Still want a puggle?

This is a sweet picture of a vicious puggle, but it's also a great example of how to promote your blog through photography.

It's hard to sell pictures, but to give them away with your blog's web address on them? Priceless! ...or at least worth a few bucks on your Adsense account.

Making Cash Online

It happens to all of us once in a while. Whether you got a speeding ticket, you wanna go skiing this weekend, or you forgot to buy one of the books for a class you're taking, we could all use some quick cash.

Here are a few great ways to make some quick cash on the internet:

Sell all your old books, music and movies on Half.com. It's affiliated with Ebay, and your user ID for Half.com can also be used for Ebay. I use Half.com myself, and there's no easier way to make a quick buck.

They pay for shipping; you simply print out a shipping label and bring your book or movie to the post office. In some areas, you can even leave the package in your mail box with some money, and the postman will take your package and leave your change. Now THAT'S postal service.

Another quick way to make money on the internet is by reselling items on Ebay. See what's selling on Ebay, then check the prices at your local discount stores. Going-out-of-business sales are great places to find cheap stuff to resell on Ebay for a profit.

Perhaps the method of making money on the internet with the most potential for earnings is Internet Publishing. Create a blog about something that interests you and equip it with Google AdSense. Post all your interesting and original ideas, home videos, and political theories, get Google AdSense to accept your website, throw the html code on there and watch the money roll in! When you can make money in your sleep, you know you're doing somethin' right. Or something illegal. But anyway...

Always be on the lookout for what you have locally, whether your own creations or the best deals at your local stores, and throw them online for a quick buck!

Blog about your Major

Can't think of a theme for your blog? Why not post about your academic major?

Essays and thesis papers are great places to find material for posts. You're also likely to get lots of new ideas and inspiration from the assigned reading for your classes.

Let's face it, your major is your area of expertise and, hopefully, the subject about which you're most passionate.

Use that knowledge and passion to write top notch posts that people are gonna love.

The Post that Makes You Famous

When you've written a really great post, sometimes it'll be picked up by a big website that features the best blogs on the web, and by linking back to your site, you're bound to get a HUGE increase in hits.

But will you be ready to harness those hits for the long term?

I was fortunate enough to be featured as one of the "Best of the Web" on "Comment is Free," the official blog of the British newspaper, The Guardian. It wasn't an amazing post (you can check it out here), but it was something that fit their bill for the day, and it sent a ton of visitors over to my other blog.

If you want to make the most of your big break when it comes, you've got to be ready for it beforehand. You want to make your new visitors "sticky" by providing them with content that they'll want to come back and see over and over again.

Make sure you've optimized your Adsense ads, and always keep a nice, clean, attractive blog. And no matter what, keep writing and improving your content, because great content is what will keep new viewers coming back "again, and again, and again," to quote the evil emperor Commodus from Gladiator.

AdSense: Maximizing Revenue

One great way to make the most of your AdSense revenue is to use the "competitive ad filter."

This function is available within your Adsense home page, under the Adsense Setup tab.

You can add the website addresses of advertisers that you want to exclude from appearing on your website, normally because they are in competition with your own page.

However, as bloggers we don't really have that much competition showing up on our Google ads. I've seen a couple advertisements appear on my page for other blogs, but they're normally specialty blogs of some kind, and if a viewer wants to head over there it's no skin off my back.

Where this filter becomes really useful is in excluding advertisements that are low profit for you. I don't want advertisements that pay me one cent for a click, because why lose a viewer for a mere cent? It's simply not worth it. So as you identify advertisements that pay next to nothing for a click, consider adding them to your filter list.

Another way the filter can help to maximize your Adsense revenue is to weed out off-topic advertising. I make no attempt to do that here, as you can see from the Britney Spears and the Replacement Windows advertising... if I've written about it, you might see it pop up, making for some awkward combinations.

But it's alright to be smarter than me. If your blog is about race cars, filter out the ads about ballet and bicycling.

Helium for Writers: Article Deleted

I recently had an article deleted from Helium.com for "meaningless content." Keep in mind that I didn't create the topic, I merely contributed an article under the given heading of "The Names of the Magi." Other people were all serious, answering things like "Balthazar, Melchior and Casper."

Here's my deleted article:

The Names of the Magi

"Frank, Joe and Tom.

"Funny story, actually. For a while, Joe wanted to be called Armatron, because he was fantastic at doing the Robot, but Frank and Tom wouldn't go along with it so Joe eventually gave up.

"They were like, "Joe, we're Magi, you have to stop doing the Robot. It was funny the first time, but now it's just getting kind of awkward." So Joe reluctantly agreed. He WAS damn good at the robot, though. No one could ever take that from him.

"Later, it turned out that Joe had been severely dehydrated, so then the whole Armatron thing wasn't so funny after all."

Deleted for "meaningless content"?! Was it off topic? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes. Meaningless? Yes.

Curiosity Killed Your Account

It can be very tempting to click on your own Adssense ads. Believe me, I know.

I mean, what exactly IS the soulmate calculator? Will this link really help me find the love of my life? Is my automobile gay? And then of course there are the "free Britney Spears and Paris Hilton videos."

Well, your prayers have been answered and so have mine. The Google Preview tool is here!

Made specifically for AdSense publishers, the Google Preview tool allows you to right click on your own page, select Google AdSense Preview Tool, and a new window will open with your page, plus a selection of sample advertisements that you can actually CLICK on and see where they go!!

The advertisers won't be charged for any clicks within the preview tool, nor will you earn money per click or inflate your page impressions.

Woohoo!