How to get your blog Google AdSense approved?

If you type this question into Google search, you will find tons of posts describing you the tricks and tips on how to get this done. You have probably gone through few of them already before you reached here.

As I was trying to get mine approved by Google, even I have gone through these and have tried to follow them honestly. But eventually I learned that none of them actually matter. One and only thing matter to the Google is, your blog or website is a Genuine one and you are here to actually share your original content on the internet. That’s it.

Now how do you verify if your website can prove itself as a genuine one?

Quality Content: The utmost important condition for your blog to be considered by Google Adsense is the quality of the content. They must be “original”. There shouldn’t be any compromise in this. Remember that Google wants to be assured that your intention is to provide your visitors with useful information/contents.

Niche Specific:  All your posts must be pertaining to a single niche. Say one day you write about ‘Pet care’ in your blog and suddenly tomorrow you write on ‘How your power yoga classes have helped you shedding your weight’ and another day your write about that ‘broccoli salad’ you made. That will not do. All the post you publish must be somehow related to some basic niche and have one common 'Intention'. Google wants to know what exactly your visitor is interested in and will place the ads pertaining to the same niche and hence unless your blog can attract visitors interested in a certain niche, your blog is of no use to Google.

Content Size: You might have read on internet that the size of each article must be atleast 200 words, or 250 words or some say even 500 words for your blog to get approved of AdSense. This actually isn’t necessary. Until you are providing meaningful information and consistently providing information, it doesn’t matter what is the size.

Image Quality: A decent image adding value to your write-up is fine for the Google. You need not worry on getting a professional, high resolution photographs. One of my blogs where I mostly have photographs clicked using my average phone camera along with the write-ups has been approved by Google.

Minimum Traffic: I’ve been reading in many blogs that there should be a minimum of 50 visitors every day, only then AdSense would be approved for the blog. But, the same blog of mine which I mentioned earlier had only 20 to 25 or sometimes even less traffic when it was approved by Google. Until you have content that is useful for anyone who visits your site, it holds the chance to get approved .No matter what is the visitor count, if the count is real then it doesn’t matter. (Real Traffic is the traffic which you get through Search Engines, Social Media and other such means where people visit your site because they want to read what you have shared and not just redirected from some other sites unknowingly, which happens in some cases of fraudulent clicks )

Minimum Posts: ‘In certain countries like India and China, there is a requirement of 6 month for domain to apply for AdSense’. This is a myth. I’m an Indian and my account was approved by Google in just 3 months. There are lots of myths around the number of posts as well. Some say there should be atleast 50 posts, which is also not really true. I applied as soon as I felt that there is enough content on the blog to keep a visitor engaged atleast for few minutes.

I hope these little points will encourage you start earning from your blog through Google Ads. Happy Blogging!

Newsletter and Small Business

All you small online business owners or bloggers who are doing the marketing for your site on your own may have heard about Newsletter during your research. For all those who haven’t heard or yet to start with marketing, here’s a brief explanation. Newsletter service is a service which enables you to send updates and other emails related to your website to various lists of subscribers who have subscribed to the service in some way.  (They are different ways to add subscribers to your newsletter, will discuss this in the next segment.)

If you are still not using any newsletter service, you may be finding it hard to bring back your visitor once they leave your site. You may be using various options for driving traffic to your website. No matter what way you do it, all the effort is not really worth unless you can bring the visitor back again and again to your site.

Yes, we all know ‘Content is the King’ in terms of driving traffic and you may claim your content to be the best. But people these days do not remember their own cell phone numbers, they save it in their contact list so that they can read it to those who ask for the number, do you really think you can make your website remembered by everyone who visits your site? Okay, you may say they will bookmark your site or save it somewhere so that they can access it again later. But after all your effort marketing your site and bringing a visitor to the site, can you just sit and expect them to bookmark your site and come back again and again? No definitely not.  That’s where Newsletter comes into picture.

Not every visitor visiting your site subscribes to your newsletter. But even if 10% to 20% of the visitors do subscribe, on an average you can expect them to come back to your site atleast for 5 more times when they receive an email about the update in your website. This makes your website traffic (10 to 20) % x 5 which will be (50 to 100) % more than earlier. Without a newsletter you lose all these recurring visits. I’m trying out some newsletter for my site. I will update soon with my experience on which worked best for me. 

What is Hosting?

Most of them realize the importance of a good content. They hire a good web-developer to create a beautiful website or sometimes develop it themselves. But once it is done they think rest of the things don't really matter. This is not true. The actual business starts then. You will need to choose a good hosting provider to get your website online. Hosting provider are basically those who provide a space for your website on their server, so that it can work online.  They are responsible for your web services like file management and server space because it is practically impossible for everyone owning a website to have their own servers, since all can't afford one. Constant working of the server is very important for an undisturbed business, since the downtime can cause you loss of traffic and decreased page ranking. There are different types of hosting meant for different requirements.

There are too many hosting providers promising 100% uptime and cheaper prices. But not all keep up their promise. If you are a newbie for webhosting, you may end up choosing a service where you will later have to compromise with lot of things. Not all services suit all the websites. So depending on the type of your website, you will need to choose a hosting type and a provider. What exactly you are willing to do with your website matters when you choose a provider. To decide what exact type of hosting you need, it is important to know the types of available hosting.

Types of Website Hosting based on server type.

Shared Website Hosting

Shared hosting, a single server is shared by multiple websites. A shared server allows a user to get hosting space to store their files online, so that others can access them online.

Dedicated Website Hosting

In Dedicated web hosting, a web server is entirely devoted to your site. You may purchase your own server or pay for access to a server owned by someone else.

Virtual Private Server Website Hosting

A virtual private server, like the name says is a server shared by multiple users. However, each is maintained separately. This type of hosting is something of a combination of dedicated hosting and shared hosting.

Types of hosting based on Operating System

UNIX Hosting

The hosting means your website will be running on the UNIX operating system. This is the first and knows to be most reliable operating systems for the servers.

Windows Hosting

The hosting means your website will be running on the WINDOWS operating system. This is the service to choose if you are using ASP for server scripting and if you want to use databases like MicroSoft Access or MicroSoft SQL.

Free Web Hosting

Why Free Web Hosting? Is it actually free?

As the name suggests, free web hosting is a non-paid web hosting service. There are many web hosting providers who provide tools and interface to create an account which is absolutely free and those sites can be accessed via sub domains which they provide for that particular account.  If you wish to access the website with your own domain name then you need to register your own domain name.

Apart from these fully free hosting providers, there are also some providers who provide certain services free of cost with some paid services.

How a Free Web Hosting works? Why would one provide services for free?

The single and ofcourse biggest benefit of such hosting is that it is free of cost. Well you might be amazed why on the earth are they providing a free service. What kind of business is theirs? Are there any hidden charges which would come up later once the website is set up and in a point where you cannot refuse to pay, since all the effort to create that website would go vain.  No, that’s not true here. 

These services are absolutely free.  Features and resources are limited ofcourse. These type of companies let you create sites with them and later place various kind of ads on your sites which is their source of income here.  Some of them might share the revenue earned with you and some may not. It all depends of the individual providers. You need to make sure what type of service do you want before you sign up. Some providers may provide partial control on such ads like to move them in any corner of the page, re arrange the colors, fonts and sizes etc. But unlike paid hosting services, you will not have full control over your website.

Such service is suitable for the sites are just for sharing public information where security is not a concern and the sites are shared with only limited people and has limited traffic.

There are some providers who provide free service which can be upgraded later. You can use such service when you are experimenting with some ideas. If your idea gets successful, you can upgrade later for obtaining more resources and features. 

• Some of the major differences between free and a paid web hosting services which will give you a better understanding about what is free web hosting service and whether it’s worth to opt for such free hosting for websites?
•  Advertisements on your website are controlled fully or partially by the web hosting company that provides you with the free web hosting. It might be any type of ads like pop-ups, banners, pop-under or any other advertisement on your site on which you do not have control.  Also, the revenue earned is owned by the provider, or they might give only some percentage of the revenue earned through your site. But, in paid web hosting, you have full control over your website. They will not be able to place any ads and even if you place any ads, you will be the sole owner of the revenue generated and you need not share it with anyone. 
• There won’t be customer service. 
•  Limited Bandwidth and disk usage which can be reason for frequent downtime. 
• Most importantly, Limited security: Such accounts a much vulnerable to hackers and other fraudsters since the security limited. 
•  Low bandwidth and lesser data transfer capacity makes free website hosting vulnerable to greater downtime whereas paid website hosting gives you optimum bandwidth and data transfer for maximum uptime.

If you want to have a site for which security is not a major concern, can be managed with limited resources and if you do not intend to earn any revenue from it, then free hosting is the right option for you.

Dedicated Hosting

What is a Dedicated Webhosting? 
 

When you purchase a dedicated hosting an entire server is dedicated to serve your single account. This is why it is called dedicated web hosting. You may purchase your own server or rent a server paying to the server owner just like you pay for any other hosting accounts. If you own a server and have it stored in someone else's facility, it is known as collocation hosting. In any of this type of dedicated hosting, the use and administration of the server will be in your control, since the server is dedicated to your site alone. This enables all the aspects to be manageable. So a dedicated hosting is best suited for a website which requires lot of server space and bandwidth also when you want to create a large site for company with lot of technical resources.

Since this type of hosting is bit expensive compared to the others, you may also need strong financial resource. Because of the same reason, this may not be suggestible for small and medium companies. Other than this reason, there are plenty of other reasons because of which smaller companies may not prefer this hosting like maintaining such hosting needs higher technical skills. Hence, people new to this field definitely shouldn't go for this type.

Pros:

• Suitable for websites with higher traffic.
• You can have multiple domain names.
• Efficient email solutions.
• Efficient database support.
• Strong software support.

Cons:

• Comparatively expensive.
• One needs to have better technical skills to be able to maintain such a hosting account.

iPage Shared Hosting

iPage is the first name I would suggest, if you are a beginner trying to experiment with your small business website.  Most important reason is the price. iPage.com provides one of the cheapest priced shared hosting.

Shared Hosting are usually meant for Small to Medium business websites. (You can know more about Shared Hosting here.) Same holds for iPage Shared hosting as well. Additionally they have collection of features that enables almost anyone to set up their website online and start business. Here’s a list of such features which I feel makes setting up your website a breeze. 

Support:

It’s hard to imagine beginning any work without proper guidance. But professional help usually comes very expensive. But iPage even with their cheapest hosting packages or even with the free parking accounts provide free and very efficient Email, Chat and Phone support 24/7. Support is known for their helpfulness, patience and knowledge. 

Tools:

There are easy to use website builder tools, using which those with zero technical knowledge can also easily create a website within few minutes. Tools like Weebly drag and drop makes creating a website a child’s play and there are other website builder tools available at the control panel as well. 

Marketing:

There are lot of options to facilitate your website marketing. They provide various ad credits, using these credits one can start their online marketing campaign.

Also there’s a service to do everything needed to make a site top ranking. Of course this service is not free. 

Special Advantage:

One more thing which I like the most is even though iPage provides cheapest hosting they give the best referral credits in the market.  Yes, if you want to earn some extra dollars in your account, iPage is the one which provides highest affiliate credits or cash. 

iPage is the best host one can have if you have a small business and a shared server is sufficient for your hosting needs.

Shared Hosting

What is Shared Website Hosting?

When multiple websites are hosted on the same web server, it is Shared hosting. It is called virtual hosting. This is most basic and simple type of hosting. This is suitable for personal, hobby or small business websites. When you purchase a shared hosting, you are provided with the space for storing your files online on the server which is shared by multiple users just like you.  Saving files online will enable you and other internet users to access your website files online.  This is most affordable and suitable for small business and also medium businesses. Most of the shared hosting services provide unlimited diskspace and bandwidth, though most of the website user do not use large amount of diskspace and bandwidth, only few users use the entire amount provided.

Since an efficient server is shared by all the hosting accounts, there is reliability of a good server at exceptionally lower price compared to having your own servers. Shared hosting is an appropriate choice for many users, but not right for everyone. Those with high end technical requirements and want to control the entire server and website, you may need other hosting than a shared hosting. Additionally, if you have a large and extremely active site, you may need more server resources than shared hosting provides.

Pros:

• Low cost
• Suitable for small business and websites with an average traffic.
• Multiple software options.
• Own Domain name.
• Good Support.

Cons:

• Comparatively less security since many sites are hosted on one server.
• Restrictions on traffic volumes.
• Restricted database support.
• Restricted software support.