Make Money Online

Since the launch of Google Suggest last August, you may already be used to the magic feeling of getting real-time suggestions just after typing a few keystrokes — that is, if you’re searching on Google.com. But what if you’re doing a search on Google in the U.K., India, Ireland or Australia?

Today we’re happy to announce the international launch of Google Suggest. We’ve localized our suggestions to account for various cultural and local factors to offer suggestions that look familiar to our users. For example, English users in different countries will get suggestions that feel natural:

• If you type [liver] in the U.K., you’re probably a Liverpool fan (but in the U.S. you’ll get more suggestions about liver diseases):

• In Australia, typing [kan] will offer suggestions about Australia’s most famous animal:

• In India, where the mobile phone market is exploding, it’s no wonder that typing [no] leads to:

• In Ireland, there are [pubs] everywhere:

• While in the Maldives, typing [ato] leads to:

Google Suggest now covers 155 domains in 51 languages. Special thanks go to the Suggest team in Israel for their hard work in making this a reality.

So go ahead and start using Google Suggest wherever you are, and enjoy the special flavor of local suggestions.

Posted by David Kadouch, Product Manager

More here:
Local flavor for Google Suggest

We often talk about optimization techniques here on the blog, but we’ve heard from many of you that you’re looking for a more hands-on learning experience. With that in mind, we’d like to invite you to an AdSense Optimization Webinar we’re holding tomorrow. During this interactive 1-hour session, members of our optimization team will explain and demonstrate ways to improve your ad and search performance. You’ll also have the chance to chat online with them during the event.

The details:

AdSense Optimization Webinar
Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Time: 11am PDT (GMT -07:00)
Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=572860900

You’ll need to register before the event starts in order to attend, and we’re only able to accommodate the first 500 publishers who register. If you’re interested in attending the webinar, be sure to sign up using the link provided above.

If you’re unable to attend this webinar, please know that we’re planning to host more of these in the future. (And don’t forget that soon, you’ll be able to update your email notification preferences so we can personally let you know about them.)

Posted by Arlene Lee – Inside AdSense Team

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Optimization Webinar tomorrow

I used to believe that I couldn’t write too!

I ended up writing a 100.000 word doctoral thesis
in 1996 and a swag of technical articles published in
journals. Since then I have c0-edited 2 books, written
four e-books and published 40 online articles on affiliate
marketing and Squidoo.

What’s the secret? – START WRITING!

The biggest impediment to developing your
writing skills is INACTION.

The secret is action learning - plan, write, review.

You learn to write by DOING IT!

When my son started Grade 8 at 13 years of age he
was gifted with a female teacher who believed in the
action learning approach to writing.

She started off by insisting that each student write
50 words a day and submit it for review … and she
provided a range of topics.

At the beginning we had tears and tantrums as my
son asserted that, “I don’t know how to write…I
can’t do it.”

We helped him plan his writing and gave him some
feedback as he finished. The teacher gradually
incremented the number of words required each day.

The more he wrote the easier it got…and the
more independent he became. By the end of the year
he was writing 1,500 words without much difficulty.

It’s worth stating that principe again,:
The more you write, the easier it gets!

Where do you start?

Well, I recommend starting with a
Blogger.com blog as I did in 2005 (this blog).
You don’t have to locate or add plug-ins, etc. They
are there for you to use if you want to.

The main thing is that your blog is an online journal -
a place to record ideas, insights, opinions, thoughts,
recollections, case studies… and to include links,
resources and references. It’s your online data
storage as well because blogs are searchable via
the tags you include below each post. Keep
your audience in mind as you write and you will build
your readership (as well as your credibility).

The steps:

1. decide the focus you want

2. create a blogger.com blog

3. START WRITING

4. Make a post on Twitter.com with the URL
of the blog post.

….rinse and repeat with whatever frequency
you can muster.

Optional:

5. Add the blog RSS feed to your Squidoo lens if you
have one (and the feed will automatically appear on
your Squidoo lens).

WARNING for the perfectionists – don’t try
to make every blog post a landmark post. Focus on
an idea or an insight and just get it down.

P.S. The great novelists will tell you that writing
is 95% perspiration and 5% inspiration. They create
a writing routine – and some have been known to tie
themselves to their chair to make sure they persist
with trying to write … even when nothing seems to
come.

Again, the principle of focused achievement comes
into play.

**********************************************
Ron Passfield is a Top 100 Squidoo Lensmaster and
Giant Squid. He provides free resourcesfor Squidoo
affiliate marketing on his Squidoo lens:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

To learn more about Squidoo Affiliate Marketing
check out:
http://www.squidooaffiliatemarketing.com

Subscribe to Ron’s free Squidoo Marketing e-course:
http://www.smsecourse.squidoomarketingstrategies.com/

Ron is the author of the ebook:
Squidoo Marketing Strategies

********************************************

More here:
Who said you can’t write?

Last time I wrote about the fact that email has, in some respects, become the new direct mail. That’s because email marketers, with increasing frequency, are using such tactics as concept testing, list segmentation, and communications triggered by customer actions – all borrowed from the direct mail world.

But even as email marketing is becoming more effective, there’s a predator lurking around the digital corner. eMarketer reports that “according to Nielsen Online, more people in the US and other leading digital countries worldwide are using social networks and blogs than email.”

Darren Waters, the technology editor for BBC News, interviewed David Sacks, who founded Yammer, a business-oriented social network. Sacks told Waters: “We are all in the process of creating email 2.0… It’s no coincidence that these products [social networks] are all looking like email.” Ari Steinberg, an engineering manager at FriendFeed, told BBC News: “You used to email content to people and you had to choose who you wanted to email it to… Now you can passively put something out there and let people engage with it.”

Couple the comments of Sacks and Steinberg with a new report from database marketing agency Merkle, “View from the Inbox 2009, (pdf)” and you can see that the sands may be shifting for email. Merkle’s research study, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that, while time spent by consumers with permission (opt-in) email gained last year, it “stabilized” this year; in other words it didn’t go up. Here’s the real problem for email, though:

“The biggest reasons subscribers choose to opt-out of permission email continue to be lack of relevance (cited by 75%), followed closely by sending too frequently (73%),” says Merkle.

When you cross the trajectory of blogging and social media with the gradual decline in email, you begin to see a potential upheaval on the horizon. Direct mail may never completely disappear. Email may never completely disappear, either – certainly not in the business world, or for consumers who need to send attachments. But it seems we are in the midst of a large and significant directional change in the way people want to communicate over the Internet. Blogging, along with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a host of other social networks, are fun and engaging. They’re also harbingers of the future – a future none of us, even committed email users, can ignore.

——————
Barry Silverstein is a freelance writer/marketing consultant and co-author of the McGraw-Hill book, The Breakaway Brand.

Here is the original:

If you run an e-commerce site or use AdWords to direct traffic to your business’ webpage, chances are you’re interested in knowing what visitors to your site are clicking on, what content interests these potential customers and what avenues brought them there. The more you know about how people engage with your site, the better you are able to design successful advertising campaigns to help grow your business.

In Latin America, online advertising is growing as more and more small businesses initiate an online presence and publicize their efforts through search and display advertising. But less than 5% of web properties throughout Latin America rely on analysis tools to improve their website’s performance. Last week, our offices throughout the region hosted several Analytics-themed events to give agencies and other clients a better look at several Google measurement tools that provide people with the means to analyze their site’s flow of data, interest and readership in order to build a better advertising campaign.

In Mexico City, advertisers got together to learn about Insights for Search, Ad Planner, YouTube Insights, Analytics, Sitemaps and Website Optimizer, as well as DoubleClick tools. Presentations were designed to give companies an in-depth look at the Google tools that can be helpful for planning their marketing budgets during an economic downturn. Being able to measure data on what content interests people and where consumers are searching for information can help advertisers be more selective about how they invest ad budget. Since the great majority of consumers go online for information before making a purchase, the goal of the seminar was to familiarize advertisers with tools that can increase the reach of their campaigns, while giving them a better idea of what works and what people are searching for.

Meanwhile, our Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik visited São Paulo and Buenos Aires to speak to clients about web analytics and how to make the most of online marketing through analyzing metrics (check out his recent post on bounce rate for related information). Avinash made web analytics fun and accessible with colloquial comparisons (referring sites as ‘BFFs’), and demonstrated how to optimize a website’s performance with changes in color and layout, among other things. He was accompanied by Google’s Latin America managing director Alexandre Hohagen, Brazil’s country manager Alex Dias, and Argentina’s country manager Adriana Noreña at a succession of events revolving around web metrics and website optimization.

The response and interest from customers and agencies to all of these events was indicative of the huge need for metrics and the ability to track ROI for their marketing investments, especially during these difficult times. For more information on Google Analytics tools, check out the Google Analytics Blog, the Website Optimizer Blog and the Conversion Room blog.

Posted by Alfonso Luna, Marketing Director, Latin America

See original here:
Analytics in Latin America

So one of the perks of internet marketing is you can buy cool stuff. Back when I first got into all of this and was making okay money with ringtones, I decided to sell my P.O.S. car and get a new ‘07 Mazda3. It was a really nice car but I always knew I’d have to step it up in the future.

Last week I bought a brand new ‘09 Audi TT-S. It’s 265 turbo charged horses of high performance fun. 19″ stock rims, all the extras and goodies (aside from built-in nav which I’m going to install myself). It’s an extremely quick car and a ton of fun to drive. Just pumped and thought I’d share a couple pics with you guys.

Going to write a Google slap article soon too so stay tuned.

Use the 3 E’s in social media. Educate, entertain engage. Dave the rapping Southwest airlines attendant does all three!

Excerpt from:
How to use YouTube for business!

There are many free ways of getting indexed by Google
but these often take time.

If I am in a hurry to get a Squidoo lens indexed, I will pay
to have it submitted to Google.

The service I use is “Easy Submit” with IneedHits.com

This currently costs $2.99 (USD) per site but the site
is usually indexed in 3-4 days.

********************************************
Ron Passfield is a Top 100 Squidoo Lensmaster and
Giant Squid. He provides free resources for Squidoo
affiliate marketing on his Squidoo lens:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

To learn more about Squidoo Affiliate Marketing
check out:
http://www.squidooaffiliatemarketing.com

Subscribe to Ron’s free Squidoo Marketing
e-course:
http://www.smsecourse.squidoomarketingstrategies.com/

Ron is the author of the e-book:
Squidoo Marketing Strategies

********************************************

Here is the original:
Getting your Squidoo lens indexed by Google

Today we’re excited to announce Google Ventures, Google’s new venture capital fund. This is Google’s effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google’s unique technical expertise and brand, we think we can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into successful businesses.

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet. Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the “next big thing,” and we’ll be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see our website at www.google.com/ventures.

Posted by Rich Miner and Bill Maris, Managing Partners, Google Ventures

Read more from the original source:
Google’s newest venture

It’s hard for me to imagine going without email for a day. It’s such an easy and convenient way to communicate with my friends and family. However, there was one limitation that bothered me: my family members and friends who prefer to communicate in Hindi did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice. I am extremely happy to announce the launch of a new feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type email in Indian languages.

When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character, as the screenshot below shows. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you will need to go the “Settings” page and enable this option in the “Language” section.

When you click the Indian languages icon, you can type words the way they sound in English and Gmail will automatically convert the word to its Indian local language equivalent. For example, if a Hindi speaker types “namaste” we will transliterate this to “नमस्ते.” Similarly, “vanakkam” in Tamil will become “வணக்கம்.” We currently support five Indian languages — Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam — and you can select the language of your choice from the drop-down list next to the icon.

We built this new feature using Google’s transliteration technology, which is also available on Google India Labs, Orkut, Blogger and iGoogle. I hope you find this feature useful to communicate with those of your friends and family who prefer to write in their native language, and it will be available soon to businesses and schools using Google Apps. Now back to replying to all those Hindi emails I got from my family and friends today!

Posted by Chandramouli Mahadevan, Software Engineer

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Email in Indian languages

Google Health is working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on a pilot program in Arizona and Utah that lets Medicare beneficiaries import their Medicare claims data into Google Health.

The pilot is one of several CMS programs to test out how the government can give beneficiaries secure access to their medical data online. Before I came to Google, I worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which houses CMS. At the time, the idea of giving beneficiaries access to their own Medicare claims data in electronic format was just that — an idea. Today, it’s becoming a reality. And given the more than $19 billion investment the government is making in Health IT as part of the stimulus package, now is the perfect time.

As a part-time caregiver to my mother who has a serious chronic illness and someone who just lost both elderly grandparents in the past four months to illness, I can see the benefit of having all of my family’s medical information organized in one place. When Google Health launched last year, I promptly set up accounts for my mother and both grandparents. But at the time, I found it frustrating that I was not able to access electronic copies of my grandparents’ Medicare claims — where most of their medical data resided.

The Medicare Arizona and Utah pilot is designed to give beneficiaries choice in the tools they use to manage their medical records online. Google Health is one of four personal health records (PHR) that beneficiaries can choose from. While only traditional fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries with a primary residence in Arizona and Utah are eligible to participate, this includes nearly 1.1 million beneficiaries living in those regions.

For beneficiaries who choose to participate, it’s important to know that Medicare does not have access to information in your Google Health Account — Medicare will only be sending data to your Account. Beneficiaries who participate in the pilot will still have access to data imported into their Google Health Accounts after the pilot concludes at the end of 2009. And with the recently launched Google Health sharing feature, any beneficiary enrolled in this pilot can now share this data with family members and doctors in their care network.

If I had this type of electronic access to my grandparents’ medical records during my family’s medical crisis, it would have been a huge help to me. I applaud CMS for taking this big step towards empowering consumers with access to their own health records.

If you’re a Medicare beneficiary living in Arizona or Utah and are interested in participating in the pilot, you can get started here.

Posted by Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Manager, Google Health

Go here to see the original:
Getting your Medicare records in Google Health

As has been noted both in this space and elsewhere, traditional news media is in trouble. Not only have papers like the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News shut down their presses, but other big names are cutting staff and tightening their belts for the rough ride ahead. The New York Times Company (NYTCO) just announced at least 100 more job cuts throughout its operations, as well as a 5% pay cut for all remaining employees. All of that is in addition to the 500 positions cut in January with the closing of City & Suburban, NYTCO’s wholesale distribution business.

Putting aside for a moment what this means to the advertising industry, both online and off, the grand failure of all these publications to survive in the world of new media poses another problem, one that fundamentally changes the way we in press relations and marketing get our messages out to the world. It’s hard enough to get someone in the news media to pay attention to a press release in the best of times; it’s harder still when there’s no one on the other end looking for it.

As with so many things these days, this challenge means adjusting our thought process to include non-traditional means of information dissemination. That doesn’t mean that press releases on no longer useful, but it does mean that the word “press” just got a little broader. Consider the example of Netflix.

About four years ago, Netflix marketing management took a pretty narrow view of dealing with information requests from the press, according to Steve Swasey, Vice President of corporate communications for the Los Gatos, California based online multimedia delivery company. If someone who wasn’t from the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or NBC came looking for a statement or an interview from Netflix, they likely were out of luck.

Among those in that crowd? Mike Kaltschnee, the writer of a blog called Hacking Netflix. Contrary to its name, Hacking Netflix is dedicated not to exploiting the service, but in Kaltschnee’s words, “the desire to fully understand [Netflix], and … learn as much as we can about this company and share this information.”

When he joined Netflix, Swasey was shocked  no one had reached out to Kaltschnee, if for no other reason than to make sure the information posted on his site was accurate in its portrayal of the company. “There’s no one out there focusing more on how we do business than Hacking Netflix,” says Swasey. “In fact, the main stream media often go to Hacking Netflix for unbiased, objective, third-party information about us.”
From that point on, Swasey made it a priority not just to respond to requests from small online operations like Hacking Netflix, but to make sure  blogs and online publications were included in press releases and corporate announcements.

In September of last year, the relationship with online publishers came in quite handy when Netflix needed to let its customers know about an unfortunate service outage that caused shipment of DVDs to be delayed. Since Hacking Netflix routinely receives more traffic than Netflix’ own community blog (according to compete.com), giving up-to-the-minute information to Kaltschnee kept the Netflix community more informed that Netflix could do on its own.

The lesson here is that someone, perhaps many people, on the Internet is likely having a conversation about your company. And even if that person doesn’t have a press badge, it’s in your best interest to participate in that conversation.

Excerpted from:
News Media: The Definition Just Keeps Getting Broader

If you’re reading this, you’re probably an active publisher who stays up-to-date with all things AdSense. You’re probably also signed up to receive newsletters and surveys from our team. But publishers like you keep telling us that we’re not doing enough to reach out to you. That’s why we’re happy to announce that we’ll be rolling out new email notification preferences in your account over the next few days.

What does that mean? Simply put, you’ll soon have the option to receive specific messages like event invitations, information about webinars, and personalized account suggestions from members of our team.

In a few days, you’ll be prompted with a one-time interstitial page after you sign in, which will ask you to select the types of messages you’d like to receive from us. We encourage you to take the new email preferences out for a spin once they’re available in your account. If you change your mind, you’re welcome to update your selections at any time. Just sign in to your account and visit the Contact Preferences section of your Account Settings page to update the types of emails you want to receive.

Posted by Jen Phillips – Inside AdSense Team

See more here:
New email notification preferences to keep you informed

Video Podcast: Episode 37 Live Presentation WITH Slides embedded – Ten Free or Low Cost Strategies for Marketing in a Recession Jay Berkowitz Live at the American Marketing Association in Charleston, SC.

Go to the Ten Golden Rules Podcast page for show notes and to download!

See the rest here:
New Video Podcast Episode 37: Live Presentation with Slides of the Ten Free or Low Cost Strategies for Marketing in a Recession

There has been plenty of chatter about AB 178, the anti-affiliate bill in California. My concern is that as I looked at a board in our community the other day and there were 73 posts on AB 178.  And it was not until post 72 that there was a call of action to do something about the legislation.

It reinforced what I’ve been thinking: we are spending so much time talking to each other and not enough time talking to legislators (my focus here is California but what follow remains true for those in the affiliate industry to reach out to their legislators).

I just wanted to ask everyone to reach out to your legislature in California and write a letter.  Better yet, pay a visit to your state assembly member.

If you don’t think grassroots action can make a difference, think again.  When I was working on Capital Hill, I literally watched a Member of Congress getting ready to vote on a bill look at two piles of letters from opposing sides on an issue on their desk.  Then go and cast his vote from the side that had the most letters in their pile. In another case, I watched a Member of Congress look back at his schedule count the number of people on each side of an issue that had visited him, and then vote for the side for whom more constituents had paid visits over the last six months.

If you are concerned about the ramifications of AB 178 and live in California, you need to write a letter – here is how – or visit your Assembly member. Next week, the California State Assembly is going out on recess and we need to get people to visit their members in 4 key districts.  You really have a chance to make a HUGE difference here.

The list of members is below.  If you live close to their district office, can you please check this link and see if you live in their district.  If you do live in their district, and you know how to visit an elected official,  just do it!  If you need a little help let me know, and I’ll walk you through it and make sure you have some people to help. Caaffiliates (at) gmail.com.   This is not hard, elected officials work for you and they want to hear what you care about and how they can help serve you.

Thanks so much!

Coto, Joe
100 Paseo De San Antonio
Suite 319
San Jose, CA 95113
(408) 277-1220
Assemblymember.coto@assembly.ca.gov

Ma, Fiona
455 Golden Gate Avenue
Suite 14600
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 557-2312
Assemblymember.Ma@assembly.ca.gov

Portantino, Anthony
215 N. Marengo Ave
Suite 115
Pasadena, CA 91101
(626) 577-9944
Assemblymember.Portantino@assembly.ca.gov

Saldana, Lori
1557 Columbia Steet
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 645-3090
Assemblymember.Saldana@assembly.ca.gov

See more here:
Want to Stop AB 178? Talk to a Legislator