There are lots of Adsense guides out there, but I’ve come across one recently that really lays out the process of making money with Adsense in a way that is easy to understand and follow. It’s called the Adsense Income Blueprint by Kurt Chrisler over at AdsenseMasterPlan.com. At Kurt’s site, he offers videos outlining his process. But if you’re like me, you can absorb material more quickly by reading it. I much prefer written guides over videos, so I asked Kurt if he could provide me with a written version of his program. Not only did he do just that, he told me I could offer it to all MoneyClub Online visitors for free!

So go ahead and click the link below to download your FREE copy of Adsense Income Blueprint!

Adsense Income Blueprint (PDF)

If you’re just getting started in Internet Marketing or any Web-related activity, you probably have lots of questions about Website hosting. There are many options available and monthly fees range from a few dollars to a hundred dollars or more. And you definitely don’t want to make a choice and then realize shortly after that you should have gone with something different - moving sites can be a pain. So how does a newbie figure out what’s right for their needs? Read on…

Shared Hosting

The first type of hosting you’ll find is shared hosting. Shared hosting means that you are given a block of hard drive space on a server that houses other accounts as well. You are sharing the server’s resources with dozens or even hundreds of other customers. And if the shared hosting account allows you to host multiple Websites, this means that there can be thousands of Websites living on this one server.

Let’s look at the good things about shared hosting. It is the most inexpensive type of hosting, which is a major plus for those just starting out. It usually includes a control panel (most often cpanel or plesk) which makes it easier to configure things on your hosting account. You often get an assortment of script installers (Fantastico is one of the more popular ways of providing this) which allow you to add a blog, a shopping cart, a guestbook and other options to your Website.

On the negative side, using shared hosting means that your Website is, to some extent, at the mercy of other sites on the same server. If another site is running a script that uses a lot of the server’s memory or processing power, it can slow down or even interrupt access to the other sites on the box. A good hosting provider will usually catch this problem and resolve it with the owner of the offending site, but it can still cause unnecessary headaches. Another potential problem is with spamming. If someone else on your server is sending out a lot of spam e-mail, the server’s IP address (the unique address of the server on the Internet) can be blacklisted by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) meaning that email sent from your Website might not get through, even though you aren’t the one spamming people!

Shared hosting is a good way to start if your Websites will be just HTML pages without any major scripts running, or if you don’t plan to send out a lot of email through the mail server. The pricing can’t be beat, but you have to be aware of the limitations and potential pitfalls I’ve outlined above.

Some shared hosting providers I’d recommend are:
Site5 Hosting
BlueHost
midPhase Hosting
Omnis Network

Virtual Private Server/Virtual Dedicated Server

A step up from shared hosting is the VPS or Virtual Private Server (also called Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS). VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting in that you share a physical server with others. The big difference is that the server is outfitted with something called virtualization (Virtuozzo is one of the most common solutions used). Virtualization basically splits up the server’s resources into defined and dedicated blocks. Whereas with shared hosting, another user’s site can hog the physical server’s resources and bring all the other sites to a crawl, with VPS you get a certain amount of RAM and a certain percentage of processor usage that is dedicated to your sites. Similarly, each virtual server, or “chunk” of the overall physical server usually has it’s own IP address, thus reducing the potential for your IP being blocked because of someone else’s spam.

On the negative side, the cost of a VPS solution is usually significantly higher than a shared hosting package. Expect to spend about $40 to $90 a month. Look for coupons or specials that will either reduce your monthly cost or increase the level of resources assigned to your account without increasing the cost. And speaking of resources, make sure that you get a minimum of 128 MB of RAM (256 MB is strongly recommended). You also want to look for “burstable” resources, meaning that you can “borrow” unused resources beyond your dedicated limit for short periods of time. Another thing to watch out for is that many of the cheaper VPS packages do not come with much, if any, management of your virtual server. This means that you are responsible for installing any scripts you need (including a control panel in some cases). Unless you are a major tech geek willing to learn a lot about server configuration, try to find a managed VPS service that includes an already installed control panel (again, cpanel and plesk are recommended). It will save you a lot of headaches. Also look for WHM (Web Host Manager), which allows you to create sub-accounts for all of the domains you want to host.

Recommended VPS/VDS providers:
EasyCGI VPS Hosting
midPhase VPS Hosting

Dedicated Server

Hosting your site or sites on a dedicated server means that you are the only customer of the hosting company on a given server. You have the entire server and all its resources to yourself. No one else to bog down the server with complex scripts, no one else to get the IP address blacklisted for spamming. Just you. It sounds great, but the cost ($100 per month and up) is often prohibitive for many folks, especially those who are new at Internet marketing. Additionally, while you can sometimes find good deals on a dedicated server, there is usually a catch. That catch is that you take full responsibility for the software that is running on the box. You are responsible for updating to the latest version of the Apache web server, the latest version of PHP, the latest version of mySQL, etc. You are also responsible for making sure that security holes are patched so that your server doesn’t get hacked. In short, you probably have a lot to learn before you are ready for this type of responsibility.

That said, there are managed dedicated servers available, where someone at the hosting company takes care of some or all of these responsibilities. Of course, this costs even more money.

I don’t recommend a dedicated server for anyone just starting out, unless you’re a network admin who just quit his or her job to pursue the work-from-home dream that Internet marketing promises. Otherwise, steer clear until you have made enough money to pay for the fully managed dedicated server or to hire your own server admin.

Recommended dedicated server provider:
LiquidWeb

So what should you do if you’re just starting out? I’d recommend starting with a good and inexpensive shared hosting provider until you learn the ropes and get comfortable with Web hosting. Once you’ve got some experience, move to a VPS solution. A smart way to go is to look for a hosting company that provides both shared and VPS plans - they may be able to help you move your sites if and when you need to upgrade your plan. (Both EasyCGI Hosting and midPhase Hosting offer shared and VPS plans - check them out.)

Finally, the best tip I can give you is to make sure you understand what you’re getting in your hosting plan. Check the list of features against what you plan to do with your sites. If you are planning to run an ASP script, don’t sign up for Linux hosting - you need Windows hosting for ASP, in most cases. If you are planning to run a PHP application, make sure the plan you sign up for supports PHP (most do, but the point is to be diligent in checking your requirements before you sign up).

A good hosting provider can be a valuable asset to your online business for years to come. A poor one can be a major obstacle to success. Follow the advice I’ve provided here and you should be in good shape.

IAC announced that it was laying off 8% (about 40 people) of the Ask.com workforce and that the search engine would be refocused to target women over 30, which they claim represents about 65% of their users. Ask.mom anyone? They also indicated that they would be refocusing on the question-formatted search, a la the old Ask Jeeves. So why should those of us who are not women over 30 care? Because Ask was the true innovator in search right now and they are deciding to take a HUGE step backward. Sure, Google has all kinds of nifty things that may or may not ever make it out of Google Labs, but Ask made changes to their search results pages that should have changed the way we all look at and use search. And now, in all likelihood, it’s all about to go away and that sucks.

So who is to blame for this terrible decision? The easy answer is Barry Diller, the Chairman and CEO of IAC, Ask’s parent company. The conspiracy theorist’s answer is that Barry’s wife, Diane Von Furstenberg, pushed for the move to give women a search engine to call their own. The real answer? Look in the mirror. You, me, and the majority of Internet users are to blame. We have been so brainwashed by Google that we spend the extra time typing google.com when ask.com is shorter. We have been so busy being “hip” by “Googling” everything that we didn’t recognize the tangible value of the Ask.com search results page, with it’s neatly organized blocks of relevant video, audio, image, news, and Wikipedia entries. We eschewed the convenient “Narrow Your Search,” “Expand Your Search” and “Related Names” lists on the left side of the results pages, instead opting to retype our search query all over while adding a word or two to make it more specific or alter it’s focus. We stupidly ignored the outstanding preview feature - those little binoculars that would show you a thumbnail of the page behind the link so you could find the right result before leaving the page. Nah, I’d rather click a result and hit the back button, click the next one and hit the back button, maybe do it a couple of more times before I find the page I’m looking for. Internet users are, apparently, a largely masochistic bunch.

Lest you think I am a regular user of Ask.com who is spouting sour grapes, let me assure you that I am equally as guilty of falling into the Google trap. Like a robot, I type google.com whenever I need to search the World Wide Web. It is nearly an involuntary action, like blinking and breathing. I would have a rare moment of clarity and actually use Ask.com once in a while, and I loved the results I got and the ingenuity and usability of the page they were presented on. So why didn’t I use it all the time? I, and I suspect many of you readers out there, can’t fully answer that question. But that doesn’t mean we can’t explore it.

Ask was a search engine lacking a position. Google was the hip choice and the market leader. Yahoo was the long-standing authority who had always been there for us. MSN was, well, the default home page for Internet Explorer, the most used browser in the world. Ask was… that quirky little engine that you could ask questions of. No, wait, they moved away from that years ago. So how come my wife still calls it “Ask Jeeves?” Even when Ask ditched Jeeves and decided to play with the big boys, they never identified and targeted a large enough demographic to get them major market share. They focused on trying to get the pseudo-hip techie-types away from Google with the “It’s the Algorithm” campaign, and while they succeeded on some small level, they never made a serious dent. Then they showcased all the useful pieces of their search results page, comparing it to the bland results provided by Google and the others. But those ads never quite worked, in my opinion. So we never had a compelling reason to switch all of our search activity to Ask.com.

Ask also (at least to my knowledge) never got into the Web-based e-mail thing like Google and Yahoo. With the success of web-based e-mail services, led largely by Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail, and the easy access to Web search that those services provide, you have to wonder if Ask missed the boat on a major gateway to search traffic.

In retrospect, Ask was kind of like that syrupy sweet Aunt who always pinched your cheeks when she saw you. You never went out of your way to visit her, but now that she’s gone you realize that you’re going to miss the awesome homemade double chocolate chunk cookies she gave you and the way she would go out of her way to make you happy when you did visit. That’s how I feel about Ask. Now that the things I love about it are rumored to be going away, I realize that I shouldn’t have taken it for granted.

Pardon me while I visit the old girl one last time…

If you have a web site and are serious about getting traffic to it, you have two choices. Choice #1 is paying for traffic by using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. It sounds like a good idea until you realize all of the hoops that Google and Yahoo will make you jump through in order to keep your cost per click down. Don’t want to jump through their hoops? Then you’ll pay super high per click charges and burn through what little budget you have so fast that your head will spin.

Choice #2 is getting free traffic to your site. That is what search engine optimization, or SEO, is all about. In a nutshell, you make your site very relevant for search phrases that many people type into the search engines every day. This is done by researching the search market, applying certain techniques to your web pages and building relevant inbound links to your site. It may sound simple, but I do it for a living and what I’ve described is definitely an oversimplification. But when it is done correctly, it works tremendously well. The search engines want to give the most relevant sites to their users, so they will move your site to the first page of results. SEO is the single most powerful way to drive traffic to a site.

So how does a person learn to do SEO? Well, you can pay a ridiculous amount of money and attend a very expensive training course taught by SEO experts. You can also spend years trying different things, reading SEO books and forums and learning from your mistakes. Me? I did both. But I’m happy to tell you that you don’t have to do either.

There is now a terrific video-based course available that will teach you how to effectively optimize your web pages for top search engine ranking. Its called SEO CodeBreaker and I have personally reviewed it and wholeheartedly recommend it. It not only introduces SEO to newcomers and walks them through the basics, it also covers many advanced techniques. I’ve been doing SEO for years and I even learned a few things from the course!

The videos are very easy to follow, and were much better than I expected. The content is rock solid and is really easy to grasp. Charles Kirkland, the product’s creator, really takes his time and explains how to do it and, most importantly, why to do it. It really gives you a great understanding of not only the step by step process, but also the reason for using each specific technique.

The bottom line is this: If you are tired of losing your shirt on pay-per-click and want to start getting free traffic to your web sites, then SEO CodeBreaker is a great investment. Highly recommended!

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Learn more about SEO CodeBreaker.

I’ve checked out the 2008 edition of the Ultimate Website Conversion Course and it offers outstanding insight into dramatically improving conversion rates on your Website. These days, there’s a lot of focus on SEO and PPC, but as I always tell my SEO clients, “You can pay me to send thousands of prospective customers to your store, but if they get there and the place is unorganized, products are hard to find, and they aren’t compelled to buy anything, you’ve paid me for nothing!” The other side of the SEO and PPC traffic generation coin is usability, compelling sales copy, and all the other “user experience” factors that determine conversion rate.

Think about it - if you are getting 300 visitors a day converting at a 1% clip on a $50 product, that’s $150 a day. Not bad. Now bump that conversion rate to 2% and suddenly your sales are at $300 a day. Over the course of a year, that’s the difference between sales of $54,750 at 1% and $109,500 at 2%. And really, who couldn’t use another $55k in sales?

The Ultimate Website Conversion Course is even recommended by conversion rate guru David Bullock. Who’s David Bullock? Read what marketing god Perry Marshall has to say about him. Bullock purchased the Ultimate Website Conversion Course at full price to check it out and was so impressed he wants to include it in his $2,000 conversion improvement package!

Bottom line: You owe it to yourself to check out the Ultimate Website Conversion Course. It’s backed by an unprecedented 16 week money back guarantee, so you’ve got nothing to lose!

Rating:

I’ve just been authorized to offer our readers a $30 discount on the product for a very limited time. Just click through this link: “I want to increase my conversion rate!” and enter the coupon code MONEYCLUB in the Coupon/Promotional Code box on the right side of the checkout page. You’ll pay just $67 instead of the regular $97 price! But hurry as this offer expires at midnight Eastern time on Friday, February 1st.

Learn more about the Ultimate Website Conversion Course.

I plan to use MCO to blog about various topics including Internet/affiliate marketing, search engine news and SEO and PPC techniques. I will also review products and services relating to these topics. I hope that the many people who are new to this game will get some benefit from the information I post here. If you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to drop me a line.