Google recently annouced an improved AdSense for search.

After reading it on the AdSense blog I went and checked it out in my AdSense account. You have a had time believing this is not Photoshopped. It is a screen capture I made when it happened.

It is nice to know even someone that defines quality websites like Google can have problems too.

I’m not sure why the sample was messed up. Could it have been a browser glitch? I was using FireFox. Was Google’s CSS messed up?

I know the improvement was in the way Search works not the look.

I still think it was pretty funny. Anyone else notice this happen when they announced it a while ago? I am sure it is fixed by now.

Google wrongly labels Alphatrends.net and blocks author’s access.

Is your blog safe?

Alphatrends is the BlogSpot home for Brain Shannon’s financial videos.

His analysis of stock trading videos are some of the most subscribed financial videos on YouTube. He has over 600 videos and over 5000 YouTube subscribers. He posts a video on stock analysis daily at his blog. Here is an example:

Friday, I got a message through MyBlogLog that he was unable to update his blog because Google was blocking him as a spam blog.

My first reaction was "You’ve got to be kidding." One look at Brian’s videos will show you they are not spam. The is quality content. In fact, most of it is a bit over my head, but I want to learn about stocks and subscribe to his blog because, eventually, I’ll understand. His blog consists of his daily videos and an occasional post about something related.

Alphatrends is not a site you would think could be labeled as spam.

Brian has a PR from Google of 5. He has an Alexa rating of 159,700. This is a financial blog, not a blog that is going to attract lots of readers with an Alexa toolbar. In other words, Alphatrends has good links and decent traffic. I think it is from the content and not from Brian working hard promoting his blog.

Brian is back up on Alphatrends.

Usually, Google is quick to fix these situations. It still takes time. If your label as spam by Google, you get no warning. You are guilty until proven innocent. That can take a couple days. I noticed that while Brian was not able to update his blog, AdSense was still advertising. What happens if your AdSense account gets labeled as spam also? You would not be able to remove it from the blog as Google blocks your updates and still keeps the blog showing. You better hope they let you back in.

I think this is a good example of why any blogger should look into their own hosting.

Brian has a domain name already Alphatrends.net. All he would need is hosting and he would not have been cut off from his blog. With your own hosting, even with a bad host, you should at least have a warning before something like this would happen. In Brian’s case, I doubt if any host would have considered a complaint against him valid.

If you are using WordPress.com or Blogger/Blogspot you are adding an unnecessary risk with your business.

If you are looking into stock trading, Alphatrends is a blog you should look at.

Brian Shannon does not give investment advice. He teaches how to understand stocks and evaluate them technically.

For Alpahtrends.net maybe hosting might be a good investment at $10/month.

The AdSense Program is Free!

This is almost unbelievable!

A few weeks ago the Inside AdSense blog had a post about people thinking they had paid to join the AdSense program.

The complaint they had is that they had been rejected after paying. In some cases, the purchase was for a CD.

I am not even sure this is a scam or just outright stupidity.

When I first read the post, the idea of one company charging someone to join a program run by another program seemed like an outright scam. It is. After reading some of the comments left on the post over the past weeks, I begin to wonder if these people (those who were scammed) really just paid money and never read what they were doing. I would like to see one of these sites.

Some of the comments on the Inside AdSense blog were jaw-dropping.

• One person did not even seem to read the post. He was still confused because he had read you needed to by a CD that came with a free Website.
• One person wanted to know how to blog and advertise.
• One person had gotten an AdSense account but still did not know how he was supposed to make money.

There was a point that some of the programs the post was referring to used AdWords to Advertise.

This commenter wondered if Google was partially responsible. Maybe just a bit, but I would hate to see Google trying to check all the AdSense ads under this kind of scrutiny. It would take forever for ads to be approved and we would not have as many advertisers using the AdSense program. Not because they are bad, just because of the extended hassle advertisers would face.

It does not cost anything to join the AdSense program.

You do not need to buy a CD. You do not go through another company. You only work with Google. You will need a Website that they will approve I believe, but that is all. If you do not have a Website, you have no way of using AdSense. You can make a free Blogger blog and get into the AdSense program with that, but you need to actually have created content first.

If you blog, create Websites, or do Internet Marketing the Inside AdSense blog is a must subscribe.

It is a good source of information on many topics you need to be familiar with, including AdSense. Even if you are not in the AdSense program. It is also good for entertainment as well. I find it amazing that John Chow has more subscribers than Inside AdSense.

Check out the Inside AdSense post below.

What do you think? Are some people just too stupid? Were they looking for instant money? Was this an outright scam? Was it totally misleading? Were these people purchasing a Website and thinking they were purchasing the right to the AdSense program? Do you think Google shares in the responsibility?

Inside AdSense: A word of caution A word of caution Of late, we’ve received a few emails from new AdSense applicants about not being accepted into the program despite paying a specific amount of money or buying a CD package. We’d like to take this opportunity to state that we’re not affiliated with any third-parties that solicit payment to join the AdSense program or that sell CDs with money-back guarantee offers. AdSense is a free product offered to publishers by Google Inc., and there’s no cost or obligation involved. As a result, we recommend that prospective publishers exercise caution when presented with such offers.

 Let me know what you think about the AdSense scam.

I am bringing AdSense back to this blog.

Most readers should never see them!

One of the many features of the Semiologic Pro theme is that is comes with the Who Sees Ads plugin built in. I am setting it up so AdSense only shows for readers who come from search engines. I’ll first show you a bit about the Who Sees Ads pluging then I will explain why, after no AdSense ads for over a year, I would bring them back.

Here is a screenshot of the Who Sees Ads plugin in the Semiologic theme.

The Who Sees Ads plugin allows you to control when an ad shows and who it shows to.

You can set an ad to show to a reader only the first time they visit or show for a particular number of times a visitor visits and then not again. The plugin allows you to have an ad not show until a post is older.

One other feature of the Semiologic Pro theme is that nearly everything on the blog is widgetized.

This makes arranging just about everything related to your blog as easy as arranging the widgets in your sidebar. It’s pretty cool.

Here is a screenshot of the widget admin screen in Semiologic Pro

Now, about the return of AdSense.

First, I do not feel that AdSense is something that would be appropriate for most of my readers. Let’s face it, most bloggers that would regularly read this blog avoid clicking AdSense ads out of habit. Also, for social network visitors, an AdSense block right at the top is a bit of a turn off.

AdSense does have an advantage for search engine visitors.

Often, a vistor from a search engine is looking for something related to what is on a page, but the information is not quite what they are looking for. These are the types of vistors that AdSense is good for. AdSense will serve up ads related to the post that may be closer to what the visitor is really looking for. I have posts that get search engine traffic that is probably not related to the main theme of this blog (making money, in case it is not too obvious). The normal ads that I have on this blog are not related to many of the searches that I get.

I am hoping that AdSense will monetize some of this traffic.

Otherwise, it is wasted traffic. At the same time, I want to keep the number of ads for my regular readers to a minimum. I also like to keep some control over ads to regular readers since there is an implied endorsment since they are on my site.

So, if you are a regular reader, no AdSense for you.

Internet marking constantly changing and Keyword Avalanch has changed to NicheRockets.

Why should you care? Keep reading for something really cool (and free) if you are trying to make money online.

What is NicheRockets?

At it’s core, NicheRockets is the same paid forum just like Keyword Avalanche was. In addition to the forum, Keyword Avalanche featured keyword lists that were useful to build niche sites around. However, the Internet marketing world is changing and AdSense does not pay what is used to and keyword lists are not as effective. So to add and keep real value to the forum they increased value of the benefits of being a member.

NicheRockets gives you five businesses in a box on a monthly basis.

More than just five niche sites ready for you to build, they are actually 5 businesses. You get a complete site. Graphics and template plus articles for content. You also get a complete Nichebot keyword search so you can change the content for your articles and know what keywords are hot. The real kicker is the product. A quality ebook for the niche site with sales page. That is not just one, but five per month. All you need is a domain, hosting, and to set it up.

Why not just sites and articles?

The fact is, Adsense is not as great as it used to be. Having a product to sell can really help create a true income from the sites. Let’s face it, if 10 out of 100 visitors click an Adsense ad, you are lucky to make $10 from all of them and in most cases you will make less than $1 from those 10 clicks. Now, if just 2 visitors buy your product, you’ve made over $20 instead. Plus, you can run your own AdWords campaign (or even set up your own affiliate system) to send more traffic.

Curious about NicheRockets’ business in a box? A free offer!

NicheRockets has a free business in a box for you to check out. Yep, a free site with content, graphic, product, and sales page and even a Nichebot keyword search done for you. You can even create the site and sell it. It is also not a ebook on making money online!  NicheRockets places the value of this gift at $1000 and it could very well make you more than that if you know what to do. I would suggest you download it right now before they remove it. Use the following link:

Free Business In a Box

What if you do not know how to set up a niche site?

That is where the NicheRockets forum comes in. With NicheRockets you can get complete training. They have videos to guide you each step of the way, including both a more basic system to get you started and guides for a more robust system when you are ready. If you find that you have questions after the videos and instructions, you also can ask in the forum.

The Nichebot forum is a real value by itself.

There is real advice there from people that really make money online. Tim Gorman (who is one of Ezine Articles top authors) shares his advice and experience. You cannot get more practical than a full time Air Force recruiter who makes the kind of money he does online. What he does works! There are other members that give great advice too. While there are not any real "secrets" in internet marketing, there is also advice that cannot be shared "out in the open" that some members feel safe to share in a closed forum like NicheRockets. There are also other products made available to members on the forum including resale rights products to sell that others are paying just to read (and members get them free). Great products, great education and great advice all in one place. What more could you ask for?

How about a $1-7 day NicheRockets trial?

Check it out for 7 days. If you do not like it, $1 is nothing to worry about it. If you do decide to stay (they wouldn’t make this kind of offer if they did not think you would be impressed) you get $50 off the normal monthly subscription. Give the $1 trial a trial and save the $50 on the subscription using the link below:

NicheRockets $1 trial

If you are interested in making money online, NicheRockets may be a good investment for you.

I am not going to tell you it will make you thousands per month. Most people buy the guru ebooks and never make a dime. Sometimes, it is because the information is useless and everyone is already using it. Other times, it is simply because they do not use the information. Ether way, they have wasted the money they spent. Sometimes that can be hundreds or thousands of dollars. You can see the what the NicheRockets product will look like for free and test the forum for just $1. I feel safe recommending that to anyone.

Once more here are the links:

Free NicheRockets business in a box

NicheRockets $1 trial and $50 off monthly subscription

I have been with NicheRockets nearly 2 years.

It is one of the two paid forums/products on internet marketing that I can really recommend. If you just want to run a blog, it may not be for you. If you are looking at eBay, it may not be worth the monthly expense. If you are interested in affiliate income, Adsense, and niche sites, I would think it definitely would be worth it. In any situation though, I would recommend you see for yourself because $1 is nothing that will set you back financially and it may be just what you need.

5 ways to make money with ScratchBack on your site and 4 ways to make money using ScratchBack on other sites.

What in the world is ScratchBack?

Maybe you have seen the widgets like mine around inviting you to be a Top Link or TopSpot?

That is the ScratchBack widget. It works a bit like a PayPal donate button. In this case, whoever tips you also gets a link on your site. That is what separates this from a typical donation to your site. I think it is a good idea.

The links are nofollow.

That should keep Google off your case. You do not have to worry about linking to a "bad neighborhood" as far as the search engines are concerned. You also keep complete editorial control over the links. You set it to let you approve links first or you can cancel links after they are up.

You can also offer small banner-like image links.

It would be nice to be able offer both,but you have to decide which you will have. I think that if you want to offer images this could discourage someone that does not have an image from buying a link. It would be nice to have a text only option for this.

My understanding is that a marketplace is in the works for ScratchBack users.

This should really help blogs sell a few links. I am hoping that it will work a bit like Text Link Ads system. I think TLA is missing a chance by not offering a nofollow option with them. They already have a huge market and I think many would welcome the options they could offer even with nofollow links.

I feel a little more comfortable knowing the links are nofollow versus the links with TLA.

I don’t have to worry about the quality of the site. While I would encourage anyone that might think their link would be controversial to check with me first. I don’t have to be too concerned. As long as the link does not lead to something obscene or a scam, I am most likely to let it stay.

Five ways for making money online with ScratchBack on your site.

1. Keep the cost low and let it bump off, using it as a tip.

The lowest you can set ScratchBack is $1.00. After PayPal fees and ScratchBack’s cut, you get about $.60. That will be a bit less when ScratchBack raises it’s percentage after the Beta.

2. Use it as a moderately priced tip.

Raise the price of a link as they get bought. In a way, you will be auctioning the links off till you find a bit higher price that still seems low enough for others to pay for. The more traffic your site has, the higher this will be. In this case, you may still want to allow newer links to bump off older ones as long as the price is not too high.

3. Use as a replacement for Text Link Ads.

With ScratchBack, you can also set the links to expire after 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days. In this case you will need to set your price accordingly. Right now, it is unreasonable to expect the same amount for a nofollow link that you would have gotten for one that passed PR. Still, if you have good traffic, it should be as useful as CPC text ad on your site to an advertiser.

4. Sell image link ads for higher prices.

I mentioned the trouble with the image ads above. Right now, if you offer image ads, they are all image ads and someone who just wants to tip you will need to make and image that is the correct size first. Still, for the right market, this is a nice option. In graphic niche it should do better. Still it does limit your market. I would go with the monthly expiration for the advertisers. So I came up with a fifth way for making money online with ScratchBack on your site.

5. Offer image ads with a free graphic designed by you.

If you have any graphic experience, it is easy to make a graphic. You can do this very easily with Photoshop Elements. A free option is Gimp. The image size is very small so there really is no need for anything too fancy. I am planning to offer this service with ScratchBack advertisers for a while at www.photographybyjet.com.

4 ways of making money online with ScratchBack when it is on other sites.

1. Advertise your site!

There are many good deals right now since it is new. Find a site with some traffic that still has a low ScratchBack price. If the site is set to bump, you could have a link to your site for several weeks. The trick is finding a site with traffic. Manuel Viloria was the first blogger to buy a link here to his blog.

2. Advertise your spammy site.

Actually, my first advertiser with ScratchBack was a bit on the spammy side. It is a link to a page of different home-based businesses labeled Top Work At Home. While I would not want a full link to a site like this, it is no different than an AdSense ad for a home-based-business. If you have some type of site that would normally not be indexed by Google, this is a good option for getting traffic. Always check with the owner of the page first since they may not approve your link if they do not like it and you will be out your tip.

3. Advertise a product.

Almost like the previous way to make money online with ScratchBack, this is another case where you would not normally get a link from a website or blogger. Jim Kukral (who is behind this whole ScratchBack thing) is the first one I saw using this. Think of it as running an AdWords campaign without a CPC. Jim used a link ad here to send readers to a site selling a cool flip digital video camera that plugs right into your USB port to send the video to your computer.

4. Set up a business creating ScratchBack graphics for advertisers.

Similar to method number 5 of making money online with ScratchBack on your site. In this case set up a page with fees and some design ideas for designing graphics for others who need buttons to advertise on ScratchBack. Yep, you need a little know how and software, but it could be handy. You may be able to work out a deal for a discounted ad with sites using ScratchBack with images. It will help them get more advertisers too. I may start to do this myself.

I hope I have given you some ideas on how you can be making money online with ScratchBack.

There are so many ways to make money online. This is an exciting time to be a blogger. Those who are successful are the ones who will take advantage of opportunities as they come along and use them to full advantage.

Has the Google-slap had it’s intended effect already?

The Text Link Ads calculator seems to be showing some very interesting results now.

If you were thinking of using TLA on your site, they had a calculator that could tell you what you might expect to make on your site. It would calculate what you would make depending on how many ads you wished to run.

It seems that TLA is now telling us that you won’t make any money with them anymore.

The calculator now gives some very odd results.

Where you used to get a $ figure, you will now get one of several results.
While they might have been comical, they show the effect of the Google-slap on it’s competition. The paid link market has crashed.

Here are some screenshots from the calculator.

I am not sure when TLA made these changes to the calculator, but it sure shows the market since the Google-slap.

DigitalKeyTo.info’s calculation:

How about John Chow’s site?

Same result. It is not just my site-it is the paid links.

Here are two more results you will get:

I find it sad to see this.

Text Link Ads has been a favorite advertiser for many blogs. It provided an excellent option to AdSense. It gave a consistent income that could be fairly reliable as long as you had the Alexa ranking needed to attract advertisers.

You can also see for yourself at the Text Link Ads site.

The link ad calculator is here.

It looks like Google has accomplished it’s goal of crushing their competitor.

Perhaps TLA’s parent company saw this coming when they purchased AuctionAds.com. At the very least, it was a wise decision on their part to add another income stream.

I think having a second plan in line is a good idea for anyone.

The good news is that there are some new alternatives coming up for bloggers and Internet Marketers.

If you find this post useful, why not zoom it at Blogging Zoom? Also, subscribe to my RSS feed. RSS is the best way to keep track of my posts.

AdSense announced new features coming soon.

You will soon not need to paste new AdSense code to do things like change color.

Ever paste AdSense code into your site and discover it was the wrong color? Then you would have to go through and do it again?

You will be able to change things like color and border without having to repaste the code in your site. You will be able to do it directly from the site the AdSense manager.

Visit the Adsense blog and read for yourself.

This new ad management feature means that your ad unit settings (such as colors and channels) for new AdSense for content ad units will be saved in your AdSense account every time you generate ad code. Then, if you’d like to change any of these settings in the future, all you do is make the update within your account — you’ll no longer need to manually replace the ad code on all of your pages. For instance, you can quickly change the borders of all your 300×250 medium rectangles from red to blue with just a few mouse clicks. Fancy! We hope that this new feature will help you save time and will simplify the process of optimizing your ad units.

Inside AdSense: Coming soon: Make ad changes without replacing code

After reading it once, my first question was what if I only want to change the ads on one site?

After reading again, it looks like you will be able to use channels to specify which ads are changed.

I still wonder if it will possible to change the entire ad size.

Or maybe, switch to text only ads from picture ads.

I guess we’ll have to wait till it is released to find out.

Do you think this will be an important improvement for your ads?

I have not read anything about this yet.

The New Google Video AdSense Ads Do Not Seem To Show With Firefox!

For the first time in months, I have an AdSense ad running on a recent post on this blog. One of the new Google video ads to be precise. It does not show on my computers using Firefox. It only shows using Internet Explorer. Same computers, just different browsers. This site looks terrible in IE too.

Maybe you can see the video ad in Firefox.

I cannot. It shows up just fine in IE. I hope I am wrong.

*Don’t bother looking, I’ve removed the ad now.*

This would be a real screw-up for Google if I am right.

What kind of idiot would make an ad that would not be visible on a browser they promote. I would think that is something they would have made sure worked.

Here is the announcement for the AdSense video ad at Inside AdSense.

We’re excited about the launch of video units — a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your site, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes.

Inside AdSense: Introducing video units

Am I wrong about the AdSense video ads and Firefox?

Can you find the AdSense video ad using Firefox? Can you find it in Internet Explorer? It is in a very recent post.

Let me know what you see and think.