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.

Money Q & A

Thank you to everybody who decided to submit a question for this week’s Q & A about how to make money online – we had a good selection and those not answered will be addressed next week.

Does my website need a good page rank to make money? It’s 0.

Alex

Actually Alex, no, you don’t need a good PR to have a profitable website at all. In fact, two of my most successful websites had, and to the best of my knowledge still have, a page rank of zero. My main business has a PR of 2, which may not be great, but it is still a highly successful site that makes money. PR is good, but it isn’t the defining factor when it comes to making money.

How can I get traffic to my site? I get only one or two visitors a day.

Anon.

Traffic comes from promotion, one or two hits a day makes me think you haven’t read my article on how to get free traffic; I suggest you take a look at that and use some of the tips, such as making the most of social bookmarking websites and getting some free advertising from AdWords and Facebook.

What do you think the best affiliate program is?

Zei

Without a doubt the best affiliate program in terms of letting you make money online is Clickbank – the payouts are higher then most other affiliate programs. They pay by check for the first three months, but after that you can opt for bank deposit. They are the only affiliate site that I still use today, and I’ve tried them all.

If you have a question to submit, do so in comments, and I will answer it next week – if you don’t want the comment to be published simply say so in your text.

Until next time!

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 ;)

Launch

These days if you want to make money online, it is not vital to have your own website – but it sure does help! So today I’m going to be talking to you about how to launch your new website successfully.

1. Plan To Launch On Monday

A website that launches on a Monday or a Tuesday is always more successful from the start than a site launching later in the week. It is one of the simpler things you can do to make your website successful.

2. Don’t Launch Early

I know it is tempting to launch early and start making money online with your website right away, but it is a very bad idea. A rushed launch rarely works out well, and you will find issues that you need to go back and correct later.

3. Triple Check, Then Check Again

If you have spelling or grammatical errors your site will look unprofessional to your visitors – you want to check your entire site’s content at least four times before going live.

4. Check Your Site In 3 Different Browsers

Sites can show differently in different browsers, so it is best to view it in at least three before your launch. I would suggest Firefox, Safari and either Chrome or Internet Explorer.

5. Promote, Promote, Promote!

In the month leading up to your launch you will want to be promoting your website as much as possible. Post in forums, build up a list of high PR blogs to comment on with your link, issue a free press release – none of it will cost you a cent but you will see plenty of interest, (and traffic,) as a result.

6. Manually Submit

Manually submit your website to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc – don’t use an auto submitter for these big search engines.

7. Make Sure Your Layout Doesn’t Hurt People’s Eyes

I know this sounds obvious, but the number of sites I see with white text on a black background, or red text on black, is astounding. If you want your site to make money online you need people to read it without getting a headache. No matter how “trendy” it might look to have fancy colors, black text on a white, or very light, background is the only way to go.

8. Seek Advice

Getting advice from people who have experience in your industry is vital if you want to work at home and make money online just by using your website – it has to be the best it can be, and for that to happen you must be willing to ask questions.

9. Don’t Cover It In Ads

At the start you want the most of one ad per page on your website – too many will look unprofessional and make people think you are desperate for money, which, even if you are, is not a good look.

10. Be Willing To Suck Up

I personally don’t do this, however I know many people who do and if I launch any big projects in the near future I might get into it as well – but buying gifts or sending vouchers to people who have well read, well respected websites and blogs in your industry will get you everywhere. It might be a bit dodgy, sucking up to other people – but these people have an audience, and you want that audience to become yours.

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. :)