Putting Ad Sense on your site is not as easy as it seems. There is a common myth out there that it is. Chances are you have put the code on your site and didn’t make a dime. Alright, maybe you made fifty cents. The problem is, many people create the ads and don’t put any thought into the appearance or position.

How should you customize your ads to maximize your profits? Let’s talk about location first. Where should your ads be place for best performance? The center of the page is the best location followed by the upper left hand side bar, just below the header and directly below your text at the bottom of the page. Places you should avoid are the right hand side bar, above the header, and lower left hand sidebar.

Now, let’s think about style. Borders should be avoided since they provide a visual barrier between your text and the ads. To make the border invisible, make it the same color as your web page background. Also, the ad background should be the same color. If you are placing ads in different areas of your web page with different background, make sure you mimic this in your ads settings. Yes, you could be creating different ads for the same page. This is why templates or dynamics pages are important.

Your title color should be the same as the links in your site, which ever area you are working with. This will allow the reader to know that the text is an active link. The text and URL color in the ad should be the same as the text in your site. Make sure you match the color exactly, if you don’t, users will be able to tell and it is unprofessional.

Now, if you’ve paid attention, you’ll notice the same theme in the paragraphs above. Make the Ad Sense blend in with your site with the exact same colors of your site. Instead of thinking of them as ads, think of them as small areas of important text related to your site. People have developed “Banner Blindness” and anything that looks like an ad will not get any attention or clicks, people simply don’t see them anymore.

Here are a few more tips that may help you along the way. Avoid image ads, opt for the text only version. Make sure that you maximize your ads. At the time this article was written you are allowed 3 text ads, and 3 ad link units, these are the two I use. Be sure that you use them all on your pages.

The Ad link units are best placed in navigational areas. Again, make sure the background and border are the same as what your are using in the area they are to be placed. Also, don’t forget the link color should be the same as the other links. If you have vertical navigation, place the Ad Sense below, above or between the other links. If you have horizontal navigation, you can place it above or below.

Try to get the same size of font as you are using. There are only two sizes, which are determined by the amount of link units. If you have 4 links in the unit, the font will be larger, if you choose 5 links, the font will be smaller. Also consider underlining your links so that they match Google’s.

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Want to find out how to make money quick if you have a presence on the internet? Sign up for an internet marketing giveaway.

A good way to make money from giveaways is to enrol as a free member and download all of the gifts. Just one giveaway will usually hand you almost everything that you need to make money fast on the internet. You will probably be able to download ebooks that you can resell, plus the sales website to sell them from, and lots of hints and tips on bringing traffic to your offer.

However, there are better ways of making money from giveaways. You will do even more if you have a product to offer yourself, and use it to build your list.

Rosie Cottis has been profiting from internet giveaways for several years. Here are her tips for how to make money from them.

1. Upload a good gift – something that people will really be grateful for.

2. Upload your gift and test your own signup process before the launch day. Most people will join in the first 24 hours.

3. Have a paid product that people will see immediately when they have signed up for your gift. You could put this offer on the download page for your free gift. I find that a relatively low priced offer is most effective ($5 to $15).

4. Send them the download page link by email, even if they already went straight there after they confirmed. That way they have another chance to buy your upsell.

5. Line up further emails in your autoresponder, giving them either additional information or more bonuses.

6. After that, you can start to promote your more expensive products (or affiliate products). Remember that you want the free gift to bring you people who will be interested in your later promotions, so your free gift should be related in some way.

7. Keep promoting the internet giveaway. If you do not yet have your own list, use free promotion methods e.g. safelists. Do some promotion every day. This will add to your points so your gift is shown higher on the list.

8. If the giveaway offers an upgrade for contributors where you can buy your gift a higher slot, I recommend you take it. It pays.

Last but not least, keep logging in to see what is happening. Is your free gift attracting as many signups as the others on the same page? How is your upsell converting? Are your new subscribers staying on your list? There are so many things you can work on to increase your sales now that you see how to make money fast from giveaways.

If life is a tight rope walk for all, for serious entrepreneurs, life is a tight rope walk with spinning plates in hand sans a safety net below. Sure, they are making it to the top of the ladder in their business, but are also perforce perpetually running survival marathons.

It often feels like one huge juggling act.

As internet marketers, we guide and motivate our team members, talk to prospective clients, reply to endless emails and text messages, keep up to date with all the new marketing strategies, promote our campaigns, get bombarded with guru launches that promise to make us richer faster and easierand fit in time for our family and ourselves.

How do those, who survive, then survive without a career burnout?

In the January issue of Professional Speaker magazine, serious entrepreneur John Alston writes: “For some of us, work is our first love, and for those of us struggling to make our businesses work, there are patient and enduring lovers, spouses and children hanging in there with us. For others there are ex-lovers, ex-spouses and alienated children who can and will testify to what you really value.”

Every job comes with a certain amount of stress, but having your own business — and whether or not you market on the internet full-time, you must look at it as a business and NOT a hobby — is a whole different ball game. And most likely no one taught you how to handle the pressure. It was sink or swim, and you worked out the inevitable challenges on your own.

The most successful internet marketers and business owners that I know have a passion for what they do. They are stimulated by the challenges and opportunities that come with being their own boss. They thrive on being entrepreneurs and discovering that next golden nugget that will take their business to the next level. They wake up excited to see what a new day will bring.

But they know when to shut the computer off.

Serious entrepreneurs are only too conscious about the fact that though their jobs define life itself for them, life is much more than that as well.

They take time for “dates” with their spouses, attend their children’s sports events and piano recitals. They hit the gym, fish and hunt, take guitar lessons, and have backyard barbecues. They take time to meditate, do yoga, read just to rejuvenate.

Incorporating entertainments, altruisms, or gym workouts into one’s schedule is not in fact a time management problem. Each of these facets of life is as important in a man’s life as the other. Together they maintain the equilibrium of life and make the passion for making money itself worthwhile.

If you think you have no time, remember the Parkinson’s Law “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

Stop! You’ll never get it all done. The things on your to-do list never get completely crossed off. So, take stock and decide what means most to you, what you love to do. And the rest can either be forgotten or outsourced when it comes to your business.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful” said Albert Schweitzer. Serious entrepreneurs can take note.