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Google Ad Manager

Posted in » Google, Online Advertising - by Ades

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Google Ad Manager is now open to public. Anyone who has Google Account can login and start managing their advertisements.

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.

I have always used phpAdsNew (now OpenX) for managing my ads. Compared to Google Ad Manager, I found OpenX to be much more user friendly (or is it just because I have been using it for a long long time?).

Again Google wins…

Basically besides being the No.1 search engine on the net, Google is an ad-network too — with its Google AdSense on one side and Google AdWords on the other. So, what does that say about this new ad-network platform — Google Ad Manager — that Google introduced?

OpenX has a good answer to that on their blog, below is the excerpt from their article:

Google is Your Biggest Competitor
By allowing Google Ad Manager to serve all ads on your site, you are reducing your ability to get advertising elsewhere. Because Google could ‘cherry pick’ users that are the most lucrative for Ad Sense, they will leave the other users for your remaining advertisers. Therefore, your advertisers will not get as much ROI, and leave you for another website.

The same theory goes for ad networks. If ad networks do not have access to your most lucrative users, then they will not pay you as much for them.

Google’s Margins will Increase, Not Yours
By allowing Google to serve your ads, you allow your biggest competitor for ad revenue to know how much you make from ALL advertising on your website.

Therefore, if your average CPM from Google is $0.75, and your average CPM from other ad networks is $0.50, there is no reason that Google should give you more than $0.51! Remember, it is up to Google to determine what revenue share that they will pass back to websites. source

I think that’s a huge plus for Google and very very big minus for all the other ad-networks.

portable apps

Posted in » miniblog - by Ades

1 Comment 

collection of free portable apps can be found at http://www.app-stick.com [via techsnack]

ListMessenger Light - Free Newsletter Script

Posted in » Scripts - by Ades

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Talking about Email List, here is a free script to start your own mailing list.

It used to be my favorite newsletter script back in 2003. I used to use ListMessenger 0.9.4 then, current version is 2.1. Why I stopped using it? Well, as it usually happens… because the later versions became paid. But now checking back their site, I see that they have made it free again. However, there is a paid version too. The main difference is that with free version you can have maximum of 200 subscribers only. Which is plenty of subscribers for those who are newly building their mailing list.

They also assure a smooth transition to Pro Version if your subscribers exceed 200. Pro version costs one time fee of $47.31, which is very affordable considering that you will get all the future updates for free.

So, ready to build your mailing list? ;)

Demo: listmessenger.net/demo_backend.html
Script URL: http://www.listmessenger.com

P.S I tried to use aweber but it was too costly, I had to discontinue after few months. I think for building a mailing list from scratch, free scripts like listmessenger is ideal. I will give another try for listmessenger.

WP Plugin: Rotating 3D Tag Cloud

Posted in » General - by Ades

22 Comments 

Below is a WordPress Plugin called wp-cumulus in action (mouse over it). Basically what it does is - it takes your tags (or categories) and turns them into a rotating 3D navigation.

Installation of the plugins is simple like all the other wp plugins. Basically you just upload it and activate it. Then in your posts you just insert [WP-CUMULUS] tag wherever you want it to appear. And if you want to put it somewhere in your blog theme, then you should use this code <?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>.

It displays the whole thing in flash movie (.swf) file, of which the width and height can be adjusted by you in the plugin options. You can also change the background and text colors. And either display tags or your blog’s categories.

Author: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/
Plugin Page: http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/15/wp-cumulus-released/

google’s math errors

Posted in » miniblog - by Ades

1 Comment 

google seems to have trouble calculating large numbers click here

Monetizing your words VS free biz model

Posted in » Articles, Blogging Tips - by Ades

6 Comments 

Monetizing your blog posts i.e the content that you write on your blog has been a much discussed topic. Will people pay to read your blog posts like they do to read articles on WSJ? That’s the question!

Maki of DoshDosh says in this regard:

It is important to keep in mind the reasons why you are publishing blog post after blog post, all full of ideas and information and giving them away.

Do you know that you might generate more income by creating content and packaging it into the form of an affordable eBook, or perhaps a membership site? In terms of earning efficiency, premium/paid content might be a more lucrative venture than the act of simply giving away all your content away. source

Bloggers churn out thousands of new blog posts everyday — all for free. Even the “make money online” blogs give away free blog posts to make some money on the advertisements ;)

As for Maki, his reason for blogging for free is to build a brand, as he explains in the last part of his article.

What if, you already had the brand name?

If you had the brand name on the net, would you be still writing good articles one after another every day like DailyBlogTips does? (no pun intended, DBT is a great blog that consistently publishes quality posts. Hats off to Daniel Scocco!) or Would you shut down your blog and turn to other ways of media like what Jason Calacanis did?

“Will you come out of retirement at some point?” Clark Kent, Daily Planet

Jason Calacanis: No. Absolutely not. This is not a Michael Jordan or Jay-Z ploy. I’m done. It’s not over one instance, and it’s not because–give me a minute [editor’s note: Calacanis looked down, fighting back his emotions]–I can’t handle the pressures of being an A-list blogger. This is a very personal choice that I’ve discussed with my family, and it’s the direction we want to go. I’ve done blogging and now it’s time for the next chapter. source

Jason shut down his blog and now has a 4,000+ member newsletter readership, to which I am also subscribed (sign up here). However, his articles from his newsletter still appear on sites like TechCrunch “How To Demo Your Startup” and ValleyMag “PR Strategies for Startups (Part One)“.

So, why did the A-List blogger like Jason Calacanis quit blogging? When everyone else wants to achieve what he has already achieved?

In his own words, he said he did it because he wants to build a deeper relationship with people… “I’m going to try and build a deeper relationship with fewer people–try to get back to my roots.”

he also said…

“Starting today all of my thoughts will be reserved for a new medium. Something smaller, something more intimate, and something very personal: an email list.”

Why Email List (in other words Email Marketing)?

Email List seems to be the answer to the questions in the beginning of this post. That is, should you charge for your blog posts? Should you monetize your words? If yes, will people pay to read your posts? And how to go about it?

But before that, why email list is the answer? Here is a great post by Yaro Starak which describes why email list has a better earning power than blogging. If you read Yaro’s post, he questions too… “why bother blogging if email list is a better option for making money online?”. His answer is, you should use your blog to build your email list!

Hmm… that makes sense. Is that why Jason Calacanis shut his blog and started an email list? I don’t know. But he certainly doesn’t need a blog to build his email list. People will subscribe to his email list anyway.

Currently Jason is trying to syndicate his email newsletters to some of the highest profile sites on the net! (see twitter message to the left). And if he does that, I am sure he would get some kind of deal that would affect his bottom line positively.

Summary

So, do you see where we are getting at? Destination seems to be the Email List, and blogging is the journey that takes you there. Some bloggers like Calacanis, Yaro and Maki are aware of that, and they have a clear picture of where they are heading. How about the rest of us? Why do we blog? “To make money” you will say, yes, but that’s like… being on a journey and having no idea where you are heading!

Or in other words, you are planning for a short-term, whereas Yaro and Maki have a long-term plan. And I think that’s one of the reasons why they are successful at what they do, and why they are always one step ahead of the rest — because they plan strategically!

Ok, I will leave you with that…. you comments are most welcome.

P.S How to start your mailing list? read this post.

Blaze Media Pro v8.02

Posted in » Software - by Ades

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Blaze Media Pro is powerful, all-in-one media converter, editor, burner, and ripper software application supporting all popular media formats.

It has been my favorite software since 2004, being listed on my software pick page before (software pick section is no longer available though) and now on my shared folder (in favorite sharewares).

It supports two-way conversion for both audio and video files. You can convert DVD to AVI, MPG, WMV for example. Formats supported for audio conversion include CD, MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, AIFF, M4A, AAC, AC3, FLAC, and ALAC.

Other advanced features include video capture, video creation, combining, and extraction, video editing, copying of music CDs, audio and video merge (joining), MusicID audio recognition, lyrics search, audio tag editing, FreeDB support etc.

On top all these Blaze Media Pro is also a CD burning software, as well as DVD burning software. It’s being sold at $50.00 now.

Software URL: http://www.blazemp.com or http://www.mystikmedia.com

3 Free CSS Web Templates

Posted in » Adobe, CSS - by Ades

13 Comments 

Originalix of www.bboy.cz sent me a 3 Free CSS Web Templates. I looked at them and found them quite interesting, they are clean and well designed. As you can see, it’s a variation of one layout in three different colors. Download file contains source file too (.psd - photoshop file).

You can download them here. I have also put them on my shared folder.

Now you can get your blog posts on Yahoo.com

Posted in » Blogging Tips, Marketing, SEO & Promotion, Social Bookmarking, Yahoo - by Ades

10 Comments 

Finally Yahoo has opened its doors to publishers to submit their blog posts to Yahoo! Buzz (buzz.yahoo.com). This means higher traffic to those who write exceptional posts, and you could even get millions of visitors if your blog post is featured on yahoo’s main page yahoo.com.

How it works?

You go to http://buzz.yahoo.com/buttons and get a button of your choice. Integrate it into your blog. And finally keep doing what you are doing - writing good stuff!

Well, you could go ahead and start submitting your own contents (blog posts) to Yahoo! Buzz. But that’s not really a sustainable strategy for bringing in the traffic. Rather you should concentrate on writing quality posts and let your readers promote your posts.

So, after you have integrated the button in your blog. For the first time, someone has to submit it to Yahoo! Buzz, then the rest of the people will just vote for that post. The more the post gets votes, the more it will have a chance to be top news in Yahoo! Buzz. And if your post gets to be the best content, then it may be featured in Yahoo.com — potentially bringing in millions of visitors to your blog!

So why wait, go to http://buzz.yahoo.com/buttons and get your buttons! I have got mine already (done my part), now it’s for you to vote for my posts ;) (see button below)

wufoo unplugged

Posted in » miniblog - by Ades

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it’s a desktop software for your wufoo account, with it you can access to your wufoo data from your desktop and search them offline click here