Seeking Revenue » on the net

Keeping track of those Famous Marketers

Ken — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 02:48:55 +0000

Have you always wonder who are those people that claimed to be some famous marketer? What did they do to become famous? Who are those people that they referenced to? Are they a pack of lies or is there some truth in it?

To help solve that I’m starting a project that everyone can contribute – ProNetizen.

Based on the Wikipedia concept, the objective of this project to collect together information about a particular online Marketer, an online Product, an online Service and Websites.

Through these information, it is hoped that newcomers to online marketing will be better equiped to make a better, well informed decision.

Do you have any information to share? Drop by and share your knowledge.

Random Posts

Adsense is Dead

Ken — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 18:16:30 +0000

Interestingly I found this new marketing spin call “The Death of Adsense“

Normally I get bombarded with so many “marketing guru” email daily that I just ignore the pitch. But something about it caught my attention.

First was the graphic, impactful, shocking, got my attention.

Then it was the free report. Yeah I got lots of free reports saved on my harddisk. Wouldn’t mind adding another to the collection. Why not?

Then I found that I was duped! The guy before got paid $0.50 just for me to download it. (That’s Fifty, five-o, 1/2 a dollar, NOT a fraction of a cent!)

What! The guy behind this spin is on drug or he is crazy or both! A viral marketing like this would create thousands if not tens of thousand of download. And he is paying for each download!

Well, what you waiting for? Click here to bust this guy and earn me 50 cents.

Random Posts

StumbleUpon – source of good traffic

Ken — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:23:00 +0000

Many had pointed to tried and tested method of using Digg and del.icio.us as source of traffic.

In this article I’m introducing another source – StumbleUpon, as a good source of traffic.

For the past few months I notice StumbleUpon appearing as referrer on one of my site. I didn’t take notice because the figure wasn’t significant.

A few days ago though, I submitted Free Biz Ware to StumbleUpon and was duly blown away by the result.

Take a look at these traffic charts.

From an average of 20-40 visitors, I suddenly received close to 2000 visitors within the day.

If you look at the source you can see that most of the traffic originated from StumbleUpon.

I am sure many internet marketers are already aware of this effect and quietly using it. Hopefully as more people become aware of the StumbleUpon effect, the quality of stumble will not be degraded.

Try it but use with responsibility of a good netizen.

Random Posts

The end of AdSense sweatshop?

Ken — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 11:12:41 +0000

Increasingly publishers are turning away from what they feel is the “Google’s AdSense Sweatshop“.

And it is not that they are not making money. They are making as much as $10,000 a month. A figure many of us revenue seekers wouldn’t even dream of making.

What is happening? I hate to see the bubble burst, since I myself had just jumped on the bandwagon. But is this really the end?

The arguments are centered around 3 major points

Publishers can make more money with the visitors then sending them away.
Publishers are at the mercy of companies like Google.
Publishers has to do lot of work and even resort to trickery. Even then they cannot control factors like search engine ranking.

Join the conversation.

Do you think it is wrong to make money from Adsense?
Are there more money to be made elsewhere?
How do you decide to use Adsense or create products?

Random Posts

Collection of Creative Adsense Placement

Ken — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:42:00 +0000

Users are getting immuned to Adsense ads because it is getting too common. Many are simply not looking on them or are subconsciously shutting them off.

What can you do as an Adsense publisher?

If visitors are not looking at ads, they are certainly not clicking it. If they are not clicking it, you are not getting revenue.

One way to deal with this is to be creative with ads placement. Instead of just sticking an ads anywhere, place it creatively to attract attention (or reduce attention as the case maybe).

Here I look at some examples I had collected from my surfing around other people’s site. Maybe they can inspire you.

Before looking at some the examples here, beware that you have to comply with Adsense policies in putting up you ads. Be careful not to cross the line.

Design BlendingThe idea is to blend the ads nicely into the content so that visitors do not notice they are ads but part of the site’s navigation or links.
The is a simple idea but not many do it well.

Here is an example from BlogDesignSolutions
Notice how the ads and text links nicely blend with the overall color tone and layout.
(I wonder why the 468×60 ads do not show a “Ads by Goooooogle” which is the norm.)
Visual blocks

I called this method visual blocks because it artificially creates blocks that guides naivgation.

Here is an example from MindBlog.
Notice the text link unit in the 3rd blue column. This bends in well with the other color content blocks.
Next, notice how the 4 ads in the Leaderboard unit is directly under the 4 color blocks. This again guides navigation.
Image guides
Another variation of visual block is to use images to guide the eyes to the ads.

Here is an example from worth1000.com
The images are sized nicely to match the 4 ads Leaderboard. (Note that this may be in violation of Adsense’s policies)

Here is an example from supriyadisw.net.
The images are next to 336×280 ad unit.
In additional, take a look at the style of the text links unit on the right and the Catagories. A clever use of design blending.
Pseudo NavigationThis technique uses the link unit creates an impression that the ads is part of the navigation.
See this example from MyMoneyBlog.
The link unit on the top is aligned with the menu below, creating a menu effect.
Artificial TabsAn improvement to the pesudo navigation is to create the impression of tabs.
This example is from sapiensbryan.com
See how the design creates a tab-like effect on the navigation.
Creative FrameWhy do you need to frame the Adsense ads in squares or rectangle? Can you frame them up more creatively?
However, be sure not to be too creative.

This example is from Plan59
The ads are in a retro-looking trapezium with shadow effect.

Another example from Karen Cheng
Great looking torn-carton background for the ads.
DisorientationIf you can’t convince them, confuse them. As Seth Godin suggested, you do not want the user to see something familar which they will ignore. Some research has even shown that messy design works better.
Take a look a this example from MyMoneyForest
Where do I start clicking? Maybe one of those ads.

Have you come across any other interesting ads placement ideas to share?

Random Posts

How to get unbanned from Adsense

Ken — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 03:54:25 +0000

Getting banned from Adsense is one of the most dreaded event for an online revenue seeker. So much so that there is now a forum devoted to it – iambanned.com.

You can see from the forum that there are 20 topics of websites being banned and 2 topics of websites being reinstated.

How to get reinstated from Adsense?

From anecdotes found online, it seems that the only way is to send in a well-researched email with supporting information to Google and pray.

Here is what Andrew did,

After I calmed down a bit, I wrote to Ad Sense. I first explained that I have never violate the TOS nor clicked any of my own ads. I further explained that I had reported the unusually high clicks twice. I also pointed out my IP address and told them they needed to check their records as they would find no clicks from that IP. I commented on how it was unfair to penalize publishers for click fraud when they have nothing to do with the attack, and have no way to control or stop such an attack. I also started searching and sent similar emails to everyone from Google I could find. I even wrote to the guy that writes the Google Blog. LOL I was desperate for someone to help.

Another example from SarahG’s friend.

Random Posts

New Adsense ads style?

Ken — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 04:36:41 +0000

Today I came across these 2 ads format on 2 separate sites. I thought hey maybe a new publisher ad source to check out.

On closer look, the links go to googlesyndication. Upon looking at the HTML code, they are indeed Adsense ad units.

Anyone seen this format style before?

On a similar note, many people are discovering other new test format.

Jensense reported New AdSense “Vertical Images” within ad units
Problogger reported a year ago of a test Fully Customizable Ads Blocks. Have not seen those around yet.
Another format is the “Change to ads about” format where you can change the ads shown. I had seen this on some of my sites and didn’t realise it!
Update: It seems like this was an old format that had appeared before.

Random Posts

What is happening at AdBrite?

Ken — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 05:45:38 +0000

Since last week, I had been unable to get report from Adbrite. A long wait and database error message was shown even time I click on Report.

Even signing in is frequently a problem.

Today I notice the graphic button on the right was missing, so I went o AdBrite’s site and found the site in this state.

A case of too much traffic and cannot cope? Or sign of trouble?