From internet news

Facebook users are on high alert this week for another e-mail scam advising that their accounts have been reset and asking them to reset their passwords through an attachment contained in the unsolicited e-mail.

But as security software vendor McAfee (NYSE: MFE) details in a blog posting, the attachment is actually a password stealer that is installed when users click on the link.

The potentially damaging e-mail is titled “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support,” and Facebook officials are telling users to immediately delete the message to avoid infecting their PCs and mobile devices.

Once the phishing agent is installed, it can access any username or password entered on the computer or mobile devices, putting users’ online banking account log-ins and other sensitive information at risk.

“This threat is potentially very dangerous considering that there are over 400 million Facebook users who could fall for this scam,” McAfee researchers said. “This is also the sixth most prevalent piece of malware targeting consumers in the last 24 hours, as tracked by McAfee Labs.”

With an estimated 400 million users worldwide, it’s easy to understand why hackers love to target Facebook with various phishing and malware scams on an almost weekly basis.

In January, a massive scareware campaign plagued the site for a couple days, attempting to lure Facebook users into installing bogus antivirus software on their computers.

McAfee officials said this latest malware project included “tens of millions” of spam messages sent to users around the world and would likely result in the infection of millions of computers.

McAfee recommends users install the latest version of its antivirus software to protect themselves from attacks of this type and reminds users to never click on any links or attachments contained in unsolicited e-mails regardless of how authentic or personalized they appear to be.

From CNNMONEY

As the tax deadline draws near, the IRS wants you to beware of fraudulent tax preparers, hidden offshore bank accounts and offers that seem too good to be true.

In its “dirty dozen” list, released Tuesday, the IRS urged taxpayers to avoid falling prey to — or carrying out — a number of common tax schemes that will result in copious fines or put an offender in prison for years.

Taxpayers should be wary of anyone peddling scams that seem too good to be true,” said IRS commissioner Doug Shulman. “The IRS fights fraud by pursuing taxpayers who hide income abroad and by ensuring taxpayers get competent, ethical service from qualified professionals at home in the U.S.”

Among the scams to watch out for this year are preparers who offer refunds that don’t exist, promoters who encourage you to argue with the IRS about taxes you owe, and IRS impersonators who may even use Twitter to obtain your personal information.

The IRS will also be keeping a close eye on misbehaving tax filers, so think twice before filing a phony salary, lying about charitable donations or trying to claim a tax credit for the gas costs you incurred during that road trip you took last year.

Hiring a sketchy preparer: It’s easy for an accountant or tax preparer to take advantage of you, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the tax code or paperwork involved with filing a return.

There are many preparers out there who — to make an extra buck — will skim a portion of a client’s refunds, charge more than they should for services and lure taxpayers to their office by promising unattainable refunds.

It’s up to the taxpayer to be careful when selecting a preparer, but the IRS is also taking steps to help decrease the chances that a taxpayer will end up receiving “help” from a fraud.

In future filing seasons, all paid preparers will be required to register with IRS in order to receive a preparer tax identification number. Preparers must also take competency tests and participate in continuing professional education, unless they are attorneys, certified public accountants or enrolled agents.

Hiding your money offshore: The IRS is cracking down on hidden offshore accounts, and as part of its enforcement, the agency is targeting offenders and seeking out anyone else who helped to enable the scheme.

If you have an offshore bank account, brokerage account, credit card or even an offshore insurance plan, the IRS urges you to come forward now and admit to your crime voluntarily in order to limit the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Phishing for personal information: Be careful before replying to that e-mail from the IRS notifying you of the thousand dollar refund you’re eligible for this year.

“IRS impersonation schemes flourish during the filing season,” the agency said. “Criminals use the information they get to steal the victim’s identity, access bank accounts, run up credit card charges or apply for loans in the victim’s name.”

These scams can come in the form of e-mails, phone calls, faxes or even tweets. If you receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be from the IRS, don’t open any attachments or click on links included in the e-mail. Instead, forward the message to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov.

Filing false or misleading forms: Scam artists are claiming refunds they don’t deserve by filing “false or misleading” returns, said the IRS.

Taxpayers are fabricating information returns and claiming made-up withholding credits in an attempt to make a little extra money from the IRS by way of a tax refund.

Some taxpayers carry out this scheme because they are under the belief that the federal government holds secret accounts for each of its citizens, said the IRS. These individuals believe that the funds in these hidden accounts can be accessed simply by issuing a Form 1099-Original Issue Discount, which is a phony information return.

Overvaluing your charitable donations: While giving to charity is a noble act, don’t reverse it by lying about the amount you donated.

It can be tempting to overvalue items you give away when reporting them on your return — especially for non-cash donations such as furniture or artwork — but the IRS is keeping an eye out for suspiciously high-valued donations this year.

Arguing with the IRS: Have a bone to pick with the IRS? Be careful.

Taxpayers are being convinced by scam artists to argue with the IRS in order to get back some of the taxes they owe to the agency.

“Promoters of frivolous schemes encourage people to make unreasonable and outlandish claims to avoid paying the taxes they owe,” the IRS said. “While taxpayers have the right to contest their tax liabilities in court, no one has the right to disobey the law or IRS guidance.”

The agency has a list of “frivolous” legal positions that have been “thrown out of court” and cannot be used against the IRS, so pick your fights carefully this tax season.

Fishy retirement plans: The IRS is on the hunt for taxpayers who abuse their retirement plan arrangements, including individual retirement accounts (IRAs).

Taxpayers who enter transactions that allow them to exceed the contribution limit of an IRA are wanted by the IRS, as are those people who fail to properly report early distributions.

Claiming gas costs: Trying to claim the money you spend on your hour-long commute to work each day? This could cost you a $5,000 fine from the IRS.

While taxpayers such as farmers who use fuel off highways as a means of carrying on their trade or business may qualify for the fuel tax credit, you can only claim the credit if it meets specific IRS requirements.

Disguising your company: It’s time to fess up to that business you own. The IRS is currently working with state authorities to identify corporations and other entities that disguise the ownership of a business.

These entities are often disguised through using a third party to request an employer identification number, and the businesses or financial services can be used for the underreporting of income, fictitious deductions, money laundering, financial crimes and even terrorist financing.

Giving yourself a pay cut: In an attempt to lower the amount of taxes owed, some taxpayers are filing phony wage-related information returns instead of the required returns.

“Taxpayers should resist any temptation to participate in any of the variations of this scheme,” said the IRS, adding that false filings could result in a $5,000 fine.

Abusing trusts: An increasing number of people are misusing private annuity trusts and foreign trusts to transfer income and deduct personal expenses.

“Some promoted transactions promise reduction of income subject to tax, deductions for personal expenses and reduced estate or gift taxes,” said the IRS. “Such trusts rarely deliver the tax benefits promised and are used primarily as a means to avoid income tax liability and to hide assets from creditors, including the IRS.”

Inflating your withholding credit: You could be fined $5,000 this year if you exaggerate your withholding when reporting nontaxable Social Security benefits, which would result in your falsely report zero income to the IRS.

Tell the IRS: If you notice anything fishy, report suspected tax fraud to the IRS using Form 3949-A.

From the Numbers News
Alice in Wonderland comfortably held top spot at the box office this weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday. In these days of 60% drops for big releases, its decline of 47% can be considered a victory for Disney and earned it an impressive $62 million in its second outing. Its total cume to date passed $200 million, and the movie is already Tim Burton’s second-highest grossing movie after 1989’s Batman.

New releases all struggled individually, but collectively earned over $40 million, indicating that the high level of competition was their biggest problem. Green Zone topped the list with $14.5 million, well down from previous Matt Damon/Paul Greengrass collaborations. She’s Out of My League picked up $9.6 million for Paramount, also below expectations but not terrible.

Remember Me scored $8.3 million for Summit. Again, that’s lower than pre-weekend projections, and something of a disappointment given Robert Pattinson’s fan base. However, it’s hardly a disaster considering the likely budget of the movie and the time of year.

Our Family Wedding was the final new wide release, and it actually did a little better than expected with $7.6 million. Its Per Theater Average was comparable with Green Zone’s, making it a fairly successful niche play for Searchlight.

How to Get Traffic to Your Blog

Original post by Alan View from  Moneymakerinfo

If you enjoy making money online by promoting products or services, then the chances of you being in affiliate marketing are fairly high. You might have signed up as an affiliate with one or more online businesses, who then give you a specific affiliate ID. Many of the online businesses that are involved in affiliate marketing might have provided you with a simple marketing package like banner or text ads and your affiliate sales page link. The only thing you really need to do now is to use these great tools and drive traffic to your affiliate sales page.

This is the strategy almost all affiliate marketers follow, but there is a problem here. Though this is a good strategy, in order for you to make a decent amount of money, you will need to have thousands of people visiting your affiliate sales page before even one product/service is sold. That being the case, you can imagine how hard it can be to actually make a $10 commission. Even if you succeed in doing so, the amount of time and effort you would have spent in earning those $10 would be huge!

Not just this, there is another problem with earning these commissions too. If you look at the terms and conditions of your affiliate marketing program, maybe they don’t pay commissions till you have earned at least $30. That means another thousand or more visitors and then, you might just have a chance at looking at those $30.

But here is something you need to consider without getting discouraged. Internet marketing is an excellent way for you to make extra cash on the side, and it honestly does not need much of an investment.

Four Step Affiliate Marketing Process:

Instead of advertising your affiliate program directly, make use of this four step process.

1. Providing value-add: Before getting down to advertising, provide something valuable to your potential customers. The simplest ‘valuable’ thing that you can provide without much effort is free information. You can provide this free information in the form of a series of email courses, eBooks and so on.

2. Give when you get: Don’t give away your free information till you get the email addresses of your potential customers. It is vital to know the name and email address of all the prospective clients, so that you can move on to the other two steps in the affiliate marketing process.

3. Earn trust: The next step in this four step process is to earn the trust of people, due to the valuable information that you have provided.

Just as you would closely monitor information provided by someone who gives you good advice on managing money, time or effort; others will start trusting you, provided your information is trustworthy. Since you have the name and email addresses of the potential customers, you can send them occasional emails with valuable information. Remember, don’t spam their mailbox. Else, they may block you and you will lose sales.

4. The actual sale: If you have been providing the potential customers valuable information regularly, they will trust you enough to buy a product/service you recommend. The sale is easier, if you can somehow make them realize that what you are recommending is worth the amount they will be spending.

In affiliate marketing, try to sell products and services that have helped you personally. This way, it becomes easier for people to trust you and you can share your experiences with them too!

Anybody will tell you that to make money working online you must have at least a basic knowledge of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is just another tool in your marketing bag. If used properly it can bring you more customers, more prospects, and more clients faster than any other form of marketing. But, like any other form of marketing it requires a plan. Before you even start to optimize your site you need to know what your goals are. What kind of person do you want to attract to your site? What keywords will you use? What kind of conversion rate do you want to achieve? Whatever your conversion goal is it will involve a living breathing person on the other end of the Internet connection. Before the existence of the Internet, before the existence of direct mail marketing, conversions involved face-to-face interactions. Keep this in mind while developing your marketing plan. Search engine marketing is NOT about tricking the search engines, it is NOT about how much you pay per click and it is NOT about how many websites link to yours. At the end of the day, it is about simulating that face-to-face interaction as closely as possible.

When your prospective customer reaches your website they probably will not know who you are. They are probably not familiar with your company and, most importantly, they will not want to be ’sold’ to.

‘But wait’ you say. ‘I have to make money. I have something to sell. That’s why I spent so much time and money bringing people to my website’.

Yes, but here is something to ponder. When you are shopping in a brick and mortar store, say for instance that you are shopping for a new stove. What are you initially looking for?

INFORMATION!

You want to know what makes the £600 model better than the £400 model. You ask yourself, “do I really need all the features of the £600 model or can I live with the £400 model?” So you are sitting there reading all of the information on the tags. You are gathering information. If a salesman walks up in the first few moments, you tell him that you are ‘just looking’ to get him to back off. It isn’t until you have settled on one or two models that you ask for help. It isn’t until you have gathered all of the INFORMATION that you even glance in the direction of the salesman, fearing that even looking at him before you are ready will cause him to come running over and pressure you into buying the most expensive model in the store.

You don’t want to be sold to, you want to make an informed decision. And when you finally do ask for a salesperson, what are you looking for? MORE INFORMATION!

You are looking for more information to support your buying decision. Only when you have answers all of your questions do you ever pull out that credit card and make the purchase.

Keep that in mind when you are creating your Internet marketing plan.

The successful salesman knows that he has products to sell. He knows that he must sell X number of stoves to put food on the table. But most importantly, the successful salesman knows that in order to make the sale he must know his product. He must have the INFORMATION his customers are looking for. He must know how to communicate that knowledge and how to make the sale passively without being a ‘pushy salesman’.

So, back to how to market ineffectively online….

If you really want to lose potential customers; if your passion is to sit around all day figuring out how to trick the search engines into ranking your website in the #1 or #2 spot; if you love paying way too much for pay per click traffic; if you are absolutely sure that you do not need to pay attention to proper search engine optimization, then here are a few sure fire ways to completely waste your time with your website. Here is how not to make money online:

· Use LOTS of cute graphics… especially the dancing cowboy one… everyone loves that right?

· Put everything you can possibly think of on the first page

· Include links to every single site you can think of

· Link exchange with everyone that asks

· Ask everyone to link exchange with you

· Make your contact information hard to find

· List your contact information everywhere and anywhere it fits

· Have no form of sensible navigation whatsoever

· Name your home page ‘home’, your contact page ‘contact me’ etc

· Use images to link your inner pages

· Have at least three broken links on every page

· Use the worst possible picture of yourself and make sure it is badly cropped

· Use the same title tag on every single page

· Use the same description on every single page

· Build your entire site in flash (remember to include the broken links)

· Hide text on your website so that only the search engines can see it

And the #1 thing you can do to completely waste your time with your website is….

· Don’t include any information anywhere about anything to do with your business

May your success be more than you can hold!

From JohnChow dot com

They always say that blogging is already saturated. Saturated especially if you are going to use blogging to target a wide audience and then make money. I’m always observing the blogosphere and while I can’t argue that there are so many blogs out there on a certain topic, I think it’s not enough to call it saturated yet. Not even close if you ask me.

I always classify bloggers into three. There are those who we call professional bloggers, the medium caps bloggers and the average bloggers. Pro bloggers are those who are considered the experts, the famous ones or simply “web celebrities”. Mid cap bloggers are the ones who I describe as bloggers who do things right but not as popular as probloggers are yet. And obviously average bloggers are the pollutants, they are the majority of what comprise the entire blogosphere.

Ok, I understand that pollutants is a bit of a harsh term but unfortunately, most people don’t realize that they just fall into this category. In this post I will give a list of 10 signs why you are just an average blogger. Without further ado, here they are.

1 .You don’t have a goal (and specific goals)

Goal Setting is a very important part of every business. And blogging is an internet business, so you need to set one as well. When I ask people what is their goal, their usual response is to make money. David Risley recently made a very good post on how people should get things done. In that post, he outlined that most people just put a long haul general goal and the problem is that almost all of the times, it’s not attained.

Setting goals, targeting specific tasks and outlining subtasks are important for online success so make sure you’re not neglecting this one.

2. You don’t build a list

I used to think that list building was for spammers only. But as I’ve observed how famous people use list to their advantage, I realized that it’s really a must-have for all serious bloggers. My blog has been up for 2+ years and its just last year that I started building a customer’s list.

Remember each and every of your readers is your potential customers. They build your business for you and it’s really imperative to collect them.

3. You think of making money too much

Most bloggers get into this mistake. They start a blog then put some content, market it a bit and then go full force into making money. Most of the times they do it by plastering ads to their site or by simply switching from giving good value to their readers by having the obvious intention of making money.

Listen, do you really just want to waste all the effort you exerted by forcing your monetization tactic? It’s hard to build a loyal base of audience and once they start clicking that unsubscribe button, it’s gonna be hard for you to make them come back.

4. You have a crappy design

The problem with this is that usually people really don’t realize their blog design sucks! Just because you think it’s cool it doesn’t mean it’s great in the eyes of the majority as well. The thing is you really need to follow the majority. If they think it sucks, then ditch it!

One of my tips is to actually just make use of forum review sites. Most people think its sole purpose is for quick traffic but the use of it is still to provide reviews. Most forum lurkers are pretty straightforward so you’re going to expect some great suggestions there. People always say content is king, but isn’t it that design is part of the content?

5. You don’t utilize social media

Social Media represents Web 2.0. I’ve seen some bloggers who skyrocketed their profiles in their blogs by just maximizing its use of social media. If you’re new to social media then please consider taking some time on reading about it, understanding it more.

When I was in my early stages I even studied how each of the social sites work, built relationship with reputed people and just invested an ample part of my time. If you’re not into social media as one of the tactics in your blog then you’re missing out a lot.

6. You think blog commenting is the best marketing tactic

Blog commenting is cool especially if you just started a new blog. It’s a pretty great way to say “hey I exist!” But one thing I see most bloggers do is use it as their no.1 marketing ploy. Sure there’s nothing wrong in commenting but just doing that will bring you nowhere!

Consider who’s going to gain more traction between the two. The first blogger comments on 150 blogs everyday while the second blogger do guest posts at least thrice a week. Who’s going to get more traffic and readers at the end of one week? You judge!

7. You don’t do Guest Postings

Reading the previous one, it’s obvious that we’re going to head into this topic. Guest Posting is probably the quickest way to spit your brand out there and get noticed in a very wide scale of audience. I bet all of you guys reading this article know it but I doubt you put this into work.

Writing guest articles is not just doing it three times, four times or eight times. Man, you have to do it in bulks! You can easily notice as well that even popular bloggers do guest posting. That’s because of the unending search for a new audience that would turn into a loyal customer. Guest Posting is probably the most cost-conscious method that you can use to drive great traffic to your blog.

8. You spread yourself too thin

This is the common mistake that most bloggers make. They believe they already know the recipe for success and as a result, they create multiple blogs. In order for anyone to be successful in blogging, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. In short, you need to spend a considerable amount of time in your blog to make good progress. Don’t fall for this common mistake, don’t spread yourself thin.

9. You mass market your blog

There is nothing anything worse than seeing someone create a thread in popular forums only to say “hey check out my blog, its cool”. Or going to a high traffic social site like BlogCatalog only to spam your link out there. This is another crucial mistake that most bloggers are still doing! They think that by letting as much people as possible see their blog, they’re going to convert well.

It’s really a huge mistake not only because you get to annoy people there who cause them not to even look at your site, but more importantly you’re most likely targeting the wrong demographics. Remember, quality is more important than quantity.

10. Your content doesn’t make sense

OK, assuming everything is in line now. You now have that good design, have done a ton of really great guest posts, have an awesome list, you focus only on one blog and stuffs. In the end it all boils down to this last point, writing good content.

This has been rehashed probably a million times already but obviously everything that you’ve done is useless if you don’t write good content. Just imagine, you managed to guest post on several authority blogs, people love what you wrote and as a result they are clicking to your link. What if what they saw in your site is post about your cat? Or how ugly is your enemy? Or how you loathe you Math teacher?

In the end it all goes to waste. You see, it’s really a tough pill to swallow isn’t it? How do you write good content then? By sticking to your niche. I discuss a lot how professional blogging isn’t about having perfect grammar, superb fluency and being boring. And writing good content doesn’t have to be like that. As long as you think you’re connecting well with your readers, you’re fulfilling their needs; you’re doing your job.

Conclusion

So to end this one, I would leave it all to you. If you have been blogging and you think you’re exerting some effort and still not growing, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate, time to jot down notes on things that you are working hard with, yet are not producing good results for you. Remember those average bloggers never evaluate things. Just by doing your job now will put you way ahead of most bloggers.

A COMMON reason given by those who have yet to try Twitter: “I have nothing to say.”

The truth is, you don’t have to post a message to get the most out of Twitter.

At its best, the social medium is a perpetual, personalized news service about topics of your choosing — whether health care reform, tech news or the latest episode of “Gossip Girl” — filtered and served to you by people who care a lot about what you care a lot about.

Even the most prolific users say Twitter has become more useful as a way to tap in to the discussions of the day than to broadcast their own thoughts. And once you get pulled in, you might just find you have something to say after all.

Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, suggests that naysayers simply log on to Twitter’s home page and search for a topic they are interested in, whether it’s their favorite sports team, the name of their company or a topic in the news.

Within a minute, they understand the appeal, he said.

Twitter users write 50 million messages a day. For the holdouts, here are a few ways to make Twitter work for you.

A CUSTOM NEWS FEED By the time Bridget Baker, who works in public relations in Seattle, checks Google Reader while eating lunch at her desk, she has already read most of the articles in her feed because she saw them on Twitter.

In the year since she joined, she has written only 17 posts. “I tend to be a pretty private person. and I don’t feel I have anything that needs to be said,” she said. Yet she opens Twitter first thing each morning and follows friends, bloggers and thought leaders who post about politics, religion, fashion and food.

People with shared interests become your editor and Twitter becomes an alternative RSS feed. Find those people by searching Twitter directories, like WeFollow or Just Tweet It, and by following people whom others repeat or mention.

One-fifth of posts and 57 percent of repeat messages contain a link, proving that this is an increasingly popular way to spread news, said Dan Zarrella, a social media scientist who works at a software company called HubSpot. A quick scan reveals the news of the moment as the most important stories of the day bubble up and are reposted.

For instance, when Audi showed an ad for a green car during the Super Bowl, Chip Giller, the founder of Grist, an environmental news site, immediately noticed a debate about the car’s environmental merits on Twitter. Sure enough, the next day it was a big story.

CHECK YOUR LISTS Twitter is such a fast-moving stream that you may not want to follow everyone who posts about your interests. That’s one reason Twitter invented Lists, which anyone can create. Someone could separate celebrity users, owners of food carts in New York or tech pundits, for example, so they get an unadulterated stream of news on only the topic they want at that moment.

If you don’t know who the best users are on a favorite topic, look for Lists on sites like Listorious or by checking profiles.

Janessa Goldbeck works in Washington for a rights organization, the Genocide Intervention Network. Each morning, she checks a few Twitter Lists of people who work in human rights. “I don’t want to follow all those people, but I can get a snapshot of the landscape each day by looking at the Lists,” she said. “It’s the quickest, most personalized news filter you could imagine.”

ATTEND A CONFERENCE, VIRTUALLY Most conferences these days have a Twitter hashtag. At the exclusive TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., in February, for example, attendees added #TED to the end of their posts.

By searching #TED on Twitter, people could read the latest updates (and skip the $6,000 attendance fee). People wrote quotes from the speakers, like this one: “ ‘If I only had only one wish for the next 50 years, it’d be to invent the thing that halves the cost of CO2’ — Bill Gates #TED.”

Others told us what we were lucky to be missing: “last talk on evolution #TED was obvious, boring and put audience to sleep.”

WHAT’S AROUND YOU RIGHT NOW Twitter is working on ways to deliver news nearby, like alerts about an earthquake or the closing of a bridge, Mr. Stone said.

Twitter’s list of trending topics can now be searched by city. On Wednesday, “TAKS” was a trending topic in San Antonio because schools were giving the annual achievement test of that name, while “Dennis Seidenberg” was trending in Boston because the Boston Bruins had acquired the hockey player from Florida.

Some Twitter apps, like Tweetie and TwitterLocal, let you search posts near you. Check the Web site Happn.in to see the most discussed topics in your area.

People are coming up with makeshift ways to do something similar. During the recent snowstorm in Washington, people added #snowpocalypse to the end of their posts. By searching that term, Ms. Goldbeck said she read news about closings of government offices and Metro stops before she heard it elsewhere.

ASK QUESTIONS Once your Twitter writer’s block lifts, you can use Twitter to ask questions when you don’t know whom to ask.

Ask where to eat dinner in a new city, for example, or how to extend your iPhone’s battery life, and you are sure to get answers.

Some people are even using Twitter for more urgent questions. Bertalan Meskó, a medical student at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, wrote a post about a patient with mysterious symptoms: “Strange case today in internal medicine rotation. 16 years old boy with acute pancreatitis (for the 6th! time). Any ideas?”

Within hours, specialists worldwide had responded, suggesting gallstones, lupus or growths on the pancreas. One of the suggestions helped the doctors with a diagnosis.

“It would have been impossible to find that specialist through e-mail, because we had no idea who to contact,” Mr. Meskó said.

How to make Money with GOOGLE ADSENSE

If you have a website or a blog, you should definitely sign up for Google Adsense. It’s one of the few programs you can truly ‘set and forget’ – once it’s there you don’t really need to do much else with it except making money and making it fast.

But there are ways and means to maximize your income from Google Adsense and make easy cash, and as you get to know more about it you can start to generate a decent income from it that will keep rolling in month after month. It’s a true passive income, which is why so many people are using it.

Most people have heard of Google Adsense, but not everyone understands exactly how to use it to its best advantage. So we’ll start with how to use it in its most basic sense and then progress to the more advanced benefits you can get from the program.

Basically if you have a website or blog you can sign up for a free account at Google Adsense and start putting contextual ads on your website. What do I mean by contextual? It means quite simply that the ads which appear on your site will be relevant to your content. So let’s say for example that your website is about tropical fish. The Google ads will then be related to tropical fish in some way. And because of the information that you give to Google, they will also display adverts that are relevant to your area. So if you are based in the UK the ads that appear will be relevant to UK buyers; if your site or business is based in Australia the ads will appeal to Australian buyers.

All of this is carefully worked out for you in order to attract the maximum click through possible for your website and your ads. Every time someone clicks on an ad you will get a few cents into your Adsense account, so it makes sense that the more attractive and relevant your ads are to your visitors, the more money you will make and the quick cash will begin.

Let’s have a look at the appearance of your ads now, since this can affect the amount of click throughs you get. You can choose the color and borders of your ads to fit right in with the color scheme on your site if you wish, but it’s worth experimenting with having no borders at all around your adverts since this makes them blend in with your content more seamlessly and may encourage more click throughs in a subtle but effective manner.

However well you integrate Google Adsense into your current blog or website though, there is obviously a limit to the amount of money you can make from one site. If you get thousands of people visiting your site every day then you can expect to get a good income from it but many people don’t get this number of visitors and that’s where you need a separate strategy to try and up your numbers.

In this case you can go to the advanced level of Adsense income and think about starting several sites, all based around a different yet popular subject. You should think of these essentially as being content sites, since they are often chock full of articles and useful content which is carefully keyworded to attract plenty of search engine traffic on that particular subject. The Adsense ads are then placed in the optimum positions to achieve the best click through (the Adsense pages will give you ideas on where to position them but it’s worth experimenting to see what works best for you), and the site goes live for people to find and read through.

You can also insert affiliate links for products into these sites in order to gain even more income if you wish, but they are often known as Adsense sites simply because they are set up to attract visitors and click throughs on a specific subject.

Some people end up with dozens of sites like this, and the beauty of them is that once they are built and you have bought your domain name and hosting plan you don’t really need to do too much with them except for promote them. Updating them fairly regularly is good if you want to get to a higher position in the search engine results though, which will gain you more visitors as a result.

You can also keep your site updated more regularly (and encourage repeat visitors) by inserting RSS feeds of news stories related to the subject of your website. Anything that will get people returning to read more – and possibly click on more ads as a result – is worth a try.

One final note here – choose the subjects of your Google Adsense sites wisely. It’s tempting to go for whatever is in the news at the moment, but once the stories die down so will your traffic. You want something that people will always want to know about – saving money, getting a better job, earning more, and various other more personal subjects such as skin care and successful dating for example. There are plenty of options to choose from; you just need to get your thinking cap on to find them.

In short the best place to start making money from Google Adsense is to integrate it into your existing website or blog. As you gain experience and discover the best ways to use it you can start thinking about adding extra sites into the mix. You might end up being an Adsense guru and raking in plenty of money for very little work indeed. That’s the best thing about it – the ‘set and forget’ benefit that keeps on working even when you’re not.

If you enjoyed this article or have any questions or comments about it, please leave them by using the form below. Once you’ve done that it will be time to visit Google’s Adsense site to get started! Good luck.