Chitika have been rolling out their
new CPM ads over the last few days. These impression based ads will appear mainly on sites with a lot of traffic from non supported countries (they only serve their own ads to traffic from USA, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, UK).
In a sense these CPM ads are ‘alternative ads’ - so if a reader comes from Japan for instance they see the new CPM ad instead of a default ad or a Public Service Announcement. The theory is that at least you’ll earn something from the ad.
I can understand why Chitika are doing this and why it’d be attractive to many publishers. Most sites get at least some decent traffic from the countries that Chitika (and other ad networks) don’t support and to not monetize it is a pity. However….
What concerns me a little about these ads is that the announcement post says that it’s not just when someone from a non supported country visits your site but rather they say they serve them ‘when it makes sense’ to do so and give this example:
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@jb108 asks - “how do you feel about VA’s, do you use any, how many, how much work and what type do you delegate to others.”
I love the idea of VA’s (virtual assistants) and can see a lot of tasks that I could potentially have one do for me - however I’ve never really felt completely comfortable with the idea and don’t currently have budget set aside for one.
I do have
Lara help me with comment moderation and a little other admin work when I have a project going on that I need assistance with but apart from that I don’t personally delegate much work.
Of course at
b5media we have quite a sizable team of staff to do a lot of the administrative stuff to keep our blog network running (I think at last count there were 12 full time staff).
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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.
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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.
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This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, the author of The Online Business Handbook.
One of the most common things bloggers complain about is their lack of ideas. You hear all about how excited they were during their first week as bloggers, only to realize that things stand quite a bit differently once they start losing momentum.
Is that the case as far as you are concerned, are you using lack of ideas as an excuse? Well, guess what: there is no such thing! Show me one person who says that he or she doesn’t have great ideas and I’ll show you a misguided individual.
Symptom, Not Disease
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It is always interesting to see the redesign of famous blogs, and this time it is
Engadget’s turn. The old design was really cramped and narrow, so it was about time.
The new design is more minimalistic, with a simple header featuring navigation links, a big column for the content, and a sidebar with ads and links to featured articles.
I like minimalistic concepts, but the opinions regarding this new design are divide. If you check the comments (over 130 of them) you will see that many people did not like it. Some were even calling April Fools….
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After reading about it virtually on every single website on the web, a couple of weeks ago I decided to give Twitter a try. I must say that, contrary to what many people claim to, I did not get addicted to it.
It is certainly a useful and interesting application for some purposes, but so far I am using it with moderation. I log a couple of times during the day to check what other people are tweeting about. Once in a while I also post replies, links or ask questions.
I still don’t get some messages that people write, like: “Hello everyone, how are you doing?” or “Going to bed now, see ya.’
That being said usually there are some interesting thoughts floating around, and cool links as well. I’ve read somewhere that Twitter is a middle ground between blogs and instant messaging, and I think that the definition is not that off the mark.
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