Google Wave

Google Wave, A latest buzz to hit the Web world claiming to be the future of all Web conversations.

What does it do?

Google Wave is a multifaceted platform integrating E-mail, IM – Instant Messaging, Collaboration, Google Maps, Wiki, Online documents, Online games, Video Conferencing and Search; enabling the Web user to handle communication much more effectively.

What is the purpose?

Lars Rasmussen, Google Wave’s engineering Manager said “Wave is an attempt at redefining communication over the internet”. I’m not very sure what that exactly means but am sure this new Wave must have shaken up other competitors. The preferred browser for Google Wave seem to be Chrome, Firefox and Apple’s Safari.  Google Wave is product as well as an Open source platform for building new Apps.

How does it do?

In Wave, one creates a wave and adds people to it. Everyone on a wave can add richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and online feeds to respond to and edit the wave on real time. It’s instant and one can see what others are typing in a wave. A user can also use ‘playback’ to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

When can I use it?

As of now Google Wave is sent out only to a select 1,00,000 invites for a limited preview.

This is the most important task while deciding to start a website focused on making money using Google Adsense program.

I have observed many people write about their personal experiences and day to day activities on their blog and then put up Google Ads alongside their post and expect good earnings through them. I can understand that you do this if you are a certain celebrity and have thousands of fans across the globe fascinated to know what you are up to. But the fact is that our personal blog only attract our friends and colleagues and does not cater to a mass population.

The real trick of making money using Google Adsense is to maximize the number of readers (visitors) to your site outside your friend list.

You can draw visitors to your site through many channels; obviously your friends will be the first to visit your site, but they are just limited numbers. Your main focus should be to attract visitors through Search engines like google, yahoo etc. If you look at the graph below, you will notice that my site receives maximum traffic from Search engines and very less from direct and referring sites.

Traffic Source Report

The traffic received through Search engines are people whom I do not know personally but they visited my site because it provided some useful information that they were looking for on a search engine. Probably, my site must have appeared on the results page for a particular keyword.

Choosing a theme basically means choosing keywords (words that describe your theme)

Here is what you need to know while choosing keywords for your Adsense site which will work as a magnet to get traffic from Search engines.

Find Popular & Low Competition Keywords

You can use Google Keywords Tool to give you the search volume for any keyword/s.  Search volume is the number of times a keyword was searched from around the globe.

Using the above tool you can search for Popular & Low competition keywords.

What do I mean by Popular Keywords?

You may find a certain keyword (theme) appealing but if that keyword is not used by others on search engines, then it will not generate any traffic for your site.

Look out for keywords that have good number of search volume. Starting a Site with keywords having a certain amount of search volume, assures you that there is a bunch of live audience who will definitely visit your site to read the information you put up.

While selecting keywords also record all related keywords and use them while writing content for your site.

What are Low Competition Keywords?

Getting your site ranked on top position for your relevant keyword in a search engine is not an easy task. It may take days, months and sometimes years to get there, and all this depends on your Competition.

A keyword that is popular and also very competitive,  will take a considerable amout of time to generate results. For instance, take the keyword “home remedy for hair fall”, there are 14,400,000 results for that one keyword. Though it is popular keyword, yet because of the competition it will cost you to wait for a long time  to rank on the top list of the search engines for that keyword.

A keyword with a low competition will not take much time to rank in top position and generate the desired traffic.

Hope this article has helped you with some more insight on making money on the internet using Google Adsense program. Do post in your comments and queries, I’ll be happy to answer them.

In my last article I wrote about Making Money on the Web using Google Adsense. Here I will be sharing some of the basics of making money using Google Adsense Program.

First and foremost you need to have a space on the Web where you can launch your Google Adsense Program, it can be a Blog or a Website. If it is a site, I would suggest on having a CMS (Content Management System) Site wherein you can update the site content on your own without any technical help.

If I have to put the whole process in 5 simple steps it would be

1. Create a Site / Blog
2. Publish some Content / Information on that Site
3. Apply for Google Adsense Program
4. Place Adsense Ad code on to your page
5. Get paid from Google whenever your site visitor clicks on the Ads

… all this sounds very simple but it is a bit complicated.

To make serious money from Google Adsense program

… you have to attract visitors to your site
… you have to publish interesting and informative content
… you have to wisely select the theme for your website
… you have to get good rankings on search engines for your relevant keywords
… you have to prudently promote your site through social media site
… your site traffic should keep increasing each day
… you have to constantly update your site with new content

If you are ready to invest your time in doing all the above mentioned things, I suggest you stay connected with this blog as I will be sharing each of them in much detail.

More about Google Adsense

Googe Adsense is a ‘Contextual Advertisement’, which means when you place a Google Adsense Ad code on your webpage it smartly delivers Ads that are relevant to the content on that page. For e.g. if your content on the page is talking about ‘cricket’ then it will only deliver Ads that are related to cricket. In this way Google enhances the visitor experience on your page as well as attracts them to click on the Ads. Every time a visitor clicks on an Ad, they go to the Advertisers site, the Advertiser is then charged by Google for per click, Google then pays you a share of the money.

To apply for a Google Adsense program you just need to start a site/blog, publish some content on it and apply for Adsense here www.google.com/adsense

It’s been 5 months since I left my job and started on my own. I started my career as an ‘Internet Marketing Specialist’ in 2003 and ended up as a ‘Professional Internet Marketer’. During these 7 years of my experience I learnt the skill of Designing, Developing and Promoting / Selling almost anything on the web, working for clients across the globe, also working with non English sites for clients from Japan, Korea & Taiwan; worked on creating strategies for excellent Web presentation as well as promoting it effectively through Search engines.

All these years of experience have taught me many things about the Web which I will be sharing with you through my Blog here. Frankly, there is nothing secret about the web which is hidden, everything is out there, all that’s needed is a search. What is challenging is to bring all the pieces together and create your own strategy for Web success. Obviously, that comes through experience and your ability to take risk as well.

Many people claim to have a secret formula for making money on the Web. The so called secret formula for making it big on the Web world is just the strategies they developed for themselves which they sell and make money.

Since I left my job, I’ve been working on many projects; some have started well, some have failed while some are still in the development stage.

What I want to share with you in this series of articles is something about Google Adsense which has been a regular stream of income for me since I started on it a year back. If you are a person who spends times on the Web you must have surely come across Google Adsense Program and may have also tried your hands on it.

Before I start sharing about Google Adsense, I want to address some of the questions you have in your mind regarding this money making stream and help you step out and explore the possibilities.

1. Is it really Genuine?

This is the first question that comes to our mind when we hear of money making using Google Adsense. Will it really generate the kind of money I’m expecting?

I had this doubt in my mind for a long time. When I saw my monthly earnings during my initial days, even after designing a website for this purpose, I was really disappointed but over a period of time things started looking much better.

I did not go through any guide or something, just jumped into it because one my friends recommended it. It was a risk as it involved investing time and money in buying, designing and promoting it. When I got my first check from Google I thought all my efforts were worth it.

If you have the right skills I suggest you step out.

2. Can I do it?

Yes. There is a need for some basic skills to start working on this program but I don’t think they are hard ones. In my next article I will share more in details about the basic skills needed to start your own Google Adsense program.

One of the basic skills needed is Writing and I don’t think that’s a hard one to crack. I never thought I could be a good writer and expressing myself in words was the last thing I thought I could do. Let me share with you my first blog entry on my personal blog here in the year 2007, you will understand perfectly what Im talking about. If I can do it, you definitely can.

If my cousin who is just 18 years old can make money from Google Adsense through his blogs on Wrestling, then you can also try your hands on it.

3. I will need a lot of money to start

I don’t think you need a lot of money.

Yes, you definitely need to have your Web page where you put up your content along with Google Ads. To start with you can try your hands on free blogs and free web spaces available but on a long run I suggest you having your own domain name simply because it will help you in branding and make you look more reliable.

You can register and host a domain for not more that Rs 2,500 ($ 50) per year and hire a Web designer to install and design a CMS (Content Management System) enabled site wherein you can add / delete and update your site contents on your own, it wont cost you more than Rs 15,000 ($ 300) depending on the added features you need for your site. So what are you thinking?

Ok. Now I think I’ve written a lot on this post and am presuming that you guys don’t like reading long articles like me. So for now I’m just ending it here and will continue on my next post.

Do subscribe your email ID using the tool on the top left corner of this blog so that you stay updated whenever I post my next article. I promise I won’t spam your email ID.  :)

Few days back I was sharing the importance of ‘Learning’ with my team.  One of the things that I mentioned during the session was that we all know how important it is to keep learning and developing our skills but somehow we don’t seem to dedicate enough time for Learning.

The world around us is moving at a much faster rate and constantly evolving; new ideas are born each day; new technologies are introduced, new laws, new policies to govern those new laws, new problems, new solutions. This means that if we are not constantly updating ourselves with recent changes, we are getting further out of reach with the demands of the modern working world.

There are many ways you can gain knowledge but one of the major, popular and free platform where you can frequently keep learning is the Web world. Isn’t that true? Most of the things I learnt in the past, I learnt on the Web, for e.g.: I am confident that if I am stuck up with any technical issues I can search and find the answer on the Web world.

If you agree with me and wish to dedicate your time learning on the Web, this article will surely help you as I am going to introduce you to two of my favorite Web tools which helps keep me updated with the new happenings around me. If some of you reading this article might already be using these tools, can I request you to share your experiences with other readers? Some of you may have heard about them in the past but haven’t really used it effectively and for others, it will be something new.

1. Google Homepage (www.google.com/ig)

There is lot of learning we get from different sources across the Web, like for e.g. informational websites, Blogs and News sites, but it is very difficult to track new updates from the same sites, we often end up opening each of the sites whenever we get time. Just like my site www.Webscoop.net, unless you get an update from me on Facebook or Twitter you will not come to know when I post a new article.

Here is a tool that will help you receive latest updates from your favorite News sources, websites and blogs. It is a browser based application and you do not have to download any software. You can see all the updates on all your favorite Blogs and websites in a single page. I’ve been using this tool for quite some time and find it very helpful.

I found this article that will help you learn how to setup your Google Personalized homepage – http://www.wikihow.com/Set-Up-a-Google-Personalized-Homepage, do let me know if you find this article helpful.

Also find a screenshot of my Google Homepage Dashboard divided in different categories, hope it gives you a basic idea of how I manage my stuffs.

2. Delicious (www.delicious.com)

Delicious is an online bookmarking site where-in you can bookmark your favorite Web page. It is similar to your Internet Explorer Favorites, the only difference is that you can view your delicious favorites from anywhere around the world.

This not the only feature that makes delicious unique, it also allows you to browse favorite Web pages of other people. Every web page you save in delicious is linked with a tag, for eg:  photoshop, design, music etc, and you identify other favorites with the help of these tags.

Here is a good article to help you use Delicious like a professional – http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-use-delicious-like-a-pro.

On the left hand sidebar of this site you will also find a link to my delicious bookmark page.

Hope this article helps you enhance your Web learning experience, do let me know your comments and views.

The Web world is evolving in a magnificent way; right from connecting people all the across the globe to increase in trade, it is moving faster each day.

For most of us it’s a place where we all want to be on the net all the time. I guess the most striking feature of the Web world is its potential to connect people all across the globe and enable them to communicate with each other as if they are having a chat in a coffee shop. We all love it because “Communication” is perhaps the most basic characteristic of humans. We always like talking about something, whether it is written, drawn, spoken, painted, coded or signaled.

As per Internet World Stats the No. of Web users as of now is 1,596,270,108 which is around 28% of the World population, Asia being the highest 657,170,816 around 17% and its growing at a much faster rate than the last decades.

Businesses and Organizations have realized how important it is to have an active Web presence. They have discovered that their target audience / customer can be easily found either   browsing the sites with a specific need on the internet or communicating with friends on orkut, facebook and other social media sites. Earlier it was just businessmen and office goers who were found on the internet, now we have people from all age groups active on the Web world which includes youths, housewives, actors, businessmen, artists and office goers, everyone one is on the internet.

What does all this say to me?

Take maximum advantage like never before. There are much opportunities for you more than you can ever think of. There is money to be made, friends to be found, products to be sold and purchased and places to explore. There is something for everyone.

I would love to hear from you what you think about the Web world and how it made a difference in your life?

Google Analytic gives detailed information about your site visitors. Understanding the nature of your visitors enables you to maximize your reach and increase your online business. These are some of the important data you will see on your Google Analytic dashboard; all this data gives you crucial information about your visitors and if you spend sufficient time studying it you will reach great heights in your online marketing efforts.

1. No. of Visits / Visitors

Google Analytics records both visits and visitors on your site. Visits stand for the number of individual hits initiated by all the visitors to your site. This data helps you keep a track of the progress you are making in attracting visitors to your site. You can see it in a graphical view as shown in the above picture.

2. No. of Page views

A page view or known as page impression is a request to load a single page of an Internet site. Internet page request will occur when a web surfer clicks on a link on another web page pointing to your page, this could be due to an Ad or a Search Engine result page link. An easy explanation of Pageview is the total number of times any page is viewed. For eg,  if a visitor lands on page X, goes to page Y, and then back to page X, that is counted as 3 page views because there were 3 page loads.

3. Traffic Sources

This data gives you the Source through which a visitor reached your site, there are many channels through which a visitor can come to your site as I had mentioned in my earlier article on “Promoting your site on the Internet!”. The main source of traffic being Search engines as they cover a wide range of audience.

4. Map Overlay

This is my most favorite section, it gives a diagrammatical view of the location from where visitors visited my site. It can be broken into Country, Territory and City. This data helps me gain a better perspective about which region I need to focus more on while promoting my site.

5. Time spent on the site

This data reveals how much time a visitor spent on my site.

6. Top Landing pages

Landing page is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an Ad or a search Engine result link.

7. Top Exit pages

Exit page is the page from where a visitor leaves your site. It can be interpreted as a page where viewers didn’t find what they were looking for and so went elsewhere. It is important to study exit pages to determine how you can improve your website and make it more interesting to your readers.

8. Search Engines

Gives me the breakup of which search engine gave me the highest and the lowest traffic.

9. Keyword typed in search engine

Keyword is an inquiry expressed in the form of a word or wordsthat your visitor inputs into the Search engine inorder to gain desired results. This is a very crucial data used while targeting Search engines for drawing traffic to your site. It is imperative that you study  keywords that give you traffic.

Web Analytics is the process of tracking and analyzing how people find your site, how they navigate through your site and how they become customers. This information is vital to ensure consistent improvement on the performance of your website.

According to a latest report by Bizreport.com “Less than half (47%) of the 1,545 American and British marketing professionals use Analytics to measure their online campaign”. Analyzing your visitor is very crucial because it helps you stay focused and spend your money in the right direction.

In these series of articles, I will cover every aspect of Web Analytics and show you how they help in improving your sites performance.

“Web Analytics is the measurement of the behavior of visitors to a website. In a commercial context, it especially refers to the measurement of which aspects of the website work towards business objectives” – Wikipedia

There are many Web Analytic programs available in the market. The most popular one is Google Analytics which is absolutely free to use and very easy to install. All the screenshots in this article is from Google Analytics as it is easier to understand.

Signing up and Installing Google Analytics

You can sign in to Google Analytics here http://www.google.com/analytics; during the sign in process you will be requested to enter your site name for which you want to install Google analytics. At the end of the sign in process you will be given a personalized Google Analytics Tracking code which you have to place in every single page of your site within the html <body> tag. The code looks something like this

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try{
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

Once the code is installed in all your pages Google Analytic will start tracking each and every activity that happens on your site.

Google Analytics Interface

1. Date Range:
   The default date range for Google Analytic is 1 month, you change the dates using the Flash based calendar on the right side of the page, usually while tracking visitors of multiple websites, it is nice to see the current day activity.
2. Dashboard:
   On the extreme left is the dashboard which gives you detailed information about your ‘Visitors’, ‘Traffic Sources’, ‘Content’ and ‘Goals’.
3. Help Resources:
   At Help resources you can find answers to all your common questions, about report generation and much more.
4. Graph Tool:
   A flexible graphing tool allowing you to see the larger trend even if you analyze and compare specific time periods, a detailed report is just a click away. This tool helps you visualize your data in new ways.
5. Site Usage Stats:
   Under ‘ Site Usage’ you will find quick information on various site traffic stats for the time period shown in the main chart. Site Usage helps you explore your data in variety of formats.
6. Widgets:
   You can set up to 12 graphical overviews of reports that you want to see at a glance. You can move them around, remove from the dash board or add new ones as per your need.

A site receives traffic (visitors) through various sources and search engines are the number one and the most important source of traffic to your site.

To obtain relevant traffic, your site has to be ranked on top positions in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s). Getting a top ranking is not a simple task especially when there are too many competitors competing for the same keywords.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your site that will result in high volume of traffic to a website from search engines via SERP’s.

SEO is divided into 2 parts, On-page optimization and Off-page optimization.

On-page optimization includes the following steps.

1. Site Structure Analysis

The structure of your site plays a significant role in getting your site ranked on the SERP’s.

The technology used to design your site, the navigation system of your site, the url’s of each page etc are all part of site structure analysis and they need to be done correctly.

There are many ways to design a website, but a site needs to be designed keeping the search engines in mind, search engines should find it easy to crawl your site and retrieve information regarding your service / product.

2. Keyword Analysis

The next big task is to select the right keywords that will drive traffic to your site. While selecting keywords the following points needs to be taken into consideration.

• Select keywords that are relevant to the content of your site.

• Check whether the keyword has a good search volume on the internet. What I mean is whether people are using that keyword to search for the product/service/information displayed on your site?

• Do not pick up keywords that are very competitive, look out for ones that have low competition and a decent search volume.

Good keyword selection will help you stay focused while optimizing your site for higher search volumes.

3. Meta Tag Optimization

Meta Tags are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured meta data about a web page. These tags are placed in the head section of an HTML document. These tags are used to specify page title, page description and target keywords of that page.

Meta tags are used extensively to optimize the web pages to acquire rankings on search engines.

4. Content Optimization

Finally the content of your site; the most important part of your On-page optimization process. Use targeted keywords to write your site content, and give them maximum exposure on your site.

Off-page optimization is basically acquiring link to your site from other sites to increase the popularity of your site.

*All articles in this blog is written by Saju Joseph. Please do not use without permission

Have you ever wondered why some sites do well on the internet and some don’t?

For example let’s look at the popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.  According to ComScore Google’s share of searches in the month of April 2008 is around 61.60%, Yahoo – 20.40% and MSN – 9.10%. If all provide the same service, then why is Google’s share of searches  more than Yahoo and MSN?

There are many online book stores on the internet but the first name that comes to our mind is Amazon.com. Why is it so? There are many video viewing sites but why is Youtube.com more popular?

There are many reasons for the popularity of any sites but the most important aspect according to me is the user experience provided by each of these sites;  the usability of the site plays a very important role in getting it on the top.

Hence “Web Usability” is defined as

“The approach to make web sites easy to use for an end user, without requiring her (or him) to undergo any specialized training” – Wikipedia

I hope you’ve understood the importance of web usability, unless the end user is comfortable using your website, she (or he) won’t ever think of returning back.  Studying the Web usability of a site has been greatly ignored by companies and web designers.  The reason for this ignorance is lack of awareness and I hope to communicate it through this article.

There is a gap between the web content managers and the designers.  A content manager  thinks of coming up with the best content to describe their product / services whereas a  web designer  thinks of designing the best site in the world. No one is really thinking about the user experience; what is it that user wants to read, what kind of graphic or content placement will the user find comfortable, is the navigation of the site easy to understand, has the most important section highlighted in a way which can easily grab the attention of the user, etc.

There are many factors to be taken into consideration while working on the Web Usability of a site, some general ones and there are other factors that depend upon the content of the site. Here are few points that will help you make the right decisions regarding your Web Usability.

Don’t make the user think too much
Some of our sites are so complicated that the user has to spend time figuring out where to click next or what to do next. When they find the site too complicated they immediately leave the site and never come back again. And I don’t think you ever want this to happen with your site.

Remove unnecessary text/writings from the site
Visitor doesn’t read everything written on the site, they just scan through the site to find information that is relevant to their need, take your own example. How often do you read the whole content on the site. Removing unnecessary text from the site will help users take the needed action quickly.

Follow the Web conventions
Web Design conventions are general rules or you can say a web culture followed and practiced for many years, like the placement of Site ID (Logo) is always on the top-left corner of the site, the sections and subsections (menus) of a site is always on the top  or the left hand side of the page, etc. These conventions are very common and the user is very much used to it. It is very important to keep these conventions in mind while designing a site. Breaking the rule means frustrating the end user.

Do a Usability Test
One of the best way to test the usability of your site is to observe an outsider browsing your site, this will give you a fair idea on how effective is your website with regards to content, navigation, graphics etc.

There are many things I would like to share about Web Usability, which I will do in my future articles. Do let me know if you have any questions. Your comments and suggestions are highly appreciated.

*All articles in this blog is written by Saju Joseph. Please do not use without permission