The title says it all - add Adwords credits as a payment option for Adsense simply to keep more of our money.  Currently, many people (myself included) have Adsense on our websites but buy ads on Adwords so why not make things simple for everyone by having Adwords credits as reward for our Adsense dollars?

What’s In It for Google

For Google to decide doing this, there must be a reason for action. Here are a couple reasons for Google to think about:

Creates a Higher Demand for Ads
Once it becomes an option, more people will be willing to try this form of advertising which is only a good thing for Google. On top of that, people like me who already advertises with Google will probably be more encouraged to use it since the credits are already in our Adwords account!

Higher Ad Prices
One side benefit of having more demand is that each ad will naturally have a higher ad price! More ads with each ad having a higher price, isn’t this Google’s dream?

Keep Money From Leaving Google
Are there any other stronger reason? If I transfer $500 worth of credits from my Adsense account to Adwords, Google is guaranteed that they won’t have to pay me $500!

What’s In It for Us

Why am I pushing this? Here’s why:

Tax
Google’s legal department can probably come up with a workaround so the US folks don’t have to pay taxes for the Adwords credits they earn, so there will be some benefit for those that are US residents.  Sure, when we buy an ad, we can deduct the taxes right back but our tax accountant really doesn’t care too much about the extra paperwork, especially when there are 100 Adwords payments to deal with whenever she gets our expenses history.

Freedom
I want more freedom and having choices give us that. Whether many people will adopt this or not remains to be seen but the more control we have, the better!

Incentives
Since it makes so much sense for Google, I’m hoping that they will give an incentive for Adsense publishers that adopt this payment method. This could be an added bonus, gift, or something else which will benefit us.

It Would Be Cool
Not all reasons are for everyone. If Google actually adds this because of my post, wouldn’t it be cool?

One of the difference between an average blogger just starting out and another who has set blogs up numerous times is the amount of content they have starting out.

When most bloggers first start out, they install wordpress and immediately try to promote it.  They want everyone to know about their blog as they are all excited about this whole concept and start emailing other bloggers in their niche, telling them to check the blog out.  They ask for links, they tell everyone the URL of their blog but they don’t realize that the blog doesn’t even have that much content!

With like 3 posts, what impression does that give an establish blogger? What did you expect readers to feel when they go to your blog and see an empty blog?

Compare this with an established blogger who launches a blog with 50 posts.  Although the blog might be brand new, it will immediately bring value for the visitor once they decide to click pass the first page. Whether it’s the about page, the interaction of the poll or other pillar articles, a blog with established content can potentially capture visitors into readers from day one.

There’s also the reputation and brand to consider.  If we were to build a brand based on a blog, it wouldn’t be good to have people associate the brand with an empty blog.  We want the brand to be associated with something successful and positive, and a brand new blog with 3 posts absolutely doesn’t relate to anything positive.

If you are going to start a blog (or another one from scratch), seriously consider writing a bunch of articles first before making it public.

Q: This is all great but how do you have established content on the blog without it going public?

A: There are many ways to do this with Wordpress.  Stay tuned for the next article.

Whether it’s getting on the front page of Digg, receiving a bunch of thumbs up on Stumbleupon or getting a sudden blessing from Google, we’ve all grown addicted to that sudden surge in traffic.  It’s addicting, it’s exciting and it’s something we just want more of.

A reader asked me about social media and Google the other day, so let’s talk about these two today.

Social Media
Since readers will seldom be the first to submit an article into the social media networks, those who are just starting out might need to submit their own articles in hopes that it will get picked up by the main stream as people continue to vote up the post.

Something I’ve found is that the person who submits the article can be the difference between front page stardom and zero traffic boredom. In order for your content to be successful in social media networks, heavy participation is very important. This means submitting articles from other sites that interest you, commenting on the posts within the social media sites, adding friends to your network and in general embracing all activities within the network.

Once you participate, your articles will have a much better chance of gaining that traffic love you were seeking.

Google
It is possible to gain a huge surge in Google traffic. The advantage of this is that unlike front page Digg traffic that lasts 1-2 days, the Google surge can last months. The trick is to write about news that is related to your blog that is very hot with lots of new sudden searches. Since no one else has articles written around those keywords, there is a much better chance that your article will gain traction.

As an example, my friend wrote an article on the economic stimulus check when the United States government was handing them out, and instead of getting 500 visitors a day, his traffic jumped to getting 250,000 unique visitors a month. (As of this writing, he is still enjoying 150,000+ visitors a month after a few months)

Side Note: Although Google webmaster tool is supposed to tell you when the Google bots last crawled your site, I find that the date is wrong. Whenever I write a time sensitive post, Google always seems to be able to find it right away while checking the webmaster tools will often give you a day that’s a day (or more) old.

As we continue down the path of our blogging journey, we will have the chance to meet many other bloggers that share similar interests. Whether it’s a blogger asking for a link exchange, someone emailing you to blog about his/her killer article or a commentator leaving you an interesting and insightful comment, these are opportunities for us to interact with them.

Most people tend to ignore many of the comments and emails that come through as they convince themselves that there is no time to respond, but not taking advantage of these events is a big mistake!

The reason is simple - referral traffic! When you start chatting with other bloggers, they will slowly become familiar to your blog and brand. This reminds them to come visit your blog and sooner or later, they will start visiting your blog on a regular basis and link to your articles. These links are the best ways of obtaining traffic because:

1. They are targeted
2. They are permanent
3. They are free

The power of referral traffic can best be explained with an example so take a look at the Google Analytics screen shot of MoneyNing.com during the last month.

If you look closely, I received a little over 10,000 visitors during the last 30 days from other sites around the world.  This is a decent number but what’s more important is the statistics of these visitors.

1. Average Time on Site - A quick look shows us that each visitor from referral traffic on average spends 1 minute and 44 seconds on my site.  This is 28 seconds more than the site average!  When a visitor spends more time reading, they are more likely to subscribe to the blog, comment on the article and become a long term reader!
2. Bounce Rate - Out of everyone that comes to my site from other pages, only 57.24% (compared with 73.16% for all traffic) leaves without going to another page.  If a visitor clicks on another page, it probably means that they find your site interesting!
3. Pages per Visit - We know that the more pages a person visitrs, the more engaged they are with our site.  Referral traffic during the last month was 1.82 pages per visitor vs 1.58 pages per visitor on average!

As it clearly shows in the example above, referral traffic is one of the better traffic source for our blogs!  So if increasing traffic is one of your priorities, I suggest taking every chance you have to network with fellow bloggers.  As you get to know people, they will help promote your brand for you!

Readers ask me all the time about ways to increase traffic.  They see the success of a few of my sites and they believe that there is some secret to getting traffic that I’m not sharing.  They want to know what I do to rank high on keywords within Google, whether I pay for advertising and how much time I spent marketing my blog.

To those readers, I often tell them that the secret to traffic building is time.  There are many things you can do to increase traffic, but all of those things take time to build.  Sure you can write a killer article that gets to the front page of digg and end up receiving few thousand uniques a day for a while, but that traffic is short lived and not sustainable.

In order to increase traffic for the long term, we should look at how people come to our site: direct traffic, referral traffic and search traffic.

Direct Traffic
This category consist of readers that regularly come to your blog, the ones that regularly comment on your post, people who you know and generally everyone that remembers your brand.  It could be someone typing in your domain name in the address bar, the ones that have bookmarked your site or even those that have your page as their homepage.

In order to increase this type of traffic, it requires quality content that people value and creative branding to help readers remember you.  At first, a casual reader might read a good article from your blog and not come back, but if he/she comes across your blog and reads articles on your blog again and again, that person will become a subscriber and keep coming back for more.

Referral Traffic
These type of traffic is the best and often the most satisfying to receive.  Having other bloggers link to your posts is like others telling you that your article is one that they believe their readers will find interesting.  Links on other sites will also helps you reach new readers because it spreads the word of your brand out to different people.

Unless you are very famous or you have major advertising budget, you won’t get much referral traffic at the beginning as it takes time for other bloggers to remember coming to your site.  It takes time to build your network and it takes even more time for people to link to your articles.

The key is not lose patience in the beginning and keep writing good articles. Eventually, others will notice your great articles and links will flow to your blog.

Search Traffic
This is the area that everyone seems to spend the most time optimizing when time is actually the best optimizer.  Since a search engine’s existence is to bring qualified pages to a search term, blog content eventually will rank high because we write blog content day in and day out on one particular subject.

Search engine’s ranking are complicated but it is somewhat based on:

1. Other sources of traffic
2. Number of links to that particular blog and article
3. How long those links existed
4. How long the blog has been in existence within the search engine

Most of the factors affecting keyword rankings like the ones mentioned above are directly or indirectly time dependent.  There is no way to gain an incredible amount of inbound links naturally in a short amount of time (search engine’s actually flag your site if it happens), and unless you can manually manipulate the search engine’s ranking formula, there is no way to increase the time those links or your blog has been in existence.

Final Thoughts
You will always see some sites having a ton of visitors from day one, but if you are just starting out and don’t have the means of those people (connections, budget etc), you need to keep writing quality content. Instead of being impatient, have confidence that people will take notice the great content that you are writing.  As they often say “If you build it, they will come”.

When it comes to your blog, branding should be of the highest priority.  Potential clients always have options, as there are many alternatives in the marketplace today.  If you make money by selling advertisements, your brand will help attract advertisers.  If you sell services, then your brand will help you qualify and generate leads.

Even if making money is not in the plans for your blog, building a brand will help bring in more traffic and readership! Therefore, it is important to start focusing on building your brand. If you never thought about this, the time to start is now.

Get Started

Here are a few pointers to help lead you in the right direction.

State the Facts
As a blog, the articles we write form the foundation in which our brand is based on. It is crucial that we state the facts and not guess.  Readers will quickly spot the bloggers who know the facts versus the ones that just type without reference.

Show Consistency
Eventually, there will be readers who follow your blog.  Show integrity and consistency by continually giving messages that don’t conflict with each other.  If the writing and mindset changes from article to article, it is impossible for people to build trust.

Be Unique
Be it the blog design, advices written or delivery method, there should be a level of uniqueness in your blog.  As I said earlier, there are alternatives out there.  Don’t just aim to be a “me too” blog.

Better to be Interesting to Some than Mediocre to Everyone
In order for people to come back, there should be a reason to come back. Don’t try to tailor to everyone because it is impossible. Instead, make sure that there are people who will love your blog so you can capture those readers. Give people a reason to come back, even if it’s at the expense of some others.

Be Coherent
At the end of the day, it is a blog you are writing on. Although you don’t need to be an English major, your readers will need to be able to understand your writing. Once you are done writing the article. At least read it over once to make sure it is understandable by someone other than you.

It is also not a bad idea to ask someone else to read your article and then tell you what the article is about. This will give you insight into how someone else perceives your article for you to make changes if necessary.

Be Yourself
Not that it is impossible, but it is too hard to pretend to be someone else. Your articles should reflect your true feelings and beliefs in topics you write about.

One Last Thing to Note

Be patient with brand building as it is a long (in fact never ending) journey. Keep the above points in mind and your brand will be developed, traffic will come and money will be made.