Mailbag Friday 11-18-11
By: John Elder posted in Adsense
Hello good people!
Well it’s a beautiful Friday here in Chicago…after a bitter cold day yesterday we’re back up to the 50’s today. How about that?! Being Friday, that also means that it’s time to open the mailbag and answer some of your questions.
Hey, I remembered two Friday’s in a row! I think that’s a record…actually, I think that really IS a record!
Question 1
Comes from Heidi “My question is about getting approved for Adsense. I’m ready to apply with a site that I had outsourced, from a professional team, because I figured that way I won’t get denied with the application process. I have read so many bad stories of people not getting approved, etc… So I have really been constantly researching. That’s how I even found you!
Do you know if I can just apply straight with this site? More specifically I mean, because its not on my own hosting account yet and I didn’t register the domain myself, so those “behind the scenes” information is not with my name, add., etc.”
Really great question Heidi. I hear this question a lot on different forums around the Internet. Unfortunately I’m not the best person to ask about this because I don’t really have any experience with it.
When I signed up for adsense, I just signed up and got approved later that day. I didn’t do anything different, or strategic, or anything. Just filled out the information they asked for and clicked the button.
I have heard horror stories about people not getting approved, but frankly I don’t understand how that’s possible. Unless the person just really screwed up the form, didn’t fill out their correct info, or submitted a website that was just so incredibly horrible that it was unacceptable to Google.
The one thing I would recommend is that you change your websites whois information (your domain’s registration info) into your own name. That actually might be a red flag to Google if it’s not in your name. And really, it takes 5 minutes to update that information and usually another 24 hours or less for it to propegate throughout the general Internet.
One tip I have seen people use it to set up a free hosted blog at like blogger.com or wordpress.com or any of the other main free blog sites. Then just write 5 articles, make them into five blog posts on five different days, then wait a week and apply for your Adsense account, listing that blog as your main website.
Seems to have worked for a lot of people.
Question 2:
This one comes from Kyle “have a (probably simple) question I was hoping you could help me out with. Having recently begun my own Adsense Journey I currently have 4 Adsense websites. My problem is that I put a lot of time and effort into keyword research and product selection and am starting to think that I’m wasting my time with so much effort.
I analyze exact search volume, CPC, number of competing pages, average Page Rank of competing pages, etc. The result is that it takes me much longer to find a “suitable” keyword than it does to actually make the site itself, and it limits how much I can get done every day. Do you think I am over-analyzing my keyword selection?”
Great question! The short answer is “Yes” I think you’re definitely over-analyzing your keyword selections. But most people do that.
My approach is much different than most peoples. I build hundreds of sites, so I use a shotgun approach to keywords. I pick a broad keyword, then build my site to spin articles with thousands of variations of that keyword…then I just sit back and see what sticks.
So the main theme of the site might be golf…then the site itself would spin out pages about golf clubs, balls, bags, tees, shoes, shirts, different brands of all those things, etc. I set my sites to do this automatically and I often seed the site using all the keyword choices given by the Google keyword tool.
I think I might have talked about this in other past articles, if not I’ll get into the specifics in the future sometime.
The bottom line is…quantity is far better than quality in the Adsense game. Churn out the websites…because even your best research won’t help you. The winners will always be some obscure keyword you never thought of.
Thanks again for questions…keep them coming!
Keep on building!
-John
The Marketing Fool!
