I recently received my copy of the “Yellow Pages.” All I could think was “what a waste.”

I think a Yellow Pages ad is a waste of money and here’s why:

1. Most searches now begin online

When was the last time you scrambled around to find the yellow pages so you could find the phone number of a local business to call? I can’t remember the last time I did that.

Nowadays, people’s first reaction when they need information is to look online. If I need someone to work on my yard, I look online. If I need someone to work on my roof, I look online. If I need a mechanic for my car, I look online.

I’m fully aware that lots of businesses do not have a web page, but instead have yellow page ads, and that’s fine. I just won’t buy from them. Neither will a lot of other people.

Hanging on to a Yellow Page ad in the age of the internet is akin to continuing to make horse pulled buggies back when automobiles were getting really popular. Sure, people will still want buggies, but more people want cars.

2. Yellow Page ads are static

Unlike a web page, you can’t update your ad after a few weeks to highlight a new special or a new offer. Once that ad goes to print, you’re stuck with it for a year, or until the next ad cycle.

3. Even the publishers of the Yellow Pages admit defeat

One of the biggest selling points for their ads, is that they’ll include a listing for you in their online version for free or for a nominal charge. That alone should tell you what they think of the effectiveness and continued viability of their print version.

All is not lost for the Yellowbook

Yellow Page books are great for lifting your computer monitor to a more comfortable height. That, is one thing that a web page simply cannot do.

What’s the solution?

Instead of spending all that money on a static ad that may or may not yield any results, why not implement an online advertising campaign? Talk to us about setting up and managing an online advertising campaign for your business or service.

Even though I learned my lesson in adwords, the lesson applies to any and I do mean any advertising network known to exist.

Some background info

A key component of an effective pay per click campaign is to have multiple versions of an ad running so you can test different elements of the ad. Basically you want to test title A with body B, title A with body C and so on and so forth.

You should be testing your ads. If you aren’t, you’re short changing yourself.

Here’s the lesson:

I learned that before you edit an ad, you should have a backup of it. Because you may end up editing the wrong ad.

• As in, the one ad that is getting good conversions.
• The one ad that is working like gangbusters and not costing you an arm and a leg in the process.
• The one ad that you should not break.

The backup does not have to be anything terribly fancy, just copy and paste the ad into a clean notepad file and label it something that will help you remember that this is your control ad. Just make a record outside of adwords of what the ad said and why you wanted to keep it.

Seriously, once you accidentally delete the ad, you have no real way of getting its mojo back, unless you have it backed up somewhere. Trust me on this. By the time you remember that you’ve edited the wrong ad, you won’t remember what it said.

So, here’s a free lesson from the techie that tells people all the time to back up their data.

Back up your data, including your adwords ad text.

I myself have received my very own check from Adsense. I was ecstatic when I got it. No, it was not for $152,000 it was for significantly less than that. A decent amount, in my opinion, but nothing like Shoemoney’s check.

What does it take to earn a check?

Here are some things that you probably want to know about what I went through to get my check: I can tell you that I opened my Adsense account in 2006, but I didn’t really start “working it” until the summer of 2009. All in all, it took about 6 months of on and off effort to earn this check. Not a “make money fast” plan at all.

Specifically, this is what it took:

1. It took some testing of content
2. Some testing of ad placements
3. Some website creation etc.
4. It also took some writing
5. Some keyword research
6. Some article writing
7. Some content creation

I now know, first hand, that it is possible to earn money and get paid for “placing tiny classified ads” on your website.

It’s a lot of work

Anyone that tells you differently, is lying or trying to sell you something. I did try to channel the TV infomercial guy “Don Lapre” with that statement about tiny classified ads by the way.

I don’t know that I’ll earn anymore of these checks, but I’ll certainly let you know if I do. I just don’t have the time nor the inclination to do the work that it takes to get the clicks that make these checks. I may change my mind, but I’m earning money doing other things, so my focus is not on adsense.

Which is the other thing that it takes.

It takes a lot of focus

Focus on content creation, on driving traffic to your adsense sites/ pages, focus on creating relevant keyword rich pages that aren’t spammy. Did I mention the part where you have to somehow convince people to click on the ads without actually saying “click on the ad?”

If no one clicks the ad, you don’t earn any money. So even after you’ve done all the right things, you still need people to click an ad to make money.

Basically, to earn that check it took hard work, perseverance, patience, and educating myself in the dark art of click persuasion.

I have a decent understanding of content based advertising. I’ve even earned a check from Adsense for my efforts, but it took me nearly 2 years to earn enough to have the check issued. I’ve read books on Adsense publishing, I have studied where to place the ads in the text for maximum efficiency etc. but there’s more to it than that. I want to know the “more to it” part.

I want more.

I want to get a check from Adsense every month. I want to be able to produce content that will enable that goal.  I want to take my traffic generation to the next level and rank on Alexa in the under 100k level.

I want to learn how to provide better value to my visitors and advertisers. I made the conscious decision to not have ads on this site until I can come up with a strategy that helps me reach my goals.

I feel that attending CRS and ad:tech will help me reach the next level faster. Chances are that I’ll reach the next level whether I go to the conference or not. Attending the conference will help me get there faster. I also promise to implement everything that I learn at CRS and ad:tech.

Thank you for your consideration.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about Google’s advertising program.

I think that it’s against google rules to talk poorly about them, but this is just too much. In a nutshell, the program works like this: advertisers create ads that Google then pushes out to content producers/ providers so the ads can be displayed on relevant pages. As a content producer/ provider, I get a cut of the ad revenue whenever someone clicks on the ad. The advertisers use “Adwords” and the publishers place “Adsense” ads on their pages.

As an adwords advertiser, you can use a technique called “dynamic keyword insertion.” Basically the ad replaces a word in the ad copy with a keyword on the page. The only real requirement is that the inserted keyword has to physically fit in the space alloted for it within the ad.

When applied properly, it produces an ad that perfectly matches the page or whatever keyword the person is searching for. It’s a thing of beauty. When it doesn’t work, it’s just embarrassing. Oh yeah, I should also mention that Google penalizes you the advertiser if you do not have a relevant landing page for your ads.  What that means, is that whatever your ad is about, has to be on the same topic as the page that people land on when they click the ad.  I don’t know what the repercussions are when Google posts your ad on a page or post that does not have a close topical relation to your ad.  Take this ad for instance:

I have a post on one of my other blogs where I’m talking about the cyclone that hit Burma. I talk about all the people that died there, and how the gummint over there is killing their own people. The best ad that they can come up with to post on this page, is an ad for “Myanmar Ringtones”?

What does that sound like?

Howling wind, houses falling over, people drowning? What kind of a ringtone is that? How is a ringtone relevant to Myanmar? Is this Google’s fault for displaying an ad on a page that is not relevant to ringtones, or is it the advertiser’s fault for including the word “Myanmar” as a word they want to target?  More importantly, will I get penalized?

Image via Wikipedia

Of course, you can argue that I should write more targeted posts, meaning posts that target a specific keyword or whatever. Well, there’s a whole industry that does just that, but that’s another story.

I guess I wouldn’t be so miffed if I had written a story about Justin Timberlake, and the ad had said something about getting Justin Timberlake ringtones. That would be a better fit

Maybe I just caught it at the end of a product rotation, and those ringtone ads were the last one left to display. Google only gets paid when someone clicks an ad, so I guess they have to display all their inventory if they want to make any money. I’m really not hating on Google, I’m just hating the limitations of the system.

OK, enough of the whining. I think I’m going to go drink for whining.

Actually, I think I’m just going to go to bed. I’m getting grumpy. Hopefully, I’ll still have an adsense/adwords account tomorrow or whenever the next time they look over the network and figure out that someone’s been talking trash.

Maybe I’ll come to my senses in the morning and delete this post before anyone notices it. I just had to get these frustrations out.

Fred was waxing poetic about Greg leaving and going to be his own man and go stand on his own.  Fred kept lavishing praises on Greg for leaving the rat race behind and going to follow his dreams. Greg’s girlfriend asked Fred:

Why don’t you join Greg and leave the rat race behind too?

Fred replied:

Oh no, I’m a rat.

This scene has been in my head for sometime now. I always think of it whenever I try to do my own thing and stand on my own.

Recently, it got me to thinking, that you should figure out if you’re a rat or not. I don’t believe that one is better than the other, I just think that you should know if you’re a rat or not.  Again, you don’t have to like being a rat in the rat race, you just have to figure out if you’re a rat or not.

Basically, the way I see it, you’re either a rat in the rat race, or you’re not a rat.

One isn’t better than the other, you just are what you are. You could argue that you’re a rat in the rat race that really wants to get out of the rat race. What that really tells me is that you’re not a rat at all. You just haven’t metamorphosed into your non-rat form, yet.

So, which one are you?