One of the reasons I love working online and running a website is that it lets me mind my own business. I’ve never been one for office politics and I hate the idea of having a ‘boss’ so I’ve never been particularly partial to working your typical office job. As such then, I also don’t appreciate it when my work as a blogger starts to turn political and the whole thing starts to degrade into something like a schoolyard shouting match. Isn’t that the kind of thing lots of us are trying to avoid?
Unfortunately though where there’s money to be made there will always be those willing to resort to unscrupulous methods, and to try to blow out our candle to make theirs blow brighter. This is where ‘negative SEO’ comes in – which is the point at which bloggers stop concentrating on themselves and on offering a great site, and instead start thinking about how they can get ahead by taking down the competition and getting their sites penalized. Find yourself a victim then and you can see your website drop from the top spot in the SERPs to page eight and even see your content and design ruined. It’s unsettling, it’s unfair and it can potentially cost you a lot of money. read more
I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to blogging platforms, and my view of LiveJournal isn’t the rosiest. Then again, the platform does have 22 million registered bloggers, so it’s certainly not to be passed over.
The Russian-owned blogging platform will now allow its premium (i.e. paid) users to embed Google AdSense ads on their blogs.
The “Your Journal – Your Money” system means that LJ users with an AdSense account can add customised ads to their blog, in much the same way as any other AdSense publisher would. LiveJournal says it won’t take any of the profits (and if it’s based on individual AdSense accounts, how could it?) read more
Google has announced that AdSense publishers will soon be able to choose whether to accept advertisements from other ad network companies, as well as AdSense itself, in a change to how ads are served.
Any network that is Google-certified — that is, the ad company adheres to user privacy, ad quality and speed standards — can bid for ad positions previously exclusively available to AdWords advertisers. read more
When I logged into my Google AdSense control panel last night I found a new option to have my earnings listed in local currency (UK pounds) from now on.
This has been developing for some time but it’s the first time I’ve been prompted by Google to change to local currency.
What appears to be new is that, once the change has been made, it’s not possible to change back to US dollars (either reporting or payment method). Before, Google had said that “you can still choose to receive payments in US Dollars”.
Does this make any difference to international publishers? read more
Google has announced that it’s to hold a series of AdSense training webinars, based on feedback received from publishers. They’ll be interactive, allowing attendees to ask questions of AdSense professionals, and focused on improving revenue.
Topics covered will include using custom search engines with AdSense, using AdSense effectively (optimisation), a general product overview with focus on product updates that have been rolled out over the last three months, and two webinars about Google Ad Manager.
There is limited space on these so interested publishers need to sign up quickly via the AdSense help centre.
Google has announced that it’s launched limited beta testing of a new feature: the ability to filter certain categories of advertising so that they don’t appear on a publisher’s site at all.
Google says that this is one of the top requests from publishers, explaining:
Category filtering will give publishers the ability to block ads that fall into specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics. Regardless of how ads are targeted, they’ll be filtered if they’re within one of the selected categories. We’ll also show the percentage of recent revenue that ads in each category generate, so publishers can predict how filtering selections will impact their revenue.
It seems that the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that stolen content is big business. Within the past two years, there are a variety of services you can use to track where your online content has gone, report and stop it. A new project is underway called the Fair Syndication Consortium that might put a dollar amount on that stolen content, paying you for others abusing your content. read more
The Google Adsense Blog helps you to get started with Google Ad Manager, Google’s hosted solution for managing your ads. Ad Manager is free to use, but if you grow big you might have to pay up, be sure to read the terms of service so that you know what you’re getting into.
Over on the Blogger Buzz, Google provided a quick explanation regarding its Monetize tab which mysteriously appeared late last month upon many Blogger blogs.
(Blogger Buzz) You may have noticed that about a week ago a new tab showed up in Blogger for your blog. The tab is called Monetize, and in case it isn’t clear what that means: it’s now easier than ever to make money with your blog! [...]
The current Monetize tab allows you to apply for an AdSense account (or link your Blogger blog to an existing AdSense account). You can then choose where to place ads on your blog, and once ads start appearing on your blog, review your earnings.
Once a user clicks on the “Monetize link,” Google cleverly presents them with several options as to where they should place ads on their blog, with some extra emphasis on placing ads upon the sidebar and underneath posts. read more
Google’s general philosophy surrounding AdSense ad placement is to make them blend with the rest of a site’s content, so it’s always struck me as a little strange that publishers have had no control over the fonts displayed.
That’s just changed, with Google announcing an update which allow ads to be rendered in a number of fonts. Don’t get too excited, though, because there’s a small selection — Arial, Times and Verdana.
You don’t get much control beyond that. Obviously, you can’t alter the size of the fonts because the ad blocks are specific sizes and you’d end up clipping ads (this often happens if a user manually increases the font size on their browser). It only works on ads displaying Latin-based characters, and it won’t affect image-based adverts. read more
