If you display Adsense ads on your site here’s a simple little trick that will improve the quality of the Adsense ads and make them more relevant to the content on your website. Simply place the tags around the most relevant content on your page:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
Content Goes here
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

Be sure to only place these around a fairly small section with lots of keywords. Do not place this around all of the content on the page or you’ll keep getting the same results. Adsense will scan the content contained in these tags and ignore other unrelated content on the page.

Some users report a 100% increase in click through rates. I’m just starting to experiment with it so I’ll let you know what kind of results I see on my sites.

After using AuctionAds for the past few weeks it didn’t take long to realize that the AuctionAds servers are not adequate for the traffic load being placed on them. This is somewhat understandable due to the rapid growth of this new company. But it still causes problems for the publishers that have chosen to place AuctionAds on their websites. When AuctionAds load slowly it causes your whole website to load slowly. There is a relatively simple work around for this and it doesn’t just work with AuctionAds. You can use this anytime you want to insert code which calls on another server for content. This <IFRAME> snippet will allow the rest of the page to finish loading while it attempts to retrieve the information from the external site.

First, create an html file and insert the complete code which grabs the content from the external server. Save the html file and upload it to the server. In this example the file name is adcode.html. If you use something different be sure to change it in the IFRAME code below.

Next, copy and paste the code below to your website where you previously had the AuctionAds code.

<iframe src="adcode.html" width="WIDTH" height="HEIGHT" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" >
</iframe>

It’s that simple. Reload your website and see if it loads quicker.

I’ve had several people ask about setting up a blog site like this one and others I maintain (http://www.TigerPawTalk.com/blog). Blogs are a great for sharing information with others , expressing yourself through writing and generating extra money, sometimes lots of it, if you have a popular blog.

While adding an entry is as simple as composing an email, setting up a highly customized blog is not easy for a beginner.

For a limited time and on a first come first serve basis I will create a custom blog just for you with custom graphics and Google Adsense ready for only $200. All you have to do is write the content. If you need hosting we offer very affordable hosting accounts at iChristianHost.com for only $6.95 per month.

If you are ready to take me up on this offer just use the Buy Now button below. I’ll contact you right away to get more details and get started on your blog.  The graphic design alone is worth more than $200!

Joel Comm, a leading Internet marketing “guru” and fellow Christian is currently filming and producing the first Internet reality show. The Next Internet Millionaire will premiere on August 15th and features twelve contestants competing for a grand prize of $25,000 and the right to work with Joel Comm on launching their own million dollar Internet business.

The show will be similar to reality shows such as Survivor and Big Brother in that each week contestants will compete in a challenge and each week one contestant will leave the show.

The twelve contestants will receive instruction from some of the top online money makers such as Mark Joyner, Jeff Walker, Armand Morin, Marlon Sanders, Brad Fallon, Mike Filsaime, Ray Edwards and of course Joel Comm.

Not only does the show promise to be entertaining but you will be getting a free inside look at the world of internet marketing and how these men consistently generate millions of dollars through their websites. It should be a very educational experience and I for one won’t miss an episode.

With revenue from my various websites representing nearly 40% of my family income, I'm always looking for new revenue streams by experimenting with different affiliate and ad programs. I stumbled across a new one a couple of weeks ago and I am pleasantly surprised at the results. In fact, it reminds me of the first time I installed Adsense on one of my sites.

This new program is called AuctionAds.com.  Through AuctionAds you can place targeted eBay ads on your site and receive commissions each time someone clicks on the link, bids on the item AND is the winning bidder. You receive 50% of the fees which the seller paid to sell the item on eBay. You also receive $25.00 for each new user you send eBay. A new user is defined as someone that registers for eBay for the first time, confirms his or her registration with an eBay supplied password sent by email, then goes onto eBay and places a bid or uses Buy It Now to purchase an item within 30 days of their original registration.

AuctionAds is ideal for website with a narrowly focused topic in which there are retail products related to that topic. AuctionAds allows you to define specific keywords so that the eBay auctions being displayed on your site are perfectly targeted to your users. For instance, if your run a website discussing camera equipment and you write a review of the new Canon 30D digital SLR, you could display auctions for that camera.

So what about the results?

I have been running the ads on two of my forum websites for the past two weeks, ChristChat.com and TigerPawTalk.com. Both sites receive moderate traffic (for forums) and have vastly different target audiences. So far the two sites are running neck and neck. The AuctionAds on ChristChat.com have generated $14.74 and the ads on TigerPawTalk.com have generated $14.30. Not to bad for a first attempt. With some testing and fine tuning these ads should do much better.

Between these two sites, TigerPawTalk.com is more suited for AuctionAds. This site focuses on Clemson sports with an emphasis on football. During football season I will use keywords such as 'Clemson tickets' to display auctions selling tickets for Clemson football games. These type of auctions should do very well on this type of site.

Give it a try on your website and let me know how it works for you. I'll keep you updated with the results I have over the next few months.

Joel Comm, one of the leading Internet “gurus” and fellow Christian is currently filming and producing the first Internet reality show. The Next Internet Millionaire will premiere on August 15th and will feature twelve contestants competing for $25,000 and the right to work with Joel in creating a million dollar online business.

The show will feature some of the biggest names when it comes to making money online. Internet entrepreneurs like Mark Joyner, Armand Morin, Mike Koenigs, Jeff Walk and of course Joel Comm will teach the contestants how they do what they do. Just like popular reality shows such as Survivor and Big Brother, contestants will compete in challenges and each week someone will be eliminated from the show.

Not only does this show promise to be entertaining but the viewers will get an inside look into the mind’s of these men that can use their websites to generate millions of dollars per year.

Here's a cool little trick I found that can give your website the appearance of loading faster. Notice the keyword here is appearance. Your website will not actually load faster but most users will have the impression that the pages are loading more quickly. I'm sure you're thinking that this makes absolutely no sense, but bear with me for just a minute.

I'm sure you've noticed how most websites will fill in gradually as the information is downloaded. This small modification to your html headers will allow that information to load and then display the page instantly. This seems to work better on small to medium size pages. The more information on a page the less the effect is noticed, at least from my experience.

For those that are familiar with AJAX, this can give the user the same effect. If you are using a common template throughout your site then when a user clicks on a link to jump to another page on your site it will appear as only new information is being loaded to the existing page. The header will not flicker as it normally does when it is loaded.

To try it out on your website just copy and paste these two lines to the top of your page with the other META tags. Place it on all pages you want to have the appearance of loading faster.

<META http-equiv=Page-Exit content=BlendTrans(Duration=0.0)>
<META http-equiv=Page-Enter content=BlendTrans(Duration=0.0)>

I would love to hear some feedback on this. Let me know if your website seems to load faster. 

I recently received an email from a reader wanting to know how I got the small cross to appear to the left of the website address in the browser's address bar. Here's what it looks like in the Firefox browser:

This is a very simple addition and adds a little bit more of a "big site" feel to your website. You can create your own custom icon with any decent graphics editing package. I use Ulead's Photo Impact. You can also use programs such as Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. Create a new 16×16 (16 pixels) image. No, that's not very big and you can't do much with an image that size. You need to keep it sweet and simple but make it unique so that users will associate the icon with your website. 

Once you have created your image save it with the filename favicon.ico and then upload it to your website's root html directory. This is the directory with your website's main index.html. You only need to load the favicon.ico file to your main directory. 

In order for the icon to appear in your browser you may need to clear the cache. Once this is done reload your website and see how your icon looks. Your favicon.ico not only appears in the address bar but also next to your website name in bookmarks or favorites.

While this is no monumental achievement and won't lead to an avalanche of traffic flowing in to your website, it does add a little pizazz and makes your site stand out a little among all of the other bookmarks. 

Yeah, yeah… another blog entry touting some great feature offered by Google. You may have guessed by now that I take advantage of almost everything Google has to offer.

Today I wanted to let you know about the set of Webmaster tools offered by Google. As with most everything Google these tools are available online at no charge and if you are serious about improving your search engine ranking, especially on Google, you need to be taking advantage of them.

The Site Status Wizard is loaded with handy tools that will allow you to check the last time the Googlebot indexed your site, see any errors that the Googlebot received (file not found, server errors, timed out errors, etc.), view sites that are linking to your pages, manage sitemaps (more on this in the future) and more.

The Google Webmaster section also offers a discussion group for webmasters and the official Google Blog for webmasters. Be sure to check their blog for the latest news from Google. They are very secretive about their exact method of indexing sites but they do release very useful information from time to time and the blog is the best place to find it.

I read a great article this week on CNN Money about Kevin Ham, a devout Christian that amassed a 300 million dollar fortune buy investing in domain names. Most of this wealth was generated by snatching up expired domain names, especially ones with regular traffic, and setting up parked pages with relative ads.

Kevin has owned as many as 300,000 domain names and currently owns domains like God.com, Satan.com (which included mostly Christian links) and ChristianRock.com. And he's not afraid to spend big money to get the domain he wants. He recently paid $31,000 for ChristianRock.com, $10,000 for Weddingcatering.com and a whopping $350,000 for greetings.com.

But Kevin has his critics. There's a lot of people that are outraged by cybersquatters,  those that buy large amounts of domains with the single goal of turning a profit from ads or reselling the domain. 

I've never understood what all the fuss is about. To me, this is no different than real estate speculation. They are buying domains on the open market hoping that one day the domain will go up in value, just like those that buy land with the same intentions.

So, if you think you can make a little extra money, or maybe even a living, buying thousands of domain names, go for it.  But be sure to do your homework. It's not as easy as it sounds.