Google reduces payments for referral ads

Google Inc. has started a validation period for a new system of calculating how online publishers are paid for displaying its referral ads.


Publishers of Web sites make money when visitors to their sites click the ads that Google places on their sites through its AdSense program. The ads that Google places on the publishers' sites are for products or services related to the content of the sites.

Google now wants to ensure that the conversions generated from referral ads are valid -- meaning that the people who click on the ads are actual customers -- according Eva Woo, of AdSense product marketing, in an announcement on Google's AdSense blog. And that means that publishers who display the referral ads may not make as much money as they thought they would be making.

"The earnings you receive for the ad may now be less than the maximum referral value displayed for that ad," Woo said in the blog. "This is because our system will initially place a restriction on referral earnings as we monitor click and conversion data to determine that the conversions generated are valid. Once this validation period ends, you'll begin earning the maximum value of the conversions as displayed in your account."

Google did not say how long the validation period would last, but said it would vary from publisher to publisher. Google could not be reached for comment.

The company claims the change will have a minimal effect on most publishers.

But one publisher, Ken Dahlin, said that while he hasn't noticed a change in the money he receives from the program, he has noticed that he didn't make any money from a couple of conversions when he thought he should have been paid from them.

"I just figured that a single individual was taking advantage of the same deal," he said in a blog. "Whether that's fair or not, I didn't find it that big of a deal to start an argument. What troubles me is if I do get lower conversion prices during validation I'm going to have to lower my budget for promoting those links, which could kill my business model. In addition, the announcement says nothing about getting the full price after the conversion is deemed valid. We'll see.

Make Your Web Site Pay: Google AdSense

If you run a popular, information-rich Web site or blog, you can earn money from the growing online advertising market. You don't even need to approach advertisers.


Simply run pay-per-click ads provided by search engines such as Google and Yahoo on your Web site. You'll earn money every time a visitor clicks on an ad.

If you use the Google search engine, you've probably noticed the text ads that run along the right-hand side and sometimes across the top of your search results. These are placed by advertisers who participate in the Google AdWords pay-per-click program. Google AdSense lets you earn a share of that money by running those ads on your site. There's no guarantee that you'll actually attract clicks and get paid, but it costs nothing to sign up and try it out.

PPC vs. Affiliate Marketing

AdSense is a pay-per-click service, not an affiliate marketing network. While both PPC ads and affiliate marketing networks allow you to earn money from your Web site, there are some significant differences in how they work.

Affiliates typically earn money only when a visitor referred from their site purchases the advertiser's product. But Web publishers can earn money from PPC ads when a visitor simply clicks on an ad. No purchase is necessary.

To maximize affiliate earnings, you must carefully match the interests of your site's visitors with the products and services that you advertise. That can be relatively easy if you manage a tightly focused site. But if your site discusses different topics on different pages, it can be time-consuming to find the most appropriate products to advertise for each topic.

AdSense automates that content-product matching process. Google crawls your site to examine your pages, using content analysis technology to find appropriate ads. The technology is similar to that used by Google's search engine. Most of the time, the process works well and serves up relevant ads.

AdSense Basics

To use AdSense, you start by signing up for an account at no cost. You then insert Google-supplied advertising code into your Web pages.

AdSense supports a number of ad formats that should suit virtually any page layout in your Web site or blog. You can adjust the color of the text and background, if you like. In addition, you can run up to three ad units per page.

Initially, you may see public service announcements displayed on your site. These PSAs earn no click-through money. Google says that in most cases relevant ads will display within 72 hours.

Wis. Teacher Arrested for Blog Comment

Wis. Teacher Arrested for Blog Comment

By RYAN J. FOLEY – 10 hours ago

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Bloggers and free speech advocates are calling on prosecutors not to file charges against a teacher arrested for allegedly posting an anonymous comment online praising the Columbine shooters.

Some were disturbed by the post police say James Buss left on a conservative blog, but other observers said it was a sarcastic attempt to discredit critics of education spending.

The suburban Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher was arrested last week for the Nov. 16 comment left on http://www.bootsandsabers.com, a blog on Wisconsin politics. The comment, left under the name "Observer," came during a discussion over teacher salaries after some commenters complained teachers were underworked and overpaid.

Buss, a former president of the teacher's union, allegedly wrote that teacher salaries made him sick because they are lazy and work only five hours a day. He praised the teen gunmen who killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide in the April 1999 attack at Columbine High School.

"They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs. One shot at a time!" he wrote, adding they should be remembered as heroes.

The comment disturbed at least one teacher, who called police in West Bend, 40 miles north of Milwaukee and home of the blog's administrator. Police traveled to arrest Buss at his home in Cudahy, south of Milwaukee, last week after the blogger gave them the anonymous poster's IP address.

After his arrest, Buss spent an hour in the Washington County jail before he was released on $350 bail. He did not return phone messages and e-mails seeking comment, and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer. >>>>>more

How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.
courtsey :http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/06/how-bloggers-make-money-from-blogs/#comment-2341113

World’s First Photograph!

Joseph Niepce of France took the world’s first photograph in 1826. He named the photograph “heliograph.” It took 8 hours to take the picture. It is not known however exactly how he took the photo. People are thinking that he used pewter plate coated with bitumen (a petroleum that is sensitive to light). Then he waited 8 hours letting this dry and harden. After that he washed it with white petroleum and lavender oil. It washed away the undissolved bitumen which didn’t see the light. Here is the picture.

3 Interesting Ideas to Make Money on ebay

1) Sell Used Cell Phones on ebay
The demands for used cell phones with brand names like Nokia, Motorola, Kyocera, Alltel, Ericsson, Sprint, etc in ebay are pretty high. Many of the used cell phones auctions in ebay usually attract bids.

So how to find used cell phones to profit on ebay?
Many people change their cell phones every year. If you are one of them, probably you already have 2 or 3 used cell phones kept at home that can sell on ebay. Your friends may also keep a few of old phones left unused. You can buy from them and resell on ebay.

To get a consistent supply of cell phones, you may think about placing classified ads in newspaper states that you pay money for used cell phone. You shouldn't pay much when buying used cell phones. Do a little research on ebay to find out how much used cell phones are generally selling. If a used cell phone sell at a price of $50 in ebay, you should pay not more than 30% of the price to buy it. If the phone is a recent model you can pay little more and cut a little if it is old and nothing special.

2) Sell Used How-to Books
Used how-to books are quite easy to find and inexpensive to buy. They can be bought at $1.00 or less. You can buy how-to books from thrift shops, estate sales, used book stores, yard sales, etc and sell them in ebay for high profit margin. You can also get how-to books from Book Sale Finder. Here are the type of books you should look for:

Hobbies
Photography, blacksmithing, clock building & repair, woodworking, magic, treasure hunting, iron work, pipe smoking, dog training, antiques, coins, buttons, medals, drawing, painting, craft making, dolls, pottery, etc.

Home and Garden
Home decorating, home remodelling, garden trellis, etc.

Misc
How to repair (watch repair, door repair, pipe repair), how to play, lost treasure, eary aviation, etc.

When you list your books in ebay, you can either list them in the "Book" category of ebay or in the subject specific category of ebay. For instance, If you are selling a book related to home decorating, you may be making more profit if you list the book under the "Home Deco" within the "Home & Garden" category of ebay campare to listing the book under "Book"

3) Sell Gift Cards
Gift card is another profitable market in ebay. There are many people possess gift cards but not everyone of them will use their gift cards. If you can offer to buy these unused gift cards for a price at 20% or less of the value of the gift certificates, they will sell to you. You can advertise your offer in local newspaper, penny shop and trading post. You are looking for gift cards that are still valid (not yet expire). Most gift cards have a toll-free number on the back you can dial to check whether the cards are still valid.

When determining the buy and sell price of a gift card, you should do some research on ebay. Try to look for auction that sell the similar card. See how much the card sells in the auction and set you buying price at 40% to 50% of the selling price of the auction. The starting bid and winning bid of the auction can also give you an idea on how much your card can sell on ebay.

5 Tips to Boost Your Adsense Revenue

Google AdSense program has made it easier for webmasters to make money through a website. Webmasters who run an AdSense campaign will display Google's contextual Ads relevant to the content of their sites and thus encouraging visitors to click the ads and earn money for each ad click.

However you will earn very little AdSense revenue if you don't know how to optimize your AdSense ads on your website. Here are some tips to increase your AdSense earning:

1. Focus on one Adsense ad format. The Large Rectangle (336X280) ad format seems to work better than other ad formats because this format tends to result in higher click through rates (CTR). Another reason is that the ads will look like normal web links that visitors use to click on them. It doesn't matter whether the visitors know that they are clicking AdSense ads or not, as long as there are clicking, you earn AdSense commission.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Select a color that matches your website's background. If your site's background is white both, the color of ad border and background should set to be white too. Also the color of the ad title should be similar to coloe of the links in your website. This is to make your AdSense ads look like it is part of the web pages. Again, this will boost AdSense CTR.

3. Don't place your AdSense ads at the bottom of your webpages because it is proven to be less effective. Displaying your AdSense ads at the bottom is like hiding your AdSense and thus leads to low CTR and AdSense revenue. Try to put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Try to place your AdSense ads near rich content as visitors main focus usually are your content. There are several ways to insert AdSense ads into your content and one of the ways is place your AdSense just after the end of your content.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your AdSense code in a text file, name it as “AdSense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then use SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. There are other ways to optimize your AdSense that produce high CTR also. You can learn more tricks by reading in AdSense and webmaster forums.