs.com massive database of recent pings but found no sign, and google blog searsh dfinitely didn't pick me up. In the end I manually pinged several servers using www.pingates.com, which I found to be excellent.

Immediately many servers spidered my site. Now, five or more hours later the post has turned up in google blog search. So, the next plan is to check if this post manages to get there just with drupals ping module alone.

Hi

My latest changes to the way I manage my sites has been very simple but effective. It is amazing how small tweaks to CSS and adsense can completely alter your click-through rate (CTR).

People tend to ask for the formula for successful ads. Of course there is none - the number of factors involved in each individual site (colour scheme, font, topic, ad position etc) are far too great. What is important is just to spend some time looking at your site. Open pages of your site and see where your eyes naturally land.

Hi,

I'm Tom. I have been working as a copywriter and Search Engine Optimizer for several years, and this blog is the sum of my experiences.

I started off designing my own site using basic html and Serif Webplus. Since then I have graduated through Dreamweaver to a point where I write my own code and incorporate server side includes, JavaScript, flash and PHP where necessary.