Padding Adsense Code in Blogger Blog Templates

Some of the default blogger blog templates place Adsense code automatically in a way that looks very ugly within the template, going inside or outside of graphic sections etc.

On my site, Distribution Business Articles I had adsense code that was showing up too the left of the graphic body template and needed to move the adsense block over to the right a bit.

This used to be very easy with the old blogger, and it is not too much worse now if you know what to look for.

The key is to find the section called <data:adcode/> and place a Div tag around it. I used the id name of 'adpadding' when I did this and gave the left side a padding of 150 pixels.

Here is the result on my blog. Note the body is about 560 pixels wide in total so with a 250x300 ad block there is about 250 pixels to split up and I have used 150 pixels. Its not quite dead center, but its good enough for me. Note this site talks a lot about product recalls and things of that nature hence the list of ads relative to that topic as opposed to something off topic like cartoons or Kohler sinks.

EDIT

This code is pretty short, simple and sweet, but per a request we wanted to share (You'll want to hit the check box to expand widgets)

This is the code for the css section of your template.

#adpadding {
padding:0px 0px 0px 150px;
}

A Great Picture Can Get You Lots of Traffic

I saw a great picture over at a blog called Dodgeblogium » Blog Archive » Ding Kong.  The image is actually a flikr photo, but its a good example of how a great image can garnish you traffic and maybe links.

One of the interesting things about attracting people to your blogs with an image is that they are likely to click away looking for something else and that could mean that they will click on an adsense advertisement on their way out of your website.

We have previously covered the aspects of how an image can be used as a link bait.  One of the things that can aid in this is making it slightly more difficult for others to copy the image or even hotlink to it(forcing them to link to your article instead, although hotlinks can be used to gather up links too!)

One of the keys in identifying an image of this nature is to find an image that is not widely circulated and hopefully very unique.  You do not necessarily want something very common like a picture of a big screen TV on a plasma stand or even a picture of President Bush (unless he is doing something goofy).  You want an image that is very unique.

Ever Have Problems Finding a Good Poll

Here is a sample Poll I created on a site still in beta called SmartLapPoll.com

 

So here is the poll, and it is definitely politically incorrect. The point is that it is not always easy to find a good or easy poll service on the web.  We are looking at multiple ways to grow this polling service into something extra useful.  So if you check it out, please let me know what you think of the functionality or what you are looking for in polling sites or services today that you are not finding.

I personally have a need for political polls, but also cover a number of tech issues as well from web design, web marketing, even some hardware and electronic gadget sites. (currently testing a slim external hard drive and a pocket solar charger for one site as an example).

 

Regardless let me know what you think about the poll above (functionality not topic) and what might be done to spruce this up.

Revver is Good for Readers and Good for Stats!

If you ever offer up your own videos on your blogs, I highly recommend Revver.  First, Revver enables you to earn some money from your videos.  Now, my videos tend to be tutorial in nature and I'm not getting rich from them but that's ok because those videos do something even more important.

They give my readers good content to view.  Video is richer in content than just text.  Plus combining video with text is even better than holding video separate.

Revver drops ads at the end of videos and you get credit for the impressions and clicks and that pays a little money.  But more importantly you get access to some great stats that helps you see what your readers/viewers are looking at and doing.  This then helps you to see what you are doing right with the videos and possibly what you are doing wrong.

Here's some examples of some partial shots of my stats . . .

There's another benefit here as well.  Running the videos on your website or pages also helps you place better in search if the title of the video is relative to the keywords for search.  It may not help you compete with mesothelioma treatment but it could help you a bit with less competitive words and definitely help you on Ask.com. 

Adsense Blogger Take Thyself to Ask.com, Register and Download the tool bar

This is a bit counter intuitive (well not really).  If you are a blogger that blogs for business and you make money from Adsense and other forms of online advertising, then you need to pay attention to Ask.com.  This search engine will be important for you whether or not you blog on politics, tech or a defined niche reviewing Vegas rooms that are the best for gambling at various levels or on specific days with certain dealer combinations.

They have the potential to be the next Google in search (Google gave up on that a couple years ago and they are just treading water.)

Ask.com however is doing a number of very innovative things with their search engine and just by the process of throwing darts not only on the board but towards the center, they are likely to hit a bulls eye soon.

So you need to get your blog articles indexed in Ask.  You can start by setting up a MyStuff account at ask

http://mystuff.ask.com/

You can also submit articles that you find interesting to Ask, just like you can with Stumbleupon or Digg.

I also recommend downloading the Ask.com toolbar so that they can gather up information about the websites that are important to you.

VOIP and Adsense

There are many different Adsense strategies that a publisher or website owner can utilize to work cohesively with Adwords advertisers.  One of those strategies involves building and structuring sites and articles to support online e-commerce retailers.

As an example I would like to show you a site called Neobits.  This website focuses on selling voice over IP products and services.  They are not an affiliate laden website, they sell real products.  For example they sell voice over IP products from Talkswitch, Panasonic, and many other VOIP equipment manufacturers providers.

For you to build a good site that helps this type of retailer, you need to understand whether or not they are advertising with AdWords first.  Once you know if they're using AdWords are not, then you need to structure your blog articles or your website to support the topics that their customers are filtering into their site looking for answers or solutions.

This oftentimes comes in the form of a product review.  That does not mean that you go out to their website and perform a write up warrior review of their actual website.  Instead, you need to do a deep dive into each of the individual products on the website and review those individual products.

Ideally you need to purchase the products or receive a review copy, and test the products out and provide your feedback or information were insights into how to use the products, how to use them to best advantage, how the products work well, and where the products fail.  When you talk about the failures of the products, you need to do this from the perspective of helping consumers find products that will work well enough for them to point out the products that have certain weaknesses and steer consumers away from the products that have weaknesses that they cannot live with.  That becomes a value-added service that you're providing in helping them to make their decision based on your experience and your newfound wisdom.

If you do not have access to the products can you a different opportunity.  It's called Web research.  You can go out and gather together a large number of other reviews that people done on this particular product and you can compile and consolidate those reviews.  Be sure to point out the areas where the reviews have identified a consistent pattern or results.  Also make sure that you know any of the exceptional items that individual reviews noted, or problems that they found.  It's important not to give these outliers too much weight as it could just be a fluke and that single review, but it is something that could be valuable to your consumers to understand the potential of that product and how it might work for them in specific situations.

Writing it for Copy

now of course after you do your review, or after you compile the reviews of many different writers, you need to take a look at your article and you need to format it so that it will work well with AdSense.  You need to use the script in essence provides to block keywords that will not relate to the topic that you're covering, and you need to utilize good keyword density to help promote the keywords that you do want to promote especially for AdWords topics.

When you're working for AdSense results, you do not necessarily want to have an article that is several thousand words long.  Instead you want to break your article up into multiple pages.  Each page should have a focus on the topic that you're covering such as voice over IP, but it should also have a sub topic some niche of voice over IP.  Shorter articles will work much better with AdSense placements, plus as your readers are flipping from page 1 to two and then to page 3, you will be earning additional impressions and an additional chance to convert someone through an AdSense advertisement.

The style does not necessarily always work well in a blog format and is sometimes better suited towards static websites.  It can be achieved by breaking up a single blog article into multiple blog articles and then interlinking between those articles.  As blogs are published from the most recent to the oldest, you will left to make the decision on whether or not to publish the beginning of the article first or save it for a lapsed so that it appears on top of the other articles.  If you save it for last, you will probably want to publish all of the articles at the same time, if you publish it first then you may want to space out the publishing of your articles over several days.

Are Your Incoming Links Sourced from a Dangerous Site?

Here is a Great tool recommended to me in an article from a friend of mine. 

The site and article can be found at Advertising For Success: Lost Innocence and Page Rank

The tool enables you to get a sense of the quality and safety of the links are pointing to your website, your internal pages and more.  Generally the more back links you have the better, however some of those back links can associate you and Google's eyes with bad websites.

Google defines a bad website is anything that makes it difficult for Google to do business or earn money in advertising in my humble opinion.  This means those websites may look perfectly legitimate to you and may offer unique content and even very useful services, but Google doesn't like them and they might start to dislike you as well just for having a link received from that site.

Now you can stop someone from linking to your website, but you can work to build up your links from other sites that are more trustworthy and keep things balanced.  This game of Google's is somewhat similar to the games are played in both residential and commercial real estate.

In real estate function and location are the most important things.  That plays out on the web as well and Google has the ability to provide you the right location.  If they don't like you they can bury your location and make it very difficult for you to do business successfully.

Microsoft adCenter

Normally we talk about Google Adsense here.  That is not the only fish in the sea, and Microsoft adCenter is a service that enables publishers and advertisers to work through Microsoft's version of AdSense.  Microsoft is not an original in this market, they rarely are.

That doesn't mean that you can't make money working with their advertising services or even make money as a publisher running their ad content on your site.  The trick is, if you run Microsoft's adCenter on your site, you cannot run AdSense at the same time unless you happen to have a rotator program, that will only show AdSense or adCenter adds alternatively.

So if you have multiple locations on your website where those types of ads are running, you need to ensure that they rotate entirely off the page while the other service is rotated on the page.

Note Microsoft does take the time to send you lots of direct mail materials for their online advertising service. And is that Search Master Steve Guy a relative or a rip off of the Verizon Wireless Guy?

One of the specialty items about the Microsoft program, is that they enable a more targeted approach to Internet surfers based on the information that Microsoft has about their usage of Microsoft products.  This enables Microsoft to a limited extent to understand who's actually looking at the ads, how old they are, what sex they are, and maybe even where they live.

Google is working to catch up in this area by capturing users information from all of the different Gmail like accounts that Google offers.  But they don't have the reach that Microsoft has in this area yet.

I've only used Microsoft adCenter to a limited extent.  I do plan on using it more especially in my own advertising campaigns.  In some niches it can be cheaper and more effective.  Plus it never hurts to understand how a competitor works so that you can get the best deal on whatever it is you might be advertising from baby clothes to computer memory.

Moving From Free Tools to Paid Tools - Keyword Analysis 201

Eventually as you build up more experience in working with domains, websites, blogs, SEO and SEM, you will consider when to stop using the free keyword analysis tools and start paying for even better keyword research tools.

I use a number of keyword research tools that are free from tools available at Google and Yahoo and Yahoo!'s Overture to tools from Adwords and even a number of great tools from sites such as SEOChat.com.

I have found that eventually when you start working on more comprehensive site plans you will want to use a more comprehensive tool, that is faster and and answers some of the questions that you can not cover with free keyword analysis tools.

When I first started doing this work, I investigated some of the paid tools, even tried some free trials with keyword research tools, but ultimately opted to continue using the free tools until I had earned enough to pay for the good tools.

It was kind of like the principles used in real estate flipping.  You build your investment off of you profits not your principle investment.

Now as I look at my lines of business, I have been earning much more money from areas of business that did not require an deep dive into keyword analysis.  But recently, I am finding that these tools can generate a premium in my work and so I have finally reached a point where purchasing these tools make sense.

As I journey through this purchase, I am not yet prepared to buy the service a year at a time, but I can easily afford to pay for the service for a 1 month subscription (and I'll leave the auto renew options unchecked).

When I have some working history with the tools, then I'll make my decision as to which tools to continue with.

With that in mind, I am going to try Trellian's KeywordDiscovery tools first.

Its not an expensive tool to jump into (they do have a decent free trial offering as well).  But even the paid version is only about $70 for the first month, and if you like the service you can pick it up at about $50 per month after that.

Adsense Notifier Helps Track Stats While You Surf

One of the first plugins that I added to Firefox was a little add on called the Adsense Notifier. I can't recall exactly, but that plugin, may have been the reason why I started using Firefox in the first place.

If there is anything truly addictive about firefox plugins, the adsense notifier is it, and I'm not going to drug rehab to break my addiction.  This one is just too useful.  This tool enables you to check your Adsense stats at a glance. 

The Adsense notifier can be configured to show you the stats that are important to you within the lower right portion of a firefox browser window.  The image above gives an example, by displaying from left to right the number of uniques, the number of adsense ad clicks, the page CTR (click through rate) percentage, the eCPM, the total earnings and the average earnings per click.

These are just some of the configuration options, and not the extent of what is available.

If you want to quickly check your account in more detail. just right click on the notifier section and it launches your adsense account in a new tab.

BlogWorld Here We Come

This week bloggers are converging on Las Vegas Nevada for BlogWorld.  Real Estate may be topsy turvy and Las Vegas may no longer be the hot market with land for sale, but social media marketing is hot all over.

I will be heading out for BlogWorld myself Wednesday.  The show before the show starts that night, with the convention going Thursday.  There's an open bar party at the Hard Rock that night, my friend Steve Boyett will be the DJ at that event and then back to the conference Friday. 

Saturday moves into the second blogger conference in Vegas, Postiecon, with another party at the Tao night club that night .

Social Media marketing are very hot commodities right now, and the tight employment across the country are fueling that fire even more.  If you are a blogger right now, you are in the right place at the right time.  Hopefully, you are doing the right things to be successful.

The Beauty and Irony of the Google Blogosphere Bomb

Google attempted a Shock and Awe campaign on the blogosphere last month.  They targeted publishers and blogs from Forbes to the little bloggers that work for very little money.  Specifically, they were targeting blogs that hinder their ability to remain the king of Search.

It is ironic that the largest search engine in the world would take a defensive measure by lashing out at publishers to protect their business as opposed to fixing their business.

The internet may be virtual but its all about real estate.  Google wants to control the real estate and be the only realtor helping people search for their answers like Century 21 might help you search for a home.  The difference is that Century 21 has many competitors from GMAC to Remax and many others.  Google has a couple distant competitors like Yahoo! and MSN but no one has threatened them, until the rise of bloggers and publishers working to flatten the ownership of the internet.

The real truth is that writers on the internet aid Google bot in indexing the internet.  We help to write about what is going on, what sites are about, what's important and most importantly, Why!

Google bot would not function half as well if it weren't for the writers publishing things on the internet, but Google does not want to share in the control.  They might dole out some Adsense pennies from time to time, but control and power is very different.  Google attacked publishers for the threat to Google's power.  The beauty of this is that Google essentially recognized the power of publishers and the irony is that the attack will only fuel the power and force publishers to take more direct action against Google to stay in business.

Google Adsense Flaw - Attribution!

Microsoft was fast to point out a severe flaw in the Google Adsense business model.  The problem is attribution of all the websites that contribute to persons inclination to click on a google AdSense ad.

The Problem with Adsense Attribution

How many times have you surf the Internet and seeing an ad and almost clicked on it.  Maybe it's five maybe it's 10 pages later you see the ad again over and over and over, and you finally click on it.  The website that you happen to be on where you click on the ad is attributed with conversion.  They receive half of the advertising fee and Google gets the other half.

Even more problematic is when someone sees the attribute over multiple websites, and then performs a google search to learn more about the advertisement.  All of those websites that carry the advertisement get zero attribution for their work.  Sometimes a person to does the Web search clicks on a Google ad from the Web search site and Google gets paid and no one else receives a dime.

Microsoft of all people (and competitors) pointed out this flaw this week and PC World was quick to jump on it.  Google Gets Undue Credit for Ad Conversions

The interesting thing is that Microsoft hinted that they might just have the ability to solve this problem, presumably with their own advertising tool and not Google's.  It will be interesting to understand just how they might split the revenues from multiple attributions.

Furthermore, hinting at the problem and the ability to solve it is very unlike Microsoft.  They could have just rolled out a fix and taken Google by surprise.  The reality is that Google could roll out such a fix easily today as they already track ad impressions. 

However, Google may be a victim of their own success.  If they applied attribution today, many publishers that get lucky at the end of a chain would receive less and those attributers along the way would receive more.  Getting Google to clean up its PPC business, might be about as easy as getting Lindsay Lohan to stay in drug rehab.  It might just take a Microsoft to save the PPC industry from itself.

Just testing this video

BLOGRUSH

I received an email today asking if I had heard of BLOGRUSH.  This is somewhat similar to some of the services provided by Blogmad and Blog Explosion. 

This is not a surf exchange however as those are.  They sign bloggers up, categorize their blogs and grab the feed for the blogs.  They then rotate headlines from the feed through widgets on other bloggers sites.

For every impression a blogger that signs up receives when someone looks at their own site running the widget, then that blogger will get one of their feed headlines to show up on a different bloggers site (in a blog that's in a related category).

The so what factor

Blogrush provides a referral program that goes 10 levels deep, so your referrals of your referrals  . .. . 10 deep will also bring you credits for listing your headlines in other blogs across the internet.

The down side

1. This is just another form of barter like advertisement for bloggers. 
2. It provides related article like headlines, but these are not on your site and they are not with bloggers that you know. 
3. You seem to have little control over the bloggers that are run in this program. 
4. Plus, you won't get exposure, unless someone on a different site you do not know, actually sees your headline and clicks on it to view your site.

If you have the space on your sidebar for the widget and it doesn't detract from your content nor clutter things up, this could be nice form of free advertising, but its not likely to earn you enough traffic to generate the dough to go buy Super Bowl tickets with your adense earnings anytime soon.

For what its worth you can get the same capability that BLOGRUSH offers from Blogmad and Blog Explosion.  They offer the same exact functionality, although their referral tiers only go 3-4 levels deep.  These older networks do have a very large and established network though.

The SEO Benefits of Static Clean

StaticPageBuilder.com provides a service that can only be relevant on the internet.  Like a clothes dryer generates static and sometimes sticks a sock to your back or something.

The Problem

On the web there are many tools these days that enable people to dynamically generate content.  The dynamic aspect means that the content is piped in from a different location and it usually doesn't provide the search engine anything to index.

The Solution

Enter StaticPageBuilder.com and their static pages generator.  Their software helps to build hundreds if not thousands of pages of static pages that are designed for search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

With a static page, a search engine bot can take its time and read through the site.  It can then be indexed and listed and ultimately found in search engine results.

Personally, I do like the concept that this search engine optimization software offers, but I need to see it in action and I would like to see some pages that it has generated to test it to see if it can generate valid html code for example.  I've written to the company and I am awaiting more feedback.  I'll keep you posted as I learn more.

Netscape Bookmarks

Here's a great way to build up some links for your site and some traffic too.

Once you publish an article, simply post the link, title and summary of that article at netscape.

You pick up an indexing link and its pointing in, plus you stand a better chance of people following the link back to your site from Netscape.

Push these links into Netscape regularly, and you will see a strong benefit in page rank results when Google follows through on the next update.  Its simple to do, but does take a couple minutes.  Try and work it into your article writing and publishing routine, before you jump away too fast to read something else or write a different topic.

You are not throwing out the kitchen sinks when you spend that extra minute promoting your article or your site.  You do want people to read the articles and you do want maximum exposure, so pay yourself a 1 minute reward!

Adwords to Push Traffic

If you have not used Adwords to promote your blog or even some of your flagship content then you are missing the boat.  Adwords is a relatively cheap way to advertise your site in the most trafficked realm of the internet, Google Search.

You can set daily budgets (even at a $1 a day). 

Now if that's too much for your budget, then you aren't paying attention to my blog because I can make you a lot of money every day so that you will definitely have a $1 per day to grow your site and make even more money.

If you have a blog and you are not making at least $25 - $50 per day, contact me through Softduit Partners.  Within 6 months, you might even be making enough money to think about giving up your day job!

I'm not saying you have to do Google Adwords to make money, but it can help.  Still I always advise that you make some money first and invest in yourself and your website with a small portion of your profits.

So the next time you write the killer article about some esoteric topic such as cbu mailboxes or secured mailboxes or even cluster mailboxes, and you want to push your article and your blog up in the search engine results, set a goal and a budget and try a short trial run with Google Adwords, running it for a week or 2.  Then shut it off and analyze the lessons you learned from the experience.

You can even blog about it, and if you are working through my programs, you'll probably make money blogging about it!

Multi Blog Chains to Promote an Extended Topic

Sometimes you will want to promote a concept or topic and you won't want to cover it entirely on one website.

There are many reasons and scenarios when it will make sense then to take the topic and split it up and publish it on multiple sites.  Maybe the sites are yours and maybe some belong to others that allow you to guest publish an article (free content for them).

This is a good way to express a topic completely and deeply with out taking your blog way way out on a tangent that does not entirely relate.

Its also a good way to introduce a controversial topic indirectly.  For example, you might want to call out a controversial topic in satire first, and then refer to the satire article to give an example of the satire in a more serious article.

Maybe you want to talk about a general topic like Scottsdale real estate and then on a different site go into mortgage brokers in Scottsdale and on an even different site, talk about the average closing time of Scottsdale mortgages or the average short sale price of Scottsdale foreclosures during the previous 90 days.

You can go into detail on each specific topic, and then link or cross link from site to site, using the linked networks on a bigger topic to push and pull readers through the thread of the topic building traffic for all the sites while keeping them focused the entire time!

The New Adsense

Over the last couple weeks, I have noticed a significant change in Adsense.  The earnings and payment rates are strong.

The clicks are not worthless (they are not pennies, but quarters and dollars per click).

I haven't changed anything in my Adsense organization or line up but I'm seeing much better results across many of my websites and blogs.  I've been covering many different topics from technology to politics to biology, philosophy, satire, and clothing trends from high waste pants to french padded panty designs and back to software tips and web design.

Across the board on all categories, I'm seeing better Adsense results, even some product referrals and that leads me to believe that Google may have finally fixed Adsense.  Its been over a year for me and two for some people since Adsense performed well.

I hope its back to stay!

How to List your Blog in a Directory

I have been training someone this week in some of the arts of blogging, and in the course of things, I put together a general tutorial on Top10Tech Web Tips on How to Submit a blog to directories.

There's no fancy videos, but it does walk through the why's and the where fors and gives readers access to my list of over 125 blog directories ranked by pagestrength.

For a blogger, its actually a good idea to go searching in blog directories to network and perform market research.  Its a great way to find other blogs on similar or the same topics that your blog covers.  You can then network with those bloggers and build up links from individual but separate articles into your own deep links.  This isn't the same as a direct exchange of links from a blogroll on  a domain to another domain, which essentially cancels each other out twice (once for the 2 way exchange and once for the fact that its in a blogroll!)

Exchange quick article summaries about what your blog is about and give the same and don't link to the general domain, but to a deep link, if possible exchange three links each, linking to a recent article, another for a month old article and the third for a very old article.

You'll be doing each other a big favor.

Using Adsense to Improve Debt Solutions

 

Many people often times begin to embark on a path to earn money by working online.  They often times at the website or a blog or many such sites and start to work as a freelance writer or blogger.  They can often times earn money from AdSense or other services that enable bloggers and website owners to place advertisements within their website.

Bloggers often find that one of their favorite topics to cover is talking about how they earned money, how they earned more money, or new methods the encountered to save money.

They are all very popular themes and they make for good reading to as people like to share the tips and tricks they learn that make life better or easier for them.  If a blogger comes across an idea about how to successfully navigate the tricky course to achieving Debt Relief, odds are they're probably going to write about it and even promote the service or company that helped them do that.  Similarly a person goes out refinance their home and has a good experience and might even write about that experience or some of the other alternatives they weighed when they went through the process.

Maybe they considered utilizing Credit Card Consolidation services or techniques to refinance their student loans or other debt.  Bloggers like to write about what they know about and they like to write about what's going on in their lives at that point in time.  It's the thing a central focus to them and it makes sense to write about it as it's happening and this creates a blogosphere is oftentimes filled up with similar articles and so watching the buzz in the blogosphere can not only help you benchmark on how to do something, but you can see through other bloggers trial and error how do achieve a better result.  If 100 people do something and they all write about it, odds are they're going to do it slightly differently and you're going to be a we read about some of the mistakes and some of the good things that each one of them did you might then be a will to do it even better.

Of course that will give you some great material to write about yourself!

Are Bloggers Going to be Blacklisted by PPP?

It was bound to happen eventually, but some bloggers are being threatened with the potential of an industrywide blacklist that could be sponsored by PayPerPost.  PayPerPost themselves said as much on their own blog.  The implications of such a move are extremely ugly and definitely not a good thing for bloggers.

At a minimum such a move would work to separate bloggers from each other and provide the advertising industry even more clout in control over what bloggers write, how they write it, when they write it, and why they write it.  PayPerPost is brought a number of great things to the industry but at the same time they are developing into the 800 pound gorilla of the group and they don't always play not ask.  After threatening an industrywide blacklist of bloggers, they were somewhat surprised at the backlash they receive from bloggers.  That does not mean that they're going to mend their ways or even not live up to their own threats.

For more on this check out the following headlines

• PayPerPost Accuses Some of their Oldest Members of Gaming Alexa and PayPerPost
• PayPerPost Prepares to Black List Blogs Utilizing Industry Trust

Shareaholic.com

I found a great referral from Miss Jenny of The So Called Me blog.  She recommends a service called Shareaholic.com.  They offer a Firefox plug-in that allows you to share articles that you're looking at in your browser with

• Digg.com
• Stumble Upon
• Delicious
• reddit
• facebook
• googlebookmarks and more

 

There are other ways to get the same service, but this does seem pretty useful.  For people that like to have this type of thing in their browser as a button or a drop-down, this could be a good fit for your bag attracts.

Many blogs already have these buttons installed as plugins within the site itself, but if you are looking for one stop shopping, this can definitely be a good option to consider.  It may not be the right fit for everyone, but nothing ever is.  In the blogosphere, you often have to try out many different tools to find the one that fits you.  Kind of like trying to find the right type of furniture for your house.  

Maybe you'll find something that is comfortable but if its some sort of Bush furniture motif and you have a victorian styled home, that might not work. Not the best analogy, but you get the point.   ;) 

Not Sure if You have found the Perfect Domain Name? Lease it!

Sometimes you just can't be sure if he found the right domain name.  That can especially be true if you're attempting to purchase a domain name.  It's not like he used car you can't kick the tires and take it for a test drive.

Let's not exactly true there's a new service that allows webmasters or anyone for that matter to lease a domain name on a monthly basis or even for periods longer than a month maybe you just want to lease a domain for the quarter for a pop up site or maybe you want to try it out and see what the traffic looks like during certain seasons.  Instead of buying the domain for the long haul you can lease it through a site called leasethis.com.

Example

Let's say that you're looking to start a new blog about skin care products and you're not sure if the domain name superclearskin.com will bring in the type of traffic that you looking for.  You might build go to leasethis.com and lease the domain and give it a test run only paying for the amount of time that you need to use the domain to potentially establish if that domain will work for you or not.

Their terms range from one month to 24 month terms.  It's a nice alternative as opposed to cyber squatting or picking up a domain for five-day window and dumping it before you have to pay for the actual registration.  It's also a nice way to test of the domain before you purchase it from someone.  Maybe they're offering up stats that can't really be provided after a sale and this gives you a chance to actually take that site for test run.

Stake Your Domain Claim - Be Prepared to Fight

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The Blogosphere isn't Shrinking - The course is being groomed better

 Steve Rubel at AdAge.com recently tripped over an important concept about the blogosphere.  Normally AdSense for idiots wouldn't stoop to the level of covering a website of such low repute as AdAge.com, however if you read through the entire article at the bottom to progress and important concept.  A concept its importance for bloggers and webmasters and Internet marketers.

The concept is that the blogosphere is not shrinking, but the edges are becoming more refined.  There is a useful analogy provided at the end of the article that illustrates the point.

If Web 2.0 is like golf, then a blog is a nine iron, while a micro-blog is a putter. It's all still golf, but bloggers are starting to mix it up, and the course is changing. Therefore, marketers need to adapt. More on that in my next column.

Advertising Age - The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Blogosphere

 

The point here is that you can get a long way with the blog.  A blog is not necessarily a driver, but you get a lot of distance out of each hit that you have a blog.  However when you get down to the minutia you need to use and mix up some other tools from social networking sites and even possibly some of the new micro-blogging concepts that are coming out of websites like twitter.

Twitter provides a service that allows people to send short messages from their cell phones to a website where their friends can stay connected with what's going on in their lives.  These are similar in terms of length of information to a telegram or postcards that you might send your friends while you're on vacation paid their mail boxes typically after you've already returned.  They don't provide a lot of information, but they do provide a little bit of information and that's entirely the point.

The concept of mixing up your Internet strategy is not new, but the growth is shifting a little bit.  The Internet started with a number of websites that might be viewed as the big rocks that were put into the bucket and then medium-sized rocks such as blogs were added to the mix and now a number of other tools like social networking sites and micro-blogging sites are the small rocks and grains of sand that are filling in all those remaining areas.

It's not only important that they're filling in that area, but they're also serving to connect all the rocks together with many more touch points.  You'll notice that no one is poured water into the mix yet and so the fluidity isn't perfect there are still disconnects out there, however we're getting close and it probably won't be long before someone figures out how to fill the blogosphere up with water.

In the meantime, our hats are off to the hacks at AdAge!  ;)

Google's New(er) Referral Products

For quite some time Google has been offering people the ability to earn money from their referral products .  Firefox with the Google toolbar was the first referral product that they offered.  Basically what any one signed up for a product through your Google referral buttons you get paid by Google (on their extravagantly long and drawn out payment terms).  Will Google is trying to find more ways to monetize referrals and now offers a long long list of products that you can earn referrals through Google's programs.

 

It's not just limited to things that are related to Google like the Firefox toolbar, it covers a wide range of products.

To find it, simply login to your Google adsense account and click on AdSense setup, then scroll down and choose referrals.

 

You should be presented with a list of about 13 to 15 different categories.  You can then dive into those categories and find products that might fit your needs.  So if you are looking for natural skin care products you can possibly go into the health category and dig your way down until you find a product that you think might work well on your site.

One of the nice things about thisset up is that you can pick based onthe products that convert very well.Some products don't have much of a history yet as this is still a rathernew area for Google.  But it is an interesting start and might provide you with some good waysto boost the revenue on your site.

Are You Getting Comfy on Adsense Earnings?

Google's AdSense product has been around for a number of years.  Many people made a lot of money off of AdSense.  Are you one of those people, are you comfortable with the earnings that you pull them from ghouls AdSense program?

 

AdSense is not the only fish in the ocean.  There are many other ways that you can make money online or find ways to monetize your website or blog.  The last year has probably seen more growth in ways to apply revenue streams to blogs that almost any other area on the Internet.  If you're not capitalizing on these new ways to earn money, then you're just not looking.  They are out there, we cover them in this blog as a regular occasion.

 

Anyone that reads this blog knows that we don't try and sell you an e-book, we don't try to sell you anything.  We provide you information on how tonight money online.  We'll have to sell you anything to earn money ourselves, because we are using our own techniques to make money.  We also know that if you make money online through our techniques will all benefit from sharing a bigger pie.  So if you're hoping to be a will to relax a little more balanced lifestyle, spend more time with the family, exercise more, and set up a nice new office within your home styled with contemporary office furniture and you're the right place. If you haven't subscribed to this blog already please consider doing so and please also drop us a comment and ask about our family of blogs covering many other related areas that will help you do more with your time.

Harry Potter is Great for Blog Conversations

If you have not yet got on the bandwagon

and read the last Harry Potter book, then I suggest that you hop over to close a store and search their books until you find the seventh book in the series.

There are a lot of different ways that you can play Harry Potter on your website.  The topic gets a lot of attention and a lot of responses if you're a blogger, you're crazy to miss out on the opportunity to drawing your readers can connect on common ground.  I'm not suggesting that you throw an Amazon link up on your site to try and sell the book, I am suggesting that you use it as a conversation piece and an opportunity to get closer to your readers.

Anonymous Search from Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask?

Google's competitors are coming up with a novel approach to competing with Google. 

Offering searchers more privacy.

Google received failing grades from Privacy International last month for snooping and failing to protect searchers.

Microsoft, Yahoo! and Ask are racing to do better than Google and to one up each other.  Promising ever shortening periods under which they will keep users search result information.  Ask is even offering up a service that would promise something akin to anonymous searches on its network.

That might make it harder for you to find personalized cups in your search related advertisements, but if you are attempting to avoid imprisonment in a Chinese jail for researching a politically taboo topic it could save your life.

Power of Privacy ~ Are you Credible?

Are you running a privacy policy on your website?

Can your visitors or customers trust you with their information?

You may not take credit cards, but emails and other forms of information are also very important.

A privacy policy can make a subtle but important statement on your website regardless of what the site is doing, how big it is or how small.

Here's a good example of a company that understands the importance of a privacy policy.  NEDC is a ISO 9001 certified fabrication company specializing in among other things Die Casting and EMI Shielding. They may not get millions of visitors per day, but they realize that its very important to make the most out of the visitors they do get and tell those visitors how they will protect their privacy.

Posting an Image in Your Blog to Make it Available in a Forum

Do you ever post an image in your blog, just so that you can hot link it in a forum and make it visible there without screwing up someone else's bandwidth?

Here's an example from the movie The Incredibles

I wanted to post this picture of Inrediboy from the movie The Incredibles in a forum next to a quote "When everyone is special, no one is special"

I didn't want to point to a site that used it for a movie review, as I didn't want to hot link to them and steal a little image bandwidth, making them pay the bill.  So instead, I loaded it up here through blogger where the image hosting is covered by Big Daddy Google.

I get a blog post with linkbait like images for future Google searches, plus the link from the forum when I hot link back to my own blog and I don't steal anyone's bandwidth that isn't prepared to pay for it.

Why Go to the Trouble?

Some webmasters have to literally pay a bandwidth overage bill if they exceed their allowed bandwidth on their self hosted site.  If you hot link one of their images and millions of people open your page to view their image, then they get a big slap in the face with a bandwidth bill and no traffic.

Unfortunately, no one has invented the concept of Bandwidth insurance yet.  You can purchase pet insurance or Funeral Insurance or even an Umbrella Policy but if you go over on your cell phone or bandwidth you are just out some money!

10 Articles You Should read to be a Successful Blogger

Performancing provides an excellent community where Pro Bloggers share their insights into blogging.

At the beginning of the week they put up a great collection of 10 articles that every blogger should read at least once(here's the link to the article).

Here are the titles of the articles

1. How to Write Magnetic Headlines
2. How Can 10 Simple Articles Change Your Life
3. Scan-able Content
4. 10 Killer Post Ideas
5. 7 Steps to Being Recognized as an Expert
6. Converting One off Visitors to your Blog into Regular Readers
7. 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang
8. The Art of Linkbaiting
9. Before You Begin Blogging: A few things you should know
10. 5 Surefire Steps to Increase Readership 300% (or more)

You can join Performancing for free with our invitation.

IPower Driving Me Nuts

It seems like everytime I do business with Ipower hosting I walk away from the experience telling myself that I will never do business with them again.

But I keep doing what should be more simple transactions with them and they keep screwing things up more and more.

I think I am going to establish my own hosting or reseller account for domain registrations.  I've had it really with IPower.  They just continue to fail no matter how many second chances that I give them.  Their tech support people seem to have a brain made up of a single brain cell or maybe just a dash of amino acids and half a peptide.

I tried looking at GoDaddy for this type of thing.  They advertise $1.99 domains, but you have to jump through so many goofy hoops that you wonder just how much you have to pay to get the opportunity to buy something for $1.99.

Monetizing the Public Domain Update

I wanted to give you an update on this project.  This project has been going fairly smoothly.  I've been picked up by a half dozen Paid to blog advertisers at this point.  Plus, I'm finding some cool and interesting content to hit.

I think I am going to expand this project out into additional sub domains on several related topics.  This time, I'm going to run everything off of one database and see if I can code the headlines into the primary home page.

So I will have a home page on the primary domain, with one directory blog on the primary domain.  Then I will run maybe 2 additional blogs at a time on sub domains.

I'll get a good PR build off the directory blog and the home page for the domain.  I'll also get individual PR builds off of the other sub domains and increase my earning potential on all the domains.

I've just started monetizing the site.  So far it has earned about $50.  Not too much, but it literally just started earning money.  I invested about $10 in the book at auction.

I spent about 3 hours on setting up the blog and its theme, which I'll likely duplicate on the other sections.  So I'm probably at the break even point right now, getting ready to go profitable.

Right now my daily earnings potential is only about $30 per day(3-4 days per week), but with the addition of more sources of revenue will increase that soon enough.  Then maybe I can channel some of my new found revenue into my dream house and hire a good real estate broker to help me with some of the heavy lifting on the house hunt. That will then give me more time to focus on my other blogs and sites and I can keep printing money for the next round of investments.

Build a Bigger Link Bait

I have been working on a new blog for a couple months now.  Sometimes I'll start a new blog as I'm filling development time.  Then I get distracted when my primary projects kick back in and the new blog gets delayed.

Its not really suffering, its new, its just not happening much yet.

Well, I have been trying to catch up on a new blog called Home Loan Focus.  It will obviously help provide more information to people trying to get a Home loan or mortgage.  It will also give a number of tips on saving money and improving credit.  They all go hand in hand together.

So I found inspiration in a newsletter from Military.com.  They provide a list of 7 things to do to save money on Childcare.  I read the list and saw that they had missed a lot of things.

Building a Bigger Link Bait

The list gave me an idea.  I realized that I could use the newsletter as a source for some content.  So I started writing and before you know it, I had not 8 or 9 total but 26 ways to save money on childcare.

Now I've covered a mess of ways to do linkbaits in the past

1. How to Build a Linkbait
2. Types of Linkbaits
1. Video
2. News Hook
3. Attack
4. Humor Hook
5. Resource Hook
6. Pictures
7. Long Lists
8. Contrary Hooks

As I see this, this is a slight twist on the Long Lists version of linkbaiting.  Its essentially building a 'long list' than already exists and boom you have a linkbait.

Now I would definitely cite the original source.  Don't rip off someone else's work.  Besides if you are adding to their contribution, then they might check out your article and possibly send some of their readers your way for the additional information.

Technorati tags: building a longer linkbait, saving money on childcare

Domain Speculation for Link Building

We were having a speculative theoretical conversation

in the performancing community's evening.  We were talking about the possibility of purchasing domains and developing them with a dozen or more static pages.  We came up with a hypothetical situation where you could build a website and establish a page rank with that website of three or four.

The website should cover a particular niche lets say cross stitching as an example.  You could then set up 10 similar websites that also covered the particular niche of cross stitching.  None of the site utilized any duplicate content, they would all be entirely unique.

Each of these sites within point to your preferred site which also focused on cross stitching.  Your focal site would then be developed as you develop any site but you do have 10 good links from PR three or four blogs or websites for months and months and may be years.  To keep the search bots moving you could even move those links around on the different pages potentially.  It doesn't cost hardly anything to register a domain and so you could establish a link building campaign for dirt cheap, but those links will last a very long time.

The outstanding question is "How long would the page rank of all those sites hold up?"

Google Referrals through Adsense

In addition to putting contractual advertising on your website and then running Google ad sense programs, you can also utilize Google's referral programs.  They provide incentives for anybody that downloads their applications and installs them on a computer.  These referrals tend to take place, after some these actually utilized the program once.

That means you don't get credit for the download and hence don't earn any money until the following things happen

1. someone goes to your website
2. They click on one of your referral buttons from Google
3. they download the software package that Google is offering
4. they install that software that they've just downloaded
5. and they run the program for the first time

 

There are a few other odd exceptions that sometimes creep into the mix.  Google tends to pay different amounts based on sometimes the location of a blogger or the website owner that's running their referral buttons.  Sometimes they pay different amounts depending on the location of the person that downloads the program.  This location-based payment amount seems to focus on currency exchange rate differences.  I see a lot of conjecture on how this is actually cockpit but never seen anything factual.

I pointed out so that if you see some amounts that aren't typical for what you expected from that referral buttons, it could be because the person that use the button was located in a different country where the exchange rates are different generating a payout rate that varies from the norm.

Get your Blog Updated by Google Every Day

Many bloggers and website owners probably stare at their pagerank tool bar button dreaming of the day when their page rank will go up another level or another 2 levels.

The reality is that your page rank is being adjusted every single day, if . . .

That's a big IF

If your site is being searched by Googlebot.  Googlebot does not stop searching the internet and Google does not stop updating their search results.  If your site is indexed and its being searched by Google Bot then you are getting updated everyday!

Google only publishes the results of those cumulative updates about every 10 - 14 weeks and that's when the 'visible' page rank changes.

So don't focus so much on making that big move every three months, settle into a continual improvement cycle and make that improvement every day.

Most Important Strategy Adjustment

The most important strategy adjustment that you can make is to work to get your blog, website and every permalink or article, indexed and re-indexed as often as possible.  This is why deep linking is so important.  You need other sites to link to your deep pages or articles specifically, and you to need to link to your older articles on a regular basis as well.

Getting Paid to Go to College

How would you like to get paid to go to college?

it wouldn't be that hard if you're a blogger.  As a blogger, you analyze and provide your thoughts and opinions and perspectives on the knowledge or content that you take in on a daily basis.

College is a treasure trove of content.  I'm not talking about stealing your professors notes or publishing a textbook on line, I'm talking about providing your views on each of the topics that you study, your views and experiences around campus, and much more.

Blogs are all about content, and if you can provide a compelling writing style with a great deal of detailed information about what you're learning you can make a lot of money. 

You don't even have to leave the comfort of your own home.  According to a recent release, there are many online degree programs available, or you can get a college degree or Masters degree online.  You can search through directories of online degrees and find over 1,300 colleges or universities to choose from with over 9000 different degree programs.

You can take out a federally backed student loan to get your degree, and your studies can become your full-time paid job.

So what are you waiting for?

Go out there and get smarter and get paid for it!

Quick Indexing Tool

When you first start out as a blogger, one of the first hurdles to overcome is getting your main site indexed by the Search Engines, especially Google.

Then the next hurdle to overcome is getting your individual articles indexed and not passed over by Google.

Blue Hat SEO provides a quick indexing tool called QUIT.  This tool is designed to help you get your blog or website and/or your individual permalinks or individual article pages indexed rapidly.

This tool is been out since last fall and reports the ability get a site indexed within 24 hours.

Link to Blue Hat SEO-Advanced SEO Tactics » QUIT- Quick Indexing Tool

There are several other techniques that you can use to accomplish the same goal if you have a blog.  One of the easiest ways to do that is to establish a feed through feedburner and drop the buzz boost code from feedburner into a Google pages account.

But sometimes you need to have other tricks up your sleeve and this would definitely be considered an advanced option.

Running Adsense on New Blogger Templates

If you have converted from the old blogger platform and are having a hard time inputting your Adsense code into the new template, its probably because the new code is on xhtml and won't accept some of the characters generated by Adsense, they need to be escaped.

Example the symbol & when read by XML needs to be expressed with the symbols &amp;

That may seem less efficient for coding purposes, but its better for the web browsers to confirm that you are talking about a symbol and not the word 'and'

Here are three articles that will guide you through the setup of Adsense in your new blogger account:

1.  From Enviroman this article sums things up showing you how to Incorporate Adsense into your blogger blog

2.  From Blogcrowds you get more details, which Enviroman references as well. (Source Article)

3.  Then there is this handy tool at Blogcrowds for converting the Adsense code into something that New Blogger can read and create your Adsense blocks.

Welcome Back to Adsense, New Blogger Bloggers!

Using Your Blog to Increase Property Values in your Neighborhood

This week I am engaging in a little free advertising campaign for my neighborhood.  I am covering in this article a home for sale a couple blocks away.  I went and toured the home thise weekend during an open house and it has been remodeled throughout.  In Georgia they do not provide square footage numbers, but I'd guesstimate the square footage at somewhere between 2,200 and 2,600 sq ft, plus a 2 car garage and 2 cover decks (one screened in and one open air).  They have done a lot of work remodeling the inside, the outside was in decent shape although someone with a green thumb could do even more with the landscaping.

As I see it by covering this home, I am helping the home sell, just a bit more than it would on its own and that's good for overall property values where I live.

Here is a Link to Homes for Sale in River Bridge, Lawrenceville, Georgia $210,000 for this particular home.

I will keep you posted on how this campaign goes and how the house does.  Typically text link advertising provides a boost over the long run, but does not always provide a significant up front lift.  I am testing to see how much lift I can provide in the sale of this home located in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Exodus 3000 Break

I needed a break from blogging and web work today, and received an email from Exodus 3000.  They were running a good promo today.

I hopped in and learned that I had won like 4000 over the last month just sitting there.  :)

I also won some free moves.  I logged in an played for 20 minutes, and won 500 md from attacks and several thousand dollars from other activities including the find of 7,000 in md cards!

So I made quite a bit of advances, but the cool thing is that they have done a number of things to improve the game system.

If you are unfamiliar with Exodus3000, its basically an online game, kind of like risk or stratego maybe.  You search for various things and earn martian dollars.  Those martian dollars can be converted to real cash whenever you want to cash out of the game and start over!

Numbers 5 & 10 from Top 10 warning signs of Blogging Addiction

I came across a funny top 10 list this week.  It is the Top 10 Warning Signs of Blogging Addiction.

Here's Items 5 and 10, you'll have to drop by the site to see the rest of the list.  ;)

 

10. You call tech support to find out how to “activate” your Glade Plugin.

...

...

...

...

5. Your Boss, who you dislike, tells you that you did an outstanding job on the last assignment and and that he’s going to put you in for a raise. You reply by saying “Can I Blockquote you on that?”

...

...

...

...

This is not only funny but practical also.  Nice example of a short little viral linkbait.

Keyword Plurality

You may work to optimize your keywords on occasion chasing that top spot on google, but are you paying attention to the top spot for plural versions of your keywords?

You can check the numbers in Overture on keyword searches for plural derivatives and you will not find the results most of the time.  They are all lumped in together.

But try a google search and note the slight differences in results.

I tried a search on Swiss Army Watch and Swiss Army Watches.

You will not see a night and day difference on this (except with the number of adword ads on the singular compared to the plural).

There is one difference.  EWatches appears in the number 5 spot for Swiss Army Watch but comes in at number 7 for swiss army watches.

Many companies would kill for seven but 5 is better and the top 3 is the goal, especially on words where Google runs a lot of sponsored ads at the top.  As you are putting together your keyword campaigns you should consider the plural versions of the search and maybe even a few mis-spelled versions too!

Sister Site running Show Us Your Big Digg!

Our sister site at Top10Tech.com has a Web Tips section that is asking visitors to share examples of their biggest diggs on Digg.com.

Drop by and share your biggest Digg example and you will be mentioned in a future in depth article on the success of Digg submissions and blog marketing.

They have a great little provocative picture on this article that is pretty funny too!

Tracking Links and Cloaking

This almost sounds like keywords out of a Star Trek convention but not quite.  If you do any work with affiliate programs or if you are working with some of the great new CPA Blogging Collaboratives then you may want to pay attention to how effective your blog articles really are at leveraging your readership.  That's where Tracking Links come into play giving you information about what is really going on in your blog.

Similarly, you sometimes need to cloak your own IP address when you are working to set up these programs.  For example, I'm currently putting together an article comparing three different services.  Two are available only in the United States and the other is only available in Canada.  I'm located in the United States but have hundreds of subscribers from Canada and many search engine related readers as well.

If I want to look at a link and see how it will look to someone from Canada, I won't have a chance if I click on the link from my US based IP address.  But if I go through a cloaking site, I can see the same thing that my Canada readers will see and therefore I can insure that I am designing the pages effectively and also that the links are working!

When Web Partners Fight

I mentioned in my last article about the problems associated with your web partners that devolve into a turf war.  Last night I wrote up an article about the developing turf war between Google and PayPerPost.

They are essentially fighting over bloggers and the revenue that bloggers generate.  In many ways, both companies treat bloggers like cattle and they are just working to send us off to the slaughter.

The thing is that neither company is engaging in a business practice that is good for consumers, the industry, bloggers or possibly even their own bottom line.  They are fighting each other when they could be existing synergistically together.  Check out the article with all its details and let me know what you think?

Disclaimer

This site utilizes Adsense.  It does not utilize PayPerPost (It did for a short time in July of 2006 but is no longer registered in the PPP program.  I do have other bogs that run in the payperpost program and some of those also utilize Adsense.  I personally like both systems and would like to see them get along.)

Choosing your Web Partners Wisely

Many bloggers tend to hop from advertising partner to the next searching for that perfect match where they get paid the most for doing the least.  Google Adsense at one time probably fit that bill pretty well, but it seems to be stumbling a bit.

The thing is that it takes a lot of experimenting and sometimes we choose partners that don't deliver or that do not work well with our site or blog.  Maybe its a seasonal thing, maybe its the type of ads that are running, maybe its the technology, but something in the equation might not work and that stalls out our plans to buy that elegant luxury home on a bay in Boca Raton.

That means you have to pull out old code from your template or site, find a new partner, install their codes, optimize for their specific requirements and start all over again. 

Partners that Fight

Sometimes the partners compete with each other and they don't always play fair.  One advertising company might prevent you from working with another.  They make it a requirement of participation with them, but in many ways it feels and smells like anti-trust even if it doesn't fall under that within the letter of the law.

So that means you have to scrub all those agreements for each partner and understand who allows you to work with who and under what conditions.

They are all fighting for your web real estate and hoping like a realtor chasing a 7% commission on a milion dollar home to lock you into an exclusive deal so that they can control your real estate offerings.  My advice read the TOS carefully and be ready to pull the plug on non-performing partners.

Pack in Your Blog for the Summer

Following up on a theme, one of the questions raised at performancing was whether or not a blogger should take the summer off.  If your website traffic is going to decline anyway, maybe you should take some time off and come back to it in the fall.

I suspect that our sponsors at Orlandofuntickets.com might appreciate that idea.  They provide tickets to most if not all of the major theme parks and attractions in the Orlando area.

If you want to find Cheap Universal Studios Tickets, and according to their latest press release date and get what you're looking for.  After all if you were going to stay fresh and in touch as a blogger, it does make a good deal of sense to get out and relax and have fun and see what the rest of the world is up to these days off-line.

Adsense Slow Down in the Summer?

I have been following a discussion thread over at performancing about the concept that website traffic may slow down during the summertime for certain websites.  Personally I haven't seen this type of slowdown myself.

However I'm sure that it does exist for some websites.  As we've been discussing that at performancing, we talked about what you could do with your time to best you leisure efforts in turn to slow traffic situation akin to a glass half empty into an opportunity to refill the cup.

Personally I think it's a good time to consider rebooting your blog and preparing for the times to come.  I also think it's a good time to diversify your web business into other areas.

If neither one of those options are good for you, then start sandbagging and writing content and articles that you won't publish until the traffic picks up!

You need to write articles that won't fade or look out of place if you publish them two months from now.  That's not always easy to do in the world of the Internet were things change so fast, but it is possible.  Then you can capitalize on getting the most bang for your buck out of your published works later on down the road when your readers come back.

What Is the Practicality of Using AdSense on New Websites?

Every few weeks I get a question from someone who asks if it's actually possible to make money from working with AdSense on a website or blog.

The simple answer is that it is possible, but almost anything in life as possible.

The reality is that you probably won't get rich from AdSense unless you develop a website that can attract millions of people every day. Once you have a website that does that you will probably find other ways to make money from it anyhow and AdSense won't be your primary tool for earning money, but it will be a nice extra.

So what should you do in those situations where you're starting up a site and you're looking to make money from it?

You can use AdSense but you should also look to use many other things in addition to AdSense. It's only one tool that can help your site earn a little more in the early days. It will not earn you a lot, but there's no point in turning away a little bit of money.

In the early days using AdSense is very similar to putting a transfer tank on the back of your pickup so that you can put an extra hundred gallons of gas in your truck every time you fill up. If you're only going to drive 20 miles it's not going to help you a lot, but if the day comes when you start to drive a thousand miles a day, it may pay off.  You won't have to spend as much time at the gass station, reducing the number of of times that you have to stop for gas over and over and over again.

The same holds true for AdSense it won't do you a lot of good up front until you develop the capacity to use it as a tool. When that time comes theen you will be in a good position to capitalize on it.

I tend to put AdSense onto websites and blogs immediately so that the users and readers of those sites can become accustomed to it and won't be surprised by a change later on down the road when the site is established. When that time comes I do not want to upset any readers by the change.  I want them accustomed to the presence of Adsense right from go and that's what I use AdSense immediately from the beginning of the site.

Putting it on a site early also enables me to identify in the early months which ads and keywords my site is prone to attract advertisers.  This helps me gauge and prepare the site for a future with more readers and more traffic.

Want to be above the Top 10 in Ask Searches? - Make a Video

Ask.com has made some additional improvements on their web search and they are positioning themselves in a way that could someday put them at the top of the game for Search. 

While Google focuses on offering a zillion programs for a zillion purposes, Ask.com is focused on creating a better search engine.  Sounds kind of like Yahoo! and Google about 7 years ago doesn't it?

Well if you want to position yourself well with Ask.com there is a simple thing that you can do to get on top.

Make video tutorials on topics.  I have done this for several different topics and my videos are now routinely coming up in the top 3 videos listed for those keywords.  These are not video searches.

Ask.com puts videos where they exist above their top 10 text searches.  So this is actually a way that you can be in a position above the top 10 without paying for it!

Softduit's Blog Revenue Tool's

If you are looking for more ways to make money online and or from your blogs, you should check out our Blog Revenue Tools at Softduit Partners.

We provide a solid list of the best companies that connect you with Blog article sponsors that will pay you to blog.  We also provide infomation on many other business models for bloggers from text link advertising, to affiliate advertising to domain parking and more.

Plus, if you are looking for ways to increase your pagerank or your traffic we have many more tools to help as well!

Paid to Mash News

The NewsRoom is offering a new method for bloggers to monetize their website while providing good information to their readers.

They incent bloggers to post videos on their blog or in their sidebar.  These are videos of news feeds and other shows, with advertisements inserted into the video.

They pay on a cost per thousand model.

So if you have 1,000 people view a video from your site with the video inserted, you'll receive $4.00.

If you do not have high traffic this won't pay much, but it pays better than nothing. 

Pro

The good thing about this model is that they are providing useful information and content, so it actually improves your blog or website as oppose to detracting from it with ads alone!

Ticket to Watch

If you find yourself traveling to New York City any times and a and you'd like to find a good site to help you find tickets to a baseball game or a football game or to a Broadway or off-Broadway show you might consider Hallmark tickets as a source for your new york ticket broker.

They provide a wide range of tickets for many different sporting and entertainment events even concert tickets. You can look for events on their calendar and then try and determine what type of event might work for you or you can look by events and then going to the calendar to attempt to match up say a sporting event to your travel schedule.

Bloggerwave cleared by PayPal

PayPal this weekend confirmed that Bloggerwave is not engaging in fraud and that their account is open for business.

Earlier this month several bloggers experienced payment reversals relating to paid articles written for Bloggerwave.  PayPal initially indicated that these reversals were related to unauthorized access to bank or credit card accounts through Bloggerwave's paypal account.

PayPal is now stating that Bloggerwave's account was temporarily flagged.  Transactions including payments to bloggers that occurred during the flagged period were reversed when PayPal was unable to get information confirming the legitimacy of the payments from Bloggerwave.  These transactions occurred around the 8th of May.

Bloggerwave got to work and corrected the situation with PayPal this week and in doing so seems to have increased their trust levels with bloggers.

What do you do with all that historical data?

So you have been collecting data for months and months possibly years.  What do you do with all that historical data?

the answer to that question is that you use that historical data to build up a forecasting model.  Forecasting models and business plans are extremely useful tools to help guide you in your planning as well as in preparing you to make decisions on how to operate and improve your business.

One of our sponsors, Prophix.com provides an excellent forecasting software solution.  The general idea is very simple, you accumulate data, you find some relatively easy way to plug it in to a modeling program, you identify the metrics and you start to make some assumptions are also plugged into the model.

Next you run the model and you take a look at the results and attempt to determine if the likely outcome seems possible probable remote and possible and then you begin to fine tune the model when your plan.  You're basically trying to predict the future and determine if the outcomes are what you want to achieve or what you want to avoid.

Either way you need to then go back and refine the data if it's accurate or inaccurate or possibly contains some one-time offense that aren't likely to recur in the future.  They need you to check your assumptions and ensure that they are also accurate and likely to happen in the future.

 

From there you run the model and see what happens and you prepare for the future, that way as the future actually unfolds you'll be able to anticipate what's going to happen and make your decisions and reactions accordingly with the foresight of understanding all the potential possibilities.  When I was in the military this was referred to as battle planning.  We come up with a battle plan and we come up with multiple different scenarios that might occur throughout the battle and we do tend to come up with are most likely responses to those outcomes, essentially how would we react given options A, B or C.

Now in the heat of battle it is not unusual for the plan to go completely awry.  The good thing about tight forecasting models is that they not only enable you to help plan and predict the future, they also help you learn how to make good decisions when the future begins to unfold.  From your modeling experience you'll have a better appreciation for what can happen or what can trigger an outcome that you desire or do not desire.  You also start to gain an appreciation of essentially what it takes to stack the deck or the results in your favor.  This enables you to maneuver situations to your best advantage in knowing what will help you in the long run and what will hurt and should be avoided.

Microsoft pays $6B for online ad company

In the advertising world Microsoft is fighting for its life.  Google has far outpaced Microsoft and the advertising area and in the search area.  Yahoo had a vast head start on Microsoft originally as well.  

So Microsoft turned to its war chest and spent $6 million this week just had the ability to display banner ads.  That may seem counterintuitive as the age of banner ads has long since passed, however Microsoft has big hopes for banner ads with its portable devices and especially with the Xbox. 

aQuantive was definitely in the right spot at the right time and received a hefty premium for their company. That price tag is probably $3-$5 billion over what the company is actually worth. But Microsoft needs to purchase momentum and if that means shelling out extra money, providing the executives with their own private jets or providing engraved pens capable of writing in 24k gold ink, then that is what they're going to do.

aQuantive's technology will allow Microsoft to deliver ads to third-party Web sites, something that should mesh with Microsoft's existing plans for delivering ads onto other platforms such as video games on its XBox, which connects to the Internet. Microsoft currently delivers ads mostly to its own Web sites, such as MSN.

aQuantive also has a significant interactive advertising agency called Avenue A / Razorfish, which buys, sells and creates online advertising - much like a traditional advertising agency, but online.

Source: Microsoft pays $6B for online ad company