Tuesday, September 9, 2008

How to Protect From Click Fraud

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a popular model for monetizing web content. The idea is simple: You rent space on your web or blog pages to an advertising service; the service displays advertisements in that space; as a reward for directing traffic to the advertiser's site, you get a cut of the money the service makes when visitors click those ads. The advertiser pays—and you make money—only when the ad is clicked. Google's AdSense program is the best-known and most popular pay-per-click advertising program, but it's not the only one—the Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) is another example. With PPC, even smaller niche sites can make money from their content, as automated systems like AdSense and YPN make it cost-effective for advertisers to deliver their ads to all types and sizes of sites across the world.

The biggest flaw in PPC advertising programs is that they're susceptible to a form of fraud known as click fraud that harms the advertisers, the advertising services, and the sites hosting the ads. This article explains what click fraud is and what you can do to protect yourself from its effects.

Three Kinds of Click Fraud

Broadly speaking, click fraud occurs when someone deliberately clicks a pay-per-click ad with no intention of actually visiting the advertiser's site. There are three common kinds of click fraud:

Enriching click fraud. Most click fraud is an attempt to make money for the person or persons committing the fraud. They create web sites, join a PPC service like AdSense, and then proceed to click the ads (often through intermediaries or automated means) in order to increase their earnings.
Depleting click fraud. Sometimes click fraud aims merely to deplete an advertiser's ad budget. Because an advertiser pays each time an ad is clicked, competitors or even disgruntled customers may click the ads solely to cost the advertiser money.
Disbarring click fraud. On rare occasions, click fraud is directed against the site hosting advertisements and not the advertisers themselves, though it still causes grief for the advertisers. This is done in order to get the site banned (disbarred) from the advertising service due to invalid clicks.

The click fraud type rarely matters to the advertisers, though, since they lose real money with each undetected fraudulent click. Advertising services also care about click fraud: While they may make money from click fraud in the short term, they stand to lose out in the long term if advertisers abandon it due to rampant click fraud.

Site owners, on the other hand, may or may not care about click fraud, especially if they're the ones instigating or committing the fraud in the first place.

Who Commits Click Fraud?

Sometimes click fraud is perpetrated by well-meaning persons, such as friends and family. This is why programs like AdSense have rules forbidding web sites from drawing undue attention to the ads. Some sites outright ask visitors to click ads as a show of support, but such sites risk being banned from their ad program for failing to comply with the program's rules.

Large-scale click fraud is a bigger problem. Defrauders (often referred to as fraudsters) literally hire people, often in a foreign country with cheap labor, to click ads. Or they use networks of zombie computers (computers controlled remotely by unauthorized parties due to virus or spyware infection) to click the ads.

Detecting and Preventing Click Fraud

Click fraud prevention is obviously a concern for advertisers, who can now buy software for detecting possible click fraud. It's also an area of ongoing research for the advertising services themselves, who see widespread click fraud as a threat to their advertising revenues. (In a widely reported story, Google's chief financial officer called click fraud a threat to Google's financial health.)

Although most of the burden for detecting and preventing click fraud falls on the advertisers and the advertising services, web site owners can also take steps such as these to combat click fraud:

Not encouraging or enticing visitors to click ads. Asking visitors to click ads or otherwise unduly drawing attention to the ads is against the advertising service's terms and conditions.
Carefully monitoring ad clicks. Pay attention to sudden increases in the number of clicks, especially when the ratio of clicks to page impressions (usually referred to as the clickthrough ratio) also climbs.
Logging server activity. If possible, keep detailed logs of all the pages requested by browsers. Capture not only the time and IP address of a request but other information such as the referring page and the type of browser, easily obtained from standard HTTP headers included with each request.
Proactively reporting suspicious activity. If you suspect click fraud, immediately report those suspicions to the advertising service. Provide as much information as possible, including extracts from your server logs if necessary.
Removing ads from certain pages. Sometimes click fraud occurs on only a few pages of a site, especially with depleting click fraud targeted at certain advertisers. Temporarily or permanently removing ads from those pages can protect you from being a party to that fraud, although it will unfortunately reduce your advertising revenues. If you can figure out which ads are being targeted—this usually requires guesswork on your part—you may also be able to get the advertising service to filter out the ads in question.

Constant and open communication with the advertising service is your biggest defense in the war against click fraud. Ultimately, it's the advertising service that determines whether click fraud has occurred and what the consequences are for the site(s) involved. Google has been known to arbitrarily suspend sites from its advertising program for failing to do anything about click fraud, even if those sites didn't actually instigate the fraud.

The truth is that pay-per-click advertising will always be susceptible to some form of click fraud, no matter how sophisticated click fraud detection becomes. The key for Google and other advertising services to be successful with the pay-per-click model in the long term is to minimize the amount of click fraud that occurs. As a web site owner benefiting from the PPC model, you should do your utmost to help the services avoid click fraud.

From : http://www.peachpit.com

Friday, August 8, 2008

Paid to surf

Pay to surf is a business model that became popular in the late 1990s, prior to the dot-com crash. Essentially, a company places advertising on members' screens and pays them from advertising earnings.

A pay-to-surf company would provide a small program, commonly called a "viewbar", to be installed on a member's computer. Advertisers' banner ads were then displayed while the member was browsing the web. Since the viewbar tracked websites that the user visited, the pay-to-surf company was able to deliver targeted ads for their advertisers. Advertisers paid the pay-to-surf company a small amount (typically US$0.50) for every hour of a member's surfing.

Members were usually limited on the amount of time per month for which they would be paid to surf (typically 20 hours). However, pay-to-surf companies also paid their members for each new user referred to the company (typically US$0.05 - US$0.10 per recruit). Thus, it was profitable for a member to garner as many referrals as possible, encouraging some users to recruit members using spam, though officially forbidden by the user's agreement.

The first and most well-known pay-to-surf company was AllAdvantage [1]. It launched in March 1999 and grew to 13 million members in little over a year with the multi-level marketing system of recruiting new members. The scheme capitalized on the notion that anyone could make money on the internet without much effort.

AllAdvantage’s success attracted many imitators. At its peak, there were several dozen pay-to-surf companies. AllAdvantage had US$175 million in venture capital; its imitators did not and thus their members were never more than a small fraction of AllAdvantage's.

One of the few companies still in business is CashFiesta. There are people who claim that this site no longer properly pays its members[2]. Most pay-to-surf companies disappeared just as quickly as they appeared after the dot-com crash. This is not surprising since 100% of the revenue came from internet advertising, which was the area hardest hit. After 18 months, even AllAdvantage ceased operations. At that point, AllAdvantage had paid out over US$160 million to its members. Many members of smaller pay-to-surf companies were never paid when the companies shut down, which led to sites such as GPTBoycott being started specifically in order to help these members.

As with many Internet business models, pay-to-surf companies attracted people trying to defraud the company out of money. First, as noted above, the companies had to deal with spammers, often having to terminate member accounts. They were also required to get parental permission from members under the age of 18, many of whom flocked to these programs as an easy source of income. Finally, utilities started appearing which allowed users to simulate surfing activity. Some users even created mechanical mouse-moving devices which ran around their desks. These programs and devices allowed users to get paid simply for leaving their machines on. This began an arms race between the pay-to-surf companies who built fraud-prevention software and fraud program developers, with each releasing increasingly sophisticated versions of their software.

How to Earn Money with Google Adsense

Google’s AdSense is a fascinating revenue-sharing opportunity for small, medium and large web sites. Some webmasters are designing brand new sites specifically for serving AdSense text ads. (It’s against the AdSense rules to design a site purely for AdSense, so you’ll want to include a few Affiliate links or sell your own product, too.)

Steps

Determine a goal for what you want to earn using AdSense. Of course, you want to earn a lot, but make sure it's realistic.
Consider that to earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page…
- 400 visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5c payout.
- Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.
- Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.
- Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout
Consider whether these goals will be possible given your site. If it's too tough, create two sites, each attracting half the number.
- Start building keyword-rich pages containing well researched, profitable keywords, and get lots of high quality links to your site. For example, if your site is about topics such as debt consolidation, web hosting or asbestos-related cancer, you’ll earn much more per click than if it’s about free things. On the other hand, if you concentrate only on top-paying keywords, you’ll face an awful lot of tough competition. What you want are keywords that are high in demand and low in supply, So do some careful keyword research before you build your pages.

Tips

Quality is the most important for any web site, if your site does not contain the content of expected quality the visitor might not come back, So be there with high quality.
A great resource for earning money is using sites like http://www.flixya.com. You can sign up for Google Adsense and Flixya, without the costs or time needed to build traffic or your own site.

Warnings

Do not start a site just for displaying ads from adsense. People will find that this site is full of ads

Related wikiHows

How to Get Your Blog to Appear at the Top of Searches

How do you get your blog to appear at the top of search results on Google, Yahoo, Ask.com etc? It appears to be a simple question; the answer, however, isn't as easy as you'd like (if it was, everyone would be at the top of search results, and we know that's impossible). This is a list of 5 free tips for getting your blog to appear at the top of search results.

Steps

Update your blog – daily. So to begin - you must be serious about your blog. Update it at least 3-4 times a week, preferably once a day.
Write clean, precise, and accurately. This includes grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The next step is very important: write clean, precise, and accurate blogs. How do you do that? You learned this in junior high - use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation etc, but go beyond that - create your own voice, one that commands respect and one people will turn to for whatever it is that you provide.
Provide a consistent ‘product’ for your audience that they want to come back to. That leads me to the next step: provide something for your audience. It can be entertainment, advice, riddles, jokes, laughs, just about anything - but be consistent. If you're predominantly positive, then one day you spew negativity and rant about something, be aware that you might be turning off regular readers of your blog.
Promotion! How do you promote your blog? Link your blog to as many sites and blogs as you can. Search engines, like Google, track this networking through an always changing, mathematical algorithm. So it's simple, post comments on other sites and blogs and sign off with your blogs 'address'. Contact site administrators and ask to post a link to your blog on their site (this will happen more frequently if your blog is relevant, and useful!). Part of promotion is registering your site with search engines. It may take some time once you register for the search engine ‘people’ to review your site or blog, but once they have, you will start appearing on search results. They look for keywords, relevance, etc. The two biggest search engines are Google and Yahoo.
Keywords: use popular keywords that are relevant and can be used in the context of your article. Use them often in your article, and in the title of your blog! This is somewhat complicated because people use keywords to search for what they need differently. Some keywords are searched for more often than others. Only use keywords in the context of your article, and make sure they are relevant, or else you can be ‘black-listed’ by search engines for spamming. With that in mind, use the keywords frequently in your article. Let’s say my keyword is "How‿", use it about 10 times throughout the article you write, but again, use it only in context and not just to use it. How do keywords help? Search engines scan your article for these keywords. The more often you have used them, and the more relevant they are, the more they appear on searches. Remember, you appear at the top of search results because advertisers are willing to pay the search engine for advertising on your site. If it’s not relevant, or it’s a worthless laundry list of keywords, you’ll be spotted right away. And finally, use these keywords in the title of your blog entry!
Use photos! If someone is searching for a photo, and your blog has keywords from their search, your photo will come up in the search. If they are interested in the photo, they may click on it to enlarge it or get more information. If they do this, and if they are searching using Google or Yahoo, then they will get taken directly to your blog. Free promotion!

Warnings

Remember this isn’t easy work – you must be serious about it, and your blog. Promoting will take the most time and effort, but that’s what helps the most. Theirs is only one wrong way to promoting and marketing – Not promoting or marketing. There is no right way, just do it the best you know how, and you’ll see a difference.
Also, try not to post your URL on other people's blogs too much. Not only is it annoying, it also seems kind of desperate.

Related wikiHows

Friday, July 25, 2008

How to Increase Website Traffic

One of the Internet's strengths is its ability to help consumers
find the right needle in a digital haystack of data. ~ Jared Sandberg

There are many creative ways to increase traffic to your website. Some will cost you money, and some won't. Below you'll find many legitimate ways (ranging from free to costly) to boost the number of visitors to your website. But if you don't have so much as a cent to spare, read How to Increase Website Traffic for Free.

Steps

1.Offer free, original, and quality content on your site. This is the most effective means for increasing traffic to a website; offering people something that they cannot obtain elsewhere, or at least, not to the level of quality that you are offering it. Ways in which to ensure that your content is of higher quality than competitors or is unique include:

Creating content that is helpful and useful. Simply cobbling together information from another website will not generate traffic. You need to offer visitors the information they need to achieve a goal, solve a problem, be entertained, find out quality news or have a good laugh.
Keep it fresh. For repeat visits, it is crucial to provide regular updates to the website, especially in frequently viewed zones. Add fresh content every few days if possible; at a minimum, weekly.
Outsource article writing. If you hate the thought of generating content yourself, or your team is not writing-savvy, consider outsourcing this end of the task. Depending on the length, content, specialization and quality required, prices can start as low as US$5 per article. However, don't neglect attempting to write your own work - who better than you knows your own business, hobby or club and can express precisely what needs to be said? Just sit down and start writing an article. You may be impressed when you're done!
Get a proofreader. Poor spelling and grammar reflect badly on the services and information being provided; avoid unwarranted negative judgments by getting the writing in order prior to publication online.
Avoid content generators. While these were once the delight of a fledgling web industry, they are no longer useful. Putting your own team's creativity online is what is useful.
Never copy and paste from another website - Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines are too smart for this nowadays and will detect copied and unoriginal content, sending you to the bottom of the pile.

Improve your search engine ranking by focusing your content on keywords related to your topic. This is called search engine optimization and will help people find your website when they're searching the Web. Make sure the keywords flow naturally with the text and when you are brainstorming for good words, ask around for words that come naturally to people of all ages when looking for your type of site. To help you understand better, realize that the keywords not only go into headings and page names but also into "meta tags". "Meta tags" are the software code that website visitors do not see but search engines do. Finally, don't overdo the keywords; over-stuffing keywords will result in a very low search ranking for your website. Also, be very careful not to place key text inside graphics; search engines cannot pick up graphics.

Get linked. This is a very important part of website management. Exchange links. Trading links with other websites that are closely related to the subject of your website can bring you more website traffic. These are two-way links because you must provide a link to them, too, and linking to low-quality websites can threaten the credibility of yours. Only link to sites that are dead on topic, and truly help your visitors. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc.

Advertise your presence. Besides using links, you must make use of numerous other ways to increase web traffic. Sit down and write a list of all the ways you can think of to get your web address noticed and clicked on. For example:

Use e-zines. Make your own that relate to your website and form a regular reminder each issue for people to visit your website. Submit all the free e-zine directories on the internet.
Submit your articles to e-zines, websites and writing sites that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article. This is a good way to create one-way backlinks to your website. This is the most effective way to get listed on any search engine. Usually, the more relevant links you have pointing to your site the higher you will rank.
Go beyond the electronic medium and into the print medium. Advertise in local newspapers, business brochures, magazines, nationwide publications and mail-drop literature. And don't forget the perennial favorite, the good old Yellow Pages™ - printed version naturally!
Small business cards left in cafés, on signboards, exchanged at meetings etc.
Use local resources such as clubs, libraries and community centers for non-profit website awareness raising.
Participate on message boards. Post answers to other people's questions, ask questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file containing your website's URL at the end of all your postings.
Start your own online discussion community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community, they will regularly return to communicate with others.
Use word of mouth. Tell everyone you know about your website, give out business cards to passers-by in the street, and so on. You might even want to run a guerrilla marketing program!
Use your car, especially if your website is area-specific (e.g. a website detailing local events or selling local services). Get some vinyl decals or bumper stickers created and turn your car into a moving advertisement, literally driving traffic to your web site!

Give freebies. Who doesn't like a freebie?! Online freebies are commonplace and they leave the visitor wanting more when they are well written and informative introductory materials. Consider such freebies as:

Giving away an eBook with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This'll increase your ad exposure and increase web traffic to your website at the same time;
Holding free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your website's chat room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your website. You will become known as an expert on the topic.
Giving visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results.
Letting visitors download free software such as freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away.
Targeting specific groups who might worry about using the internet with free classes in using it on your site - senior citizens, busy workers etc. might find these convenient and alluring.
Offering free online services or utilities from your website. For instance, they could be search engine submitting, copywriting proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.
Giving free consulting to people who visit your website. You could offer your knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.
Offering a free start-up package that has a finite time; enough time for the customer to practice with your online product and like it enough to pay for continued use.
Sending out free CD-Roms, CDs, DVDs etc. that contain starter packs or teasers to encourage the customer to use your site more.
Offering free screensavers or templates for business cards, cards, writing paper etc., anything that a customer can print out.

Be patient. Search engines need a lot of time to index a new website and domain. They need time to index all your content; it's worth the wait and should be factored into your website profitability and/or popularity timeline. In the meantime, continue to add high quality content to your website and keep it up-to-date and relevant.

Tips

Start right here on wikiHow. Read up on how to publicize your website on wikiHow without breaking the rules. If you can provide quality content, you can create a win-win relationship where you share knowledge and get publicity in return.

Warnings

Never, ever spam. Your credibility will be gone before you know it, and with it will go your traffic.
Don't get caught up with website generators and internet tricks. All these "black hat" tricks will only work temporarily. Your business needs to be set up for the long term.
Do not be fooled by those traffic sellers promising thousands of hits an hour. What they really do is load up your URL in a program, along with a list of proxies. Then they run the program for a few hours. It looks like someone is on your site because your logs show visitors from thousands of different IPs. What happens in reality is your website is just pinged by the proxy, no one really sees your site. It is a waste of money.

Related wikiHows

How to Make Money with a Blog

You can actually make money with your blogs. All you have to do is follow the steps below and start raking in the cash.

Step1

Blog advertising: You can sell ads on your blog space through services such as BlogAds or Adsense by Google. BlogAds connects you to advertisers who place ads on your blog; you receive a commission for any resulting sales. Adsense places ads on your blog for free according to your blog niche; you receive compensation based on the number of clicks you generate on their Adsense.

Step2

Affiliate programs: You can place a link to another Web site that sells products. If someone makes a purchase through your link, you will receive a commission.

Step3

Contributions: Many bloggers solicit contributions from their readers. You can even add a "Make a Donation" button through PayPal.

Step4

Services: Bloggers can market services on their blog. It's a good way to network.

Step5

Develop customer support: Blogging helps your customers learn more about you, which can create greater volume while improving customer relations.

Step6

Traffic builder: Blogging can attract traffic to your Web site, which can promote your business and services.

Step7

Blog writing: With the blogging craze at its height, many Web sites are looking for blog writers.

How to Create a Business Blog

Making and maintaining a blog for your company is a challenging task. You need to update it every day and make the layout look nearly like your websites. So how do you do it?

Steps

Buy hosting and a domain if you don't already have a company website (not blog).
Choose the correct blogging platform needed - the best and most widely used is Wordpress. Typepad, Blogger, Moveable Type, and numerous others are all available as well, so shop around and look for the one that best fits your needs.
Develop your business marketing objectives.
Decide on the theme of the blog and find a template (or hire a web design company to create one) that best fits your needs.
Determine how many blogs your company will need. It is more than 1 in about 90% of the cases. No matter how small your business.
Decide who will be blogging and writing the content.
Have a blog promotion plan and learn some basic search engine optimization and search engine marketing techniques.
Choose a consultant that will help you achieve maximum results. Ask for specifics, case studies and references.

Tips

Look at the most effective blogging platform
Choose a platform that offers detailed reporting analytics, or install Google Analytics or one of the free or inexpensive analytics tools to track and measure your progress.
In order to get people to come to your blog you must post relevant engaging comments on popular blogs in your niche. Leave a link embedded in your comments. This will allow others to see your insight and access your blogs. Problogger has greater insight on the subject.
You should also link out to other blogs in your niche and authority websites; this gives your site credibility according to the search engines as well as helping you to network and make yourself known in your niche.

Warnings

Do not attempt to "Try Blogging Out". This only ensures failure.

Related wikiHows

How to Get Your Blog to Appear at the Top of Searches

Steps

Update your blog – daily. So to begin - you must be serious about your blog. Update it at least 3-4 times a week, preferably once a day.
Write clean, precise, and accurately. This includes grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The next step is very important: write clean, precise, and accurate blogs. How do you do that? You learned this in junior high - use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation etc, but go beyond that - create your own voice, one that commands respect and one people will turn to for whatever it is that you provide.
Provide a consistent ‘product’ for your audience that they want to come back to. That leads me to the next step: provide something for your audience. It can be entertainment, advice, riddles, jokes, laughs, just about anything - but be consistent. If you're predominantly positive, then one day you spew negativity and rant about something, be aware that you might be turning off regular readers of your blog.
Promotion! How do you promote your blog? Link your blog to as many sites and blogs as you can. Search engines, like Google, track this networking through an always changing, mathematical algorithm. So it's simple, post comments on other sites and blogs and sign off with your blogs 'address'. Contact site administrators and ask to post a link to your blog on their site (this will happen more frequently if your blog is relevant, and useful!). Part of promotion is registering your site with search engines. It may take some time once you register for the search engine ‘people’ to review your site or blog, but once they have, you will start appearing on search results. They look for keywords, relevance, etc. The two biggest search engines are Google and Yahoo.
Keywords: use popular keywords that are relevant and can be used in the context of your article. Use them often in your article, and in the title of your blog! This is somewhat complicated because people use keywords to search for what they need differently. Some keywords are searched for more often than others. Only use keywords in the context of your article, and make sure they are relevant, or else you can be ‘black-listed’ by search engines for spamming. With that in mind, use the keywords frequently in your article. Let’s say my keyword is "How‿", use it about 10 times throughout the article you write, but again, use it only in context and not just to use it. How do keywords help? Search engines scan your article for these keywords. The more often you have used them, and the more relevant they are, the more they appear on searches. Remember, you appear at the top of search results because advertisers are willing to pay the search engine for advertising on your site. If it’s not relevant, or it’s a worthless laundry list of keywords, you’ll be spotted right away. And finally, use these keywords in the title of your blog entry!
Use photos! If someone is searching for a photo, and your blog has keywords from their search, your photo will come up in the search. If they are interested in the photo, they may click on it to enlarge it or get more information. If they do this, and if they are searching using Google or Yahoo, then they will get taken directly to your blog. Free promotion!

Warnings

Remember this isn’t easy work – you must be serious about it, and your blog. Promoting will take the most time and effort, but that’s what helps the most. Theirs is only one wrong way to promoting and marketing – Not promoting or marketing. There is no right way, just do it the best you know how, and you’ll see a difference.
Also, try not to post your URL on other people's blogs too much. Not only is it annoying, it also seems kind of desperate.

Related wikiHows

How to Increase Adsense Earnings - FREE

Things You’ll Need:

Link in resource box (bottom of page).

Step1

Everyone is trying to increase their AdSense earnings AND advertise their site/business free! Here is the perfect solution. There is a company online that allows you to place FREE ADS for whatever it is you do, whether you have a site, blog or affiliate program you are promoting, you can advertise it FREE!

Step2

Not only do you advertise it free, anytime someone clicks on your ad, this site automatically inserts adsense into you ad, and if someone clicks on it, they split the earnings with you.

Step3

They also offer a referral program. Anytime you show someone else how to do take advantage of this opportunity, they pay you for that too!!!
Sign-Up Is FREE For Everyone! Click the link in the resource box (bottom of page) to get started today! No Hidden Fees, I swear, 100% FREE!

How to Earn More with Google Adsense?

Things You’ll Need:

Commitment
Patience
Concerntration
Blog
Traffic

Step1

1) Blend your ads effectively with your site theme. Match your Adsense colors with your site colors.

Step2

2) Do not use borders to your text ads. Ads without border and matching background with site background color always perform well over other ad units.

Step3

3) Have some Ad color themes that perform best with your site. At least 2-3 well performing ad color formats should be ok. Rotate your ad units with these color themes. This is just to avoid Ad blindness.

Step4

4) Use link units in your site. Link units near site navigation links can perform well. Other advantages of link units are - you don’t need too much Ad space on your site and link units are not annoying to users.

Step5

5) Place 250×250 size Ad unit at the top of every page or post. If you are using Wordpress hosting then 250×250 text or image ad option should perform best for every site. Don’t forget to align this ad unit at right or left side of the post content.

How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger

Do you know which websites refer the most visitors to your site? Or the most common keywords used to find your site? Google Analytics can provide the valuable answers to these questions, and many more.

Steps

Open a Gmail account if you don’t already have one.
Create a Google Analytics Account.
Click on: 'Add Website Profile.' Installing Google Analytics does not require knowledge of HTML, but there is a piece of HTML code that must be copied onto your blog.
In the box, enter your URL. (For example: www.yourwebsite.com or yourblog.blogspt.com.)
Set your Country and Time zone, and hit Continue.
Highlight the tracking code displayed in the large box and 'Copy'.
Sign into Blogger. Click on the 'Layout' Tab, then click on 'Edit HTML'
Click on 'Download Full Template' to back up your template onto your computer. It's always a good idea to back up your template before you make any changes.
Scroll down to the bottom and paste the tracking code just before the closing 'body' tag.
Back in Google Analytics, click on 'Check Status' or 'Verify Tracking Code' under the Status column. Once your tracking code has been verified, the status will change to: 'Receiving Data.'

Tips

Installing Google Analytics is a huge step towards taking control of your online marketing. It will open your eyes to valuable information about your website visitors and display the data in an easy to read, easy to understand format. Over time you will see trends that you could not have discovered any other way.
The longer you have have Google Analytics installed, the more interesting and valuable the data will be.
To remind yourself what the code you have added to the template is for, add a comment above it like this

Warnings

It will take about 24 hours or so after you install Google Analytics before you start seeing any data. Check back the next day to familiarize yourself the various reports.

How to Maximize Ad Revenue on a Website

This article will mostly discuss placement techniques for contextual advertising that can dramatically raise your revenue from clicks. Contextual advertisers include Yahoo Publisher Network, Google, and Adbrite. These ads usually display a link followed by some description text or the url of the link.

Steps

Make sure you place the ad correctly. Ads that people can’t see won’t be clicked on, so make sure the ads are located in a prime spot that will generate interest. The best spots for an ad is on the top fold of the webpage, meaning the viewer can see the ad without having to scroll. The most clicked on ads are ones that are embedded within content.
Consider linking text. This helps to make the ad stand out more and gives a better chance for the viewer to actually read the ads. Secondly, since the ads are embedded within the text, it’s harder for the viewer to miss. Ads located on the sides are oftentimes looked over, which is exactly what you don't want visitors to do.
Put small, relevant images next to your ads. This has been show to increase ad revenue because this attracts attention to the ads, and people are tricked into thinking that the picture is content related to the ad. Google Adsense allows this method (somewhat, however, some images placed next to ads can violate Google TOS, ask Google before adding images next to ads), however Yahoo Publisher Network does not allow it. Read the TOS on certain publishers to get more info on whether this is allowed or not.
Make the ads relevant. The best part of contextual advertising is that the ads are relevent to your site (Adbrite does not have this feature, they just put up generic network ads). Google and Yahoo both target their ads decently well, but Google Adsense definitely has the best ads that are relevant to your site. To increase ad relativity, make sure the keywords that you want ads for are repeated throughout. For example, if you wanted to display ads related to “making money” you would repeat the phrase making money many times on my page. If you want to be making money, and making money is what you want, then make sure that you are making money by implementing these ads well. It’s also best to spread your keywords throughout the page instead of concentrated in one area like above.
Keep to one theme. This kind of ties in with making your ads relevent, but make sure your website concentrates one one certain type of category. For example, GameSpot.com is a site that focuses on games, while IGN.com has sections over games, movies, comics, cars, etc. GameSpot, if they used Google Adsense, would be serving the most relevent ads - gaming ads. While IGN, if they used Google Adsense, would be serving ads about all sorts of things because they have so many sectors. If a gamer goes on IGN and sees an ad about Japanese Movies, they probably won’t be enticed to click. Of course, these statements are just theoretically speaking, the main point is that if your website is focused on one topic, the ads will be better served to your target audience. If you have a website that covers many things, it will be harder to generate ads that interest your users.
Do your research. Each publisher allows you to create separate channels for your ads so you can track how each individual ad unit is doing. Look over your ads and see which ones are performing the best, and then make a judgement as to which ads you should keep and which ones you should alter or get rid of. Constantly looking over your statistics is a key factor to increasing your ad revenue.

Monday, July 21, 2008

10 Unconventional But Successful Online Homebusiness Ideas

http://www.hardtofindseminars.com

Michael Senoff has stumbled upon a perfect online home business opportunity – reselling old seminar materials. He was really impressed by Jay Abraham. The only problem was that it costs $20,000 to attend Jay’s workshops (no wonder the press called it, “the world's most expensive seminar"). So he did some digging and managed to find a guy from Northern California who had attended the seminar, asking to buy seminar materials off him. He bought the entire set for … 50 dollars. He later found out that Jay’s materials are being sold on eBay for several hundred dollars. He broke up the original package (that he got for $50) in several pieces and sold items for $1700. Thus, his perfect online homebusiness was born. Michael now resells old seminar materials for dozens of marketing gurus, easily profiting over $1000 a day. Read full story in Mike's own words.

http://www.hungrypod.com/

Catherine Keane, the owner of Hungry Pod, makes over $100,000 a year, uploading music to other people’s iPods. This online homebusiness idea came to her when an acquaintance offered her $500 to load his CD collection onto his iPod. Thanks in part to a small story in The New York Times, Keane's advertising efforts on Craigslist and word-of-mouth, HungryPod has expanded to three employees and four computers, and has annual sales that exceed $100,000. Read The New York Times article about Catherine and her business.

http://www.idonowidont.com/

Joshua Opperman has his ex-fiancée to thank for his thriving online home based business. After the breakup, he was stuck with the engagement ring he paid dearly for. He went back to the jeweler where he'd bought it three months earlier, but found he could only get 32 percent of its original cost. Josh didn’t like that one bit, so he set up a site, where people in the same situation can sell their engagement rights for a better price. See the full profile of this online homebusiness here.

http://www.pickydomains.com/

This is a great online home-based business idea that requires no money and that anyone can start. PickyDomains is a risk-free domain naming service that got a lot of publicity and ‘blogtalk’ in Europe lately. This is how it works. A customer deposits $50 dollars and describes what kind of domain he or she wants. Domain pickers then send in their suggestions of available domain names. If the customer likes one of the domain names and registers it, the service gets $50. Otherwise the money is refunded at the end of the month. Read full article about how you can make money naming domains here.

http://www.greekgear.com/

Reading a business magazine in the doctor's office inspired Joseph Tantillo to try his hand at online retailing. At the time, he and his wife were expecting their first child and wanted to work from home. An article about starting an online store jumped out at him, he recalls—and, as a member of a fraternity in college, he decided to sell personalized Greek apparel to that market. After setting up shop for just $79.95—the cost of a merchant account with Yahoo!— he began researching what kind of products his former fraternity brothers might like. Using the strong Greek network worked, as he's built GreekGear.com's yearly sales to $1.9 million. Read Joseph’s story here.

http://rickspicksnyc.com/

Rick Field, a Yale graduate and former TV producer for Bill Moyers, is a perfect example of how you can start successful home business out of a hobby. Field learned the art of pickling when he was growing up in Vermont. About eight years ago, gripped by a sense of nostalgia, he took up pickling again. In his tiny kitchen, Field made family recipes and then quickly began experimenting. People’s wildly enthusiastic response to his Windy City Wasabeans (soybeans in wasabi brine) and Slices of Life (sliced pickles in aromatic garlic brine) told him he was onto something. Read how Rick took his homebusiness online here.

http://www.militaryexits.com/

Karin Markley set her online business right out of home. Having 15 years of experience working in a civilian employment agency and knowing that companies value employees with military backgrounds, and she wanted to provide a one-stop link between the two. Karen contacted the Department of Defense for permission to use its seal on her Web site. It took months to get it, but MilitaryExits.com is now linked to all the military bases. Markley, who projects annual sales of $600,000, points to her biggest reward: "Helping the military. Getting the letters and phone calls from these people thanking me so much for what I'm doing for them."

http://www.hotsauceblog.com/

If I told you that you can make $200,000 blogging about hot sauces, you wouldn’t believe me. Yet, this is exactly what Nick Lindauer does. In 2001, while still in college, he launched his online homebusiness then called Sweat 'N Spice out of his Springfield (Ore.) apartment. He sold a few dozen types of hot sauces, packaged each order by hand, and shipped everything from his local post office, barely eking out a profit during his first year of operation. Today, Lindauer sells over a thousand products from some 300 manufacturers. In 2005, the business grossed around $130,000. He got $200,000 in 2006. One day, it’s going to be a cool $1000000. Full story.

http://amazingbutterflies.com/

Amazing Butterflies is really an amazing million dollar homebusiness idea success story. Jose Muñiz's career began when a friend bet him $100 that he could not sell butterflies for a living. Now, seven years later, the former business consultant and his wife, Karen, own Amazing Butterflies, a live-butterfly distributor that generated $1 million in revenues in 2006. Though Muñiz is still waiting for his $100, he says that he has backed his way into a job that he loves. "I could never go back to consulting," he says. "This is just too much fun." Full story.

http://www.laneigepurse.com/

What began as a solution to her chronic back and neck pain is now a line of purses for women who share Kristy Sobel's condition--or simply want a fashionable fanny pack. After three car accidents that resulted in extensive back and neck surgeries, the 35-year-old entrepreneur realized she couldn't do the traveling her then-job required. To ease the weight on her shoulders, Sobel searched for a fanny pack that would accommodate her condition, but realized fashionable ones were nonexistent. So she created one. Before long, family, friends and even strangers were requesting this one-of-a-kind purse. She approached boutiques with her design after successful test runs at her friends' shops, but the door-to-door routine eventually took a toll on her body. Sobel continued her venture from home, found a rep to promote her bags at a trade show and used her and her husband and co-founder Eric's savings to launch LaNeige Purse. Last year she made over $200,000 from her purses.

Books on homebusiness:

The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online

Missed Fortune 101: A Starter Kit to Becoming a Millionaire

Internet Riches: The Simple Money-making Secrets of Online Millionaire

Real online home business ideas

Who Is Shawn Casey? Is He For Real?

Urgently Need Cool Domain Name Ideas, Will Pay For Your Suggestions

How to Turn Your Blog into A Profitable Bussiness

Blogging Your Way Into a Business

By MARCI ALBOHER

Published: August 12, 2007

We all know that online activities can backfire, à la John P. Mackey, the Whole Foods chief executive whose anonymous online postings to financial message boards attacking competitor Wild Oats caused even me, a diehard Whole Foods zealot, to question my thrice-weekly trips to the salad bar. But online activities, especially blogging, can just as easily be a career benefactor as a blemish. Consider these stories:

Shifting Careers

Entrepreneurial thinking. Whatever your career. Wherever you work.

Marci Alboher's Columns »

Jeremy Blachman arrived at Harvard Law School, but like so many law students, he had little interest in practicing law. As an undergraduate in Princeton, he wrote musical comedy and songs. To keep up with his writing while in law school, he started playing with blogs.

In his second year, Mr. Blachman interviewed for a summer job with the prominent law firms that came to campus to recruit for summer associates. With summer jobs paying $2,400 a week, he was more than happy to earn big bucks while being reminded that big law firm work was not for him. On a lark, he started an anonymous blog inspired by the law firm partners he had met in those on-campus interviews. “I expected the whole thing to last a few weeks,” he said.

Thanks to some artful linking around the Web, Anonymous Lawyer took off. Mr. Blachman’s online persona was an over-the-top caricature — he blogged about a series of housekeepers he fired and mocked a young associate who sent a BlackBerry message about his availability from the hospital room where his wife had just given birth — yet readers believed that the writer was a real lawyer.

At the height of its popularity, Anonymous Lawyer averaged more than 3,500 readers a day. In this post, “Anonymous Lawyer: From Blog to Book,” Mr. Blachman tells the story of how his blog became a book.

He is now talking with NBC about a television version of Anonymous Lawyer and still regularly blogs, now at Jeremy Blachman’s Weblog. Typical posts include comic musings about chair placement, water bottles and parking at television studio meetings. More seriously, he even includes honest talk about his doubts about his writing future.

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Bee Kim, 28, was a hobbyist blogger while running a vocational school in south central Los Angeles. Blogging about her personal life and issues relevant to Asian-Americans, Ms. Kim amassed a few hundred loyal readers over several years. When she became engaged and moved to New York, her blog began focusing on the details of her coming wedding. She worried that she was losing the interest of her male readers, so she moved all wedding-related posts to a new blog called Wedding Bee.

As other brides-to-be started hearing about Wedding Bee, Ms. Kim began receiving requests to plan other people’s weddings. That is when she knew she was onto something. Slowly, Wedding Bee evolved.

“I went from being a regular blogger that just loved to share ideas and research to more of a professional blogger, where I watched for tone, libel, and even language,” such as cursing, she said. Previously, “if I didn’t like a vendor, I’d vent away knowing they’d never read my post. Now when I review a vendor, I know the vendor is likely to stumble across my post. So I check the facts, make sure the tone is balanced, and basically pretend to be a real journalist.”

By inviting other women to become contributors, Ms. Kim spawned a group of about 20 other co-bloggers from around the country. Ms. Kim, now married, still blogs under the name Mrs. Bee. Her contributors each use a blogger handle; married bloggers tend to be insects (Mrs. Caterpiller, Mrs. Firefly), while the future brides are heavy on fruits and candies (Miss Butterscotch, Miss Licorice).

With each change to the business, she involved her readers. In this post, Wedding Bee Tweaks, she wrote about the decision to accept advertising, offering the proposed design up to her readers for comments.

After moving to New York to be with her new husband, Ms. Kim dedicated herself fully to the blog. Now with about a million page views a month (and nearly 500,000 unique visitors), according to the tracking service Sitemeter.com, Ms. Kim says, Wedding Bee is earning enough from advertisements to cover a salaried part-time editor and cover rent and living expenses in their West Village one-bedroom apartment.

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Carmina Perez, 47, began her blog, Mogulettes-in-the-Making, about six months ago after a long career in finance and media. Over the years, she had taken a few stabs at starting various businesses, but she always returned to the security of a job.

When her last job came to an end in May 2006, she decided to get serious about entrepreneurship. But this time it would be different. She now had a considerable financial cushion so she could support herself while building a business.

In the past, Ms. Perez always started businesses on her own, and the isolation was part of the reason she never went far. Blogging seemed like the way to create an instant community of support.

Mogulettes-in-the-Making, the blog, is about helping other women build their businesses, the very business Ms. Perez is in the midst of building. Typical posts document meetings where she brings in an expert to teach her “mogulettes” something, like this post about a session on computer security, a lecture she organized with a guest speaker about public relations or a field trip to the Science, Industry and Business Library in New York City, which offers reference resources and free sessions with business counselors for entrepreneurs.

Though the blog has only about 300 page views a month, Ms. Perez has developed a small following among women who look to her for advice.

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When Ellyssa Kroski, who is in her mid-30s, completed her master’s degree in library science in 2004, she could not find a full-time job. She was working part time in the Butler Library at Columbia University and in technology consulting, the work she did before she started her master’s program. She decided that blogging about her expertise might be a way to build connections in the field that could lead to a job.

Befitting a librarian, Ms. Kroski’s posts are well researched and well cited, the old-fashioned way, using properly formatted footnotes rather than hyperlinks.

And the blog did lead to a job, an adjunct faculty position at Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science. But in the meantime, her interests have changed: while the job is not full time, because of her blog Ms. Kroski’s horizons have risen even further.

“As a new librarian, no one would publish me,” Ms. Kroski said. Yet, after publishing her first article, “Authority in the Age of the Amateur”, on her blog, Infotangle, and circulating it to bloggers in her field, she discovered that she was cited everywhere.

“It’s been a snowball effect ever since,” she said. “I started making all kinds of connections and getting invitations to speak at national conferences. And within eight months of starting the blog, I was approached by a publisher to write a book about Web 2.0 for librarians.”

Monday, July 7, 2008

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY

A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions.

The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century (around 1940 - 1945), although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers. Modern computers are based on tiny integrated circuits and are millions to billions of times more capable while occupying a fraction of the space. Today, simple computers may be made small enough to fit into a wristwatch and be powered from a watch battery. Personal computers, in various forms, are icons of the Information Age and are what most people think of as "a computer"; however, the most common form of computer in use today is the embedded computer. Embedded computers are small, simple devices that are used to control other devices — for example, they may be found in machines ranging from fighter aircraft to industrial robots, digital cameras, and children's toys.

The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile and distinguishes them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore, computers with capability and complexity ranging from that of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks given enough time and storage capacity.

Computer History

It is difficult to identify any one device as the earliest computer, partly because the term "computer" has been subject to varying interpretations over time. Originally, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations (a human computer), often with the aid of a mechanical calculating device.

The history of the modern computer begins with two separate technologies - that of automated calculation and that of programmability.

Examples of early mechanical calculating devices included the abacus, the slide rule and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150-100 BC). The end of the Middle Ages saw a re-invigoration of European mathematics and engineering, and Wilhelm Schickard's 1623 device was the first of a number of mechanical calculators constructed by European engineers. However, none of those devices fit the modern definition of a computer because they could not be programmed.

Hero of Alexandria (c. 10 – 70 AD) built a mechanical theater which performed a play lasting 10 minutes and was operated by a complex system of ropes and drums that might be considered to be a means of deciding which parts of the mechanism performed which actions - and when.^[3] This is the essence of programmability. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the textile loom that used a series of punched paper cards as a template to allow his loom to weave intricate patterns automatically. The resulting Jacquard loom was an important step in the development of computers because the use of punched cards to define woven patterns can be viewed as an early, albeit limited, form of programmability.

It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first recognizable computers. In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical computer that he called "The Analytical Engine".^[4] Due to limited finances, and an inability to resist tinkering with the design, Babbage never actually built his Analytical Engine.

Large-scale automated data processing of punched cards was performed for the U.S. Census in 1890 by tabulating machines designed by Herman Hollerith and manufactured by the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, which later became IBM. By the end of the 19th century a number of technologies that would later prove useful in the realization of practical computers had begun to appear: the punched card, Boolean algebra, the vacuum tube (thermionic valve) and the teleprinter.

During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.

Source From : www.wikipedia.org