My site allows users to create fantasy football cheat sheets. When doing this it is often useful to search for news on particular players. I’m trying to figure out if there is any way at all to monetize this.
I know there is ‘Adsense for Search’ but I want it to only search for news, not web pages. Does anyone know if this is an option?
One solution would be to create a Google custom search engine and only include news sites in your sites indexed.
Look into that
Wow that is very, very close to what I need.
My idea was that there would be a “player news” hyperlink in each ‘player template’ within the cheat sheet that, when clicked, would open a new browser window with the results of the Custom Search Engine query on that particular player’s name.
However, right off the bat it looks like the code they give you simply generates a blank search page and I would think that, like Adsense for Search, you can’t pre-populate the keywords or automatically search.
I’d be nice to automate those 2 steps (populating the search box with the player’s name and doing the search) but it looks like that isn’t possible, or at the very least violates the terms of service?
Ahhh, there’s always a catch isn’t there?
Well keep looking, or make the feature a paid add-on, or don’t try to monetize that particular piece of the application is all I can think of off the top of my head.
The custom Google search you suggested is by far the best solution I’ve found to this point and I’ve been looking for quite awhile. I knew that Google had the “News Widget” but it didn’t incorporate Adsense. I was going to simply link directly to a Google News search which would be valuable, but there would be no way to monetize it.
Even if I open a new window with search capabilities, and the user has to type in the player name themselves then click Search, I think it would be a very useful addition to my application. My goal is to allow the user to continue editing their sheet without having to leave the site, and to provide them with tools to access the data needed to make educated updates. If it takes the user another small step to accomplish goal (especially if it can be monetized in any way) then I think it’s well worth it.
Thanks a bunch.