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Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

Monetize your website like never before using AuctionAds Top-Tier Affiliate Marketing Program

Published by

venetsian

May 22, 2007 in General, Blogging and Affiliate Marketing. 0 Comments

The thing I hate most about affiliate marketing is that its very slow and sometimes miserable process. For example I used to be big affiliate for Adidas using the BeFree network, but it was really not the best thing I ever experienced. The main problem was that I was supposed to used static (I don’t mean animated but one product/service only) banners or text links and each time they change their product line or make a new promotion I had to change everything manually on all websites and this simply sux! Yep I couldn’t take it and I gave up.
Fortunately for all of us, Text-Link-Ads came out with a new product/service targeted at affiliate marketers like me. This affiliate network is extremely similar to the Google AdSense as it is keyword targeted, but has some really nice flexibilities that the big G does not want us to use:

You can choose your own products from all products in the network and even select your own ebay userid or favorite store. This gives you the advantage to choose what to put instead of hoping that the mighty G will know you your website is all about
You can place AuctionAds advertisements wherever you want and as many as you want. Currently there is no restrictions on that (heh I haven’t red the TOS but I assume so
AuctionAds is wonderful solution that works perfectly in addition to AdSense. In fact, visitor think that you’re actually selling all those things and its a great cover-up for MFA website or addition to your blog.

I want to share also something else with you that I did recently and I got really impresses and motivated me to write this post.

I have a website dedicated to the sport of Freestyle Wrestling and its a really big website with more than 400 professionally written articles. This website became authority for a lot of wrestling keywords and is ranked top 10 for most of the thing I bothered to help it rank well. The average daily visits are about 500-1000 and they are mostly interested in the news that I post there.

The first type of monetizing that I tried with this website was total failure. I put AdSense, but nobody bothered to click on the ads. Not that the location of the ads was bad, but the website was so stuffed with content that nobody bothered to click the ads and instead continue reading more articles. This trend ended up with extremely poor conversion rates with about 1.26% CTR which is very very low.

Then somebody gave the the great idea to put a page called “wrestling gear” on the same website so that people interested in such things can click there and see a page stuffed with wrestling gear AdSense. Yes that helped me increase the CTR to 5.6% which is still quite low as most wrestling store advertisers pay as much as $0.04 cents per click. I desperately needed some good solution to increase the magnetization of this website!

Two weeks ago I received this promotion newsletter from Text-Link-Ads for their new program called AuctionAds and from curiosity I signed up and started testing. I’m always a bit scared of introducing drastically new publisher networks so I decided to test-drive this new ads on my wrestling news website as I don’t have anything to loose there. The first day I got really nice CTR of 12% to 15% which was a ground breaking record for that particular website. The unfortunate thing was that affiliate publishing does not count clicks but only actual sales and that sucked a bit because the first day I didn’t get any money and I was about to give it up.

The funny thing was that when I checked the stats two days later I found out that the first day I sale, but the way ebay works is that I receive the fund few ways later and that was awesome! It is so good! Now I get average $1.4 to $1.6 per click! Yes I measure my success in clicks as an average of all the money earned from affiliate sales divided by the number of clicks. This is quite a big increase compared the the previous $0.04 PPC from AdSense.

I guess this example should try to give you a good idea of how you can monetize your website by adding simple “online shop” page to your website and placing some AuctionAds or similar Affiliate Program.

I fall in love with AuctionAds because its so simple to use and it saves me so much time from bothering to apply to each merchant individually. I strongly suggest that you give it a try. Their website is www.AuctionAds.com.

To Sign Up with them please Use this link here AuctionAds so I can have some benefit out of reffering them new clients

Google goes after MFA sites with AdSense Arbitrage

Published by

venetsian

May 19, 2007 in General, Google and Blogging. 2 Comments

The last few days the webmasters world is rocked with a massive wave of AdSense Bans - numerous publisher accounts are banned for using AdSense Arbitrage. You can read on most webmaster forums that people receive email with warning that their accounts will be closed on some specific date, but at least they are going to receive all the money earned, not like the regular type of bans that they just close your account and you loose all the available funds.

First lets make clear what Arbitrage really is. Arbitrage is the act of reselling traffic and this is actively used by all major players and its accepted as a respectful business model. Also it is well known that Google, Ask, MSN and others do buy traffic and resell it on their websites and is totally legal.

The situation is thatGoogle is going after website that are not converting well for the advertiser. They are using AdWords data to determine which AdSense Publishers are returning bad/low ROI (Return of Investment) for their advertisers and then take that data to battle the MFA (Made for AdSense) websites. This basically means that if your website is only made to go for only for advertisement clicks and has no good content then the CTR (Click Thru Rate) will be quite big, which clearly marks your website as MFA. In such case the AdWords advertisers are paying for all the traffic which is not that concentrated to buy and as effect their ROI will be lower for your website.

This new action is trying to decrease the number of clickthru websites that are not really passing buyers but instead only viewers. This is a way to improve the quality of AdWords and make it better program and make it more advertiser friendly and that’s exactly done by increasing the ROI.
Now lets say few words on how to protect yourself from receiving the “you will be banned” letter:

First. If you’re buying traffic from AdWords then STOP! or at least decrease it so that you don’t pop out with your website. Don’t think they can not find you. Running some simple analytics they can easily identify your website and get you caught! Be smart on that one!

Second. Lower the number of AdSense ads that you have on your website. Make sure you don’t have more than 2 ad units. You can combine other types of ad publishing networks and still keep your good CTR, but in the same time be under the Google radar.

Third. Try adding some quality to your website. Posting good articles always works well and can help you rank better on the Search Engines with organic listings. I know that low content websites have better CTR but I don’t think its worth it to get banned!

I suppose that if you follow those directions the chances of your website being caught and banned are quite low and you don’t have anything to fear from. Also be advised that they are banning only websites that “resell” the traffic not websites that buy it!

P.S. I forgot to mention that In the post below about Paid links vs MFA Website I did judge a bit harsh Google for not going after MFAs and now this really proves that they are doing their best to improve quality weather we like it or not. I’ll blog about this situation later.

Before You Start Another Blog You Should Know…

Published by

venetsian

March 8, 2007 in Blogging. 0 Comments

The SEO industry is now in unison on encouraging peopel to start their own blogs to accompany just about any site. The only problem is how can you hope to truly become a success in your field if all you know well is all you know.

These there are sites to just about anything little su-niches are hard to find and sometimes don’t provide as much results as the main ones. So if you think you know about a subject check out the competition before jumping in the ocean, there may be bigger sharks looking for that golden fish! Simply saying what you know is not enough and probably will run out unless you happen to have an infinite amount of sources.

I’ve seen way too many blogs waste away because of competition and simple lack of courage after the owner figures out that this may have been a mistake. There are many niche centered blogs that pump out continual floods of news throughout the day, compared that to a small blog like mine and the future looks bleak. But that’s the beauty of a new small blog because it can build a completely new community around itself and not just focus on matters that are covered years before they happen instead to focus on what others ignore or find not worthy enough.

Before you start a blog think again and try to break into a new sub0-niche instead if the other side of the ocean has way to many sharks already.

Thank You

Feedburner Reporting MyYahoo and Google Subscriber Numbers

Published by

venetsian

February 17, 2007 in Blogging. 0 Comments

seo news blog feedburner logo Feedburner now counts your subscribers from MyYahoo and Google Feedreader. This more than doubled my feedburner subscribers count as you can see fro mthe sidebar. The good news is now us blog owners can truly track the amount of subscribers we have. This is all thanks to Google and Yahoo for finally releasing th eability to get these numbers.

Thank You

Wordpress’s New Spell-Checker Doesn’t Recognize Wordpress as a Word

Published by

venetsian

February 12, 2007 in Blogging. 2 Comments

seo news blog wordpress logo I just tried to post a post about Wordpress only to be surprised at the end when I checked the spell-checker. Apparently Wordpress with a capital W or not isn’t recognized as a word. Among other words it seems to not recognize many things. But it’s a big surprise when it can’t even recognize it’s own name.

seo news blog:wordpress

I realise the spell-checker is fairly new and some leeway is given to the wordpress folks but there’s a line.

Thank You

Wordpress Ella or Version 2.1 Is Out!

Published by

venetsian

January 22, 2007 in Blogging. 0 Comments

Not even a week after Wordpress version 2.0.7 comes out the folks over at Wordpress releases Wordpress 2.1 nicknamed “Ella”. With a host of new features starting from autosave to a whole lot more:

Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn�t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
You can set any �page� to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
Pages can now be drafts, or private.
Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

For the developer side it should make things easier with the following new features:

Psuedo-cron functionality let�s you schedule events much like cron.
Users admin can now comfortably handle hundreds of thousands of users.
The new WP_Error class cleans up how we do error reporting and handling.
The javascript loader makes it easier for plugins to include rich functionality.
Tons of new hooks and APIs.
We�ve started to fill out our code inline documentation.
Image and thumbnail API allows for richer media plugins.
Custom header, color picker, and image cropping framework.

The full list of bugs that were fixed is available at the Wordpress website. Now then off to upgrade to Wordpress Version 2.1 or Ella. I’ll review it as soon as I am able to get a feel for the new features.

Thank you

What To Expect From Wordpress Version 2.1

Published by

venetsian

January 21, 2007 in Blogging. 0 Comments

Wordpress is about to release their new version entitled version 2.1. With Wordpress Release Candidate 1 already out it’s a matter of time of now before it’s released. So what can we expect in terms of new features from Wordpress version 2.1?

Well there is a couple of features as well as new requirements. But let’s start with features:

Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions
Autosave
Tabbed editor
Lossless XML import and export for moving between WordPress blogs
WYSIWYG spellchecker
Search engine blocker for private blogs
You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else
Links can now have sub-categories
Redesigned login screen
More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, etc all instant
Pages can now be drafts, or private
Minor admin redesign
Upload manager
Faster dashboard
Psuedo-cron functionality
Users admin can now comfortably handle thousands of users
New WP_Error class
Javascript loader
Many new hooks and APIs
Comment feeds now include all the comments

That’s a bit of a big list isn’t it? Many of the new features are what Wordpress users have been asking for a while now. Like a static home page and a search engine blocker for private blogs.� But this new update won’t be all roses new requirements will have users updating their many of their servers’ scripts. PHP for example will have to be version 4.2 or newer. And MySQL will have to be version 4.0 or newer. That’s pretty much it but many users know how hard it is to update their server’s PHP and MySQL.

What can we expect from Wordpress Version 2.1? Well for one better security and more Web 2.0 support. This will make your visitors real happy as less errors and faster loading times will make browsing any Wordpress blog like magic.� Finally Links can be categorized and managed better. My eyes were getting sore from the long lists I see on some blogs like Search Engine Land. The best new development to me however is a faster dashboard. the frustrating problems I run into every time I try to even edit or post a post is overwhelming.

Thank You

Wordpress Releases a New Version 2.0.7 To Deal With SEO Hacker

Published by

venetsian

January 15, 2007 in Blogging. 4 Comments

As soon as reports started to circle the net about the SEO hacker wordpress releases a new version to deal with the vulnerability he is using. This new 2.0.7 wordpress version fixes two different bugs one in the feed and another one that happens depending on what PHP version you are using.

Since this is a minor version though only the following files have to be replaced:

* wp-admin/inline-uploading.php
* wp-admin/post.php
* wp-includes/classes.php
* wp-includes/functions.php
* wp-settings.php
* wp-includes/version.php

The bug that the SEO hacker was using called the “zend_hash_del_key_or_index” bug has been fixed along with these:

# Feeds now properly serve 304 Not Modified headers instead of mismatched 200/304 headers (a.k.a. the FeedBurner bug).
# Backport of another 304 Not Modified fix from WordPress 2.1
# Deleting WordPress Pages no longer gives an �Are You Sure?� prompt.
# After deleting a WordPress Page, you are now properly redirected to the Edit Pages screen.
# Sending an image at original size in Internet Explorer no longer adds an incorrect �height� attribute.

It’s startling how quickly worpdress has been able to counter this new hacker and effectively help everyone that was on his hit list.

Thank You

Google Blog Search Kicking Technorati Out The Door

Published by

venetsian

December 28, 2006 in Google and Blogging. 0 Comments

In a stunning, but expected move, google blog search has surpassed technorati in traffic according to the new hitwise data. With technorati getting slow and with almost no new developments, the much more agile and supported by google, the google search for blogs has moved ahead of technorati for the week of 12/23/06. How did this happen? Easy with Google behind the scenes developing it’s blog search continually improving it and not to mention funneling traffic from other areas to the google blog search.

This whole overtaking started when google placed a link to the blog search from google news causing it to increase in traffic by 168%! Google news continues to bring this steady amount of traffic to google blog search with 60% of traffic to google blog search from google news. But that’s not all adding blog search to the menu in the search box of the actual google homepage also helped.

Technorati should focus less on the background and start releasing more features if it hopes to regain it’s position. For what seems like forever now the same search engine has been powering technorati with all the same gadgets never updating. If google blog search continues to grow I might have to switch my technorati tags to google blog search tags. I am already getting more traffic from google blog search than technorati.
Thank You

Google Including Blogger in Every Blog Result

Published by

venetsian

December 20, 2006 in Google and Blogging. 0 Comments

I was checking my rankings in some keywords when all of a sudden I notice a tracking link that says:

“ Tip: Want to share your life online with a blog? Try Blogger“

On top of the SERPS. This is one of the new google features I guess anytime a query contains the word “blog” it seems to show this phrase at the top.

I wonder if google plans to advertise its services even more than they are by it’s users. I mean I can understand suggesting google images to queries that contain “image” or “picture” but that’s still search. What do you think? Is google trying too much to use it’s search engine to get ahead in more of it’s services?

Thank You

SEO News Blog

Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

Monetize your website like never before using AuctionAds Top-Tier Affiliate Marketing Program

Google goes after MFA sites with AdSense Arbitrage

Before You Start Another Blog You Should Know…

Feedburner Reporting MyYahoo and Google Subscriber Numbers

Wordpress’s New Spell-Checker Doesn’t Recognize Wordpress as a Word

Wordpress Ella or Version 2.1 Is Out!

What To Expect From Wordpress Version 2.1

Wordpress Releases a New Version 2.0.7 To Deal With SEO Hacker

Google Blog Search Kicking Technorati Out The Door

Google Including Blogger in Every Blog Result

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