Open Letter To Google Blogger Team

Dear Blogger Team,

I'd like to share some of my thoughts about some of the things you've been doing lately and my concerns over the general direction you're heading in.

You've created a great service and I appreciate the effort you've put into both making it freely available and making it better. You understand that there was a serious need to enhance Blogger reader's presentation and have done something really cool with Dynamic Views.

Dynamic Views are a great leap forward. My issue is, it might be too big of a leap and I don't think the current Internet ecosystem is ready for it.

You seem to have favored Dynamic Views rather than making minor yet significant enhancements to the current templating system which is in major need of updates.

Updating the current template system to provide more options to template designers first, and building Dynamic Views on top of it by allowing the new Dynamic Views components to reuse the old Blogger tags would have been a better course IMO.

Below I've tried to explain why I disagree with the current direction and give suggestions on how to improve the current Layout system.

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Blogger vs Wordpress

Blogging is a cheap and easy way for people who don't know how to build their own website to start making money online. All you have to be able to do is write interesting articles. Two popular free blogging platforms are Blogger and WordPress.

If you're just starting out and plan to make money blogging you should choose Blogger even though I think WordPress is a more powerful blogging platform.

It seems a little strange to not pick the best tool but I also believe in picking the right tool for the right job. As I'll explain, Blogger is better than WordPress if you're just starting out.

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How SEO and IM Became Four Letter Words

I just saw Matt Cutts response to the Scamworld video via a post on SaltyDroid.

Matt's tweet in response didn't come as a shock. Internet Marketers and SEOs seem to go hand in hand and Matt has a strong relationship with the SEO community being he's the devine messenger sent down from the top of Mount View to help those of us looking to put things online stay in Google's good graces.

Oh my: "Internet Marketer — a 21st century snake oil salesman." Painting with a broad brush here: goo.gl/MXjSC techmeme.com/120510/p38#a12…
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 10, 2012

I have respect for what Matt Cutts has been doing to combat webspam at Google but I disagree with him here. While there may have been a time that SEO and IM had a more legitimate meaning (err maybe just SEO), the titles have generally been corrupted. Maybe a little history lesson will help.

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AdSense Backup Ads Using Amazon Affiliate and Commission Junction

When AdSense does not have advertisers to fill your ad slot it displays a blank space by default which doesn't exactly maximize your revenue potential. A better solution is to display alternate ads. In this post I'll show you how to easily set up your AdSense Backup Ads to display either Commission Junction Smart Zones or Amazon Affiliate ads.

Both Amazon and Commission Junction run large, well-respected affiliate programs that can help you earn money from space that would otherwise be left blank. The process is very simple and you only need to know some basic HTML and CSS as well as have the ability to upload files to your website.

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What AdSense Categories You Should Block

Google AdSense has been enabling AdSense Publishers to have more control over the ads that are displayed on there sites. Two of the ways they've done this are by allowing publishers to block ads based on General and Sensitive Categories.

Using these tools can help you increase your AdSense earnings by showing only ads you think would be relevant to your visitors. It can also hurt your earnings if you're not careful.

So which categories should you block and which should you allow?

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Deceptive Ads and Invalid Clicks

I've been noticing a strange AdWords trend that has me really concerned about how it might affect me as an AdSense publisher. I keep seeing very deceptive ads that I'm sure generate invalid clicks through no fault of the AdSense publisher.

These ads have turned up on various sites but today I found one on this very blog as I was previewing my last article.

The ads are disguised so they don't look like ads. The example I included in the screenshot above even closely matches the colors of my site's template.

From time to time I notice a new AdSense click that has high earnings (5-10x my average EPC), then a short time later the click is still there but the revenue has vanished

In some cases it seems these ads are a willful attempt to get more impressions and more clicks but not have to pay for it. The scam appears to go like this:

1. Create an ad that looks nothing like an ad.
2. Make sure the ad can be confused with the content of the sites it's likely to be displayed on.
3. Bid very high for your ad placements.
4. Hope the ads generate a lot of invalid clicks so you get a discount.

Is anything being done about this? Are these types of ads potentially putting my AdSense account at risk of being disabled?

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How To Name AdSense Items

When you create an AdSense Ad Unit, Link Unit, Channel or other item you can give it a unique name to help you find it later when editing it or viewing reports.

By default a fairly non descriptive name is given to the item but I recommend you do not use it. Instead create a more descriptive name.

I thought I'd share the naming convention I use with AdSense that I've found to be very helpful especially now that AdSense has upgraded to the new AdSense interface.

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Why I Don't Use StatCounter To Track AdSense Clicks

A lot of people have been using services like StatCounter to track AdSense clicks as well as for gathering other information about their website visitors.

StatCounter is the most popular free service that offers the ability to track AdSense, Amazon and other affiliate ad clicks but I don't mean to single them out. I think it's a bad idea in general to give access to information about your site's visitors and what AdSense, Amazon or other affiliate ads your visitors click on. It is something that could potentially reduce your earnings.

Not many things in life are free and it's hard to imagine a company is giving you access to their service and not getting anything out of it. They have servers and bandwidth to pay for as well as salaries for their staff.

StatCounter claims that they make their revenue through advertisements on their website, they do not put ads on your site and you can even have their tracker hidden so it's not visible on your website. But is StatCounter getting more out of the deal?

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AdSense Revenues Increase But Publishers Keep Less

Today, January 22, 2009, Google filed their 2008 Annual report which includes information for the 4th quarter of 2008. In it is information that AdSense publishers will find interesting.

Google reported that they received 18% more clicks in 4Q08 than they did in the fourth quarter of 2007 and 10% more than the third quarter of 2008. That's total clicks across Google's own sites and sites within the AdSense network. Combined ad revenue increased 15.71% compared to 4Q07 and 2.85% compared to 3Q08. Unfortunately they don't break down clicks between Google's sites and AdSense publisher sites.

Many publishers have been complaining that there was a drop in AdSense revenues last quarter, even though click-through rate (CTR) and impressions remained the same. As we can see in the published SEC documents, even though Google received a lot more clicks last quarter, the increase in revenues only rose slightly. The cost per click (CPC) has declined, which Google has consistently stated in their quarterly reports.

AdSense publishers seemed to have taken the brunt of the hit caused by the economic downturn and US recession. While the Google earnings conference call said that AdSense revenues increased, that was misleading, AdSense publishers actually made less in Q4 than they did in Q3.

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Web 2. Oh No! The End of the Attention Economy?

Last Tuesday, I was wondering if Google might be dropping AdSense because of the weaker performance in recent years. My opinion was that it would be likely, but it seems that Google took other measures to cut costs. What could this mean to those that are fighting it out to make a fortune in the Web 2.0 world that exists because of the Attention Economy?

This past weekend, the blogosphere was buzzing about Google's announcement that they will be discontinuing some of their services; Notebook, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Mashup Editor, Catalog Search and turning off uploads on Google Video. In addition, they are terminating contracts with external recruiters, cutting 100 internal positions and closing down engineering offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden; relocating the workers to Mountain View, California. They also reduced the account limit on Google Apps from 100 down to 50. No doubt in an effort to get more revenue from it.

These services weren't very popular by Google standards and you probably haven't heard of most of them. The real story here isn't that some people may not have access to these services, but rather, is this the warning bell for Web 2.0 companies who make their living in the Attention Marketplace?

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Google Updates AdSense Appeal Form For Disabled Accounts

I just noticed that Google has updated their AdSense Appeal Form. No, my account wasn't disabled.

The AdSense appeal form is for users that had their AdSense account disabled mainly for invalid clicks. The old appeal form, used the words Invalid Clicks while this new appeal form is titled Invalid Activity.

Lately, it seems like many people have been complaining about losing their AdSense account. Google is possibly cleaning house or has come up with a better way of detecting policy violations and click fraud. Along with that comes a large number of appeals. Google seems to want to make it easier for disabled account holders to provide the correct information in their appeal.

Some of the questions they've added to the form are quite interesting. I'll review the new questions and an explanation of them.

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Don't Worry About Optimizing Ad Placement

First let me say that testing your ad placements, ad formats and appearance is very important. Whether you're using AdSense or some other CPC program, using CPM or affiliate network, the benefits you get from optimizing and testing can be great.

So why would I tell you not to worry about it? Because there might be better things you can do to increase your ad revenue. This is primarily geared towards new sites or sites with not much traffic.

Instead, I'll give you some advice on the main things you need to be concerned about with AdSense Optimization, and optimizing banner ads and more importantly, the things you should be doing instead.

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Why Does Google Disable AdSense Accounts When they Reach $100?

You decide to build a site or start blogging and you throw some AdSense ads to try to cover some of your costs and time. You're not trying to make it a million dollar business, but you're happy to maybe get a six-pack once in a while for your efforts.

When you started, you weren't sure if you'd make any money with AdSense, but you see that you're doing better than you expected. Google doesn't pay you until you reach $100, and that might take you a while at the rate you're going. So you just churn out your pages and promote your site and wait for the check to come. Maybe you decide to put in a little extra time because of how much you're making.

Unfortunately, just after you clear that $100 mark, you get an email from Google telling you they're disabling your account. You're not sure why, and the email doesn't really clear it up.

Why does that happen?

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AdSense vs Affiliate Banners

Google's AdSense is a very popular way people who make money online earn revenues. It is not the only option though.

In many cases AdSense does not have the most profit potential, but it is the most profitable for many content sites. The reason for this is that AdSense is very easy to use and the targeting behind it is very sophisticated. With affiliate marketing you're going to need to do a bit of work. You can't just throw some affiliate banners on your site and expect to cash big checks.

I'm going to describe how the two work, as well as give some tips that might help you make the most out of them such as when to pick one over the other and how to use them both together. I'm leaving out Amazon as an affiliate in this one and dealing strictly with Affiliate Networks. Amazon is a slightly different beast but some of what's described here can apply.

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White Hat Vs Black Hat AdSense Tips

I'm always looking for new tips and techniques to help increase AdSense revenues and this past weekend I had an opportunity to read a number of eBooks on the subject.

I didn't purchase them myself, someone asked for my opinion on them and I was curious so I gave them a read. Three stood out as names I recognized. Two had Black Hat AdSense tips and one had White Hat AdSense tips. All three covered more than just AdSense

All three eBooks were written by people you've likely heard about if you've researched how to make money online. The things I discovered were quite surprising.

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Google Dropping AdSense?

A few days ago in a post about whether Google was being fair to AdSense publishers, I mentioned how Google's share of AdSense revenue has actually been declining in the past year. In the beginning of 2007, Google gave an average of around 84% of revenue earned through AdSense back to publishers, but in the last 4 reported quarters, it's been 89%.

AdSense revenue also seems to have stalled, while revenue from Google's other web sites continues to grow. In 1Q04 Google kept $63 million from adsense compared to the $303 million they earned from their site. But in 3Q04 they only kept $184 million from AdSense which is tiny compared to the $3.67 billion in ad revenue they generated on their own sites. You can see how much it's fallen in the following chart.

Looking at these numbers, I have to wonder if Google might be thinking AdSense might be more trouble than it's worth?

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How To Get More Traffic From Yahoo and MSN/Live.com

If you're like me, then you likely look at the web stats and see how much traffic you're getting from Google and wish you could even get half as much from the other big search engines, Yahoo! and MSN/Live.

The bad news is you aren't likely to get a significant amount of traffic from the other search engines. It's a pretty simple reason. The other search engines just don't get that much searchers compared to Google, as you can see from this chart created from data by hitwise. Other services that track search engine searches show similar info.

Many webmasters I've talked to, responses I've seen on forums and blogs, as well as my own personal experience seems to indicate that even if you rank better with the other search engines, you're likely to still get more traffic from Google. I've seen this even when one of my sites is the first result for one of the other search engines.

There is only so much you can do to get more traffic from Yahoo or Microsoft, but if it looks like you might be able to squeeze a little more out of it you might want to spend the time. Many people find that while you might not get a significant increase in traffic, the traffic you do get converts quite well. For instance, on one site I find that visitors from MSN search have a higher AdSense Click Through Rate (CTR) than from other sources. On another site, I've noticed that Yahoo! visitors tended to buy more products.

This isn't always the case, but it's still worth putting in a little effort to see what happens. I'll cover some of the things you can do to try to increase your search engine traffic from Yahoo and Microsoft.

So far it's been working with Yahoo! but Microsoft is showing promise but still hardly indexed the site I'm using as an example.

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Is Google Fair to AdSense Publishers?

There has been much discussion lately on blogs, forums and even the AdSense Support Forum from publishers reporting that they've seen some pretty big drops in AdSense revenues.

By now, everyone should know about the global economic crisis and there's no denying that the US is in a recession. Advertising gets hit hard during a recession and many publishers are taking notice.

I decided to take a look at numbers Google files with the SEC related to its advertising and AdSense in particular to see what's going on. I've included some charts to help interpret the data. The last quarterly report filed was in September and the annual report hasn't been filed yet. I'll revisit this subject when it does.

From what I've seen, Google seems to be very fair to its publishers in some ways, maybe could improve in some other areas but most importantly, there might be cause for concern if you rely on your AdSense revenue in these tough times.

How much does Google keep from AdSense clicks?

This is likely different from publisher to publisher, especially when it comes to those that get invited to be premier publishers and can negotiate their own terms, but Google does list the revenue generated by AdSense and how much goes to the AdSense publishers in their SEC filings. The chart on the right shows the publishers share in red and Google's share in blue.

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Blocking Spam and Scrapers With IPFilter

One of the most annoying things you need to deal with when you develop websites is spam and content scrapers.

If you allow people to contribute to your site by providing the ability to participate in forums, leave comments on blogs, etc. you will find that people will come to your site and try to leave links to promote their sites. Many of these links are to sites that search engines consider bad neighborhoods and would penalize you for linking to. Spam also degrades your real user's experience.

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Bloggers using Java

Some popular services that bloggers use, use Java. Two of them are Blogger and FeedBurner.

This may not be big news to some, but it's not something that has been publicized much. There's a lot of buzz on other web programming languages such as PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, Perl, etc. So I thought I'd take the time to highlight these sites and others that use Java.

You'd think that anything related to Web 2.0 would be about RoR, LAMP, etc. Not Java, which has been around since mid 90's and has been used on many popular sites.

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