When Google AdSense Doesn’t Provide Relevant Ads On a Blog

April 21, 2008

AdSense is a wonderful way to make money from blogs for many bloggers - however it’s not always suitable. Check out this post looking at the ads that AdSense put up on a blog for women over the age of 40. Ads included (to name just a few): MEET MARRIED WOMEN! Married but looking? Meet LOCAL married women right now! OLDER BLACK WOMEN: Free to join. 1000’s of pictures of beautiful older black singles. HISPANIC WOMEN ONLINE: Find your interracial match on line. MARRIED BUT LOOKING: Discreet affairs for men and women have never been easier. Read more

How to be a Ruthless Blogger (and Become More Productive and Focussed)

April 21, 2008

Sometimes to grow your blog you need to be ruthless - otherwise you’ll become distracted, unproductive, lazy, unfocused and or lose your passion for blogging. Here’s 7 areas that I’ve found myself becoming more and more ruthless in in my blogging: Ruthless-Boundaries Image by LLimllib

1. Declare war on comment spam

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Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus)

April 21, 2008

First of all, notice that there are several types of Internet marketers, the questions I raise in this post regard specifically the ones that use long sales pages and several other questionable tactics to sell their products and services. Brian Clark from Copyblogger is certainly an Internet marketer. He recently launched a program called Teaching Sells, where he managed to create an initial buzz around it, had affiliates on board and so on. Yet his tactics were down to earth, and I am pretty sure that no one had anything negative to say about his program. The same cannot be said about people that resort to the long sales pages, though. If you navigate around the web you will notice that there is a great deal of controversy around these practices.

What do I think?

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Six Apart Launch an Ad Network and New Services

April 21, 2008

SixapartTomorrow Six Apart will launch a new ad network, the acquisition of a social media agency and new ’services’. I’ve published the full press release below but tomorrow Six Apart are going public with some major developments. The main components of the announcements today: A New Ad Network - for ‘influential bloggers’ Six Apart will now offer a way to monetize their blogs. They’ve long been selling ads for their own services like Vox so it makes sense to extend this and do it for other ‘VIP’ blogs also. They’re doing so through a partnership with Adify on a revenue share basis with bloggers. Read more

Alltop: For All The Top Stories On The Web

April 20, 2008

Have you found yourself wondering how to keep in touch with all the top stories in your field of interest on the web? Or perhaps you want undertake some online research when developing proposals or creating programmes, products and services? For researching business blogs in your field I usually suggest that you check out Google Blog Search or Technorati. However I am now suggesting that you also check out Alltop, a news site that aggregates top news stories from across the web, created by Guy Kawasaki and the team behind Truemors (the site that covers unusual breaking news and stories). Alltop covers subject areas from business to news, from hobbies to technology, and from regions across the globe to green issues. Read more

Link Tips: 20 April 2008

April 20, 2008

Some interesting links that I gathered this week (and a couple a bit older). A scam alert, web 2.0 generators, web metrics and podcasts, enjoy.
  • AdSense Secrets Scam Alert: You’ve probably read about Joel Comm’s AdSense Secrets ebook for $9.95 launch. Well, looks like there is a scam behind it, and Mark is calling it out.
  • 25 Web 2.0 Generators: Good list with 25 generators to create logos, badges, buttons, backgrounds and rounded corners.
  • Web Metrics 101: Even wondered about the meaning of hits, visits, unique visitors, bounce rate and similar? Check out this post then.
  • Podcast Interviews: Sometime ago I did two podcast interviews. One with Gobala Krishnam about StumbleUpon, and one with Mani Karthik about blogging. Be aware that my mic stinks, and my audio was terrible. I already ordered a decent one…
  • 9 Podcasting Tips: Speaking of podcasts, if you want to get started with one read this post from Performancing first.

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What Are YOU About? [Choosing a Topic for Your Blog]

April 20, 2008

I was reading through an old notebook last week and came across a quote that leapt out from the page at me. It was partly because it was written in CAPITALS and had arrows pointing at it - but partly because of what it said. “Probably the best place to start thinking about what your blog should be about is to consider what YOU are about.” I’m not sure where I picked this one up. I actually think that it was a friend who doesn’t even blog who said it to me. Read more

Do You Write From Your Heart ?

April 19, 2008

In this post Abhijeet Mukherjee from Jeet Blog (where he writes about tech tweaks, blogging tips and productivity hacks) asks ‘do you write from the heart?’ As professional bloggers, freelancers or writers, sometimes we tend to be skeptical about our own content. We tend to think more about external aspects like marketing etc (which we can always do after we complete the article) even before we start writing and consequently the quality of the article dips down. However most of us fail to understand that the questions which come to our mind, which bother us when we start writing, are completely unnecessary and doing no good to us. Do the following questions bother you?

1: Will readers like my post ?

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Are Theme-Based Content Websites Better Than Blogs?

April 19, 2008

A while back I posted an article titled WordPress Vs SiteBuildIt which resulted in heated arguments on both sides of the fence. Today I got an email from Ken Evoy, which is set to take this argument to a whole new level. Overall, the content of the email says that blogging is a bad idea for small business owners, and what they should really be doing is building static, content-rich websites. Ken’s argument is based on these things:
  • A static website, like the ones built by SiteBuildIt, generally have a better logical hierarchy for content, instead of blogs that are “date-based” - (implies that by having a proper hierarchy, it helps your sites get better rankings)
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AdSense Secrets 4.0 Launches

April 19, 2008

AdSense SecretsIt has been a big week for bloggers launching products and making special offers. AdSense guru Joel Comm has this week also announced a new product (or rather an update of an old one) called AdSense Secrets 4.0. Joe’s written many resources for those wanting to improve their AdSense earnings and his book on the topic has been a best seller on Amazon. This week he’s launched his 4th version of the product. Read more