Written on September 30th, 2005 at 09:09 am by Darren Rowse
Google Electronic Funds Tranfer System Comes out of Beta
Adsense has come out of beta with their Electronic Funds Transfer payment system. It is still only available to those in the lucky 16 countries but at least some of you out there are going to have a nice seamless payment system from now on. Enjoy.
Thanks to IO ERROR for the tip
Written on September 29th, 2005 at 03:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Fastclick Review
Duncan at Blog Herald has a good review of the adverising system Fastclick over at Blog Herald. It’s a good up to date review which leaves my old one for dead.
I find Fastclick useful on my high traffic sites (the Olympic games was great for it with some massive traffic) but on smaller ones its pretty average performing when compared to other systems. I also find a lot of their ads plain annoying.
Have a read of Duncan’s review though and see if its good for your blog.
Written on September 29th, 2005 at 02:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Adsense testing ‘Advertise on This Site’ Feature
Google Adsense are testing a new Adsense feature called ‘Advertise on this site’ which you can see in action on some pages at ask the builder. I’ve included this screen capture and have highlighted the link that sends advertisers to this page where they are told about the site and then invited to sign up as an advertiser for it through Adwords.
This is no doubt a strategy for increasing the amount of advertisers in the Adwords system and hopefully will attract advertisers to buy advertising on specific sites. Both of these should benefit Adsense publishers.
It will be an interesting one to watch.
Found via Ask Dave Taylor
update: Read more about this feature at Google’s Adwords Help Section on the topic.
Written on September 29th, 2005 at 03:09 am by Darren Rowse
Jason on Blog Networks Revenue Share
Martin has an interesting post on Blog Networks with some comments about internetusers especially. Interesting in the comments section are some reflections by Jason Calacanis from WeblogsInc who comments on the idea of revenue sharing as opposed to paying bloggers outright.
While WIN have gone for the paying of bloggers outright after their bloggers reacted against a revenue share/split model - Jason writes that perhaps things have changed now with more bloggers wanting to explore making an income from blogging and as a result an increased number of bloggers willing to do the revenue share thing. He writes:
However, it’s different today - there might be many more people out there to work for a future share of revenue. So, I think B5 and 9rules will both do very well in this space. In fact, it’s the most under serviced space right now, so they have the market all to themselves.
I think that there is some sense in this. What interests me is that despite the criticism of b5’s revenue share model by a few people - we’ve had over 100 bloggers have applied to write for the network - with more pitches arriving in our inboxes every day. These applicants are not your niave, ignorant or inexperienced bloggers either - they know what they are doing and know where they want to blog. Something is going on here.
Also interesting are Jason’s comments about how much their bloggers currently earn:
Today we have over 130 people getting a check every month. The average WIN blogger is doing 80+ blog posts a month (or ~3 day). some folks make a couple of hundreds bucks, some folks a couple of thousand.
Written on September 28th, 2005 at 11:09 pm by Darren Rowse
The blogging toolkit
Phil at Geeky Info (one of my favorite blogs of late) has an interesting post titled the blogging toolkit where he asks readers to come up with a list of software tools that they use in their blogging workflow:
‘So, I started thinking about the software tools that I use for blogging. I thought I would share them with you and see if anyone had some other suggestions of software tools that help them blog. Your list does not need to be the tools that you would never give up, even if you were on a desert island type scenario but just what you find useful – even if you use the tool only occasionally for blogging.’
Interesting topic - I’m looking forward to seeing what people write. Head over to Geeky Info to leave your list of blogging tools.
Written on September 28th, 2005 at 01:09 am by Darren Rowse
Chitika eMiniMalls Review
If you read this review of Chitika eMiniMalls and sign up - you might also be interested in my Chitika eMiniMall Tips Page and my post revealing how much Chitika eMiniMalls earn me.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been a part of a beta testing program of a new ad format for Chitika’s eMiniMalls.
They are a new type of ad that many of you will find quite beneficial for your blogs - I know I have. You’ve probably seen them around. They come in a range of sizes but usually have a picture of a product and then some tabs running across the top that say ‘Description’, ‘Best Deals’, ‘Reviews’ and ‘Search’. As you put the cursor over the top of these tabs they change what the ad shows.
I’ve added one to the sidebar here at enternetusers so you can see what I’m talking about in the flesh and have added a screen capture of another sized one below.
How do they work?
- ads pay on a per click basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured.
- left in default mode - mini-malls are contextual ads (ie they look at your content and try to find ads that are relevant with it)
- ads can be set to be non contextual and to target specific keywords (this is helpful when it comes to running them in conjunction with Adsense - more information on this below).
How Profitable are they?
The terms of using eMiniMalls don’t allow me to share specific figures but I can share the following:
Overall - I’ve been beta testing mini-malls for 5 weeks now and am very happy with them. They don’t out perform Adsense for me yet - but my overall earnings with them for the month of September is more than a quarter and less than a half of my Adsense earnings for the month (regularly readers will be able to do some sums and come up with some approximate earnings there). Take into consideration that I don’t have them running on every blog I own and have not spent much time optimizing them yet and you’ll see that they have some real potential.
Cost per Click - Very good. The first day I added mini malls to and saw the amount that each click was paying I was quite surprised. They are considerably higher than my average click value on Adsense - some days they are 5 or 6 times higher. I’ve talked to a couple of other bloggers using them and they report similar click values. This is the definate strength of mini-malls.
Click Through Rate - The percentage of people clicking on eMiniMalls ads is considerably lower than what I get on Adsense. This is a bit disappointing and is probably for a number of reasons.
- Poor Optimization - This is partly my fault. I’ve just not had time to really optimize the ads properly. It is also partly because they are not currently offering channels to track ad performance on different blogs/categories/positions. As a result if I were to try to optimize the ads now I have no way of tracking the results. Channels are a feature that will be added shortly however so I’m expecting to be able to increase my CTR somewhat.
- Poor Ad matching - Chitika are still working on how they match ads with content. Ad relevancy seems to be a bit of a problem on some posts. I know this because I know they have ads for some products that just don’t show up on pages where i’d expect them to. Hopefully they’ll continue to develop their algorithm and find ways of making ads even more relevant.
- Lower Numbers of Ads - I’m suspecting that Chitika has a lower number of ads than Adsense to select from to run on sites using mini-malls. This means that sometimes ads can be a little irrelevant to your content which would decrease CTR also.
Let’s hope they can increase CTR in future.
Reports - I’ll emphasize that mini-malls are in beta at present so don’t expect too much in the reporting realm yet. At this stage they just update at the end of each day and give you some basic stats under the four headings of - Date, Impressions, Clicks and Revenue. These stats are what they call ‘unaudited’ - which means they haven’t taken anything off the total that they suspect to be click fraud or ‘dodgy’ clicks. They ‘audit’ you at this stage once per month (they have indicated that this will happen daily at some point in the future). I was only in the system for three days of last month but the auditing brought my ‘unaudited’ figures back by about 10% of what they were. Clicks are audited by some secret process that includes multiple or repeated clicks, traffic from bots and spiders as well as traffic coming from certain countries like China or Korea.
I’m not too impressed by the auditing feature. While I understand why its there I can see that this will be the cause of some tension between Chitika and Publishers. I’m sure Adsense has some sort of system in place that does something similar - but they are big enough to build it in as a real time feature so that publishers just don’t know what they lose. I’d rather not know the amount they take off for this than have it dangled before me to be taken away later.
I know from my conversations with Chitika staff that the reporting system will be undergoing significant improvements in the coming weeks and months.
Ad Formats - The currently offer 10 different size formats in some pretty standard sizes. I’ve recommended to them that they add a couple of new formats that I believe would be beneficial to bloggers but overall the options are pretty good. They also allow you to make some changes to the design of your ads by changing colors of borders, title and text to match your blog.
Payment - Payment is via Paypal in US Dollars at the start of every month - around 30 days after the end of the month you’re being paid for. You need to reach a minimum of $10 to get a payment.
Can Mini-Malls be used in conjunction with Adsense? - Most people I talk to about mini-malls asks this - it’s important as most bloggers want to use them in conjunction with one another.
I’ve talked to Google about this via email. The first email I got back from them said ‘no’ you can’t use them for two reasons:
- They look too similar to Adsense Ads
- They are contextual ads
I decided to follow the email up pointing out two things.
- They actually don’t look like Adsense ads - they have a picture in them, tabs etc. I think the mistake Adsense made at first was in confusing mini-malls with Chitika’s other ads which do look very similar to Adsense ads.
- You can actually disable the contextual element of the ads and plug in code that targets a specific product.
The email I received back said that they were sorry for making a mistake and that Chitika mini-mall ads can be used in conjunction with Adsense IF they are set to be non contextual.
I know of two others who have had this same conversation with Google with the same results.
English Sites only - at this point they are in beta test and only accepting Engine sites into the program. While this is sad for non English sites I guess they have to start somewhere. Hopefully they’ll widen it later at some point.
All in all - I’m pleased with Chitika’s mini-malls. They have loads of potential. I suspect (and until I get channels I won’t know for sure) that they will do best on product related blogs. They seem to serve very relevant ads to my gadget type blogs and struggle on some of my more ‘news’ related blogs.
I’ve also seen them producing very relevant ads over at ShoeBlogs (remember in the interview I did with Manolo that he said that chitika ads were in some of his better performing ads). I’ve also seen a couple of bloggers so impressed with mini-malls that they’ve ditched Adsense all together as they were able to earn significantly more from Chitika (one of these is Jeremy Wright from ensight.
As with all new ad programs I would suggest that putting all your eggs in one basket is not the way to go - give Chitika a go by all means but keep in mind that eMiniMalls are in a beta test and as with all beta tests things are being tested and tweaked along the way. There is promising signs but take your time with it.
You can apply to be a part of the eMiniMalls beta test at Chitika Mini Malls Sign Up.
Disclaimer: the links to Chitika in this post are affiliate links - if you sign up using these links I earn a small amount as a commission. It does not impact what you earn from Chitika but rather is paid by Chitika. While these links are affiliate links I genuinely believe in the product and have pointed out both its benefits and weaknesses.
Update: A couple of people have asked for more information on the Adsense/Mini-mall running on the same page thing. Here is an excerpt from an email that Google sent associates and I when we asked them for clarification about running the mini-malls in a non contextual mode.
‘Yes, you can use the Chitika products that rely on keywords selected by
you as opposed to your site’s content, on your site in addition to Google
ads.For additional questions, please visit our AdSense Support site at
https://www.google.com/support/adsense or feel free to reply to this
email.’
Update II
If you’re one of the many bloggers who have just signed up for Chitika eMiniMalls after reading this review you might like to check out Quick Online Tips who have just posted tips on running Chitika eMiniMalls & Google Adsense on Same Webpage.
There they give code that helps you to set your eMiniMalls up in a way that is non contextual (and is therefore allowable with Adsense) but in a way that rotates a variety of ads which will help you to get a bit of variety in your ads which will help combat ad blindness.
I’ve been using this rotating ads code over the past day or two and have noticed an increase in earnings already.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that the bloggers that are reporting the best successes with eMiniMalls are the ones that are targeting products on their blogs. I know I mentioned this above - but bloggers with a focus upon gadgets, clothes, shoes etc seem to be doing very well from them.
Update III - I’ve added a Chitika eMiniMall Tips Page for those of you who have signed up. Enjoy.
Share what you’ve learnt about eMiniMalls below in comments.
Written on September 27th, 2005 at 03:09 pm by Darren Rowse
PubSub Top 1000 Sites with Feeds
PubSub have published a list of the top 1000 most influential sites on the web that publish feeds. The list is based upon links to these sites over the past 30 days. It includes not only blogs but newspapers and other sites of various types. It’s an interesting list to keep an eye on as it will give you an indication as to what people are into at any given time.
It seems that these lists are becoming a must have for site tracking sites at the moment. Last month it was Feedster’s Top 500 (must be due for it’s monthly update soon) in the spotlight. Blog Pulse also have a top 40 - but its not as highly publicized.
Congratulations to a couple of our favorite blogs for making the list including MicroPersuasion (#265) and Blog Herald (#297) who both put me onto the list. Thanks to for enternetusers readers who’ve helped us get to #326. We’ll have to work on breaking into that top 300 next so we get invited to the events that those like Duncan and Steve in the 200’s get invited to.
Written on September 27th, 2005 at 02:09 pm by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Readers Fly High in Style
Tim Flight emailed me this morning to show me a picture of him and Jeremy Wright on an outing on the weekend where they went flying together.
Take a closer look at the picture and you’ll note that Tim (on the left) is not only flying high - but he’s flying with real style while wearing a enternetusers T-Shirt. Click to enlarge the picture for a better look.
Of course - the offer still stands. Anyone who buys a enternetusers T-Shirt, Bag, cap, mug etc and sends us a picture of them wearing it gets the picture published with a link back to their blog.
Written on September 27th, 2005 at 12:09 pm by Darren Rowse
MSN Preparing for Contextual Advertising
Jen has the news that we’ve all been expecting - signs that MSN are getting ready to get into contextual advertising. Jen talks about one of the advantages that MSN has - the ability to target demographics:
Because MSN AdCenter will feature options of target ads to particular demographics, including age and gender, this could allow publishers greater flexibility in what ads they show. For instance, I have a few sites targeting female audiences… if I could include this information in the MSN contextual ad platform, these sites could be given higher priority to showing ads that advertisers are targeting female audiences. This combined with other targeting methods could result in high paying ads for publishers and good CTR and ROI for advertisers.
It’s going to be interesting to see where all this ends up and to track the impact that MSN’s ad system has upon Adsense and YPN.
Written on September 27th, 2005 at 12:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Fine Fools Community - Foolish or Smart?
Scrivs from 9rules network has started another network (although he’s not calling it a network) of blogs called Fine Fools Community.
What is it?
Scrivs talked a couple of days ago about wanting to mobilize some of his older idle sites by getting others writing on them. He decided to give his authors 100% of whatever their posts earned from Adsense/YPN. It currently has 8 blogs on it on a variety of topics.
He’s promoting it as a foolish idea - however I don’t believe that it is - at least its not on some levels.
While giving authors 100% of Adsense and Yahoo revenue might sound a stupid move by Scrivs its actually not - don’t worry - he isn’t completely missing out on benefits of the blogs here. What does he get?
- Adsense and YPN ad revenue on front page and category pages. Authors make money from the contextual ads on their own pages - Scrivs presumably takes anything generated elsewhere on the site.
- Other Advertising. The agreement says nothing of sponsorship deals, affiliate programs, shop sales. Scrivs has previously made serious money from shops on his sites and has talked about sponsorship deals on his other sites off an on for a while.
- Page Rank. One of the benefits of involving others in your blog is a more Active/fresh site that has the ability to grow in it’s search engine ranking. This will benefit his authors but also himself and the posts that he chooses to write on these blogs.
- Referral Traffic - Scrivs has control over what appears on sidebars and menu etc and will refer to the sites he chooses. One of the stated reasons for starting Fine Fools is to refer traffic back to 9rules (and presumably any other sites he wants to start).
- Departed members Content - the members agreement states that the authors have their publisher code left on any articles that they write for 90 days after they leave the network. Over the long term members will come and go. Thousands of archives can be a lucrative asset.
- Site Sales - Scrivs has previously sold sites for some pretty decent money. There is nothing to stop him doing so in this case. Members are effectively fattening his blogs up for market.
Now I’m not suggesting that Scrivs is evil or sneaky or hiding anything here. I’ve got nothing at all against bloggers making money from blogs or involving others in doing so - all I’m really doing here is exploring why offering authors 100% of income might be a worthwhile (and perhaps smart) thing to do.
What do you think about Scriv’s approach?
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