How to Decide a Niche?

This is a very important step. You have to give a lot of attention to this step as it will directly impact your earnings in future. In my opinion, choosing a niche which boosts your earnings in future will be a smart decision.

If you are planning to monetize your site with AdSense, then always remember AdSense is an ad publishing company. It allows you to place ads on your sites. These ads are generally of products which other companies want to sell. Therefore choosing a niche which matches popular products will definitely boost your earnings, plus there comes an added advantage in choosing a product related niche which is, you can also make money through affiliate programs and paid reviews, which are completely safe to use along with AdSense.

Next comes targeting a particular product. In this case, a smart decision would be to choose a product which every individual uses. Such as, Mobile Phones, Food Products, Clothes etc.

A very interesting technique of choosing a particular product is to watch television for an hour. Only this time not the shows but the ads which appear during commercial breaks. Now, pen down all the products whose ads appear during commercial breaks. Then shortlist those products which people from both the genders use. This will increase the chances of getting clicks on your AdSense ad units.  

!! But wait before you go any further, make sure you have some info about the niche you are about to choose !!

Now that you have chosen a product, it’s now time to broaden the field of the product to target more people and products. For example, under Mobile phones, choose consumer electronics, which includes mobile phones, accessories, etc. This will allow ads from different products to feature on your site and will also increase competition between ads, thus ads which pays more wins! This way you will always see highest paying ads on your site.

Blogger vs WordPress

So, now that you have finally made the decision of stepping into the blogging biosphere, its time now to decide which platform to begin with. Blogger or WordPress? This decision should be made keeping few points in mind. These points are:

1.   How much can you invest on your blog

2.   How much coding you know (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc)

3.   Commitment towards your blog

4.   How much time you can spend on your weblog

Considering the above points, lets dig a little deeper into what Blogger and WordPress actually is :

Blogger.com 

Blogger is very good and easy to set up a blog and is owned by Google. Therefore with Google comes trust. Google servers and website securities are the best in the world. Blogger does everything for you and it’s free. Plus you can also mess with the HTML and CSS codes, which is the best thing about Blogger. Since, Google manages all the security and server related matters with your site, therefore you can focus only on posts. The biggest downside of Blogger is that the templates provided by Google are far from being professional. Therefore in order to have a professional design you have to mess with the codes. But don’t worry! There are a lot of places on the web where you can get professional templates for free. Another downside of Blogger is that when you create a blog on Blogger, Google hosts it. That’s right; it means Google has full control over your blog, including the DELETE button. Yes, Google has full liberty to delete your entire blog. So, be careful!

WordPress 

Unlike Blogger, WordPress is not a website it’s a software. Therefore you have to manage everything including hosting, design templates and other stuffs. But don’t worry! There are a lot of companies which can provide just about anything related to your blog. But to get a professional service you have to pay according to the level of professionalism that company offers. In WordPress you are the owner of your blog as you self-host your blog, this means you have full control over your blog, including that delete button. In short, if you go ahead with WordPress you have to devote a lot of time and money.

Considering the above two options, all I can say is that; if you are short on funds, know coding and have limited time, then go for Blogger. If you know coding, believe me you can design a better looking site than WordPress and that too according to your wish. In WordPress all the technical stuffs are managed through services and plugins provided by other companies. Thus, you won’t get a custom design template or other features without spending some money. If you have money and can invest it on your blog, then the sky is the limit to what you can do to customize your blog. Plugins are available for almost anything related with your blog. All you have to do is to purchase and install that plugin.

In Blogger, the main disadvantage is its design template. You have to design your own weblog or let someone else do it for you. This can turn out to be a big advantage if you know coding. In WordPress you have to buy a template and apply it on your weblog, plus you can’t modify the codes in that template, this limits the customizability of you blog’s design using WordPress. In blogger you can design your entire blog yourself, which makes it highly customizable.

My advice would be to, go for WordPress if you are very serious about blogging and planning to make it your career. But if you are planning to earn extra bucks without quitting your day job, then Blogger should be your first choice.   

How to Build a Google AdSense Optimized Blog/Website?

Always remember that AdSense is constantly searching for publisher and advertisers, and think of them as company who would like to get more publishers; and AdSense being a number one player in this field is very serious about the quality of its publishers. Therefore you will have to work very hard on making your blog/website unique, professional and according to Google’s standards. But don’t worry! The steps given below will guide you through the process of building a site which follows Google’s standards.

The 9 steps to build a site according to Google AdSense standards are:

1.   Decidea Niche

2.   Create a Brand

3.   Choose what you want to build, a Blog or a Website

4.   Choose a Platform

5.   Purchase a Top Level Domain (TLD)

6.   Design a Professional Site

7.   Post Quality Articles

8.   Include Important Pages to your Site

9.   Establish a Strong Social Media Presence

Believe me these are not tips, it is a prescription that you should strictly follow to build a site which AdSense can approve. Now, let’s talk about each step in detail.

Why Google AdSense Rejects Your Application?

As per recent reports only three out of thousand application gets approved to hold an AdSense account. Don't be surprised if you find yourself among the rest 997 rejected applicants. Many people in a hurry of making money apply for an AdSense account without even thinking whether their online content is AdSense ready or not, thus face rejection. 

I have in this article compiled all the reasons which Google AdSense give when it rejects an application.

The following list contains the common reasons Google states when it rejects an application

1.   Insufficient Content

2.   Copyrighted Content

3.   Unacceptable Design

4.   No Website Policy

5.   Violation Of Google Policies

Insufficient Content:

Well most of the time Google rejects an application is because of this reason. People now a day are in such a hurry to make money through AdSense that they apply for it with a half built site. Completing your site design does not complete your site!

Your website should have enough text for Google specialist to review. Always remember ‘Content is King’ and Google gives a lot of value and attention to the content in your blog. If your website/blog does not have enough articles/posts Google will reject it right away. Google hates when people apply for an AdSense account with a half built site. Make sure that your site is fully built and launched before applying for AdSense.

Google rejects sites that have only headlines or images or videos. If you run a Photography site or a Production House site or a News site you MUST include a short story related with the image/video/news. Although Google has not specified any minimum number of post/article that a site should have, you must be wondering, why is that so? I’ll talk about this a little later. Another thing to be kept in mind is that when you write something make sure it is grammatically correct.

Copyrighted Content

Copyrighted content is a content Google thinks has been copied from another blog/website. Surprisingly a lot of people do that, when they find some interesting post/article they copy paste that article into their own blog, which I think is the stupidest thing to do. Always remember Google is very smart. I’m an engineer and trust me it is very easy to determine whether an article is original or has been copied from somewhere.

If you still want to include someone else’s article in your site, my advice would be to read that article a couple of times and write it down in your own words on your site and whenever you do that never forget to give credit to the site from where you have copied the article including a link back to the original article. Trust me no one clicks on the link to the original article but that doesn’t mean you will exclude the link. And yeah this rule also applies to images and videos, which you have featured in your site.    

Unacceptable Site Design

Always remember after content comes design. I know a guy who runs a very popular blog on HTML and CSS coding. His content is awesome and you will find articles on any topic related to HTML and CSS coding. This year he celebrated his blog’s first anniversary but even till now his blog didn’t get AdSense approved. Why? No prizes for guessing! because of an awfully designed template. He himself has designed many professional blog design templates for others. When I asked him why he uses such an awful design template, he said that it is his first designed template and therefore he is personally attached to it. Now he uses other ad networks to earn money.

No Website Policies

Another reason why Google rejects application is the absence of website policies. Many people don’t know that when they browse something on the internet, web browsers stores those activities. This includes what you do on the internet, which sites you visit, what you do on a particular site, your location, the device you are using, how much time you spend in each session, etc. The list goes on and on. So, you need to tell your website users what information, regarding them, you are using and how can they can choose what and how much info they share with your website. This information must be added under your sites Privacy Policy.

Then comes legal matters regarding your website. This is a kind of an online contract between your website and your website users. Best thing to do is let your lawyer draft it for you. But don’t worry! I’ll talk about making legal policies related with your website later, for now consider this brief overview. Legal matters related with your website can fall under many categories, such as Disclaimer, Copyright Policy Terms of Use etc.

Next comes pages like About Us and Contact Us. These pages should contain detailed information regarding what your website is all about and how a person can contact the owner of the website. These pages should contain the same name you added as the payee name on AdSense application from.

Violating Google Policies 

Just like you have a policy for your website; Google has its own Policies, which you must in all cases adhere with it, if you want to your application to be approved. Google will mention about their Policies at every step in your AdSense application submission and approval process.

Main points included under Google Policies are:

1.   No Unique Content

2.   No Organic Traffic

3.   Copyrighted Content

4.   Bad User Experience

5.   Poor Navigation

6.   Promoting Illegal Activities

7.   Poor Design

I hope this article will help you figure out the problem with your online content, because of which your application is getting rejected.  

For more info regarding Google AdSense application approval process read : Google AdSense Application Approval Process.

 

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