AdSense Helpers

1) Adsense Deluxe : I don’t use it on this blog, but on others, it’s indispensible. It adds an Adsense block inside your posts with just a click.

2) Adsense Beautifier: This one is visible on the single posts page of this blog. It automatically ads images to adsense ad blocks to increase clickthrough

Tags and Bookmarking

3) Bunny’s Technorati Tags: Easily add Technorati keyword tags to your posts. See the tags beneath all of the posts on this blog for an example.
4) Sociable: Add links to all the best social bookmarking sites under your posts.

Keep Visitors Longer

5) WordPress Related Entries: Keep people clicking by showing posts related to the one they’re reading.

6) Adhesive: Makes some posts “sticky” so they stay at the top of the category page no matter what date they were posted.

Encourage Return Visits

7) Subscribe2 : Lets users subscribe to different blog categories to receive alerts when you post in topics of interest to them.

Subscribe To Comments : Another way to bring back past visitors. Once someone has commented, they can receive notification when that comment thread is updated for potential replies.

Make Search Engines Happy

9) Google Sitemap Generator: create an updated Google Sitemap everytime you post.

10) Add Meta Keyword Tag: Turn your Bunny’s Technorati Tags into Meta Keyword Tags.

I’ve just finished my third, and coolest yet, WordPress theme with WP Themerator.

This one took a lot more editing after creation, since Themerator doesn’t deal with with black or dark backgrounds with light text, but I think it turned out pretty good in the end.

I even took the time to add a graphic to the footer to make it extra special.

You can see the screenshot below, and it’ll be in my Themes tab in a few hours.

Update: Apparently everything has been worked out to the satisfaction of both parties, so you can ignore the warning email, but the lesson still holds.

Here’s what just landed in my email box:

Hi Wendy,

Violation of Terms and Conditions of PrivateLabelMonthly.com.

DO NOT BUY InstantAdsenseTemplates.com from Joel Comm and Eric
Holmlund.

InstantAdsenseTemplates.com has violated our Terms and Conditions
by bundling the products of PrivateLabelMonthly.com and reselling
them to the public. This is in direct competition of
PrivateLabelMonthly.com and its members and had violated the
membership terms and conditions.

As a valued subscriber we would like to protect your interests and
have contacted them to immediately cease and desist. We have
already contacted our attorney. Contingent on their response, we
will take legal action.

To Your Success,
Michael and Anthony
PrivateLabelMonthly.com

Note: I am no longer a member of Private Label Monthly (see this post to find out why) , and I didn’t buy Instant Adsense Templates because I read that they use tables instead of CSS, making their claims of being perfectly optimized false, so I’ve got no vested interest in either package.

It does raise the problem, however, of the multitude of terms and conditions being written and interpreted by non-lawyers, and how easy it is to ignore or misread them.

Which is why one of my new policies is to NEVER buy templates or headers to use as-is. I’ve heard too many stories of marketers being contacted by Corbis attorneys, as an example, because of an image in a template they were assured was private label.

With the legal departments of these image aggregators smelling cash, diligence is the most valuable virtue a marketer can have when dealing with graphics and templates.

And with ever changing terms for private label products, and the actual legality behind private label content in question in the first place, perhaps the best thing for the wary marketer to do is to always assume the strictest possible interpretation of the terms rather than the most lax.

I have just signed up for a new service (currently in beta testing) called Text Link Warehouse. The concept is simple. You paste some code at the bottom of your web pages, Text Link Warehouse sells text links to other publishers, and you and TLW split the revenue.

The appeal:

To publishers, the appeal is simple. Anything that will add a source of monetization to your site without causing you a whole lot of headaches and work is a good deal.

To advertisers, the appeal is having lots of text links pointing to your new site, speeding up indexing (hopefully) and boosting traffic.

BUT…

There’s the Google PageRank issue.

Lots of people are under the impression that a high Google PR is a super great thing to strive for. I personally haven’t seen PR correspond to revenue or traffic, but the fact is that people will pay for high PR links. They won’t pay, at least not much, for low PR text links.

So, one question that needs to be addressed by TLW is whether advertisers will be able to buy only high PR links, or whether they just buy impressions… and the related issue of whether publishers will get extra revenue from their high PR pages or they’ll just get a flat rate per impression.

This, actually, is a vital issue, since if it’s not handled well, and publishers can get more from selling their own text links on their high PR pages, then they’ll only list their low PR pages on TLW, which will make the service less attractive to advertisers, which will lead to fewer buys, and less income all around.

The second issue that needs to be addressed is how much control publishers will have over the ads displayed.

Google has made clear that it will be penalizing sites that link to ‘low rent’ areas of the web, which means that it could seriously hurt your site to link to online pharmacies, casinos, and many of the other types of sites that would be common advertisers for TLW.

Also of concern is the issue of the service leaving a fingerprint… since Google frowns upon buying and selling text links.

SO

While I’m interested in how this will work out, and may add many of my higher traffic and high PR links in the future, right now I’m only going to play with TLW on this blog.

Stay tuned if you want more unbiased, common sense reaction once the links start showing up.

Yesterday I made a few changes to the layout and display of Adsense on this blog. Prior to that, my CTR for Adsense blocks on this blog.. no matter what size, shape or color scheme, has always been horrible. And by horrible I mean less than 1%.

But the new layout on the front page — and most of the progress is on the front page– has helped. A lot.

No, I’m not getting double digit CTRs, and I probably never will on this site, but after a decent amount of traffic today, it appears I’ve achieved a bit better than a 600% increase.

Still not rolling in dough, but at least it might be worth testing and tracking a little more, rather than abandoning Adsense here altogether.