Q: Can I Use Craigslist For Traffic?

No.

Everyone hates spam.

Don't be such a selfish jerk.

There are ways to advertise your site that are appropriate. There are also ways to get traffic without advertising that don't degrade the quality of other people's work.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about - some lowlife style people spam Craigslist in an attempt to get traffic to their MFA style web sites.

You'd think people would have a little more self-respect than that.

A New Revenue Sharing Model

It's called open revenue sharing and it's deceptively simple.

A publisher simply allows anyone to add their Adsense ID to a link. So simple it's ridiculous.

However, the issues solved, and created, are potentially enormous. Good work Grokodile!

How Does Adsense Revenue Sharing Work?

Very well.

Okay, okay, I guess you'd like a little more information than that! Each person who signs up with Adsense is given an ID number. When an ad is displayed on a page it is associated with one particular ID.

On an Adsense revenue sharing site the site owner defines a set of conditions under which publisher ID numbers are used other than his or her own. A common example might be to show the ID of the author of an article. Alternately, on a forum, the person who started a thread might have their ID used when the thread is viewed.

Generally the publisher will swap out their own ID only a percentage of the time. A common number is 50%, but it could be anything.

Why Do People Share Revenue?
Well, sometimes when you aren't greedy, it ends up paying off. In this case, when a publisher is able to entice other authors to participate, both of them may end up more profitable.

Often the publisher will have more public awareness and more traffic than the author. At the same time the publisher may find the generation of fresh new content on a variety of subjects to be time consuming or expensive. So, by exchanging traffic for content, both parties may end up winning.

Is This Allowed By Google
Yes. However, you do have to make sure the content published meets the standards put forth by Google. Adsense cannot be displayed on pages containing certain types of content or on pages that break Google's terms of service.

What Are The Dangers
There shouldn't be any dangers, other than violating Google's terms of service, but there is a potential surprise. You have to be sure that you do not click your own ads while viewing a revenue sharing site. Generally, the publisher will be able to not use your publisher ID while you view their site, but of course you will have to be logged in for that to work.

Once you are in a revenue sharing relationship with a site, never view that site without being logged in. Also, check carefully with the publisher to ensure that they do employ this level of protection. It's also quite possible that some smaller revenue sharing sites have tried to implement this but failed to do so due to buggy programming (even if it is quite a simple idea).

Can I Make Money This Way?
Sure, it all depends on keywords and traffic. For example, over at Digital Point, which is a revenue sharing forum, I have a click today that is worth $3.39 on a single page view. Of course, it generally takes months for me to notice a click on Digital Point, but this was a pleasant surprise. Too bad I don't know which thread or post the click originated from -- as I'd be very happy to create content on that particular topic.

Why Did Adsense Ban Me?

This question gets asked a lot on webmaster forums.

While it seems we all know the answer there are obviously many that don't. If they did, we wouldn't have to deal with this question so often!

Here are the top 7 reasons for Google to ban your Adsense account:

1. You clicked on your own ads
2. Your friends clicked on your ads for you
3. Your enemies clicked on your ads to get you banned
4. You used proxies to click on your own ads
5. You bought low quality automated traffic that clicked on your ads
6. You have a crappy MFA web site
7. You otherwise violated the Adsense terms of service

It seems pretty simple really. Don't go looking for ways to get clicks. Don't go annoying people in webmaster forums or they may feel inclined to click-bomb you.

So what is the poor webmaster to do? Build quality content!

This has been said so many times. If you aren't sure what quality content is, consider which web sites or blogs you actually like to read. Then, consider sites or blogs that you scoff at because they only exist to make some pennies here and there. Which type of web properties do you offer?

Do you know what an MFA site is? Do you know what an affiliate site is? Do you know what a sales site is? Do you know what BANS stands for? Don't use or make these low quality offerings. It's spam. Everybody hates spam. Even you hate spam. I know you are greedy, but if you do the hard work and make something of quality, people will be glad to find it and potentially share it.

There are no excuses. Any schmo can get a free blog at Blogger, alter the basic look and feel a bit, and start writing about something of interest to themselves.

Now get to work and stop flooding the world with useless crap.

Building Adsense Revenue: Half A Map

I've been looking at my Adsense revenue reports for 2007. No, I'm not just looking at the total dollars brought in. I'm looking at the eCPM for each of the page specific URL channels that I've defined. Specifically, I know which posts are bringing in the highest levels of revenue over any specific period last year.

For example, my highest earning blog post was on a fitness related blog. The post was about research concerning a certain type of diet pill. Looking at my traffic statistics, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools data, I can see what keywords are being used to find that post. I can also find out what ranking my post has in the SERPs for those particular terms.

If that wasn't clear enough to inspire you here is the partial roadmap:

• Create page (or section) specific channels so that you can monitor income levels at a low level.
• After a period of time determine income levels for each of your channels.
• Determine which keywords are bringing visitors to your high earning pages.
• Work on improving your SERPs for those productive pages.

At this point I am assuming you know how to improve your search engine ranking!