You also need to know that when a search engine spider comes by to crawl your site, it reads each page in the order that you see it in the “Source” tab.  This means that if you have a table with 3 cells (1 row with 3 columns), the spider reads the left hand in it’s entirety from top to bottom then it reads the next cell (or column).  So, you can’t put any information in column 1 because it will be indexed in the search engine.  The description of your web site should be at the top of the first page (sometimes called and index) and normally this description is typed out in the middle column.  You will see the website description in my examples.  You should know enough about Nvu by now, that you can add this information by yourself.  (CLICK HERE)

I am going to use 3 advertisements from “Commission Junction” as our examples.  Commission Junction is one place you as an affiliate need to become familiar with.  Here is the link so you can join if you are not already a member.  http://www.cj.com.  I am not going to cover how to create Commission Junction links.  They have their own tutorial and you should use it.  I will be getting my links from their site and placing them on our template.

First, I am going to use a skyscraper.  It takes up a lot of space on the left hand side.  You can add other links, but make sure the are banners so the search engines bypass them to get to your description.

To add the links, you will be using the “insert” tab located at the top of the Nvu navigation bar.  Click on it and select “HTML”  (CLICK HERE).  A square input box will then appear.  All you need to do is to paste the html code that you copied from Commission Junction (or any html code you like) into that box and press insert. (CLICK HERE).  Your new advertisement will appear in the area you specified.  (CLICK HERE).

Last step is for you to get two more ads to place in the right hand column.  Here is what my example looks like (CLICK HERE).

Go to the web and see what it looks like on the Internet.  (CLICK HERE).  Play around with it.  You can make your page look any way you want.

In the next post, I will teach you how you can make a header graphic for your web site using a free program.

Until my next post………………………hope your making money!!

Henry Michaels

Tags: webpage, advertisment

Pull up your template that you saved yesterday using your Nvu software. Let’s change the size of the left hand column to a more equal width. (CLICK HERE) to see where you start. Put your cursor over the “Home” link and press you enter key once to shift the line down. Now right click on your cursor and highlight and choose “Table Cell Properties…”. It will bring up a new menu. Change the “width” of the cell to even out the web page. In my example (CLICK HERE), I am going to change it to “162″ (CLICK HERE). This will even out the entire page (CLICK HERE).

Next you need to divide your links because you are now going to insert the Adsense code. First divide the links (CLICK HERE). You see where I put the word “here” in the middle. You will use this to identify where you will be placing the Adsense code in the “Source” tab.

Now, let’s go get the Adsense code that you will need for your web site. We will have to create a custom code because the default is blue and you want to have your links appear in black. If you have not applied for an Adsense account you can do so by clicking here. Once you have your account set up you need to create “Adsense for Content” Links (CLICK HERE).

The next page you come to is this one (CLICK HERE). This is where you need to pick between two formats for Adsense. You need to select the bottom one so you can get the code that will give you a link format for your navigation area. You will need to select the size “120 x 90″ and choose 4 links. Don’t choose 5 as the links will look very small compared to the size of your navigation links that you have on your template right now (CLICK HERE). You will also have to change the the “LINKS” hexadecimal code to 6 Zeros “000000″. When you add the zero’s, the box will turn black to confirm that you have changed the color. Look to the lower left hand side of the screen and you will now see how they will appear on your site. Press continue and you will be at a page entitled “Choose Ad Channels”. This is an individual choice. You can choose to track each and every Adsense Ad that you create. If you don’t want to do this, then press the continue button one more time.

The last thing you need to do at this point to just press the button at the bottom that says “Submit and Get Code”. The next page will have your Adsense Code that you will need for your navigation area. Copy everything in the code and put it on Note Pad and save it to your desktop. Give it any name you want. You will want to save it in case you need to go back a step.

Ok, now that you have your Adsense Code, go back to your Nvu program and choose the “Source” Tab. It will look like this (CLICK HERE). Get rid of the “<br>” and the “here<br>”. The <br> is a line break. It tells your browser to shift down a line. This is what happens when you hit your enter key. The word “here” was the one we put in when we divided the links. It’s only purpose is to show you where you will be placing the Adsense code.

Now insert your code. This is what it looks like after the code is placed (CLICK HERE). Go back to the normal tab and put the word “Here” in the middle area. This is our next landmark so we can see where we will be pasting our article.

Remember when I showed you how to wrap text around an advertisement. I am going to use that one as our example. You can use the project you completed at that time or if you want just write your own new text. I wanted to show you how the wrapped text look when it is combined with a formated web page. In case you missed the article you can read it here (CLICK HERE).

Locate the text wrap example and copy the content code (CLICK HERE) and (CLICK HERE)

Copy and paste both into this area (CLICK HERE)

Now you can see an example of what today’s lesson looks like: (CLICK HERE).

Next lesson, we will be adding affiliate links and banners to both sides of the web page.

Until my next post………….hope your making money!!

Henry Michaels

Tags: blendadsense,

Once someone gets to your web site, they will need to get around your site.  You will need to provide them with a link that will get them from one page to another.  Even a mini site needs navigational links.  These links are important to search engine spiders as well.  A link is how a spider (or crawler depending on the search engine), gets your site indexed into their database.  You need links for everything on the Internet.

At the minimum, you will need a “Home” link, a “Site Map” link, a “Contact Us” Link, an “About” link and a “Privacy Policy” Link.  The last link (Privacy Policy) is something new that is becoming a standard in web page design because your visitors want to know that the information that is being collected from their personal computers, while on your site, is not going to be used for SPAM.  They also want to know that you are not going to sell their personal info to anyone else.

An HTML (Site Map) is for your human visitors.  This web page is for the visitor to see, at a glance, what kind of pages you have on your site and what they contain.  It’s like going to the mall and using the locater map in the middle of the mall to find the stores that are in the mall and where they are located at.

You need a (Home) link so you visitors can get back to the welcome page.  This is normally the page that gets the most traffic. (The Site Map, Contact Us, About and Privacy Policy links are normally at the very bottom of the web site and we will cover these in latter lessons).

Once again we will be using the Nvu HTML editor to create these links.  Most Navigational links are presented in the common text color of the web page.  Normally that is the primary “Black”.  Black is seen better by your visitors and I suggest that you always us always use this color when you type your text information of your site.   However, once you make links out of these, they normally turn blue in color.  For our web site example, we are going to keep them black.  I will show you how to this in this lesson.

Also, I would suggest that you make your links in a font type called “Arial”.  There is a reason for this and I will show you why in a future lesson.  For now, we will create our links in this font and keep them that way in all our lessons.  You don’t have to use this font in your web pages if you don’t want.  It’s a matter of personal preference.

Hyperlinks are normally blue in color.  That is the default in all HTML editors and you will see this on most web pages. (On this blog, they are red by choice).  For our training purposes, we will be using “Black” instead of the normal stardard blue.  Again there is a reason for this and I will show you why in a later lesson.  Because we are wanting to use Arial as the font and Black as our link color, we will have to modify our Nvu editor.  Open your Nvu HTML editor and I will show you how to change your settings.

Change the settings for “New Pages”.  You can do this by clicking on the “Tools” button and highlight and click on the “Preferences…” link (CLICK HERE).  This will open up the “Options” menu.  You will need to click on the “New Page Settings” (CLICK HERE). This brings up our “Default Page Appearance”.  You will see the default colors radio button is already chosen for  you.  You will need to click on the “Use Custom Colors” radio button (CLICK HERE).

Next step is to change the all the link colors to “Black” except for the background setting.  Keep that white. (CLICK HERE) to see which buttons to change.  To change the color just click on the link button you want to change (CLICK HERE), and then pick the color you want to change it to (CLICK HERE).  Make sure the you click the “OK” button on the color pallet and the options page to lock in your new settings.  Now you need to close Nvu.  Just click the red “X” in the upper right hand corner.  Let it completely close and then open it again.

Now you need to load the web page frame work you created in our last post.  You should have called that “Template).  To open this HTML file you will click on the “Open” button in the upper left corner of Nvu and locate the “Template file” and then click the “Open” Button (CLICK HERE).  Now you will see the template you created in yesterday’s lesson on your desktop.  For this lesson we will only be working in the left column as this is the normal navigation area.

Now that you modified Nvu for all “New Pages” your links and text will always be “Black”  Next, before we put any text in the navigation area, we will want to change the font to Arial (CLICK HERE).  Make sure that when your start typing, the word “Arial” is present in the variable width window.  Start typing the the left hand column.  In this example I will use the word “Home” and then Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 etc…  These are just examples to show you how to add navigation links to your left hand column.  You will need to decide what to call each link yourself.  Also, the left hand column will expand as you type in that area.  We will change this later so don’t worry about it for now.

When you start to type your font may be a little larger than what we need.  You will need to adjust to size.  There are 2 buttons in Nvu that will adjust the size.  They have  downward arrow and an “A” or and upward arrow and an “A” on it.  (CLICK HERE).  You will need to become familiar with with this key as you will always be experimenting with the size of your type an every web page you create.

Now change the size of your font to look like this (CLICK HERE).

Last step is to highlight each link and give them the URL they will be transferring to.  See example (CLICK HERE).

Make sure that once you get your links in place, or at least typed out, that you save your “Template” HTML page so we can build on it in the next lesson.  Speaking of which, we will be adding text to to middle column of your new web page in tomorrow lesson.

Until my next post………hope your making money!!

Henry Michaels

Tags: links, web page, web site, create,

Not everyone can afford to hire a tech to do these things for them. That’s why I created this blog. You will benefit from this information as it was tested by me. I was one of those people who knew nothing about HTML or PHP when I started AND, I did not have the money to shell out for someone else’s service. I had to learn how to do it on my own, and you can too!

Let’s get started!

If you have not downloaded “Nvu”, the free HTML editor, you can do so here (CLICK HERE). It’s free software and this is the WYSIWIG editor I use for these training sessions. It’s also the only HTML editor I recommend because of it’s ease of use. What’s a WYSIWIG? It’s an acronym for “What You See Is What You Get”. That’s not exactly true of “Nvu” because there are so many more features to this software and this’s why I recommend it!!

If you have not installed the “Nvu” program, go to the top of this post and click on my last article. It has detailed instructions on what you need to do to get it to work.

Open “Nvu” and close the tips box. If you check the little box in that window the tips box will not open when you start it any longer. You can see it again in the “Help” tab if you like. The first thing you need to do in order to create the 3 column frame for your web page is to click on the “Table” icon in the upper row. See example (CLICK HERE). Once you click the table icon, move your courser over cells area and highlight ONLY 3 of them. Click on the third highlighted cell. You will now see the 3 tables you just created side by side in equal size (CLICK HERE).

Next step is to “widen” the table horizontally across the page and set their “width limit”. To do this all you need to do is put your cursor in any one of the three cells and right click. It will bring up a menu that looks like this (CLICK HERE). Highlight and click on the “Table Cell Properties…”. This will bring up a new window. The cell tab will come up as default. Just click on the “Table” tab and you will be able to adjust the width. See example (CLICK HERE). In the “width” window, change the pixels from 100 to 952. This will stretch the width of all 3 cell across the entire screen (CLICK HERE).

Now, you have to set the limits for each cell. Setting Limits tells the browser how far the information in that cell (Column) can go before it wraps to the next line. Let’s set the middle column first. Right click inside the middle cell and highlight and click on “Table Cell Properties…”. It defaults to the cell tab. The width for the cell window is blank. Let’s give it some definition. Put 600 into the “width” window and click on the “Apply” button. You will see the middle column stretch to 600 pixels (CLICK HERE) . You will now see a true definition of how your web page will be laid out. This is like the skeleton of your site. Make sure you click the “OK” button before continuing.

Do the same for both the left hand and right hand columns. (CLICK HERE).

One final step. We have to give the web page some height. Go back and put your pointer inside the left hand column. Right click on it and get the pull down menu. Highlight and click once again on the “Table Cell Properties…” and then click on the “Table” tab. Change the height from 32 to 760 pixels (CLICK HERE). Click the “Apply” button and then click the “OK” button.

There you have it. The frame work for your new web page. (CLICK HERE) for a full page view. The left hand side is normally used for navigation. The center column is now a large area for your reading articles and the right hand column can be used in support of the reader information in the middle column. It’s doesn’t look like much now, but by the time we get some navigational links set up and a few banners as well as a couple of affiliate links, it will start looking like a professional web page. Once you get this template built, you can use it over and over again. The Internet web pages are set up basically the same on every site and there is a reason for that. This 3 column web design has become the industry standard on the net. It complements every item that needs to places on a web site and everyone expects to see it or at least a 2 column web site.

Remember to save your work as we will be building more of it tomorrow. I suggest saving it as template because I will be teaching you how to make your own header to add to the blank template. The header will changes from web site to web site, so I cover this separately, but you will always need this 3 column web site template for your future projects.

Next post, we will be adding information to your web page to make it look more lively and attractive.

Until my next post…………………..hope your making money!!

Henry Michaels

Tags: webpage, cell width, template,

In this post I am going to show you how to wrap text around an advertisement. Many Internet marketers want to know how to do this on a web site. It’s a great effect and it looks very professional when done correctly. You’ve seen this I’m sure. The Adsense ad is located in the upper right or left hand corner of the article and the text fits naturally around the ad. You can see this in action on this blog. Just go to any of the “recent posts” and click on it. There will be an advertisement embedded within the post. The text is wrapped around the advertisement and the looks reminds you of a magazine layout.

Learning how to code in HTML, or at least knowing some HTML is helpful when you create your own Internet business. If I had to wait until I got the money to hire someone to help me place ads on my sites or change things around, I would not be able to earn any money at all. You don’t need to wait for someone else. You can do it yourself.

So, with no more delays…..let’s get to it.

First, take a look at this online education database website (CLICK HERE). This will show you how a normal wrap around is used. You can put your advertisement on the left or right side of the page. Whichever side you like. You see how it blends into the article naturally. The text just bends around the Adsense information and continues in a normal flow from side to side. You will also see another Adsense ad toward the bottom of the article. This is a normal 468 x 60 banner ad with no boards. For this lesson, we will not cover the bottom ad as it is just the Adsense code places “between” the article information like it was just a paragraph. To do this all you need to do is select where you want the ad to appear and you place the code between your text. What I want to teach you is how to ‘WRAP YOUR TEXT” around your Adsense code or other affiliate code.

You will need to get an HTML editor. I recommend a free editor called NVU (pronounced N-view). It’s the only HTML editor I use and it has a lot of features. You can download your free copy at www.nvu.com (CLICK HERE). Look for the Windows insignia and download the one that is zipped. It’s the one that say “nvu-1.0-win32-full.zip” When it is finished downloading, unzip it to your desktop and you will find now find a file called nvu-1.0. Double click on it to open the folder. Find the setup exe file. It will be called “NVU”. You won’t see the .exe extension. Double click on that executable file and let it install. Once your done you will see new icon on your desk top. It will be a round purple circle with the words NVU print on it. Double click on the icon and NVU will start up. You will then have a screen that looks like this (CLICK HERE).

You can then enter your your article information. You will also see down at the bottom, 4 tabs. “Normal”, “HTML Tags”, “Source” and “Preview”. You will be using the “NORMAL” tab to enter all your text in.

First make your headline. You will use the pull down menu in the upper left corner that says “Body Text”. Highlight and select “Heading 2″ and then type your text. It will look this this when you get done. (CLICK HERE). Once you get your header done, highlight the text and center it with the centering tool. Move your mouse over the icons in the upper portion and find the one that says “Align Center”. Your text is not centered on your page. Hit your enter key 2 times and then find and click on the “Align Left” icon. This will put your text back to the left hand side.

Write your article, or copy and paste it if you have it completed already. Here is my example (CLICK HERE).

Next, you will place a piece of HTML code into your “Source” Tab. This code is called a FLOAT. The html code for a float causes an image, or in our case a text ad, to be place on a page and anything that comes into contact with it will wrap around it. This is why the text in the education data base (link above) goes around the Adsense ad.

Let’s open your “Source” tab and see what it looks like (CLICK HERE). This is the actual HTML code that makes your web page. NVU takes care of inner workings for you so you don’t have to hand code everything. This is what each browser sees when it log onto your web site. It assembles the code and makes the web page that you see when you surf the net. You are now going to modify this code by placing some information into it so you can put in your Adsense code information.

First you need to make some space. Move your cursor to the first line of your text and hit your enter key about 4 or 5 times so it looks like my example (CLICK HERE). You will need to copy and past the following code into the blank space you just created right under the <BR> line:

<div style=”text-align: left;”>
<span style=”margin: 2pt 2pt 10px 10px; float: left;”>

The first line of the above code tells the browser to put all information on the “Left hand side” of the screen. The second line of the code tells the browser that the information, (whether it be Adsense code or image) is to be placed either to the right or left and all remaining text information will be wrapped around it. You can see the word “left” in both lines. You can actually leave the “left” in the first line and change the position to “right” on the second line. This will make your Adsense ad appear on the right side of the page instead of the left. It’s a matter of aesthetics. You pick which side looks better for you. Now, let’s see this next step looks (CLICK HERE).

Now for the Adsense. If you have not joined Google’s Adsense program I suggest you do so. I am not promising that you will make much money from it, but It may be possible source of additional income. I personally have not made much money from it, but that does not mean that you won’t. Go here to sign up for Adsense. I am not going to teach you how to create an Adsense account. You can learn that when you sign up. You will need to generate code for “Adsense for Content” and make sure you get the “Ad Unit” text ads and NOT the “Link Unit”. Make sure you choose the 468 x 60 banner so you ads are not so big. For you colors, I would suggest using “Open Air” Palette. This looks more normal and there is no border.

Once you have generated your Adsense code, copy and paste it into your “Source” tab like this (CLICK HERE). One last step. You have to close the “SPAN”. The code look like this </span>. You must place it one line after the end of your Adsense Java script. See it here (CLICK HERE).

Now you need to save your html file. Go to “File” and find the “save as” button. You will have to give you file a name and click enter. This puts a title on your web page and you will also be able to save it to your hard drive. Next you will have to upload it to you web site so you can see the Adsense ad on the page. Use the FTP program you are familiar with.

Let’s take a look at the finished product (CLICK HERE). It looks a little plain, but that is because normal websites have 2 or 3 columns of information. One for navigation, one for the main body of text etc…

I also have an alternate way for you to make affiliate income. Its called Shopping Ads. You can place Ebay ads into your articles instead of just Adsense. It will look like this (CLICK HERE). You can join Shopping Ads by clicking on this link: Shopping ads.

This concludes this lesson on Text Wrapping. In my next post I will cover how to set up the frame work of a web page. I will show you how to create tables so you can separate your navigation columns from your text area.

Until my next post……………………hope your making money!

Henry Michaels

Tags: textwrapping, ads, Adsense, how to wrap text around,

For some reason, people don’t like to click on links like that. You and I both know that is how you make money, but people don’t want to click on it! In the past 3 years I have seen a lot of people use the redirect link from www.tinyurl.com. The problem with this is that tinyurl is now identified with a redirect and you really don’t know where it goes. It could direct you to anyplace on the net and their minds, that my get them into trouble. So they won’t click on it.

There is a solution to your affiliate link problem and I am going to show it to you here.

What you need in this case is just a “Redirect Page”!

The big Internet Marketers, the ones who make thousands per day, use a simple “recommends” page to send all of their readers to. During the course of your reading their web page, you will find a link to click to purchase the affiliate product they are selling. It will look something like this:

“www.mywebsite.com/recommends/bobsebook.html”

……or……..

“www.mywebsite.com/recommends/bobsebook.php”
THESE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY AND NOT REAL LINKS

When you click on the link, it goes to a folder on your site that has either html or php code on it. This code does the actual redirect and the end result takes you to your affiliate destination where the product or service can be purchased by your readers. Now, your affiliate information my show up in their browser window once they get to to site, but I have found that with the “redirect page”, they don’t pay much attention to it. It almost seems to them as though they magically landed on the page they wanted and now they will begin to read it. They normally don’t put any thought into looking at where they are at. They are more interested in the ad copy at this time.

How you make a redirect page:

The first thing you need to do is to make a folder on your desktop and rename it to “recommends” and upload this empty folder to your website. Put in in the same directory as your index.html. You don’t necessarily have to use the name recommends, but when you use your redirect link with this name, it reads as though your website is recommending a product or service to your reader. People don’t like being “sold” but they love to “buy”. Presenting the affiliate link in this manner gives them the feeling that they have control over weather or not they are going to buy the product. It’s a great psychological tool and it works every time! This does not mean that you will get a sale on every click, but you will get more clicks if your readers are interested in the product.

The HTML Redirect Page:

Most people who put up a website will do it in HTML. You don’t need to have a MySQL database in order to run your web site. HTML code is pretty simple and most people who do the work on their own sites will use this method. Copy and Paste the following code into the “recommends” folder you just created and save it as “recommends.html”

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Page Title</title>
<meta http-equiv=”REFRESH” content=”0;url=http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to.com”></HEAD>
<BODY>
Optional page text here.
</BODY>
</HTML>

The above code is the only thing that will be in the folder. Nothing else. Keep this on your desktop so you can use it every time you need a redirect link.

All you need to do now is to replace the “http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to” with the actual URL that has your affiliate link in it. Then save the file with the name of the product your trying to sell (i.e. selling an ebook called “AudioRipper”, you would name your file “audioripper.html”)
and then upload it, using your FTP software, to the recommends folder your website. Every time you create a new redirect link, you will add a new html page in this recommends folder.

The PHP Redirect Page:

You can also use a php redirect to do the same thing. PHP is just another computer language that works like HTML, but there is a lot less coding to it. Same as above, you need to Copy and Paste the following php code into your “recommends” folder: (ONLY USE PHP or HTML…not both):

<?php
header( ‘Location: http://www.the-domain-you-want-to-redirect-to.com
‘ ) ;
?>

See how much less code there is in php. Remember to save the info above the your recommends folder. All you need to do is replace the http: info with your affiliate information and then just save the modified info. This time you will save it as “audioripper.php”. Remember to use .php and not .html. Next, you will upload this new php file to the recommends folder on your web site and you can use your new link redirector as many times as you want.

Some of you are going to need to ask questions about this so, use the comments link at the bottom of this post. I will be able to answer them there and they will also serve as a small FAQ for others to read.

Until my next post……………………..hope your making money!!

Henry Michaels

Tags: link, redirect, cloaker,