Google AdWords

Last night my partner was creating his first AdWords account, and when he had to enter his credit card details for post pay his card was declined without any clear reason.

The Google AdWords advice center suggests that you should call your bank and make sure your card is working correctly, but this is rarely the case. AdWords has been declining cards without reason since 2004 that I am aware of.

Out of interest we decided to try using the Internet Explorer browser rather than Firefox – and upon log in it showed that his credit card had actually been approved.

It seems that Firefox has some issue with cookies or the cache – we cant pin point exactly where the issue lies, but I can tell you that if you sign in using IE after getting repeated declined messages when signing up for AdWords with a working credit or debit card that it does seem to fix the problem.

I appreciate that this post doesn’t strictly relate to making money online, however I know for the past (almost) 6 years many people have had this issue, and no one has suggested this, including Google themselves, as being a solution. I will be back to regular money making posts shortly, so check back in – but please remember this advice as it seems to be a frequent problem and I hope this could save a whole lot of people a whole lot of trouble.

Facebook

If you have just started a website and are trying to make money online without any advertising budget then this could be the perfect opportunity for you!

Right now if you install the Visa Business Network application on Facebook you will get a voucher for $100 free advertising at zero cost to you; just make sure you don’t spend over the $100 you have been credited with.

Usually my posts are more about how to make money online or be successful working from home, but as this offer has once again become available and because free advertising is so hard to find I couldn’t pass up the chance to make a brief post about it for all of you to try out. You have nothing to lose and get to promote your business for free!

Good luck everyone, I hope to see your ads soon ;)

Traffic

Ok, so you’ve read my other posts and decided you want your own site/blog – you’ve got Adsense on it, or it’s affiliatized – but how do you start getting traffic?

I’m going to share some of my methods with you and hope you will apply them to your projects.

1) Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is a great way to advertise; providing you don’t spam. Say for example your topic is modifying a car; do a search there and you’ll find lots of people who are interested in what you want to say. Answer their question properly, don’t just copy and paste and spam – and include a link to your site in the source section only. If you don’t spam your answer will stay on the site for all time, which will provide timeless traffic as Yahoo Answers regularly comes up in the top 5 for any common Google searches.

2) Answerbag

The exact same deal as Yahoo Answers, but the more sites you post on the better.

3) Fun Advice

One more like the above two; these three sites can be your core source of relevant and interested traffic.

4) Helium, Associated Content and eHow

Writing articles will get you a backlink on a good PR (page ranked) website and help people find you when using search engines – if your article is good it can also help establish your credibility as an authority in your chosen field.

5) Giveaways

You don’t have to give away prizes or money to draw people in; consider a free ebook – it lets people know that you appreciate them; and it will keep them coming back. Much like how I’m posting this list for free, sharing my marketing tactics – it may no seem like much but people will like it, and when they use it they will think of this website – your free ebook giveaway can do the exact same thing for you.

6) Forums

Using the car modification example; you can easily find many forums dedicated to your topic(s) – become a member and contribute, while having a link back to your site in your signature.

7) Digg It

Submit your best posts to Digg, and if they’re well written people will Digg them; this can net you a lot of fabulous traffic, so long as you dont try to abuse the system by posting a link to every single one of your blogs.

8) Get a Newsletter

Give people the option of signing up for a weekly, fortnightly or monthly email – just never spam them and always make it easy for them to opt out. This will remind them that your site interested them previously and may well be worth a return visit.

9) Host relevant videos and images

Is your blog or website about travel? Include pictures and videos about the destinations you’re discussing, local landmarks, etc. You will be found frequently in search engines this way.

10) Comment On Blogs

Leave relevant comments on all of your favorite blogs, including a link to your blog if given the option. Don’t spam and always leave appropriate comments. If the blog is “do follow”, (find out more about that in Google,) then you will be building up valuable backlinks for your page.

As this blog was only submitted to Google recently it isn’t yet indexed and has no page rank, however when it does I will accept all comments with link, provided they aren’t spam. :)