Google AdSense Updates Payment History Page
December 15, 2006 by Gaman · 3 Comments
I am not a frequent browser of my AdSense Payment History page because I know Google payments usually arrive like a clock works. The past few months have been quite exciting as I’ve been receiving payments via Western Union.
Screenshot taken from Google
Anyway, if you look at your Payment History page today, you’ll notice that the whole page has been redesigned to make it easier to keep track of your financial activity in your account.
Suzie Rha writes on AdSense blog:
You’ll now find your earnings and payments divided into two separate columns so you can better distinguish between them. Clicking on any details link will give you more information about the noted Earnings or Payment event. For example, the details link associated with a payment will show you the payment number, amount, date, and depending on your form of payment, the tracking number.
Undocumented AdWords Trick That Can Increase Your Click Through Rate
December 15, 2006 by Gaman · 5 Comments
Google AdWords has several undocumented features you can use with your AdWords account and one of the coolest tricks is what we call Dynamic Keyword Insertion feature.
None of their online resources actually tell you much about this.
Ads with the search keyword within the ad itself generally get a higher click through rate (CTR). For example, if some one is searching for “Yamaha music mixer”, they are more likely to click on the ad that has “Yamaha music mixer” in its title.
If your keyword list includes the following terms
music mixer
yamaha music mixer
music mixer board
rack mounted sound mixer
then to use this feature, all you need to do is use the tag {keyword:default phrase} in your ads title or anywhere else you choose. Your’ll write your ad like this
BlogKits – Alternative to AdSense Is Now Live
December 14, 2006 by Gaman · 3 Comments
I’ve written about BlogKits in my previous post before here and here
BlogKits is touted as a Google AdSense alternative by helping bloggers make money by supplementing their AdSense income with CPA offers from selected merchants.
On their Site, BlogKits claims that vast majority of blogs don’t make more that pennies per day using Google AdSense. The big Bloggers have a secret which according to BlogKits make a lot more money selling other ads because they have traffic.
They came up with a challenge. You sign up and run BlogKits partners ads on your blog for 30 days in place of your AdSense ads. Then compare the earnings and you decide which one is more worthwhile.
There’s also a Google AdSense blog Earnings Calculator Tool for bloggers to calculate an estimate of what a blog would earn per day using Google AdSense.
Should You Advertise on Smaller PPC Search Engines?
December 14, 2006 by Gaman · Leave a Comment
Marketing Experiments recently published an interesting article about investing on smaller PPC engines like Kanoodle, Miva and others. Can online marketers achieve a worthwhile return on investment on these engines?
Two years ago we conducted a study of small PPC engines to find out whether they offered online marketers a profitable opportunity to generate more sales.
At that time our research indicated that these smaller engines could indeed generate significant additional revenues.Today, two years later, and with even more intense bidding for keywords on the major PPC engines – Google, Yahoo! and MSN – we wondered whether these smaller engines still offered a profitable source of additional traffic and income.
From my own experience, the ROI (return on investment) from the smaller PPC engines were usually lower than that of the larger ones, i.e AdWords and Overture. This I believe was due to lower quality of the traffic the smaller engines were getting.
Is Your Plugin Compatible With WordPress 2.1?
December 14, 2006 by Gaman · Leave a Comment
WordPress 2.1 has not been released yet but it’s nearing completion and the codebase will be released for testing soon.
If you haven’t noticed this already, news was posted two days ago on your WordPress Dashboard. Plugin developers are being reminded to make sure their plugins are compatible with the new release.
Many of the changes in the new version include how WordPress handle MySQL database tables.
I think this reminder applies to us WordPress users as well. So if you decide to upgrade, be sure your plugins work with the new version. I personally would delay from upgrading if no critical security upgrades are included in this new version, not until most of my important plugins support this version.
Read more: Is you plugin naughty or nice?
Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo’s Promo Page?
December 13, 2006 by Gaman · 2 Comments
Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo recently claimed that Google has copied Yahoo’s IE7 promo page. See how similar both pages are:
In response, Matt Cutts the Google Engineer came up with an apology on his blog.
I can only speak for me personally on this. If Jeremy looked into it and says that it wasn’t a template from Microsoft, I believe him. That would mean that the Yahoo! page was used as a template for Google’s IE7 promo page. I can’t say why someone at Google would decide to do that, but to the Yahoo! UI designer whose page was copied: my apologies. In my personal opinion, it sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution.
101 Ways to use Google’s New Web Optimizer
December 13, 2006 by Gaman · Leave a Comment
Conversion Rate Experts recently published an article with the title 101 Easy Ways to use Google’s New Website Optimizer and it’s given by a their Conversion Rates Squirrel.
H ello! I’m Conversion Rate Squirrel. I’m here to tell you how to get twice as many customers, FREE, using Google’s new Website Optimizer tool! Google is still beta testing this tool and I was one of the first to use it. My Verdict?… …it’s amazing – it turns your website into a ruthless money-making machine by massively increasing your conversion rate (that’s your website’s ability to turn visitors into customers).
To be honest, I haven’t tried this tool personally but if it comes from Google, I know it something that could help me in my marketing effort. I’ll let you know about my experience once I’ve tried it out.
Blogging Is a Real Job – At Least in Canada
December 13, 2006 by Gaman · 2 Comments
Canada is probably the first country in the world that recognizes blogging as a real job.
Here in Malaysia , just imagine the blank stare you’ll get when you tell someone you are a blogger. Even most of the local bloggers do not consider blogging as a career option. I don’t blame them.
Yes it’s possible to make a living from the Internet, many Malaysian I believe is already doing it. But it’s hard to find someone who is making a living from blogging alone.
Anyway, I find recent news that a New Brunswick court has ruled that Blogging is a real career in Canada .
a New Brunswick court has recognized blogging as an occupation in a case involving an arrest for obstructing a police officer. The decision, R. v. LeBlanc , involved an arrest for obstructing a police officer.
Say No to Paid Blog Posts from ReviewMe and PayPerPost?
December 12, 2006 by Gaman · 16 Comments
ReviewMe and PayPerPost are services that pays bloggers to write about advertiser’s product. ReviewMe is backed by Text Link Ads, which is also one of Sabahan.com’s sponsors.
ReviewMe pays between $30 to $1,000 per post depends on the importance of a blog which is based on Alexa, Technorati and other statistics.
While I feel it’s OK for commercial blogs to use this service to make extra bucks, I do feel that caution must be exercised in personal blogs where your readers expect some level of subjectivity on certain issues.
In that sense, if you feel that you what to join the boat anyway, ReviewMe is probably a better choice. This is because, bloggers must disclose that the review is a paid advertisement and we can freely write positive or negative reviews and give our honest opinion without fear of not being paid. The only requirement is that the review must be a minimum of 200 words.
5 Tips and Tools To Help You Create A Killer Keyword List For Your AdWords/PPC Campaigns
December 12, 2006 by Gaman · 5 Comments
I used to think that having twenty or thirty keywords in my AdWords campaign is enough to ensure my success in that campaign. After all, how hard is it to cover all the possible keyword variations simply by using AdWords’s phrase match or broad match feature for my main keywords?
If you do not know what “phrase match” and “broad match” matching options mean, check out AdWords FAQ for some explanation.
Anyway, let me give you an example, if I were selling tennis shoes from my website, I would use the phrase “tennis shoes” – including the quotation marks – in my keyword list so that my ad will be triggered when people’s searches include that keyword such as:
“tennis shoes”
“buy tennis shoes”
“cheap tennis shoes”
This looks easy enough but a problem arise when someone searches for “tennis shoes for kids”
