Cornymans Money-Blog

Friday, March 26, 2010

Google Adsense: How to make money off their ads!

Most of the bloggers know already that you can monetize your blog in one easy step by using Google Adsense ad service. You simply register one (or more of your) blog(s) and wait some days until Google Adsense accepts your blog to publish their ads or if they (temporarily) reject it until your blog's content is within their terms of service.

After you get the approval e-mail from Google, you can start using their Adsense ads on your blogs and websites. Adsense uses Keyword sensitive ads which means Google tries to publish ads which fit to your actual blog posts or your overall blog topic. The ads which Google Adsense serves on our blogs and websites are coming from other blog & website owners, from famous brands who promote their new products / contests or from affiliate programs.

As you build up your blog posts week by week, you'll notice that there are often the same Google Adsense ads displayed when you visit your own blog. This happens because your content is relevant to their keywords which they are using in their Google Adwords campaign. Most of these ads will show you an URL to their real website (when you use the sky scraper or banner ads - the URL won't be displayed if you use only the Text link ads). On my blog there have been a lot of "Grab a free report", "sign up for my list", "new advertising program", 50 Ways to make money online! ads which include an affiliate program.

If you use now these kind of ads not only by displaying them in your Adsense ads but by choosing to join their affiliate programs (and make money off Google Adsense ads) you could make not just a few cents for the click - you could make between 2 - 50 $ (between 10% and 75% of the product price) in case the visitor who clicks your affiliate link, joins the program and buys the book or the service. Every blogger will have other ads like Mommy blogger might have the ones for baby cloths for which several companies offer partner programs with a certain percentage of the sales price as a commission or the Amazon Associate program which you can use easily inside your own blog posts when you write about certain products which are distributed by Amazon!

Most important factor to remember with affiliate links is NOT to cluster your whole sidebars with different ad banners and text link ads as they won't be always relevant to your actual blog posts. Instead you could use your affiliate banners selectively in relevant blog posts as a picture on the left/right of your blog post, between or at the end of your blog post.

You should only put certain affiliate links in your sidebars which are always useful for your visitors to see. Put other affiliate links at the bottom of your sidebars, in this case new visitors who are interested in your posts and read more than the recent one still can notice some of your affiliate links and will make you money but not annoy your regular visitors!

What's your experience with Google Adsense (earnings, success, ban, payout)?

Which experience can you share about affiliate programs, earnings and your success with them?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Stock market: These trading strategies are essential for your success!

Image by Ahmad Nawawi via Flickr

The stock market is a powerful way to increase your wealth. With many different strategies out there which people can use to take full advantage of it, it will be your choice to look for the best match. Here are five major trading strategies in which every trader can find its place.

1. Buy and Hold

Most people preach the buy and hold strategy because it is simple, passive and most people can do it without much effort. How long does it really take to buy a couple of mutual funds or ETFs and forget about it after all? Because stocks historically go up over the long term this can be a relatively safe way of investing (Example: Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway).

2. Following the Trend

Another strategy which is similar to buy and hold which can be much more powerful is following trends. This strategy involves buying stocks that are trending up and holding onto them until they are no longer going up. This way you can get into stocks that are making the big moves and get out of them as they start to pullback or trend sideways. Most traders use a tight stop-loss of 5% or 10% under the actual stock prices to secure recent gains. It may sound simple, but sometimes simplicity works.

3. Short Term Swing Trading

Swing trading is the process of using technical indicators (charts, 200 day average price lines) to give traders buy and sell signals for a short term trade. The idea is to constantly monitor your positions, cutting your looser earlier and letting your winners move up in order to maximize your gains over the long term. Any trade with a profit target, a stop loss and hold longer than one day is basically a swing trade.

4. Options

If you want to leverage your gains in the stock market, traders are using options. A 10% move in the price of a stock could mean a 100% move or more in the price of an option. While option trading is very powerful and you can gain quick money even with a small bet it isn't something to start off with. The best traders only consider option trading after they have already mastered short term trading as it is a risky investment when the market suddenly change in the other direction!

5. Short Term Day Trading

Day trading has been given a bad name by professional buy and hold trader, but the truth is it can be very profitable. It even gives the stock market the fuel to trade stocks. Without day trading there wouldn't be much to report from the stock market. Any trade that was bought and sold before the end of the trading day is considered to be a day trade. Day traders may have their ups and downs, but overall they can be very profitable.

Each strategy offers traders something different. Buying and holding is better for passive investors who can't follow the daily swings and news. Day trading is better for traders who have the time and willingness to play a very active role in their investing. Risk-oriented persons will like the power of option trading which occasionally needs really strong nerves.

Learning the different strategies and experimenting with it can certainly be worthwhile and might help you in recognizing which strategy fits you the best. One way to learn it without losing money would be taking part in virtual stock market games, some offer even weekly/monthly prizes for the best performance of your "play" account!

Do you trade stocks, funds or options?

Which kind of trader are you, risky or conservative?

Which experience did you make with these/your trading strategies?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

New Template and other changes on Cornymans Money-Blog!

Image via Wikipedia

The time has come that changes being made on my blog and that the focus gets back to the origin of this blog like i wrote way back in November 2008 in my first blog post.

To summarize it - it will be less about making the quick buck, it's much more about the practical advice

- how to invest your money,
- how to save your money,
- how to secure your finances and
- how to earn online some additional funds part-time or full-time with your blog, online or offline.

NEW TEMPLATE DESIGNER FROM BLOGGER

Changing my template was the first step because the first Blogger template was not optimized for long articles (the articles looked always much longer *lol*).
It was an easy step, it just took me around 1 hour because Google has decided to offer now a Template Designer inside of Blogger! When you look into the choices which Blogger's Template Designer offers, you will see that in the coming days and weeks most of the blogs will look more professional and get a touch of high quality look :)

You can access the new Template Designer from Blogger ONLY in their Blogger in draft section. Simply login in like you do usually and click on Layout. There you will see the new link (last link) for the Template Designer.

And this time the Layout is no more static, everything can be changed with one mouse click!

It's a good start with 15 available Templates and Google announced that more will be added in the coming weeks

Blogger Template Designer - Choice of Templates

You can rearrange the width any column sidebars to the exact pixel,
You can make your template with 1, 2 or 3 columns,
You can choose how many columns your footer shall have,

Blogger Template Designer - Layout choices

You can change the color themes
You have the choice of 100s of background pictures

Blogger's Template Designer - Background images

Blogger Template Designer - Background images

The best feature is you don't have to wait to watch out for the result. A preview of the changes is immediately visible as soon as choose one of the templates + background pictures + by customizing the columns. It will be only used for your blog when you click on the Apply Template-Button.

That means you can mess around with Blogger's Template Designer for hours and rearrange your widgets/gadgets, play with the color themes and so on, nothing will happen to your actual template (it's always better to download a backup of your template, just in case!)

I will be playing some more hours in the coming days with Blogger's Template Designer and for sure rearrange some items until i'm satisfied.

I hope some of you could give me additional advice:

-what doesn't appeal you on the template and what does appeal you-

-Can you read everything or are there some issues with different browsers-

Saturday, March 6, 2010

TOP 3 Online money making Scams

Image by Don Hankins via Flickr

Are you in need to raise a lot of money in a short time? Are you jobless and look desperately for a job? And you would like to do anything as long as you can see money flowing into your wallet?

These are mostly the questions several online money making websites asking YOU! They greet you into the world of making money online the easy and fast way! It sounds so perfect and it seems to allow you to enjoy much more time together with family & friends or even earn so much money that you can fulfill all your dreams within several days or weeks.

Doesn't this sound incredible? Too good to be true?

The truth is making money online does work.

But if it is would be that simple like just purchasing an affiliate marketing ebook or registering for the get-fast-rich schemes, how many persons around you who use the Internet already for several years would be already retired or wealthy?

If you really want to succeed on the Internet, you have to work for your own success by doing Internet marketing.

The truth hurts often, but it's the truth. You have to put in several hours daily / weekly into your Internet marketing efforts otherwise you will never make any money online.

On the other hand, if you are already giving up on Internet marketing and think that it's only a big hype, then you are also extremely wrong.

The fact is, I can show you the top 3 Online money making Scams and how untrue they are.

Online money making Scam - You can make 6 to 7 figures overnight (with payment proofs of Clickbank / Adsense / Paypal account screenshots).

One of the biggest, fattest lies! It is simply a sales pitch to bait newcomers and desperately hopeless (jobless or low-income) visitors to purchase products. Most of them will do just anything and buy everything to get their hands on more real fast 'money'. More often than not, these buyers end up losing both - their own money and their time (and deleting the spam mails which you'll get as you're on their mailing list).
Online money making Scam - Everything you need to know about succeeding on the Internet is available in OUR product

Sounds true when you read additionally the fake testimonials from recent buyers of the product but it's just a popular selling pitch to attract these desperate people mentioned already in the first Online money making Scam. Don't we know that such a product is not existent. Otherwise there would be already millions of millionaires working on the Internet. The truth is, there is no perfect product. Each product has its values that you see or buy online, but please do not allow the sales pitch to lead you to where the gurus want you to be.
Online money making Scam - Everything is automated and no effort is required.

Believe me that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Honestly, if it is as easy as it sounds, why would anyone want to own a day job instead of having money made online 'magically'?
And in case you would own this "system", would you REALLY sell it for JUST $97? Please think twice before you click that "Buy me now"-Button!

What are your experiences with online money making scams?
Do you know of other online money making scams which are easily to detect?
Did you buy one of these get-rich-quick ebooks, programs or participated in paid affiliate websites? Have they been useful or was it a waste of money?