Building Content-Rich Sites

First off, why would you want to build content-rich websites? The short answer is “Because it keeps people on your site for awhile, it makes them come back, and they tell their friends about that site.”
But why? Well, for one thing, people will stay on a content-rich site because it takes awhile to read an article or two. Thus, while they’re reading the material, their peripheral vision (off to the sides) notices little ads that happen to surround that articles.
And if people start to realize that a certain site has good content that they like, and in particular, different content that constantly changes and is updated, then they’ll check back to see what’s new.
The worst thing in the world to have is a stagnant website that never changes. People will visit it exactly twice—the first time to check it out, and the second one to see what’s changed—and when they find out it hasn’t changed, they most likely won’t come back. Ever.

What are Content-Rich Sites and Why Have One?
A content-rich site is one that has lots of informative articles up at it, usually centered around a theme. Most sites can’t quite pull off being WikiPedia, so they specialize. For instance, you could do a site for dog owners. Possible articles on that site would cover:

• How to figure out what kind of dog you want
• Where to get a dog
• How to deal with a puppy
• Life stages of a dog
• House-training puppies
• Dog training
• What to feed dogs
• Whether to get more than one dog
• How to socialize dogs with other dogs and with cats
• Exercise needs of dogs
• Training dogs to do tricks
• Treating fleas
• Common dog ailments and when to go to the vet
• Taking your dog on a trip
• Getting a pet sitter or boarding your dog if you don’t take him on a trip

The articles you’ll want to have on your site should be short enough so that someone can read them in about 5 minutes. This means you want to stick to articles of 250 to 750 words, with 300 to 600 words optimal. To give you an idea, a single page in a published novel has about 300 words.

Of course, your real purpose in putting up all these nice little short articles and changing them out frequently is not to just put information out into the world. It is to have a site that people will come back to so that they will see the Google AdSense ads, and click on them, and then you will get checks in the mail.

That’s a key point, so I’m going to repeat it:
The purpose of having a content-rich website is to attract people to it, again and again, so that they will see the ads and click on them.

You might think it’s lots of cool graphics and colors that make a site attractive to a visitor, but it’s really the content. In order to make money from Google AdSense, you need to grasp that concept. Believe me, you could run a wonderful advertising campaign and develop all sorts of viral marketing tools and attractive affiliate programs.

But unless your Website is content-rich, the traffic spikes that you get for your efforts will only be temporary. The very best way to attract and retain an online audience is to provide content that’s useful, valuable, informative, educational or just downright funny as hell or entertaining in some way.

What does a content-rich website look like? Here are a few examples.















How Do I Build One?
I know the notion of creating your very own content-rich website might be a little intimidating, but you can do it. It’s not hard. You don’t have to be a good write to have good content on your site. In fact, you don’t have to be a writer at all. There are plenty of successful people who make a lot of money from Google AdSense and they don’t write a word of that content. We’ll talk more about that later, but you can hire writers, or have guest writers—it’s not hard.

Anyone can create a content-rich Website by following a few key points:
• Have some discipline—maintain your site.
• Update that site often. Having a schedule is best.
• Be able to beg, borrow, or commission content

Discipline is key

To create a content-rich Website, you need to hone your focus and your self-discipline. I don’t have to tell you how incredibly easy it is to waste hours, even days, just surfing around the web from one site to another. You can’t let yourself get distracted like that or you won’t accomplish anything. Start with setting a limit

to surfing for fun so that you limit your searches to sites and resources that are relate very directly to your site's subject.

Discipline also applies to creating creation. Successful writers can’t afford to wait for inspiration to strike before starting work. Instead, they develop a writing schedule for themselves and they stick with it like it was their job—since it is. As one famous writer said, “I write when I feel like it. And every morning at 9am, I make sure I feel like it.” Schedule a time for yourself to sit down at your desk and write.

And you’ll need to develop another schedule for when to add content to your Website, and follow that schedule religiously. Make a commitment to yourself and follow through with it.

And remember—if you just simply can’t write, or you find yourself making too many excuses not to write content, just hire someone.

Go to Elance.com and post a project to write 20 articles of 300-600 words each for $5 to $10 each. You’ll find someone.

Regular updates are critical to your site
Nothing is deader than a website that looks like somebody’s forgotten about it. Regularly updating or modifying your site content gives you a big advantage over the competition. Web surfers will keep on coming back to your site if they notice that there’s always something new to see, learn, or enjoy each time.

What Kind of Content Should I Put Up?
Any kind you want, of course, since we’re talking about the internet. But seriously, you’ll want to give this topic some consideration, since there’s more interest in some topics than others.
You know the people who are your audience, since ideally you’re talking about something you know about. For instance, if you’re talking about Ultimate Frisbee, it’s because you play it. So you know what other Ultimate people are like, and what they want to know and what they find entertaining.

Once you know that, you can decide about which types of content will best serve their needs and how to go about finding or creating it. Here are some general categories to get you started with your brainstorming:
• Editorials
• Feature articles
• Political opinion
• News stories
• Art galleries
• A conglomeration of the best content
• Reviews of movies, books, music
• Interviews
• Interactive features - polls, feedback, discussion groups, forums, chat

Editorials
Editorials are the opinion of someone who’s seen as an expert in the field-- (either you or a guest contributor). This makes good content because people like to respond to it, either by agreeing with or opposing the writer. This can make for an exciting page, and you’ll probably have to moderate it.

Give your people a way to make their views known; put up a bulletin board or guest book on your site. People will come back to read other responses to their comments. And you can use this feedback from your audience by incorporating it into a follow up article in the future.

For instance, is everybody complaining about a new government travel policy? Do an article on it, since clearly that’s something people are talking about so they’ll want to read about it.

Full-length Feature Articles
This is the most common and in many people’s opinion one of the best forms of content. Depending on what your site is like, the articles could be long or brief, formal or chatty, technical or entertaining.

Here are some tips:
• Keep it short. While there aren't any hard and fast rules, you should keep these articles below 1200 words. If they are longer, make them into multi-part features. People hate to have to scroll down a lot.
• Articles should be relevant to your site.
• Articles ought to educate, entertain or inform. Don’t overwhelm people; stick to one or two ideas.
• Refrain from rehashing an article you've read somewhere else. By publishing something that’s new, you up the value and credibility of your site.

To Get Content

1. Offer to pay guest authors for their work. A guest author could be someone you found on your bulletin board who happens to write well.
2. Exchange articles with the guest author’s site. Your site visitors benefit by providing them with another point of view. And you might just gain some new regular visitors from your guest author's site!
3. Make sure you get exclusivity. When someone writes for you, make sure they won’t submit that same article to dozens of other Websites and newsletters. When your site publishes exclusive content, you have opportunities for syndication in other publications, online and off, and you gain a lot of reader loyalty. The key phrase in a contract with a writer is that you’re buying all rights, including electronic.

Can you use reprints?
Reprint articles written by others, but you must always obtain permission. All work, from the moment it is written, is copyright and owned by the author, whether it is marked with a copyright symbol or not. Content is not free. You can, however, make reprints interesting and personalised by putting your own 'spin' on the content. Write an introduction to the subject, or comment on the author's opinions or conclusions.

Take care to avoid 'editing' the original article without the author's permission. Avoid articles that have been reprinted many times before on other Websites and electronic publications.

Political Opinion
Using political opinion on your site can be tricky. People are deeply divided these days and have strong opinions. If you do run a political site, you’ll probably want to carve out your own niche. Even then, be prepared for flamers from very different view points.
On the other hand, if you can manage to run a site that actually features a somewhat well-mannered debate, you’ll have a huge hit on your hands. Be prepared to moderate this type of site.

News Stories
Your site can become a news source for the latest developments and happenings in certain niche area by providing timely news on topics of interest to your readers. I’m not saying you can be the next CNN or MS-NBC, because that takes building a huge operation. But what you can be is, What you’ll want to do is create a separate section of your site to deal with industry news. Or, devote an entire site to news updates. There are many ways of presenting news:
• As a feature article
• As short news clips, with a link to the full story
• As news stories, where each item is explained at length

However you decide present the news, make sure you give it your own personal style. Check out salon.com. Has its own style, doesn’t it? Now look at drudgereport.com. That’s another style. Make yours interesting, personal, chatty, fun, unique, or all of these – just make it yours.
Make sure your news is relevant, useful to your reader, and timely. Old news ain’t no news at all, it’s history! So how do you get news? By:

• Subscribe to eZines on your subject or topic
• Sign up for e-mail news delivery services
• Register to get regular press releases on your topic
• Surf the web for new news items
• Get news from newspapers, magazines and books
• Go to conferences, workshops or seminars and write about what you see and who you talk to for example, the CNN of the karate world, or the ABS-News of the bonsai tree hobbyis
Conglomerating the best content
If you can make your site into the ultimate content resource on issues related to your topic, I guarantee you you’ll attract and retain a loyal audience. Your site will become known as a The Place for anyone who wants information on your subject. For example, Harry Knowles has made aintitcoolnews.com into The Site for movie reviews and advance spoilers.

Since you’re the expert on your topic, you can evaluate sites and other resources (eZines, directories, books, offline publications) and sniff out the best ones to list along with your rating and opinions.

This sort of content is like the old book reports you used to have to write for school. Read up thoroughly on your subjects, then hit the high points of a topic. Or, consider writing a summary of three separate article that have the same theme.

Reviews of movies, books, music
This is perhaps the easiest category to get content for. If you have friends who are movie, book, or music fans, they’ll probably write reviews for free just for the thrill of seeing their stuff on a siteAlso, this is a never-ending source of content, since there are always new movies, books and music coming out. Contrast that with dog breeds—once you’ve written everything there is to say about every known breed, you have to wait for them to come up with a new breed!
If you want to have some fun, you can review movies yourself. And actually, if you’re running your Google adsense site as a business, you may even be able to deduct the cost of movie tickets from your taxes. Check with a tax consultant to make sure, though.

Music is easy, too, especially if you live in a town that has lots of live music or festivals. If not, you can buy used cd’s online, listen, and review. In fact, you could even hire a high-school kid to do this, but check their writing skills first.

Books are a little harder, since they take more time to review and cost more than cd’s and movie tickets. However, you can paraphrase what others have said if you’re clever and don’t violate copyright.

Interviews
This is a category you might want to get a freelance writer for. Go to elance.com and browse the profiles of Service Providers to see who does interviews, then talk to them. Many freelancers specialize in celebrity interviews, and that’s what you want.

Interactive features - polls, feedback, discussion groups, forums, chat
This is one of the most popular types of sites for kids, teens, and young adults because they get to give their opinions (which many kids don’t get to do enough of at home, according to them) and they get to talk to others.

So, if you want to run this kind of site, bear your target market in mind. It’s worth paying a few bucks to a freelance writer or graphic artist to come up with fun games that are constantly changing, or new polls, since people will come back time and again to give their opinions. And don’t forget surveys—people love to take surveys.

Sample Google AdSense pages—real sites
Observe the Google bar on the right-hand side, arranged vertically:












And here’s a site that has the Google bar on the left:














And here’s something really interesting: a page on how to increase your Google AdSense revenue, using AdSense on the page:

Introduction to adsense

You’ve probably heard a lot about Google AdSense (which is actually more accurately known as Google AdSense V1), but you may not know just what it is. Well, for one thing, it’s a one of the hottest new ways to make money online without having to do a whole lot. If you’ve read Robert Kiyosaki’s book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” you know that passive income is the best kind of income to have.

Passive income is income that you get without having to work for it. I know this may sound like some kind of “pie in the sky” get-rich-quick scheme, but passive income is for real. In fact, every single billionaire on earth uses the power of passive income to keep money coming in while he or she jets off to parties and resorts and such.

The best example of passive income in the physical world is real estate. When you own an apartment building and hire a property manager and a maintenance crew to take care of it for you and collect the rents, all you have to do is cash the checks that roll in.

Of course, passive income doesn’t just happen overnight, or everyone would be getting it. In the case of the apartment building owner, it took money, time, and knowledge to set up an S corporation, find a building to buy, put up the cash to buy it with and get a loan for the rest, renovate it, then screen and hire the property manager and maintenance crew. But once that was all done, checks began rolling in with little or no effort.

Well, Google Adsense is the online equivalent of that. You’ll have to invest just a little bit of time in learning about it, but once you get it set up you can look forward to seeing those nice checks roll in. Or, if you’re totally online, seeing money flow into your PayPal account.

So Just What is Google Adsense?
Google AdSense is a fast and absolutely ridiculously easy way for people with websites of all types and sizes to put up and display relevant Google ads on the content pages of their site and earn money.

Because the Google AdSense ads relate to what your visitors came to your site to read about, or because the ads match up to the interests and characteristics of the kind of people your content attracts, you now have a way to improve your content pages AND make some serious bucks off of them.

Google AdSense is also a way for site owners to provide Google search capability to visitors and to earn even more money by putting Google ads on the search results pages. Google AdSense gives you the ability to earn advertising revenue from every single page on your website—with a minimal investment of your time

So what kind of ads do you have to put up? That’s the good part—you don’t have to decide. Google does it for you. AdSense always delivers relevant ads that are precisely targeted—on a page-by-page basis—to the content that people find on your site. For example, if you have a page that tells the story of your pet fish, Google will send you ads for that site that are for pet stores, fish food, fish bowls, aquariums…you get the picture.

If you decide you want to add a Google search box to your site, then AdSense will deliver relevant ads targeted to the Google search results pages that your visitors’ search request generated.

If you’re into upgrades, Google is now offering “AdSense Premium”, which is CPC based and, for the time being, offers less flexibility in terms of ad sizes -- only banners and skyscrapers are currently available. You can apply using existing AdWords accounts, or you can request a new account. Applicants are usually notified within a day as to whether they’ve been accepted for the program.
Here’s the thing you need to know: Google has no strict criteria for acceptance into the AdSense program, and Ad Sense doesn’t hit you with a minimum traffic requirement. The only criteria they’re really sticky about is the standard “acceptable content” requirements, and that’s pretty standard almost anywhere.

Google AdSense says they’re serious about attracting quality content sites, and because of that they only allow AdSense members to serve one ad per page. This means you can’t use AdSense for both banners and skyscrapers.(Note: banners are those horizontal ads that run up top and down bottom. Skyscrapers are the tall ads that run vertically, on the left and right of your page text.)

Once you’ve been accepted into Google AdSense, you’ll be able to get the AdSense advertisements on any site you own using the same ad code, provided you obey the Google guidelines. (And that’s very, very important—more on that later.)
Your reporting doesn’t occur in real time, but is updated regularly throughout the day. Right now, you can’t view reports based on a domain or site basis if you run the AdSense on more than one site.

Before you sign up, you really ought to read the lengthy and detailed FAQ on the AdSense site.

What Can it do for Me?
In three words, earn you money. More relevant ads on your pages translates into more clicks—and more money that you receive. Because when users click on an ad, Google will pay you. If you’ve set up your own sales team, you’ll get an additional benefit: AdSense complements their efforts. It doesn’t compete with them. With AdSense, you get a reporting page that gives you a breakdown on how your ads are doing and what they’re bringing in.

Google has a huge advertiser base, so they have ads for all kinds of businesses and for just about every type of content no matter how broad or specialized it is. And since Google provides the ads, you don’t have to spend time talking to your advertisers.

AdSense represents advertisers that span the spectrum. These advertisers range from large global brands to small and local companies. And ads are targeted by geography so global businesses can display local advertising easily. One more thing: you can use AdSense in many languages.

So how does AdSense figure out how to do all this targeted advertising? Well, AdSense has the ability to deliver relevant ads because the gurus at Google understand how web pages really work and they’re continually refining their technology to make it smarter all the time.

For example, some words can have several different meanings depending on context. You’ve seen th is happen with “two” and “too” and “to.” Google technology is smart enough to understand these distinctions from the context that the word appears in, so you get more targeted ads.

When you put a Google search box on your site you start making money off of web searches that people do on your site. This ability to search off of your page keeps them on your site longer—since they can search from right there where they are—and it will only take you a few minutes to get AdSense up and running. The best part, of course, is that AdSense is free for you to use.











What Kinds of Ads Will I Get on My Site?
Obviously, there are some kinds of ads you wouldn’t want to have on your site, such as pornographic ones or ads for sleazy multi-level marketing schemes that scream “Make $30,000 a month just for watching TV!” in big red letters.

Well, you can put your mind at ease. Google has an ad review process that checks the ads they send to your site. This process ensures that the ads that you serve up are family-friendly and that they comply with Google’s strict editorial guidelines.

Google’s ad-screening team combines sensitive language filters, input from site owners like you, and a team of linguists with good old common sense to filter out ads that could be inappropriate for your content. And if that’s not enough, you have to capability to block competitive ads and choose your own default ads. That’s another nice feature: Google kind of lets you run your own show.

Now, another thing you might be concerned about is whether the ads will clash with the look, feel, and colors scheme you’ve got going with your site. Don’t worry. You can customize the appearance of ads and choose from a wide range of colors and templates. Same thing goes for your search results page. And reports are customizable, too. Google provides flexible reporting tools that allow you to group your pages any which way you want.
That means you can view your results by URL, domain, ad type, category and more so that you can figure out where your earnings are coming from.

How do I Get Started?
It’s easy to get started with AdSense and it only takes a few minutes. You fill out one single online application and that’s it. Once you're approved, it takes only minutes to set up AdSense; all you have to do is copy and paste a designated block of HTML into the source code for your site. Once you do that, targeted ads will start showing up on your website.


To fill out the online application, go to:
https://www.google.com/adsense/application-1?apply=Click+Here+to+Apply/






What are Users Saying about AdSense?
It’s one thing to hear about all the great advantages Google AdSense offers, including how it can make money for you in your sleep. But it’s another thing to hear comments from real, live people. Here are a few of my favorites.

• “We’re seeing this impressive new revenue stream without incurring any cost. We’re maximizing our previously unsold inventory, and our revenue per page figure continues to grow.” - Scott Zucker, Executive VP and COO, Intelligent Content Corp, PetPlace.com
• “It took no time at all to copy and post the code on individual pages, and it fits well with our content management system and with the look and feel of all our pages.” - Steve Larson, Founder, Our-Hometown.com
• “Instead of spending money to hire an additional sales rep to sell ad banners, Google ads have become a virtual sales tool for us. Now we’re able to reap thousands of dollars in additional advertising revenue each month that we would very likely have missed without Google AdSense.” - Robert Hoskins, Editor and Group Publisher, Broadband Wireless Exchange
• “Google shows targeted ads reflecting the sorts of information and services SeatGuru visitors want. For a small business like mine, this is the best approach to advertising. You set it up easily, it automatically serves relevant ads, and it takes very little of my time.” - Matt Daimler, Founder, SeatGuru.com
• “At the beginning I was very concerned that I might lose traffic to competitors. I only used AdSense on a limited number of the site’s pages, and I watched the stats very carefully. If the traffic, pages per visitor, or conversion rates dropped I knew I could easily pull the ads...Since implementing AdSense, our ad revenue has increased more than tenfold, and 100 percent of my available inventory is now sold through AdSense.” - Vik Kachoria, Entrepreneur, Real Adventure.

Am I Going to Make a Lot of Money with Adsense?
While we can’t guarantee results, of course, since a lot of your success lies in your own hands, we wouldn’t have written this book if we didn’t believe in the power of Google AdSense. A lot of webmasters are making a lot of money off of AdSense, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be one of them.

The amount of money you can make with Google AdSense mainly depends on what user needs your Website fills. For instance, a site about women’s issues can make some serious bucks on AdSense because of the high level of competition for related keywords.

The CPC (cost per click) is the amount you get paid every time a user clicks on one of those ad banners. CPC rates for competitive keywords can be more than $1, which translates directly to your site’s earning potential within the program.

However, if you’re in a less competitive market, you’ll make less money—that’s just a fact of life. Still, it’s unusual to see anyone using Google AdSense report earnings of less than an effective $1 CPM (cost per 1000 impressions), and the average runs

in the range of $4-$5 CPM. Some people are making an effective CPM of $15 or more with AdSense. Oh, and best yet, this is all after Google takes its commission.

About that commission…commission is definitely one thing is that’s a little bit ambiguous with AdSense. Google doesn’t publicize it’s “cut”, and only displays the publisher’s cut in proprietary member reports, so getting good, accurate information on this has been difficult.

To date, comparisons of AdWords rates with AdSense earnings add up to commissions of between 40% and 60%. People speculate all the time on user boards as to why Google refuses to publish its commission rates, but no one has the answer. It might have something to do with legal reasons or it could just be that Google wants to retain the ability to change rates without having to send out an announcement about it each time, which costs money.