Although this was announced on the 8th of January 2008, some people may not have been aware of the changes that will soon be implemented by Google regarding the Adsense referral system (I had only noticed an e-mail from Google the other day mentioning their changes), and some of you may not have realised how/why Google is changing the system.

Basically, Google have decided that the Adsense referral system isn’t working well enough for them (not making them enough money, no doubt). Therefore, they have decided to scrap the referral system for those of you who are based outside of Latin America, North America, and Japan. This hardly seems fair that someone should be favoured based on their geographical position, but that’s the stance that Google has taken.

If you do live in Latin America, North America or Japan, then congratulations. However, there is still some bad news for you. Google will be reducing the payment structure to that of previous years. You will now only be earning $100 when your referrals earn $100. Obviously this is quite a drop from the previous system, but at least you can still earn from the referral system. A lot of people will be forced to remove their Adsense referral units from their websites and will probably end up resorting to promoting other advertising programs, too.

Obviously, this won’t affect everyone. Not all people will have Adsense referral units on their websites, but I’m pretty sure that those of you who do will be pretty annoyed with Google. As of yet there seems to be no real alternative, so it seems that some webmasters will simply have to suffer a drop in revenue from their website. However, it appears likely that the main blogs and sites that will be affected are those who discuss ways to make money online, just like the Can I Make Big Money Online blog does.

Composing the Perfect Letter of Surrender

What was even more funny to me is that the conversation sounded similar to the conversation I had with my wife about this topic last week. Which makes me wonder, “Are women less scared of Google than men?”

Anyway, I have to agree with both my wife and Jennifer who said:

Dear Google, bite me!

That about sums it up for me.

Now, it’s time for me to get back to being a sheep in the Googlesphere...

My opinion on Google “slamming” folks for paid links
I am going to start with Jason Calacanis, who I mentioned in my previous post. I disagree with Jason on this. I understand wanting to comply with Google, but in my opinion webmasters should be able to interlink their sites for promotional purposes. They shouldn’t have to tell Google about these links; it’s Google’s problem- not the blogs.

Google PageRank: Joke Of The Blogosphere?
Andy Beard’s post was my favorite read on this topic so far.

The Great Google Bitch Slap
I found this post via Andy and it is a very entertaining look at the situation.

Competition: Create a Slogan for Bloggers Hit by the Page Rank Slam of October 07
Darren Rowse is running a competition to create a slogan for bloggers hit by the page rank update. Pretty funny, and it has a really good reward. Go check it out.

Court offered a couple of posts on this topic:

Alternate Theory For Google PageRank Drops

Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry

Both of Court’s articles are good reads.

How Did eMoms at Home Come Out of This Page Rank Scandal Unscathed?
Wendy asks the same question that others have been asking, “Why haven’t I been hit by Google?” Who knows why everyone hasn’t been hit. Maybe she has been hit. Maybe on the next pagerank update emomsathome was going to be a PR6. The answer is that this is probably just a partial update, but we will see.

I mentioned in my post last week, “Am I A Sheep In The Googlesphere?” that it seems like a bad idea to tick off so many bloggers. It will be very interesting to see what happens next…

PS. If you are looking for some real excellent information on making money online, check out Chris Garret’s series on making money online from the last two weeks. It has been an excellent read.

I had a conversation once about my initial concerns about interlinking blogs with the founder of Weblogs Inc., Jason Calacanis. In the comments of this post, Jason said:

in term of interlinking out blogs we always did it in an honest way. It’s totally acceptable for NBC to tell you what’s on Bravo or the SciFi channel, and it’s fine for blog networks to have their own blogrolls…

We both agreed that interlinking blogs shouldn’t be a problem.

So is lowering the pagerank of blogs that interlink ok?

In my opinion it is fine. Lowering the pagerank for blogs that interlink seems like a legitmate thing to do, but I don’t think it should affect the blogs Search Engine rankings. I guess we will find out if Google thinks the same thing.

On the other hand, I understand why bloggers would be upset about this, because it does affect their livelihood. I personally wish Google would just forget about text link ads and work on improving their algorithm. If Google doesn’t improve their algorithm, then companies like Proximic will stand a chance at taking away their business.

What do you think?

Thanks to Matt for the heads up on this news.

Hmmm… Did I just create a new term?

I will have to go “Yahoo” it… back in a sec.

Nope, Yahoo shows 999 results for Googlesphere, rats!

Anyway, the biggest news of the week across the blogosphere was that Google is lowering the pagerank of sites that sell text link advertising. I don’t know if this includes buying and selling banner links or not, but it should since banner ads normally don’t use the no-follow tag.

I think that those who made this decision at Google don’t understand how powerful the blogosphere really is, or they expect most bloggers to act like sheep and fully support Google.

Here are some of the many posts I have read this week about paid links causing websites to lose Google page rank:

Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google (I read it here first)

Part Three – NoFollow is for Blog Spam…no Paid Text Links, wait…Paid Ads…Aww Heck, Just Stop Linking and Let Calacanis Decide the Rankings

Penalty Confirmed – But I Don’t Sell PageRank

Dancing With The Gevil – Defamed By Google?

Garry Conn and Google

How to Profit from Google’s War on Paid Links

Last, but not least, Aaron Wall pretty much takes the words out of my mouth on this topic:

Google is Becoming Wikipedia Without the Talk Page

So, what am I going to do about this issue?

I haven’t decided yet. On the one hand, I have come up with a plan that could REALLY tick off Google, on the other hand I can be a sheep. Decisions, decisions...

In other news…

Tiny start-up rival to Google?
A new company called Proximic has come up with a very cool new technology. From the sounds of things it might become a great way to monetize your site and be a huge competitor to Google’s Adsense. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google… let the bidding wars begin!

Lastly, I got an email from Google’s Adsense program last night about a new service that lets you make money from YouTube videos. I am very excited about the possibilities for some of my other blogs.

That’s it for now…

I thought you’d get a kick out of this post I did after going through the pains with a friend of getting a site SERPs stricken from Google. Google Redemption

Oh my goodness, is Rob’s post funny or what?

I especially liked step number 3:

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Google as we understood Him.

and number 11:

11. Sought through prayer (links) and meditation (content) to improve our conscious contact with Google, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for our sites and the power to carry that out

Anyway, the post had me laughing out loud. Check it out and then let me know if you are submitting to the “will of Google” or if you are sinning in Google’s eyes.

I did get one reader submission for an article to include in this week’s tips (and it is a good read). Without further ado, here are some of the interesting online business articles that I read this week:

Blogging Competitor Analysis
This was my first reader submission. It was submitted by Jon Symons (Art of Money). An often overlooked method of using competitive analysis to improve your blog and your earning potential. Some things covered are: can I compete? how do they monetize their traffic? how can I differentiate myself?

Google Buys Feedburner For $100 Million
I saw this news first on Jack Humphrey’s blog. Like Jack, I think that Google is buying them for their huge user base.

Top 25 Article Directories and Free Content Sites Ranked by Alexa and PageRank
I saw this in one of Ralph Wilson’s recent newsletters. It came at a great time, because I was about to start researching the latest and greatest article services to submit your articles to. This saved me a lot of time.

How to Create Your Own Niche Blogging Masterplan for Long Term Profit
Interesting post by Maki. I look forward to seeing how things turn out for him.

That was it for this week…

The Paid Link Blog Meme
Excellent counter to Google’s position on paid links. Found via Andy Beard. The truth of the matter is that the Search Engines have to come up with a revolutionary way to rank sites. The current methods won’t be acceptable five years from now.

Indirect Profits, Business and Corporate Blogs
Chris Garret’s series has been really good reading all week. If you haven’t kept up, then start with the article above and work your way through the series.

Long Overdue Praise For PayPerPost
John Reese wrote an excellent post on PayPerPost on his new blog. My favorite part was when John says:

IT’S NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS WHAT SOMEONE ELSE CHOOSES TO PUT ON THEIR BLOG!

So true…

My Top 7 Blog Monetization Methods
It was good to see Yaro’s top monetization methods listed out like this.

Update on Me
Interesting update on Amanda’s blogging income. I haven’t tried any of the review systems, but Amanda’s post makes me think that I could make a fairly decent amount of money doing paid website reviews.

Anyway, I moved the ads from inside the posts (like on this blog), to a banner above the first post and a skyscraper ad in the left navigation bar. I actually like the way it looks better, so I might keep it that way. Anyway, you can check the new look on our Positive Sports News blog by clicking here. Depending on the results of the test, I may make more changes and/or change some of our other blogs.

PS. We have a new writer on our sports blog and I will write about that later today.

Are Headlines Tangling Your Readers?

Don’t Be The Best… Be The First!

Thinking outside of the box

What ProBloggers Can Learn from TechCrunch 20

Google Stops Google Bombs

Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero via (jazzcatseo)

Anyway, Jennifer does a great job of making sense of the Adsense TOS changes and I highly recommend you check out her post.

It looks like none of the changes will affect my sites and blogs, but with all the restrictions I can see why Darren Rowse (who I first found this story from) says:

I’ve already heard from a number of publishers that if given the choice between AdSense and YPN that they’ll jump to YPN because of the less stringent requirements – this change has put one too many hoops to jump through in front of some publishers.

Google might have just added the straw that broke the camel’s back. Personally, I really like Adsense and I don’t plan on switching to YPN. However, the constant changes to the Adsense TOS are getting to be annoying. I do plan on experimenting with YPN at some point. It certainly has the advantage of being less restrictive and there is something to be said for that.

Which Google Adsense advertising placement annoys you the most?

Here are the results:

• At the Top of an Article: 50% (34)
• In the Middle of an Article: 25% (17)
• At the End of an Article: 0% (0)
• At the Top of the Site: 4% (3)
• In the Navigation Bar: 4% (3)
• Don’t care: 16% (11)

Total Votes : 68

I am not sure how this is going to affect my Google Adsense placement.

Personally, I find it most annoying when ads are in the middle of an article, because I have to pause and stop reading in the middle of an article.

Ads at the top of articles make me the most money, so it’s hard to move them. In fact, this poll showed that Adsense placement that makes the most money is also the placement people find the most annoying. Adsense placement that makes the least amount of money is also the least annoying.

So all website owners are faced with the problem of making money vs. annoying our visitors. That kind of makes sense, since nobody really wants to see advertising.

What do you think of the results?

Do You Have the Time to be an Internet Marketer or AdSense Publisher

Its not that hard to make $100 US Dollars a month part time

Marketing Your Business on Craigslist

And just for fun, these two blog posts:

Google Copies Yahoo

Yahoo Copies Google

If you haven’t heard, Google announced this new way to create a custom search engine using the Google search engine. You can create one yourself by signing up for Google Co-op here.

I created a custom search engine for our homeschooling site and called it “The Homeschooling Search Engine”. When you use our Search Engine you are only searching from homeschooling sites that I or someone else has added to the Search Engine.

What is really cool is the whole social aspect. Anyone can sign up to be an editor for the search engine and add their favorite homeschooling sites.

You can even make money with it, by associating your Goolge Adsense account with the Search Engine.

Anyway, you can check out our Homeschooling Search Engine by clicking here. It’s a pretty cool technology that I have been meaning to play around with. I am glad I did!

Tags:

homeschool homeschooling Home education Home School google co-op co-op

The following is an interview I did with Austin, that I am sure you will enjoy…

Q. Austin, how did you get started in Internet Marketing?

A. I wanted to work from home by myself, make my own hours, not have to actually sell anything, like on Ebay, home school my kids and travel with my family. That pretty much narrowed things down to online stock trading…which I did for a while and lost money, and building a website and promoting products and services that someone else would mail out and take all the responsibility for.

I quit my day job, which is funny because I was the owner of a family auto repair shop in Houston TX that my grandfather started in 1937. I left the company and my father came out of retirement to take over. I knew nothing about the Internet and how to build a website or what and how to sell online, but I was determined and that is all that mattered.

I sat down at my computer and started to learn HTML, SEO stuff, link building skills, how to get listed in top positions in the search engines, how to become an affiliate for other web marketers etc. etc. etc. It took me about a year to really get everything under my belt…but I did EVERYTHING myself which I do NOT recommend. There are tons of places online now that can show you how to build a site, find products and start promoting them very quickly.

I had no idea what an affiliate marketer was so I had to start from scratch, and I was afraid to spend money on education, so it took me a longer time than it should have to get up and running and making a profit.

Q. If you don’t mind sharing, could you let us know what are the favorite sites you work on and why?

A. Sure, I have a direct relationship with an auto insurance company and they are my top revenue producer for me. Google adsense is my second largest revenue producer, then Alldata which is an online auto repair manual program that pays me per new subscriber. Clearly Adsense is the easiest and fastest to implement, but the days of large per click pay outs might be gone.

A year ago there where many, many marketers that were making $10,000 + a month easily with Adsense. I personally know of a handful of marketers that were making well over $50,000 a month JUST in Adsense.

If you can get a direct relationship with an advertiser, you will probably get more money and have more access to statistics and banners etc. than if you used a third party provider like http://www.cj.com which I still use, but look for a direct advertiser first. If you have a quality site, generate a fair amount of traffic and can prove to be worth the extra effort for the advertiser…you should not have a problem asking the advertiser directly.

Q. From the polls I have run on this blog, one of the top questions people have about Internet Marketing is “How do I get more traffic to my website?” Can you give us a brief description of one of your favorite methods to generate traffic to your site?

A. Hands down, KEYWORD RESEARCH! Most site owners make sites and post to their blogs about topics that they as the site owner THINK are of interest to the reader. I do things backwards. I do my keyword research FIRST, find the most traffic for the search term, then I will Google the actual keyword phrase to check out my competition.

I want to get on the top 10 on the first page…or I won’t waste my time making the webpage. So, an example would be the phrase “New Jersey Auto Insurance” and according to http://www.goodkeywords.com using the Overture search engine I see the search volume for that phrase just last month and just on the Overture search engine had about 1059 searches. Now that is JUST Overture, so I take that number and multiple by 5 to include the other top search engines Like Google, Yahoo and MSN ( I count Google twice because of its large search size). So in this example I can estimate about 5500 monthly searches or about 180 daily searches for the phrase “New Jersey Auto Insurance” .

Now I will take the phrase “New Jersey Auto Insurance” and do a Google search to look at my competition. I am looking to see how many sites are Top Level sites, meaning the main page of the site is what Google returned. i.e. http://www.trustmymechanic.com is the top level and www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html is a secondary page within the site.

If the top 10 competitors are all top level sites…my chances of beating them from my secondary page is going to be very tough, and I would look for other keyword phrases to compete against.

Now, if you did the Google search for New Jersey Auto Insurance, you probably found my page http://www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html and if you noticed the title of the page, not the title of the article on the page….the actual title of the page you can see what other keywords I am targeting and how I used them in my title so it still reads well, but will pick up on all the varieties of the phrase I wanted to target. Which are

· NJ car insurance

· NJ auto insurance

· New Jersey Car Insurance

· Car insurance NJ

· Auto insurance NJ

If you add up all the potential free search traffic from those keyword phrases it is well over 10,000 monthly potential visitors from those searches. My page http://www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html gets returned on Google using many of those phrases because I themed the page correctly for each phrase AND I have links from other websites linking to that page using those phrases in the anchor text. The anchor text is what the visitor clicks on, like “Click Here” except I get my link partners to link to that page with “NJ Car insurance” which in turn gives me link popularity credit on the search engines. The more links I can get pointing to that page…the higher the search results I will go.

So the moral to the story is that ONE page on my site http://www.trustmymechanic.com/newjersey_auto_insurance.html is now getting listed in the top 10 results on the first page in the major search engines AND is making money. Incidentally I made that page about 2 years ago doing my keyword research I found that most major auto insurance companies DID NOT write policies in NJ. There is some whacky law that the big insurance companies don’t like, so they just don’t write auto insurance policies in NJ. I got on the phone, and spent days on the internet tying to find an advertiser that WOULD accept NJ traffic and built a relationship with them.

Keyword research is tricky and time consuming, but if you do it right….you will be rewarded handsomely. Don’t forget misspellings in your keyword research….I would bet more than 30% of the search volume contains a misspelling. I purposely add the misspelling and the proper spelling within the articles like this popular page on my site http://myhonestmechanic.com/articles/pontiac-soltice.shtml

I went to the Houston car show early this year and took my own pictures and made my own car review from all the free literature they pass out. You would not believe how many new vehicles that are coming on the market that are prime candidate for misspellings. Think about the visitor and how they might misspell the words you are trying to target. According to the Goodkeywords.com program almost 200 people using Overture last month searched for “break pad” instead of brake pad. 130 searched for nsurance instead of insurance….take these search volume numbers and multiple by 5 to represent the other engines and you can easily see a LARGE amount of easy search traffic that can be picked up utilizing the same articles on your site..

Q. Another thing people always seem to want to know how to do better is monetizing their site. Could you tell us about one of your best money making techniques?

A. From what I see, most webmasters make it too difficult for the visitor to take the action the site owner wants them to do. If you want me to enter my zip code and get a free online auto insurance quote, tell me that upfront on the center of the page…get my attention, make a compelling reason WHY I should get a quote in the first place and why should I get it from YOUR site? Don’t be afraid to be a little pushy. People read a webpage very quickly usually just skimming the content of the page looking for the information they typed in the search engine….make it easy for them.

Back to the NJ auto insurance page from above, look at the page text…I reinforce the same keywords you used to get to the page via Google…it’s my page title with a BIG testimonial from me telling you why you should get a quote from my site and all the reasons why I made the page in the first place….to HELP you find good insurance, because I have already done my research and can save you lots of time and frustration. Bulleted lists work very very well!!

If you have an affiliate program that will allow incentives ( you will give the visitor something in exchange for them doing something for you) then you should make your incentive offer irresistible to the visitor, and your incentive offer must be something they visitor will perceive as valuable and worth their time and effort. Like on my NJ auto insurance page, I will give a free copy of my ebook explaining how they can lower their car repair expenses….its something that is on the same lines as lowering their auto insurance…so the visitor sees value there and takes me up on my offer.

Here are a few good places to find incentive allowable affiliate programs, http://www.modernclick.com (owned by a friend of mine) and http://www.bulletads.com among many other affiliate programs you can Google to locate.

Q. You mentioned to me that you have tons of Internet Marketing products. What is your favorite one? Knowing what you know now, would you have bought as many products as you did or would you have different buying habits?

A. I think I learned the most from Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins, both are super nice and very knowledgeable guys. Here is their latest venture http://www.instantseoexpert.com/ which QUICKLY sold out. The offer lots of really great info for free! I still buy online marketing ebooks all the time, I want to stay on top of what others are doing and if I can learn just one new idea from a $97 ebook…its more than worth it to me. There are lot of SEO tricks out there, but to be totally honest….keyword research, having good unique content, getting inbound links to your page from other quality sites AND having an affiliate program that will convert visitors to customers is 95% of the game.

Q. If you could only give one piece of advice to someone just starting out in Internet Marketing, what would it be?

A. Find your niche, do your keyword research and consistently add great unique content to your site on a daily basis. The visitors will bookmark your site, tell their friends about you and others will begin to find your site valuable as well. I am giving a BBC radio interview later today, they found me via a Google search and from a recommendation of a listener of their show. If your site helps the visitor…you will be successful.

Q. What do you consider to be the most important thing you have done to increase your online income?

Without a doubt, taking the time to do my keyword research BEFORE I make a new website or even a new page on my websites.

Q. Are there any other things you would like to tell someone just starting out?

Find someone in your area who is making money online whom you can meet with on a regular basis for lunch to discuss new ideas, get your ideas and sites critiqued. You can find people online on the webmaster forum boards pretty easily. I would also spend the money and the effort to go to a few SEO seminars like the http://bigseminar.com/ and http://bradfallon.com/. I have been to both of them and have met and interacted with both marketers…..and learned A LOT from them in a short period of time. Don’t be afraid to ask other marketers. I visit a lot of SEO seminars and trade shows and I ALWAYS hand out lots of my business cards with my email and website address. You never know who you will run into and how it can benefit you later on down the road.

A. I was too busy with my 9-5 job.
B. I knew Adsense wasn’t dead.

There is a new “Death of…” book out called “The Death of Internet Marketing” by Mike Filsaime.

I just downloaded the ebook and I will let you know what I think of it later in the week. If you haven’t arleady seen “The Death of Internet Marketing”, I strongly suggest you go take a look at it. It’s free and you can make money from it by getting others to download it.

The timing of it’s release is kind of interesting, because I am working on a series of posts on Affiliate Marketing. One of the posts I have almost completed is about pay per action/pay per lead affiliate programs like “The Death of Internet Marketing”.

Anyway, you can click here to go download Mike Filsaime’s free ebook now.

We are having a disagreement on the placement of advertising on blogs and websites.

As I stated in the comments, the thing that annoys me the most are ads that are placed in the middle of an article. Vexation from peevelog likes the ads in the middle of articles. Gary from Blog the Internet hates ads at the top of articles. I have run across some people who hate ALL ads.

That’s one of the problems with advertising in general. Nobody really wants to look at a lot of it, we all have our limits and preferences regarding how advertising is handled, but without it how do businesses make money?

From my personal testing, ads at the top of articles pay me the most money. This is why I currently place ads in the top of my posts using the java script I developed a while back.

So what do you think? Does it matter to you where the ads are placed?

Go vote on my new poll.

10 Marketing Tactics Under $10

Top 10 Secrets of the Marketing Process

Get a Top Ranking in Google in 1 Day for Free

Bad Viral Marketing in Action… & Fixing It

Help Me Build a Fortune 500 Blog Search Engine

Enjoy!