Everyone of us start with small steps. Everyone of us needs a helping hand. Everyone of those Adsense Gurus had someone help them start their online empires. And everyone of us could use a blogger friend.

One of those helpful bloggers and which I am privileged to interview is “Berry” (am not revealing the name, I do not have permission to do so hehe). And as her nickname implies, she is berry berry helpful as mentioned by Gumer!

As Gumer testifies, Berry has helped him a lot in taking the first step to making an internet blogging empire. Naturally then, we would want to know more about Berry and that is what we are going to look into now so grab a beer (or whatever you fancy drinking…) and read how our interview went below…

Paolo: So thank you Berry for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Berry: Right now, I want to say that I’m okay. Dizzy for these past few days, but still doing fine I guess.

Paolo: How long have you been blogging?
Berry: I started my blog about December 2005. It’s a private blog that only a good friend knows about it. Until something bad happened to me on November 2007. I was pregnant and I bleed. I had to stop working for a few months. But I need money, even extra money online. I was searching for PPC (pay per click) opportunities. Instead, I saw PPP on Google. Lucky me! So It’s December 2008 that I started my very
first public blog that earns money from blogging. It’s the http://www.berryblog.net/

Paolo: Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Berry: I am a programmer. I work Mondays to Saturdays, 9:30am to 6:30pm. But I usually arrive super late at around 10:00am to 11:30am, and I work for around 9 to 11 hrs a day.

Paolo: Do you have any plans to taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Berry: I would want to. But right now, my online earnings went down. But I’m trying some things experimenting) to earn more. It’s not easy to earn online. I think I’m not as good as others. But I try. I also do PTC. I’m earning more and more cents on it because of referrals. If I can earn a little here and a little there, some here and a few more on online opportunities, it wouldn’t be bad to leave my job and be serious on what I do online. I’m not so serious on the online money making right now. It’s still considered “extra money”, and if only I have extra time and strength, then I can check on my blogs and sites and earn more.

But with my current situation with my job, plus me taking care of my baby, and some more errands, I want to quit my job.

Paolo: How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Berry: Hmmm… I got this anime site. Mind if I share it? It’s http://www.kaitousainttail.com/ and it’s my first website. I just got my own domain for that site. It’s previously hosted free on Geocities. And we know that Geocities is shutting it’s free hosting. That site is running since year 2000. I first installed my very first Adsense code on year 2003 on that anime site. I thought that it’s that easy to just put the code and earn. I’m wrong. So I just leave it there. Until I created my public blog. And on year 2008, about March I think, I got serious with earning on Adsense. After about 14 months, I earned my first $100 in Adsense. I’m slowly learning and experimenting on ad placements. And I know, I should learn SEO. I’m starting to learn a little.

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Paolo: No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Berry: Sad to say, I only earn a digit per month. I still need to learn SEO.

Paolo: How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Berry: Only three blogs.

Paolo: Is the profit shared evenly between the blogs? Or is there a main blog that you get the majority of your income?
Berry: My main blog that is Berry Blog got the most earnings on Adsense. I also earn from sponsored posts there the most.

Paolo: As Gumer’s ‘mentor’, can we know what tip you gave him when he first started?
Berry: Err, I guess he’s good at gasping things that he reads. I share where I earn money online on my blog. I share how I got an Union Bank Eon Card after I got mine. I share a few tips on my blogs on earning money online. Gumer happens to be a newbie on those. I am happy he learned from my posts. I guess I’m one of those blogs he’s got into checking about earning money through blogging.

Paolo: For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Berry: Go with what you are good at. If you are good at Computer Graphics, you can share your knowledge online through your blog. One thing I had learned, your personal blog is a “personal blog”. Don’t put personal or unrelated posts on a blog with a certain topic theme. It’s also best to have a certain topic interest for each of your blogs.

Paolo: How do you look for a profitable niche?
Berry: Hmmm… I’m not sure. Right now, I do want I love, and that is blogging. I’m just lucky I can earn through blogging. It’s like hitting two birds in one stone. But seriously, it is really difficult to earn a decent money from the Internet. One got to have patience. And I know, I still got a long way to learn more.

Paolo: Do you only do pure seo or do you use PPC as well?
Berry: I’m a newbie on SEO. I need to learn from Gumer =)

Paolo: So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Berry: With my lifestyle, I don’t actually time to optimize my blogs. I did a little on my blogs. But as serious as other on SEO, I’m not there yet.

Paolo: When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Berry: I’m learning a few SEO, only the basics. If you search basic SEO on Google, those are what I do, like the h1 tag, the alt tag. Just only a few basic SEO. I should learn more.

Paolo: How do you optimize for a keyword?
Berry: But it as a title of the post =) Just make sure that your title is still reader-friendly.

Paolo: Do you think content is King?
Berry: Yes. And unique contents can increase visitors from search engines.

Paolo: To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Berry: Hahaha I don’t think that you are a newbie. I am the newbie when it comes to SEO and Adsense money making. First, one got to experiment on the ads placement. Try to check other sites and see where others usually put their ads. Blend the color of the ads with your site. If blending doesn’t work, maybe your ads looks like an unclickable text, instead of a link. Try to experiment. And to know which of the ads
got more clicks than the others, add channels on Adsense. Link each of your ads on the Adsense set up with a unique channel. Just imagine that the channels are simply like names. You would be informed which of the ads got clicked. Like what channel got clicked a certain number of times.

Paolo: What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Berry: I’m not sure if this is a mistake, but I often see blogs with the Adsense ads placed under the title “Sponsor Ads” or “My Sponsors”

Paolo: Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Berry: I got no one to teach me. Hopefully next time, I would learn the right way of optimization and Adsense

Paolo: How about Infolinks, how did you come to know about it?
Berry: I had heard about it before. But I still hadn’t registered for it..

Paolo: I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Berry: Everything starts with a cent. I see a lot of people who thought earning online was as simple as that. Those cents would one day become a $100 just like my situation =)

Paolo: Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Berry: I got none to thank when I was a newbie. But now, I would like to thank Gumer of http://www.technotechniques.com/ and Gem of http://www.theladyprogrammer.com/ for sharing their tips.

Paolo: Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Berry: Be patient. Do some simple research. And try to read other people’s tips on online money making. And also, be careful of scams. Try to search first if the one you are eyeing on is a scam site.

In the Philippines, we’ve all heard about student teachers (students who are teaching at the same time…) or student _______ , replace the blank with whatever profession. But have you heard of a student Adsense Guru? Well you have now! This Adsense Guru has already earned a lot through Adsense while still in school! Now how is that for a side profession…

Well this student and Guru at the same time is no other than Donald Serrano aka don_ser. Though he calls himself “the feeling problogger”, do not be fooled by this because he really is a problogger.

Let’s check out how the interview went…

Paolo: So thank you Don for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Don: I’m doing fine. Thanks

Paolo: How long have you been blogging?
Don: I don’t know about blogging before. But I started making websites when I was 13. And was encouraged to join adsense when I was 17. Google Adsense declined my application because I was underage at that time, so I decided to use the name of my girlfriend.

Doing HTML and other Web Programming languages manually is so difficult. Thank God I discovered blogging last April 2008.

Paolo: Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Don: I’m just a “tambay” boy. I’m supposed to be a 4th year graduating student but I stopped schooling because I wanted to have a simple life. Hehe.

Paolo: Do you have any plans on taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Don: Yup! But I don’t know what to do and where to start.

Paolo: How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Don: 2 months. (http://www.donaldserrano.com/donser/2008/07/my-first-google-check-2/)

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Paolo: No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Don: 5 digits in Peso every month… But sometimes I only get 4 digits in peso…

Paolo: How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Don: In 2008, I only maintain 1 blog. Now, I have plenty

Paolo: Is the profit shared evenly between the blogs? Or is there a main blog that you get the majority of your income?
Don: I have a main blog

Paolo: For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Don: As what Tyrone of MillionaireActs said, always take the niche that you are passionate with

Paolo: How do you look for a profitable niche?
Don: I just look for blogs with high traffic and find what keywords they are receiving massive traffic, then I copy their keywords, not their content. This is called Hijacking

Paolo: Do you only do pure SEO or do you use PPC as well?
Don: I have no money to pay for PPC, so I only do pure SEO.

Paolo: So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Don: 20 minutes per day is enough. I stop doing SEO when I find my keywords already in the SERPS.

Paolo: When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Don: It’s not a secret. SEO for me is linkbuilding. I look for websites or blogs with High PR and I ask them to exchange links with me. That’s my SEO technuiqe

Paolo: How do you optimize for a keyword?
Don: Link Building

Paolo: Do you think content is King?
Don: For me, not really… because all the articles in my blogs are useless and nonsense. I even get so many negative comments everyday because of my poor quaility content.

Paolo: To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Don: Never click or encourage others to click your ads. Just do SEO everyday, make a post everyday and wait for the earnings to come. Also, Use an Adsense Optimized theme.

Paolo: What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Don: I see a lot of newbies sending spam messages on friendster and facebook offering Free Cellphones, free laptops, etc. And when I get to their blogs, I see text above their adsense ads saying “Click one link below to receive your free cellphone”.

something like this:

“Get your free cellphone exclusive only for friendster members!Share ko sayo yung website na nagpapamigay ng free cellphone sa mga friendster members!This is 100% true kasi nakakuha na din ako and i want to share this blessings to everyone.Just visit the website below to get your free cellphone

http://*******************.com…

Pumili lang ako sa mga kulay green na nakasulat tapos nakakuha na ako”

“Hello mam sir,Im the Marketing secretary of EazySmart cellphone company,may news po kami galing sa company namin.Today magpapamigay po kami ng 8 thousand na cellphone units sa mga friendster members and we just included you to our list!Opo may libre ka na din cellphone galing sa amin!Find out more below”

“HI I AM A BIG ADSENSE EARNER AS YOU CAN SEE IN MY CHECK I EARNED A LOT IN ADSENSE ALREADY SO IF YOU WANT TO EARN LIKE ME ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS VISIT MY SITE: http://*******************…/ AND CLICK AT THE GOOGLE ADS.
IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT GOOGLE ADS ARE, THEY ARE THE BLUE WORDS YOU JUST HAVE TO CLICK IT AND YOU WILL EARN TOO, TRY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU DO NOT BELEIVE ME? LOOOK AT THE PICTURE OF MY PROFILE SEE HOW MUCH I EARN! DO NOT BE ENVIOUS BECAUSE YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO MAKE MONEY BY CLICKING THE ADS ON MY SITE. KAYA NATIN TO KAHIT NAGHIHIRAP ANG PILIPINAS!”

I really hate to see newbies doing this kind of illegal technique

Paolo: Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Don: A friend of mine, Jehz Laurente.

Paolo: How about Infolinks, how did you come to know about it?
Don: I knew about it from a blogger friend.

Paolo: I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Don: Just try and try… Don’t mind the earnings. Just do your best to have many visitors on your blog. THe more visitors you have, the more chances of getting clicks. And the more clicks you get, the more chances of higher income. Hehe

Paolo: Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Don: First, I’m really thankful to God for introducing this online rocket to me.
Second, to Jehzeel Laurente and Marhgil Macuha for answering my questions regarding Blogging and SEO, for sharing Tips and for helping.

Paolo: Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Don: Hijacking keywords is the easiest way to get high traffic and earnings. hehe.

Image via Wikipedia

Today, I am bringing you insight from a problogger from Mindanao. If you notice, many successful Filipino bloggers comes from the South and our subject today is one of them. He is no other than Gumer Liston of Techno Techniques.

This guy is one cool problogger. Much like the others I talked to, he is friendly and ready to help. From what I gather, he seems to be a hard-working person. So though he is cool, he is also a no non-sense kind of person who focuses and what needs to be done and does it.

Here is how our conversation went:

Paolo: So thank you Gumer for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Gumer: I am doing fine.

Paolo:How long have you been blogging?
Gumer:I started my first blog in 2006 but I did not take it seriously because I did not know that I could earn from it. I was more active in online forums then. But in 2008 I read a blog post from a Pinay blogger about how she earns Php8,000 or more a month from PPP and Social Spark. So I left a message in her blog, I asked many questions, mostly about how to get the blogging money into a Philippine bank. She answered my questions promptly and we became friends, she encouraged me to blog. I learned a lot from her also. That Pinay blogger is Berry of BerryBlog.net

Paolo:Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Gumer:I have a day job. I work as a registrar in one of the many colleges here in my place. This is just between you and me (and those who’d be reading this) : I am bored to death with that day job.

Paolo:Do you have any plans to taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Gumer:That has been playing in my mind for months now. I think before this year ends I’d go full-time with my online ventures.

Paolo:How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Gumer:It took me more than a year to break into that realm he he he, the first cash out was $185, 14 months after I signed up for an account in Adsense. But after that I got Adsense money every month and what I earn just sort of grow bigger every month.

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Paolo:No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Gumer:I am earning five figures in Philippine peso from Adsense every month. But now things really look good, I guess if this will go on (and it has been going like this in the first seven days of August), I’d break into the six figure income in this month of August from Adsense. I am just crossing my fingers that it will happen. Of course you’ll know about it at the end of this month, I’ll post my August earning in one of my blogs.

Paolo:How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Gumer:I and my wife (we’re a team) have around 15 blogs but the real income comes from only four of them, our main and oldest blogs.

Paolo:For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Gumer:I think the easiest road to tread is the one that leads to news. With a news blog, you have something to post every day.

Paolo:How do you look for a profitable niche?

Gumer:It’s difficult to say, really, I just rely on gut feel. It takes a lot of creativity and sharpness of thinking to find a good niche. In this age and time, almost every niche is taken so it is really difficult to say what is the most profitable niche. If you love what you are doing, if you enjoy your blog, then probably you have yourself a good niche. Even if a niche is highly saturated already, if what you do with it is extraordinary, you’ll be noticed, people will see you.

Paolo:Do you only do pure seo or do you use PPC as well?
Gumer:As of now I only use basic on-page SEO. I have yet to try PPC.

Paolo:So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Gumer:It’s a lot of hard work at first, it takes a lot of time, but once you get on it becomes a natural part of every post, you do the SEO every time you post on your blog, it comes second nature and you forget that you are SEOing.

Paolo:When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Gumer:It’s not a secret, I only do the basics. I am building a blog which will cover all the SEO I know, GumerListon.com. In a week or two it will have many posts about SEO.

Paolo:Do you have any particular SEO technique?
Gumer:I could not really say. What I do is basic SEO, no secret formulas or anything.

Paolo:How do you optimize for a keyword?
Gumer:I just use it as the title. Very basic. I also use the tag for it in the post.

Paolo:Do you think content is King?
Gumer:Of course.

Paolo:To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Gumer:You are not a newbie, I am the newbie. The best thing to do to increase your Adsense income is to drive massive traffic to your blogs. To do it, you need SEO. You can also experiment with how to use keywords so that high paying ads will be served in your blogs. Never stop experimenting. You can make use of channels in Adsense to track the high performing and the low performing ad blocks. You need also to experiment with your template, find the best place in your blog to place the ad blocks. This is very important. There is no fixed formula in placing the ad blocks because every template is unique in its own way and “the psychology of a clicker” is of course affected by the template. I personally like clean templates, the white ones, for me it’s easier to blend the ad blocks with the overall look of the page if it is white. But the blog that gives us the biggest income is my wife’s blog, it’s template is yellow and people could not help but click on her ads.

Paolo:What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Gumer:The most common mistake is in how the ad blocks look. If the ad block is saying loudly “Hey, I’m an ad, please click me,” no one would click it.

Paolo:Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Gumer:Actually I learned from a lot of people, from reading a lot of blogs about Adsense optimization. I also learned a lot from Adsense’s blog. As to having a mentor, I do not have any, I am basically self-taught, that’s how I do my thing.

Paolo:How about Infolinks, do you earn from it?
Gumer:Yes, I love it. One of my blogs averages $3-$4 a day from it, the other three blogs make $1.7 to $2 a day. Not bad because I consider it as a source of passive income, my focus is really with Adsense.

Paolo:I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Gumer:I was like them, there were day that my income is zero. remember, it took me 14 months to get my first Adsense money.

Paolo:Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Gumer:Yes, I want to thank Malou aka Berry of BerryBlog.net for being the first blogger to welcome me into the blogosphere. I learned a lot from her about earning with my blogs. I also want to thank Gem of TheLadyProgrammer.com for the help with some of the technical side of blogging.

Paolo:Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Gumer: Don’t quit early in the game. Enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, then it’s not for you. Never be ashamed to ask questions from those who know, the real experts are always willing to share what they know. See your blog as your baby, love it, consider it as an artwork in progress.

So my little sideline has paid off!

Now a little of statistics. I’ll go over my earnings for the month of July for my various earning channels:

Adsense Earnings: $52.53
Infolinks Earnings: $2.75
Chitika Earnings: $9.44 (not bad…)

I am taking the The Keyword Academy course online and am following their system. Using it, I have created 4 sites that have yet to earn some income. This is due to their being new. Let us see next month what happens with this 4 sites.

Last month I said that I will create 5-10 more niche sites and be earning $100/month. I failed on both counts But hopefully I can reach my goals for August by being more realistic. Here are my new goals for August:

• Create 2-3 new sites
• Take care of already created sites by backlinking
• Increase online earnings from $50/month to around $70-$90 /month.

So I’ll write another update next month and hopefully I would have achieved my August goals by then.

I often read books in finance and investing. You may probably have heard of Robert Kiyosaki and his book Rich Dad Poor Dad which is a best seller. However, since he lives in the other end of the world and is probably a very busy man, I do not have the chance to interview him

But what I have to day is another expert. An expert in financial intelligence who is also gaining popularity both in the online and offline world. With his informative financial tips in all aspects of life, he has created a name for himself that could rival Robert Kiyosaki himself in years to come. This expert is no other than Tyrone of www.millionaireacts.com . Let us see what he has to say on his online adventures…

Paolo: So thank you Tyrone for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Tyrone: I’m excellent.

Paolo: How long have you been blogging?
Tyrone:I started blogging last year April 2008. But I did not take it seriously. Eventually, November 2008, I came to a decision to have my own domain with a WordPress theme and take blogging to the next level.

Paolo: Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Tyrone: Yes, I do have a full-time job. I am a Competitive Intelligence Analyst for the Market Insights Team in a multinational BPO firm for a client in the IT industry. I handle Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) Region.

Paolo: Do you have any plans to taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Tyrone: As of now, I don’t have plans yet. For now, it would be an asset and source of passive income. My short-term goal is to settle abroad. But who knows? As I have an entrepreneurial spirit, I might venture into an online business someday. It depends on the opportunity that will come.

Paolo: How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Tyrone: It took me 8 months before I earned my 1st $100. But when I transferred into my new domain WordPress themed blog, it took me 3 months to earn the 2nd $100. The third $100 took me 2 months. Hopefully, if God permits, I could earn $100 on a monthly basis.

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Paolo: No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Tyrone: I earn a little income from Adsense. As I’ve said, I’m averaging 2 months before I earn $100.

Paolo: How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Tyrone: I have two blogs to create that income. But Millionaire Acts is the main contributor around 99%. Although I do have 4 blogs in total, the others don’t have huge visitors.

Paolo: For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Tyrone: Always take the niche that you are passionate with. It’s because if you are passionate with your topic, then it would create a buzz in the blogosphere and you would be recognized. You know what Millionaire ACTS had brought me? I was featured at Good House Keeping Magazine. I was shocked when I received a text message direct from the President and CEO of a major insurance firm inviting me to explore career opportunities with his company. I received a direct call from Canada from the leaders of Max GXL (a networking company) inviting me to be a leader.

One of my blogs is Millionaire SEO (www.millionaireseo.com) but unfortunately, I found myself not passionate about just writing anything for the sake of SEO.

Paolo: How do you look for a profitable niche?
Tyrone: An SEO guru said that Food, Health, and Nutrition blogs have one of the highest CPC. This is followed by finance niche.

Paolo: Do you only do pure seo or do you use PPC as well?
Tyrone: Pure SEO only. And I do entertain direct advertisers also if the offer is good.

Paolo: So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Tyrone: With my current work load, I don’t have enough time to post articles on a daily basis not withstanding the time to compose a finance related article. I just write articles during the weekends. If my time permits during work, I also blog hop and make comments on other blogs.

Paolo: When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Tyrone: SEO is Search Engine Optimization. Build good content, link it internally through your posts, link it externally through blog carnivals and other blogs, and promote it both online through social bookmarking sites like digg, yahoo buzz, etc. and offline through your friends and other acquaintances. My blog has been promoted through word of mouth I think because there are some people searching for Millionaire ACTS.

Paolo: How do you optimize for a keyword?
Tyrone: I optimize a keyword first by placing myself in the shoes of a user. If I am a user and will search a topic in the internet using search engines, what would I type? Second, I go to google trends to know if there is a trend for a particular keyword. And third is I do link building both internally and externally as discussed above.

Paolo: Do you think content is King?
Tyrone: Definitely content is KING. It’s where you will create a brand for your site like famous people such as John Chow and Shoe Money. Create a content that will be helpful to your readers because blogging is like a business. Your readers are your clients which are the lifeblood of your business. In my case, I chose finance and business as my niche. You never know who might contact you because of your content. Almost everyone in the world has access to the internet.

Paolo: To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Tyrone: I’m not an SEO guru like the others such as Randy, the first person you’ve made the interview. But I would suggest that you find a niche that would be helpful to your readers and that would interest you and that you are passionate about. Second is to implement some SEO techniques like link building, etc. And third is to market.

I think that content is king BUT marketing is the queen. You wouldn’t have the motivation to write if there were no readers to your blog even if you write good quality articles.

Paolo: What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Tyrone: They give up easily. We all started in that $0.01 income in Adsense. Don’t give up! That’s why I recommend to choose the niche where you are passionate about. Then next would be the money. Also, experiment with different colors and places of your Adsense. I recently changed one of my Adsense ads to show only pure image ads. Some Adsense guru said that an image ad side by side with a text ad in a good location in your blog would generate nice amount of clicks if you have nice traffic.

Paolo: Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Tyrone: Adsense mentor? I think Jehz would be the one. He is one of the famous SEO bloggers here in the Philippines and he literally retired himself from working as he generate enough income to live without working. I think his income is enough to put some executives to shame.

Paolo: How about Infolinks, do you earn from it?
Tyrone: Infolinks? Yeah, I earn very little from it. I started implementing it February of this year. Unfortunately, I think it would take me one whole year to reap a $100 minimum payout. It earns so slow. I think it would just be good if you have really huge amount of traffic in your blog.

Paolo: I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Tyrone: I think I already answered your question. Don’t give up. And choose your niche.

Paolo: Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Tyrone: I would like to thank Jehz, for all the bloggers who keep on visiting my blog, for James of Pinoy Money Talk who has a forum that has the same niche as mine, for Rochelle yap who designed my blog, and definitely to almighty God for all His blessings.

Paolo: Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Tyrone: Choose the niche of your blog with your interests and passions coupled with hard work and discipline

And without further delay…

Paolo:So thank you Randy for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Randy:I feel great! Thank you Paolo!

Paolo:How long have you been blogging?
Randy:I started blogging just June of last year but I got into serious blogging when I launched DC (My News blog) in September 2008.

Paolo:Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Randy:I have a day job, I’m currently employed and working as a Systems Engineer for a Japanese company.

Paolo:Do you have any plans to taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Randy:Yes definitely! I have big plans and dreams for DC. I want to have more contributors/writers in the future (paid of course). Currently, we (me and my friends) are planning to launch a blog network.

Paolo:How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Randy:I placed my very first AdSense code on my first blog way back in June. I received my first AdSense payment just January of this year and that’s because of DC.

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Paolo:No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Randy:In dollars, it’s 3 digits per month for the first 4 months but I’m very happy that it became 4 digits last May and June. Our AdSense earnings increases every month but I’m not sure if it will stay that way because I run more CPM ads today that will definitely compete with AdSense CTR.

Paolo:How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Randy:A have a few other blogs but 95% of my income comes from DC.

Paolo:For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Randy:As what other bloggers suggests, start a blog where you can write quality content. You should create a blog with market value and it’s always best to think about branding and your target audience.

Paolo:Do you only do pure seo or do you use PPC as well?
Randy:Only SEO, but maybe I’ll try PPC in the future.

Paolo:So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Randy:I am more of an on-page SEO type of blogger so my answer is every time I create a post. I’m not into link exchange these days. For me, it is much better to get links to your post rather than contacting every blogger and ask for a link exchange.

Internal linking works fine for me.

Paolo:When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Randy:Like I’ve said, on-page SEO works best for me. I build links occasionally when I have to rank high on SERP for a keyword (usually for sports events).

My other practice is to submit our articles to social media sites like Digg, Reddit, twitter, and Facebook.

Paolo:How do you optimize for a keyword?
Randy:I build few links and create good content. As a blogger you have to convince yourself that what you are writing is what the searchers and readers would want to see.

Paolo:Do you think content is King?
Randy:Yes! Content really is King but I’m not still quite sure who is the Queen. hehe

Paolo:To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Randy:I’m also a newbie Paolo but for me, the best way to increase your income is to invite more traffic to your blog because your ads will have a bigger chance to get clicked. Another thing is don’t be afraid to experiment. You can experiment on font sizes, styles, ad positions etc.

Quality Content + Traffic + Good AdSense Positioning = $$$

Paolo:What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Randy:
1. Spamming! I hate spammers promoting their site on other blogs.

2. Click their own ads

3. Blackmailing bloggers – A blogger commented on my blog and her it is:

“Hello there. PLease visit my site and click on my ads or else I will click your ads 100 times you will be banned from google adsense! Do this just one click on my google ads ok? This is my address: “URL HERE”

I copied the comment verbatim.

To all AdSense publishers, please don’t do this!

Paolo:Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Randy:Experience is the best mentor but if you want to expedite the process, read blogs of successful AdSense publishers like Darren Rowse (ProBlogger.net) and Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney.com).

Use Google!

Paolo:How about Infolinks, how did you come to know about it?
Randy:I learned about Infolinks when I landed on Zalds blog (Zalds.com) and got convinced by Dexter’s Infolinks post on Techathand.net I’m very happy with Infolinks now. I actually created a report about it and it was posted on my personal blog (randymarasigan.com).

Paolo:I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Randy:You just don’t have to expect to earn from a new blog. Before I started DC, I only expected to earn from it after 6 months though I earned after 3 months.

Just don’t get discouraged early, almost all of AdSense gurus out there started with $0.01.

Paolo:Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Randy:First,I want to thank Ron of (rondelrosario.com). He introduced me to blogging, helped me to upload my site online and writes occasionally for DC. I also want to thank the pro-bloggers out there that keeps on giving us free source of information.

I also want to thank all the Pinoy bloggers who are visiting my blogs. Thanks!

Paolo:Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Randy:If you can’t handle it by yourself, get a partner or hire someone to work for you. It’s better to be on top with someone rather than get there alone. Just don’t expect too much when you have just started.

Keep on blogging!

I know, I know, I hear you saying he is no longer 13 years old. But hey, he is still quite young(at age 15) and quite exceptional in the make money online business considering his age! This goes to show that age is not a factor in earning money online. It is your will, desire and hard work that will make ends meet and bring your goals into fruition.

Well, there are no secrets revealed here, just SEO, make money online and random tips you can use in your everyday dealings in the world wide web. Unfortunately, we had our conversation in Taglish (Tagalog – English). So if you understand Taglish then that is good. For those that do not, I have added not a transcript of our conversation but points worth highlighting in our conversation. The 3 audio files below are raw and unedited. This was the first time I recorded a Skype call and posting it on the internet so please bear with it :p.

The first person to speak in the first audio would be me. We were discussing our backgrounds in making money online…

While this is the second audio. I am using a free version of the Skype Pamela recorder which can only record a call for 15 minutes max. So I have to start recording again every 15 minutes…

On this third audio, more make money online tips…

Interesting Facts About Carl Ocab:

• 4th yr high school student
• 15 years old
• His personal blog has 25900 backlinks
• Uses link baiting as primary method
• His personal blog alone earns 4 figure in dollars
• Has less than 10 money making website
• Plans to take psychology in college
• His mentor is Joel Christopher

His current focus in on:

• Creating own products / product launches
  • Example is his Ultimate Blogging Theme
• And creating social sites

Some background on affiliate marketing:

• His first affiliate marketing program that he joined – www.moreniche.com (established)
• Promotes www.opportunity.com (fairly new)

Adsense vs Affiliate marketing

• Try adsense first to get feet wet
• Affiliate marketing larger profit
• But creating own products is the best

Authority vs Niche sites

• Authority sites can earn more in the long run
• Niche sites are good if you have many of them since if one does not work you still have others

What is a good niche

• Those that solve problems
  • Sleep problems
  • Stomach pains
• Those that have products that are to be bought out of impulse buying

SEO Tips (2 categories):

• Onpage SEO
  • Keywords should be in title tag
  • Keywords should be in the start of the sentence title
  • Keywords should be in the header tags
• Offpage SEO
  • Linkbuilding
    • Article marketing
      • Web 2.0 sites – Squidoo, Hubpages, etc…
      • Guest posting
    • Link baiting – attract others to link to you
      • Post controversy
      • Give away free reports
      • Give away free tools
      • Hold contests
      • Ask for interviews

Other tips

• Some sites convert more for Adsense, some for affiliate marketing so choose well
• Use blog when creating sites as Google consider this as news sites and you will rank higher in the SERPs

Last May 9, I read about Adsense Smartpricing in Griz’s make money online blog. One of the top make money online blogs that is truly worth considering. It offers very very relevant and informative information (duh..) which is not what you will see in other make money online gurus out there (the A-listers…).

As usual Griz, wrote very very very long posts but which I thoroughly read (I read all his posts thoroughly…). In a nutshell, what he was saying was if your site is not a niche site and not laser-targeted in its topic then most likely any quest to earn Adsense from that site would ultimately get smartpriced. After reading that, it got me worried with this blog. As you can see it contains Adsense ads to help pay for itself (in terms of hosting and domain..). This is a personal blog which talks about everything and anything under the sun and basing from Griz’s post, my site is to be smartpriced sooner or later. And not just my site but also my other sites because smartpricing is not at the site level, but at the account level.

Griz also said that social traffic is bad for Adsense. This is because visitors coming from social sites are not in the mood to click ads but to just browse around. Or if they do click, it is just out of curiosity and the probability of the them buying is slim. Granted, this is not always true. But there is wisdom in his words. Social traffic normally tend to just browse around and surf. And if your goal is to earn money online, then social traffic is not the sort of traffic you would be going after. Now what does this have to do with Adsense smartpricing?

Well, Griz theory is that since social traffic generally is not there to buy and on the event that they do click the ads and go to the advertisers sales page, they would just simply leave since they are not there to buy. This is bad for the advertiser since it cost them a click which did not result in a sale. This is bad for Google because this implies that their system does not work. And to solve this problem, Google introduced smartpricing which will give you a prorated CPC (cost per click) depending on the quality of the click. That means if an ad-clicker clicks and buys, then most probably, you won’t get smartpriced. If an ad-clicker clicks and does not buy and this happens many and most of the time, then you will get smartpriced. Well, this is just a theory anyway but well worth taking into consideration.

So on the very same day, I checked my earnings. I did see some $0.01 to $0.10 clicks and assumed I was smartpriced. On the other hand I still do have $1-$3 clicks. But still I assumed I was smartpriced. I cannot afford to turn off Adsense for a week or two (minimum amount of time to get desmartpriced…) so I looked for WP plugins that would only show my Adsense ads to search engine visitors. This was good. However, there was a problem. If an SE visitor enters my site, then the plugin would take care of showing the ads. But what if this SE visitor click on links to my other posts, will the plugin still consider the SE visitor an SE visitor? Sadly, no. This would mean that ads would have less views and thus less chances of being clicked thus my low May 2009 earnings.

Come June 6 2009 and I turned the plugin off. Back then, I wanted to see if I would still get those dreaded $0.01 clicks after 2-3 weeks of showing ads only to SE visitors. To my utter surprise, I still did see $0.01 clicks! But then again, I still also saw those $1-$3 clicks. So what’s up with that? Am I still smartpriced? I did some more research on the quality and topics of my posts. Then I came to the conclusion that I was not even smartpriced from the very beginning! I noticed that my posts that had $0.01 clicks came from posts that were tied to gaming. And as we all know such niches pay poorly. That means those $0.01 click were legitimate clicks and I earned what I deserved. Those clicks probably were just worth $0.05 to $0.10 to Google (I only earn a portion of what Google earns…) that’s why I only get $0.01.

So what have I learned from this? Smartpricing is real as can be seen from other people’s reports. But we do not have to get scared of it causing us to abandon our Adsense earning altogether by pulling them out. As one of the veterans I have talked about this said, we just have to make sure that most of our visitors come from the SE and not social traffic (90% above would do…).

This is also points out that onpage SEO is as important as offpage SEO. Never neglect onpage SEO reasoning that offpage SEO (backlinking…) is only what’s important. Creating a neat site (good HTML, CSS coding) for the SE robots and following the onpage SEO guidelines showing ‘respect’ to them is certainly important. It might have been that those sites that got smartpriced and blaming that their being smartpriced is due to their site not being a niche site were probably smartpriced because their code was cluttered thus the Google bots were not able to identify what their site is all about thus causing to show irrelevant ads thus causing low quality clicks thus causing being smartpriced.

The bottom line is this, Google is smart. We won’t know their algorithms fully and all we can do is guess. But like in real life, if we show respect to someone, more likely than not that someone would also show respect to us. So, respect Google and its bots and hope that the big G won’t smartprice you.

So here we are again, another month has passed by and we are back to looking back to what we have accomplished the past month of June. The month of June is certainly interesting. In this month, I have learned a lot of things and started some things that might lead to something good in our quest to earn online. I have joined several forums that claim to teach you the essentials of doing so. In my first few weeks there, it certainly has proved to be an invaluable source of information.

This is also a significant month for me since this would be the month I have surpassed the $100 Adsense mark! Woot!!! So here are my earnings for various sources of online income:

Adsense Earning to received next month – $142.06
Adsense June Earnings – $60
Chitika June Earnings – $16.21
All-time Chitika Earnings – $20.91
Affiliate June Earnings – $5.74
Infolinks June Earnings – $3
All-time Infolinks Earnings – $5.49

The earnings above come from only 2 sites. So what I am planning to do is add more site and theoretically, the earnings should increase. I have also accomplished the following on the month of June:

• setup 3 niche sites
• create high quality backlinks to one of the niche sites
• took on the hubpages challenge

I know that is not so much of an accomplishment. This is because I still have a day job. But we’ll schedule things and work things out.

As for my blog’s statistics here they are:
7807 Unique Visitors
13476 Page Views

So each passing month this blog takes on a giant leap in terms of traffic. Also, I am planning to make this blog a sort of journal of my online earning endeavor, like what I have already done but in a more active manner. I do not know how yet but I’ll think of something.

So that’s it for June’s statistics update. While here are my goals for the month of July:

• create 5-10 more niche sites
• increase online earnings to around $100/month

Let us keep it simple. So see you again with our next update.

Phaw:So thank you Marhgil for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Marhgil:I’m fine.

Phaw:How long have you been blogging?
Marhgil:I’m blogging since 2004, so, that’s almost 5 years already.

Phaw:Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Marhgil:Yes, I have a full-time job, a 9:00am to 6:00pm job. I’m the IT Admin of a newly opened Japanese credit card company based in Taguig.

Phaw:Do you have any plans to taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Marhgil:Yes. I have plans on taking this full time. Maybe 2 to 3 years from now.

Phaw:How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Marhgil:The Adsense code was on my blogspot blog for 1 year just earning cents. When I learned SEO and applied it on a new blog, it took me 3 months to reach $100. So, if you’ll add that up, it took me almost 1 year and 3 months to finally reach it.

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Phaw:No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Marhgil:I experienced 4-digit last December to March, but it went back to 3-digit last April and May. Hopefully, I get the 4-digit earnings back this June.

Phaw:How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Marhgil:One blog, macuha.com. I already gave textmates.blogspot.com to my wife, so I don’t earn from it anymore.

Phaw:I know you started a photo blog for monetization, how is the blog doing?
Marhgil:Procrastination got me. Haven’t updated it for a while. No SEO. No income. Maybe, later, I’ll focus on it. See, I’m procrastinating again. LOL!

Phaw:For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Marhgil:Take the niche they love blogging about. If you love what you do, you’ll not get tired blogging about it.

Phaw:Do you only do pure seo or do you use PPC as well?
Marhgil:I’ve tried PPC before. Masakit sa bulsa. So, I stopped it.

Phaw:So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Marhgil:When I was just starting, I used every idle times in our office for exchanging links, 5 days a week. While others were busy decorating their Friendster accounts or watching Youtube videos, I was busy exchanging links everyday. Right now, I just do SEO stuff when I have a new post I want to optimize, at least once a week for an hour.

Phaw:When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Marhgil:It means I do offpage optimization. Exchanging links. Submitting to social network sites. Linking from my old blogs. Getting links from forums.

Phaw:When are you going to hold another SEO contest?
Marhgil:I don’t have plans yet.

Phaw:How do you optimize for a keyword?
Marhgil:I’ll just write a post about it. Do a little research to have some quality in my post. Then start the offpage optimization I mentioned above.

Phaw:Do you think content is King?
Marhgil:Yes. Content is King. Marketing is Queen.

Phaw:To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Marhgil:Keep on blogging. Create quality content. Hijack more keywords.

Phaw:What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Marhgil:Clicking their own ads. Or asking some people to click their ads. That’s a no-no.

Phaw:Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Marhgil:I learned a lot on Joel Comm’s The Adsense Code book. I ordered it from Amazon when somebody paid me an Amazon Gift Certificate for a link. Most of the optimization tips, I learned from that book.

Phaw:Have you heard of HyperVRE? What do you think of it?
Marhgil:No.

Phaw:I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Marhgil:Everybody starts from cents. So, don’t give up. Do you know that a thousand cents is $10? You’ll not get those dollars without earning those cents.

Phaw:Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Marhgil:I just like to thank the internet and Google. The internet for providing the information I need and Google for helping me easily find those information.

Phaw:Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Marhgil:Learn the tricks of the trade. Read our guerilla blogging e-book. And don’t ever give up.