By Jeff Casmer

When we decide to pursue our dreams, to go for what we truly want instead of settling for whatever comes along, we automatically become vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Dreams are often so fragile and yet so formidable that they’re easily trampled on or abandoned. So whenever someone comes along who tells us what we so much want and need to hear, we can be like putty in their hands.

Following a dream can blind us to what would otherwise be the most obvious of hucksters. We’ve met countless people who purchased business opportunities or signed up for multilevel programs they had no business getting involved in because “it sounded so good.” Even worse are the many painful stories we’ve heard from people who were taken in by unscrupulous partners, investors, agents, or reps who seemed to be the “answer to all their prayers.” If you’re a stay-at-home mom, a senior citizen, someone with a disability, unemployed, seeking a second income, or a college student, you are even more likely to be victimized, according to the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

Make sure you don’t get taken. Whenever you hear someone saying the things you’ve been yearning to hear or things that sound so good you never dreamed you’d hear anything like them, let it be a warning signal that sets off an alarm in your head with bells, whistles, and bright shiny lights saying “Proceed with Caution.” For example, If someone requires you to sign a two-year exclusive distribution contract, you’re giving up all other opportunities during that period.

With this image in mind, here are some guidelines you can use to protect you and your family from the tempting sights and smells of opportunity knocking:

1. Don’t make decisions about opportunities from your heart alone. Run all such “offers” through careful, objective scrutiny.

2. Always arrange to take the time you need to make an objective informed decision. Do not let yourself be pressured into acting immediately. In fact, the more someone pressures you to act this very minute, the more suspicious you should be. My wife once had a salesperson tell her, for example, that she had to sign a contract that very day after a thirty-minute phone conversation or they could not proceed. We ran like a couple of rabbits. What kind of company would want to do business with someone who would make a decision like that on the spot?

3. Don’t be tempted by special offers that prevent you from making an objective, informed decision, for example: “My prices go up tomorrow. This discount only applies today.” Fine. Find out what the price will be once you’ve had the time you need to make an informed decision and consider that paying the difference will be well worth the investment. If the cost at that time will be prohibitive, look elsewhere.

4. Do not do business with any company or individual that refuses to give you the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of other people they have worked with.

5. Never, never ignore that little voice in your head or that little twinge in your stomach that’s telling you to proceed with caution. That’s your intuition and if you don’t listen to it, later you’ll be saying, “Something told me this was too good to be true. Why didn’t I listen!” If you have any doubts, wait. Gather more information. Give your doubts time to surface so you can either dismiss or address them with confidence.

6. Ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Sometimes an offer sounds so good, you just want to throw caution to the wind and go for it. Before you do, however, make sure you’re willing to live with the worst thing that could happen. For example, if you impulsively send off $100 for a guidebook, the worst thing that could happen might be that it would sit on your bookshelf unused. But if you buy a $10,000 business opportunity at an expo, that could set your family finances back more than you can afford.

About The Author

Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant with career sales over $25,000,000. His “Top Ranked” Earn Money at Home Directory gives you all the information you need to start and prosper with your own Internet Home Based Business.

By Casey Yew

One vital link in making real money through a Google Adsense campaign is accurate data and data analysis. Yes, we’re talking about tracking. If you’re not tracking the performance of ads being placed on your pages, there is one very good reason why you should be: by learning which formats of ads on what type of pages perform best on your site, you can weed out the ones that don’t offer any real value and focus on increasing the combinations that bring in the most ROI. Yes, ROI – after all, your time is an investment, isn’t it?

Here’s the bottom line – a visitor to your site decides to click on an Adsense ad because of a complex combination of factors. Tracking all those factors can be a complex and time consuming endeavor – which is why there are a lot of software vendors out there trying to make a buck off ‘solutions’ to make easier and quicker. The fact is that you don’t have to spend a dime to get all the tools you need to do a comprehensive analysis of your site’s performance with Google’s Adsense, though some of the software packages have some nice bells and whistles. Google provides a fairly powerful suite of tools that you can use to track and analyze site performance for free.

Using Google Channels Effectively

Adsense channels are the tracking option offered by Google to help you test ad layouts and other factors and determine what works best on your site. When you create a channel in Adsense, you can break down site reporting by site, domain, sections and individual pages. The system records impressions, click through rates, CPM and earning statistics for each channel that you create.

Google’s Adsense program offers two types of channels that can help you figure out:
- What colors and ad styles are most effective
- The best place to put your ads on each type of page
- Where Adsense ads perform best (blogs? Forums? Content pages?)

The first type, URL channels, allow you to create a data stream based on the URL of the pages on which ads are displayed. The second, Custom channels, will open a date collection stream based on your specific criteria. A URL channel is useful for figuring out where on your site to place ad units – and what type of page to focus on developing. If your data shows, for instance, that you get a tremendous click-through rate on article pages, but only tepid performance on forum pages, you have two different directions to work with :
- you can focus on developing more article pages to maximize their better performance
- you can examine your forum ad placement and tweak the formats and styles to increase the performance on those pages
…or you can do both, if you have the resources.

If you decide to tweak your forum page ads, you have a powerful free tool in the Custom Channel creator and aggregator. By creating a new channel for each ad unit, you can track its performance based on color palette, ad format, page and location on page. When you tweak an ad unit, make one change at a time and create a new channel to monitor the performance to see the effect – and when you find something that works, stick with it.

Using Other Tracking Methods

If you’re not satisfied with the tracking methods offered by Google Adsense, there are a number of free ad tracking solutions available. Among the best are:
- AsRep Google ad tracking trial version (www.asrep.com/download.php)
- Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/)
- Adsense tracking script (www.monetizers.com/adsense-tracking-script.php)

About The Author

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Google Adsense. Guide to making money with Google Adsense. Home of the Adsense optimization tips that will boost your google adsense profits. http://www.startadsensenow.com