For others, once I approved your comments, they would simply vanish and not show up under the post they were suppose to. I couldn’t find them anywhere. Sorry about that!

I upgraded WordPress and the WordPress Plugins this morning so I’m hoping that took care of the problem.

I believe there was a commenter on my Embarg post name Susan who become very hot at me because she thought I wasn’t approving her comments. Susan, (if I have your name correct), try commenting again. I didn’t delete your post, it just became a casualty of this black hole where all my approved comments were going!

As for you others, I have Akismet set to hold all comments with links. Honestly, when I see the amount of post in the Akismet spam section, I just delete the whole mess. Akismet is good at catching most of my spam and I don’t have the time to wade through thousands of Spam comments hoping to find one or two good comments.

If you want your comments to show up, it’s best to make one that says something other than “good site, me learned lots” or one with a link in it.

Don

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Yeah, for some of you BANS owners, it’s been a pretty tough last few months.

I’m knocking on wood here. If you remember right from my initial Build A Niche Store Review, my goal was to build 100 BANS sites. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I have AMADD (Affiliate Marketing Attention Deficit Disorder) and only made it to 30 sites before I lost focus and went off doing something else. So far none of my sites have been touched by either Google or eBay. I’ll give you my theories on why that is on down the page.

A Few Theories Why Google Is De-Indexing BANS sites.

I’ve been following a lot of the chatter on forums about this subject as well as receiving a lot of email. This is what I’ve figured out to this point. No one has 100% concrete proof why Google is de-indexing BANS sites. There are a few theories floating around.

1. The BANS program was being used by a lot of spammers. Many of these guys/gals were throwing up huge numbers of BANS sites on .info domains. They never bothered to change anything with the programs, their only concern was to get as many BANS sites up as they could, as cheaply as they could. This left a huge footprint for Google to follow.
2. Most of these same people never bothered to put any content on their sites. They were simply ebay sites with ebay auctions on them. This would be what Google calls a “thin affiliate” site. And we know what Google does with thin affiliate sites.
3. In order for Google to get all the spammy BANS sites, it had to take some legitimate sites along with them. It’s the shotgun approach. Use a huge pattern to make sure you get all of them. Try and limit the casualties but go forward knowing some innocent victims will be in the pattern.

My Theory On Why Google Hasn’t De-Indexed All BANS Sites

Even as far back as when I bought the Build A Niche Store program, there was talk about Google finding the footprint of all the standard BANS templates and possibly penalizing them. It seems this bird has come home to roost. From the start, here is what I did to try and make my BANS sites unique from all the other cookie cutter BANS sites.

• I changed up the CSS a little bit on every site. I made sections like the header and content fields larger and smaller.
• I changed the colors on every site.
• I changed the size of the headers on every site and used graphic headers.
• I DID NOT go out and start sending hundreds of backlinks to my sites. I built them up over time using blog carnivals, article submissions, reciprocal linking and adding one way permanent links.
• I added content to nearly every page plus I used a lot of graphics.
• I never put eBay auctions on my main page. I put content on the index page to make it look as much like a informative content site as I could. Just look at how many BANS sites have nothing more than auctions on their front page.
• On many of the domains that hosted my BANS sites, I added blogs, article directories and forums to many. (mostly just blogs that supported the main domain)
• I never put more than 2 BANS sites on one hosting account plus I paid extra for all sites to have a dedicated IP’s. I’ve read stories of people hosting all their BANS sites with one hosting company. Wow, I can’t fathom that idea. I’m just too paranoid I suppose.
• I only used dot com domains. Of course, these last two items is what I do for nearly all of my affiliate sites, not just for BANS. I want to make it as hard as possible for Google or any other search engine to spy on my websites.

Now, I’m not saying if you do these things that Google will not index your site. These are the things I did to every BANS site I had. I did these things from day one and as I said above, knock on wood, my sites haven’t been touched. In fact, many are still climbing the SERPS.

Is the Build A Niche Store Still Worth Buying?

I’ve had a few emails asking that question. Honestly, I’d say yes it is. But only if you intend to build sites that have a lot of content and you make them unique. If you’re plan is to buy it and throw up a bunch of BANS sites without adding any value to them, I think you’d be wasting your money. Google is on to you.

Alternatives to The Build A Niche Store program

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a week or so, you know I’m impressed with the PHPBay plugin for WordPress. As I stated in my post Advanced Build A Niche Store Strategies, I’ve been using PHPBayand WordPress to make blogs and stores with eBay auctions. It seems every week that my PHPBay/WordPress stores outproduce my Build A Niche Store sites. Hey, it’s no secret that Google is crazy in love with WordPress blogs. Why not take advantage of that? Plus, to be honest, a WordPress blog and PHPBay combination site just looks much better than 99% of the BANS sites out there, mine included. (hey, maybe Google hates ugly sites?)

Whatever the real reason that Google is de-indexing or penalizing BANS sites, owners using this program need to proceed with caution. If you continue to make sites with BANS, then do everything in your power to make them unique and stand away from the crowd.

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The other day I was reading John Wesley’s “Pick The Brain” blog post on 27 Lessons Learned on the Way to 3000 Visits a Day and 2200 RSS Subscribers. #20 took me by surprise. So much so that I’ve been thinking about it and doing my own research. And I’ve came to the conclusion he may be right.

#20 on this list is “Posting comments on other blogs is overrated“. We’ve always been led to believe that commenting on other blogs will bring us lots of traffic, make us cool and good looking all in one.

After reading John’s post, I started looking through my blog’s stats, courtesy of Google Analytics, to see just how much traffic I get from comments on other blogs.

My findings were somewhat surprising.

I comment quite often on some rather large blogs such as JohnChow.com and Shoemoney, as well as a host of smaller sites. I’m not sure how much traffic these two get in a course of a month, but I’d say it’s in the thousands per day.

In one months time, I’d received less than 30 visits from these two sites combined! Many of the other blogs accounted for a few visitors each. Total for the month from all blog comments, less than 50 visitors.

Wow, I think John is on to something!

The Real Value of Commenting On Other Blogs

Comments on blogs were never meant to be used to share PR link love or drive hordes of traffic to your site. However many “guru’s” will tell you that you must do this in order to build traffic.

The real value in commenting on other blogs is that you’re building a relationship not only with the blog owner, but with the readers of that blog as well. Whether or not they visit your site is not as important as them getting to know you.

I enjoy commenting on other peeps blogs. I enjoy the different views many other bloggers have and it’s interesting to see the response some bloggers get to their latest post.

So if you’re only commenting on other blogs in hopes that massive traffic is coming your way, you may be in for a let down. Post comments if you have something to add to the discussion, otherwise your time driving traffic to your site can be better spent elsewhere.

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It goes without saying, I hope so anyways, that you’ll need an Adsense account. If not, go get one first before trying this.

I’m going to try and explain it here, step by step.  For this example, I’ll be using the Ads Minded Theme.

1. Choose an Adsense Ready WordPress Theme. You can get one by cliking the link above.

2. Download the theme, choose it in your WordPress control panel under “Presentations”.

3. Once you’ve selected the theme you want and it shows up on your site, go to “Theme Editor” under the “Presentations” button.

4. The Adsense Code can be in different files depending on which Theme you choose.  The Theme developer will tell you which files contain the Adsense code. You normally find this either on their website or in the readme.txt file. This is what it looks like.

5. Once you find the Google Adsense code in the file, highlight the existing code and replace everything between the <script> and </script> tags with your own code. Now save the file. That’s it. The code in the WordPress Theme should be your own.

DO NOT CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADS! It’s against Google Adsense TOS and can get you banned. I know it can happen sometimes when you’re working on a site and you do it without thinking. If that happens, you might want to contact Adsense and let them now what happened.

To make sure that the correct ads are showing, I monitor my Adsense ads in my control panel and make sure impressions and clicks are showing up.

Let’s say you have www.123abcdef.com with adsense on it. You’ve just used a new blog theme and inserted your adsense code into the theme. Let’s also assume that you’ve been receiving impressions and clicks so you know you have traffic. If you stop receiving impressions and clicks after inserting the code, you may want to redo it. Chances are it’s not counting.

Good luck and have fun with these WordPress Themes and Google Adsense!

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I’ve started using Do-Follow WP Plugin to remove the no-follow tag. Take notice, this doesn’t mean I’ll put up with Comment spam, Comments are still moderated.

I think it’s important to reward good Commenters with a little link love. And since this blog is all about helping others and not PageRank, I’ll share my PR with my Commenters.

I’m not sure who started the “You Comment, I’ll Follow” rage, but I’m glad they did. Some people are crediting Tricia @ Tricia’s Musings as the guilty party. You can follow the previous link to a long list of bloggers who have implemented the “I-follow” movement on their blogs.

Thanks again and remember, You Comment, I Follow!

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That is, until I found Aizatto’s Related Post Plugin.

Why hasn’t someone told me about this plugin? There’s no code to cut and paste into your WordPress themes or databases to deal with. This has to be the simplest “Related Post” plugin I’ve ever used, and it works!

You install the plugin as you would any other WordPress plugin. Go to the “Plugins” section of your WordPress control panel and activate it. Then go to Options >> Aizatto’s Related Post >> and choose how you want your related post to show up. It’s that freakin’ simple!

You have the option of choosing how many “Related Post” it shows, whether or not you want excerpts from the Related Post shown to show up and whether or not you want related post to show up in RSS feeds.

So simple in fact, that once I found it, I went and installed it on every WordPress blog I own!

If you’ve fought with “Related Post” plugins, or hate to mess with code and databases, give Aizatto’s “Related Post” plugin a try.

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Let’s face it, Adsense is the simplest affiliate marketing program there is. (although technically Adsense is not an affiliate marketing program, but don’t tell anyone)

The easiest way to incorporate Adsense into your site is an Adsense Ready WordPress Theme. I use a variety of WordPress Themes for Adsense. The one I choose depends on the type of blog I running. I’ve compiled this Ultimate List of Adsense Ready WordPress Themes for your enjoyment. I have to be honest and say the idea for this list came about when I saw Dosh Dosh’s list of 17 Adsense Ready WordPress Themes and realized I had those plus a few more in my folders and bookmarks. I just didn’t realize how long it would take to put this list together!

Even though I say it’s the “Ultimate List” we both know it’s not. 5 minutes from now someone else will come out with one. Also, if you know PHP or use the Adsense-Deluxe Plugin, you can turn just about any WordPress Theme into an Adsense ready blog.

If you want to learn advanced Adsense strategies, I highly recommend “Desktop Adsense Cash Machine”. I learned many good tips and tactics that increased my adsense earnings by double on most of my sites. And if you haven’t yet, take a look at “The Next Internet Millionaire“. This reality based show will be sure to teach you some Adsense tactics that the Guru’s keep under wraps.

My criteria for a WordPress Adsense Theme is:

1. Easy to use – I don’t want to spend hours upon hours modifying a theme. I don’t know PHP or CSS so I need a simple plug-n-play theme.
2. Easy on the eyes- You don’t want an ugly WordPress Theme! I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but an ugly theme will cost you money!
3. Widget Compatible- A WordPress Theme for Adsense should be widget compatible, although some in the list are not. Not that I will use them, but I prefer to have that option if I find myself wanting to use a widget.
4. Optimized Adsense Placement – Preferably the WordPress Themeyou choose will already have the Adsense blocks placed in the theme and all you have to do is ad your AdsensePublisher ID code. Not all the themes that are listed are like that. The ones that aren’t designed that way are still easy to set up by adding your code to the PHP files. All you have to do is replace the developers Adsense Code with yours. It’s easier than it sounds.
5. SEO Friendly- I want organic traffic! The WordPress Themes in the Ultimate List are SEO Optimized and Friendly or they are darn near close!
6. Customizable- You don’t want your blog to look like everyone’s else. While not all of the WordPress Themes listed are easily customized, many are and that goes a long way in my book (remember when I said that I didn’t know PHP or CSS?)

The pictures of the themes are either from the developers website or taken from screen shots of blogs running these WordPress themes.

If you use any of these WordPress Themes, please visit the developers website and donate some green to their tip jars (if they have them) and always link back to their site. Also, should you have technical problems with any theme on this page, (although I can cut and paste with the best of them ) go to their website for help, I’m not a techie and I won’t be able to help you.

Some of these WordPress Themes require you open a file and replace existing Adsense Pub-ID with your own. If you don’t know how to do that, here’s a quick tutorial on how to add your Publisher ID to an Adsense Ready WordPress Theme.

Also, some of these Adsense Ready WordPress Themes walk a fine line in the grey area concerning Google Adsense TOS. Always check with the Google Adsense folks about any concerns you have with any theme, whether they are these or not. And always save your emails from them!

#1 – Ad Flex Blog & Niche Themes

Website | Download

AdFlex WordPress Theme Review

I use this theme on several of my blogs. It’s my favorite theme for Adsense because it is so customizable. In fact, I don’t know of another Adsense ready WordPress Theme that is more customizable than Ad Flex.

In addition to that, this baby comes SEO ready!

This theme has Ad Links at the top and an ad block above the content and an ad block below the content. In the screen shot of the blog above, the blog owner used the 468 x 60 ad block, but I’ve used all sizes. I’ve also used other affiliate program codes in the ad blocks (for example, Azoogle ad code) and all have shown up wonderfully.

While the screen shot above doesn’t show it, you can also put pictures above the Adsense. Whoa there buddy, I know what you’re thinking “It’s against Adsense TOS to put pictures next to Adsense ads”Well, not exactly. I have several websites and blogs with pics near Adsense ads. What Adsense doesn’t want for example, let’s say, images of cell phones next to Adsense ads about cell phones so that the surfer thinks he’s clicking on a link to a particular cell phone. In other words, don’t try and fool a surfer into clicking on an adsense ad.

I have a travel site using this WordPress Theme and have put images of tropical get-a-ways and other vacation looking pictures next to Adsense ads. I then followed up with the folks at Google Adsense to ensure that these were not in violation of the Adsense TOS. I received a reply that they were acceptable. The neat thing is, if you’re concerned about the Adsense TOS, you can turn the pictures off and on with a simple tick in a check box in the WordPress dashboard.

Neat. But that is how this whole theme is. Everything is so easy. If you don’t want certain items such as the Category section to show up in the Nav bar on the left side, just check “NO” in the field. Want the Nav bar on the right? No problem, there’s an option for that.

Here are some other features you get with this theme.

• Meta tag description that is based on the content of the page
• Non duplicate content prevention feature
• Adsense Banner Management
• Blocking Cookie
• Theme can be switched between wide and narrow
• Approximately 150 controllable features

Try this them with some of your blogs. You’ll be amazed at the results!

#2 AdsMinded Adsense Theme

Website | Download

AdsMinded WordPress Theme Review

I use the AdsMinded theme on 2 of my blogs. This is a great WordPress theme for Adsense with high CTR due to the adlinks at the top. Tip: If you’re not taking advantage of adlinks, you’re losing money!

This theme is SEO optimized plus you can customize the layout and ad placement several ways. On one of my blogs, I left out the 2nd column with the Adsense ads on the main page. They’re only visible once a surfer clicks through to read the entire post. Also, there are several other areas where you may put other affiliate codes from other companies. This really maximizes your earnings potential!

This 3 column layout comes with an optional square ad placement on top of the sidebars. It comes with some very useful WordPress plugins.

You can get this WordPress Theme in a narrow or wide version.

#3 Merah Putih

Website | Download

Merah Putih WordPress Theme Review

This is a nice clean and simple WordPress Theme I found. It needs some customizing, such as a logo in the upper left corner if you want one and you have to insert your Adsensepublisher ID into the sidebar.php, header.php file and single.php file which is pretty easy to do. All you do is open the PHP files with an editor like Notepad ++ and replace the existing Adsense Publisher ID’s with you own, save the files and upload them to your template folder or modify them in the Theme Editor of the Dashboard and BAM, you’re off and running. It takes me about the same amount of time to do it as it did to type this.

I’m a sucker for clean and simple WordPress themes such as this one. I like the ad placements and an added bonus is that once a surfer clicks on an article heading, the article page has the 300×250 Adsense block in the upper left of the article. That’s the sweet spot and heat maps provided by Googlestates this is the best place to put an adblock in an article.

The side bar has a 300×250 and a 160×600 ad block plus an adlink block at the top of the pages.

#4 SEO Adsense

Website | Download

SEO Adsense WordPress Theme Review

This is another clean and simple Adsense Ready WordPress Theme. I like this theme for my review type sites. It’s laid out very well and Adsense code is easily added. This theme loads quickly and is designed to accept three ad blocks and one ad link per page, the maximum allowed by Google Adsense TOS. You can also use Google Adsense for search for some additional income.

The advantage of this WordPress theme in my opinion is that it is SEO optimized out of the gate. The title and H1 tags contain most of the information. Category pages carry the category name as the title and on post pages, the post name is carried as the title.

The Adsense code is in three files with this theme. The header.php, the sidebar php and the footer.php files. You also have the advantage of using Google Adsensefor search in the searchform.php

Sometimes less is more when you’re trying to get surfers to click on ads. With that being said, SEO Adsense gives you a great advantage over other WordPress Themes when it comes to the layout and ease of using Adsense to it’s maximum potential.

#5 WP Colors

Website | Download – (the creators ask you download this theme from their site)

WP Colors WordPress Them Review

This is a snazzy looking 2 column theme for WordPress plus it’s Adsense ready and is widget compatible. This WordPress theme is also SEO optimizedand ready to rock once you’ve added your Adsense Publishers ID.

One of my main gripes of other “Adsense Ready” themes is that the sidebar info comes before the main content info in the source code. This is not the case with WP Colors. They’ve coded this theme so that the main content info is read by a Search engine BEFORE the sidebar info!

There is a 728×90 block at the top of the theme below the header image and a 120×600 tower in the sidebar plus a 300×250 box at the top of the sidebar.

Personally, I’d like to see that banner be a 468×60 at the top of the post and a adlink at the top, but hey, with a WordPress Theme that looks this good and is easy to use, you can’t complain about much!

#6 030106 WordPress Theme

Website | Download

030106 WordPress Theme Review

Okay, this is a mystery WordPress Theme. It has a number for a name! Call it what you want, I call it a high CTR Adsense ready WordPress Theme!

I love this theme for my tech review sites. Very professional looking and good-to-go right out of the box. You can use your Adsense Publisher ID or any number of other ad codes with this template (for example; YPN, Chitika, Azoogle, etc)

This WordPress themehas a place for a adlink banner at the top, a 300×250 box at the top of the sidebar and a tower in the sidebar as well as a place for a smaller box ad toward the bottom.

The single post pages has a place for a box ad at the bottom of the article. I’ve used these boxes for a pre-sell on offers after the article to snag some high paying commissions.

#7 Problogger Clean WordPress Theme

Website | Download

Problogger Clean WordPress Theme Review

This 3 column WordPress theme reminds me of my #4 WordPress theme, SEO Adsense. However, there are differences.

This WordPress themehas a feature called the Adsense Click Safety (so you don’t click your own ads while working on your blog). Some have had concerns that this may violate Google Adsense TOS. Click here to read Googles reply to the developers question.

I haven’t used this theme in a while on my blogs. I did have some problems early on but I got my blog to work with this theme (don’t ask me how because I don’t remember!). I’ve since changed themes on that blog. Anyhow, just be forwarned that they were having some problems with this theme and I’m not sure they have them all worked out.

#8 MW WordPress Theme

Website | Download

MW WordPress Theme Review

I absolutely love the name of this WordPress Theme. MW. MW stands for “Monetizing the Web”. That get’s a big “Hell Yeah” from me! Trust me, you can certainly monetize the web with this Adsense Ready WordPress Theme!

This is a 2 column, fixed width, left navigation WordPress Theme with a load of options.

This theme has a banner at the top with a 468 banner between the content about halfway down the page. You also have several options for Adsense and other code for different affiliate programs.

This is just a slick, easy to use Adsense Ready WordPress Theme with a professional look. Give it a try.

#9 Adsense Theme

Website | Download

Adsense Theme For WordPress Review

This is a smooth, quick loading theme with Adsense blocks in all the right places. Very user friendly and it has basic SEO features. There are no images which contributes to its fast loading times.

I haven’t used this theme as much as some of the others (hey, so many blog ideas, so little time) but when I did use it, I liked it.

To get you Adsense Publisher ID to work with this theme, you’ll need to add your ID to the header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php. Not a problem. If you don’t know how to do this, there are instructions with most themes. It’s quite easy. All you need is an editor like Notepad ++.

Note: I’ve not used the following WordPress Themes so I can’t comment on them.

#10 Blue Sense WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#11 Citrus Sense WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#12 Adsense Ready WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#13 TypoXP Reloaded WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#14 Connection with Adsense WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#15 Almost Spring SEO with Adsense Ads

Website | Download

#16 Bubbles Adsense Theme (comes in 4 colors)

Website | Download

#17 Blix with Adsense WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#18 Elite Circle WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#19 Adsense Bogpod WordPress Theme

Website | Download

#20 Tigopedia Reloaded WordPress Theme

(there’s also the Tigopedia original but I won’t count that one)

Website | Download

#21 Simple Corners

(this one seems to be down right now or my bookmark is bad, when I click to their site, I see a message from their host with a “suspended” message) I’m going to leave it up in case they are just short on their bandwidth.

#22 Adsense Ready K2 Theme

Website | Download

#23 Rockin Newspaper Red WordPress Theme

Website | Download

24. Activate WordPress Theme

Website | Download

Okay, I give up! That’s all the Adsense Ready WordPress Themes I have or could find. I hope you enjoy them and again, don’t forget to throw a bone to the developers!

I’ll try and keep this list updated, so check back when you’re looking for a good Adsense Ready WordPress Theme!

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