Make Money Online

There is a thin line between optimizing a website for search engines and optimizing it for users. In order to get the content and keywords onto a page that are necessary to boost search engine rankings, it is often the case that usability is compromised. If your page is totally optimized for search engines, but compromises usability, you may be able to drive a lot of traffic to the page, but only convert a small amount of it. On the other hand, if you optimize the page only for usability, leaving off loads of content, you may be able to better convert the traffic that comes, but there will be far less traffic.

A good way to find the best balance is analyzing your analytics. In Google Analytics, for example, you can set up goals used to track conversion on the website. Test your goals on different pages. Optimize a page for search engines and track conversions on that page. Optimize another page for the users and track the same conversions on that page, but as a separate goal. This will let you see if you generate more conversions from the search engine optimized page, which should generate a high amount of traffic with a low conversion rate, or from the user optimized page that should generate a smaller amount of traffic but a higher conversion rate.

Excerpted from:
Balancing SEO and Usability

 I have created two new audio tutorials about RedGage.
1. RedGage Explained
Discusses the RedGage site as a social bookmarking andsocial networkingsite and explains the four ways to earnmoney on Redgage.What is RedGage?  2. How to Promote on RedGageShows how to use the cross-posting facility on RedGage tobuild multiple backlinks for your blogs, websites and Squidoo lenses.Promote Your Squidoo

More:
RedGage Audio Tutorials – How to promote and earn on RedGage

We spend a lot of time thinking about how information travels around the globe. After all, there are Googlers living and working in dozens of countries — and we’re pretty sure our products are used in many more. So we’re familiar with the need to translate information across borders, and we’ve been working hard to build the technology to enable you to do just that. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve added nine new languages to Google Translate: Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish. That means that Google Translate now supports 51 languages and 2550 language pairs — including all 23 official EU languages.

The translation quality of these newest languages is still a little rough, but it will improve over time — and we’re continuously working to improve quality for all languages supported by Google Translate. We’re also working to integrate Google Translate into some of our other products; you can already translate emails within Gmail, webpages using Google Toolbar, RSS feeds in Google Reader and most recently, documents within Google Docs. For more information about Google Translate and these latest additions, check out our post on the Research Blog.

Posted by Jeff Chin, Product Manager

Originally posted here:
Google Translate now speaks 51 languages

I culled through the this years Inc 5000 Advertising and Marketing list to try to pick out companies primarily focused on performance marketing and broke them into 3 categories.  Here are the top Affiliates, Affiliate OPMs, and Affiliate / CPA networks in the Inc 5000 for 2009 based on Revenue Growth from 2005 to 2008.  If I missed any companies, I appologize, it’s not always easy to identify performance marketing companies by their descriptions on inc.com  and their websites.

Here is the list:

Affiliates in the 2009 Inc 5,000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies

Affiliate OPMs in the 2009 Inc 5,000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies

Affiliate Networks in the 2009 Inc 5,000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies

Excerpted from:
2009 Top Performance Marketing Companies in the Inc 5000

We’re happy to announce the launch of Barcelo Hotel & Resorts affiliate program in Share Results!

Established in Palma de Majorca, Spain more than 75 years ago, Barceló Group is one of Spain’s leading tourist companies operating more than 185 hotels in 16 countries. This family-owned and operated company ranks as the 24th largest hospitality company in the world.

Barcelo Hotels & Resorts offer accommodations in the most important destinations and cities throughout Europe, Mediterranean Islands, EEUU, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

For savvy travelers looking for an attractive hotel deal or for those seeking a bit of luxury, Barcelo offers their customers a wide range of accommodations like all-inclusive beach resorts to satisfy all vacation needs.

With hotel booking averages between $700-800 USD, new affiliates promoting Barcelo will have the opportunity earn high commissions during the upcoming holiday season.

Placements permitted in this program include:

• Banner Creative
• Text Ads
• PPC/Search Marketing (For more info please click here)
• Coupons
• 30-day Cookie
• Targeting US travelers

Commission Offer
As a new affiliate to the Barceló program, you will earn 6% commission on all verified sales.

Publishers that promote in the travel, coupon and search categories are ideal for this affiliate program.

For more info or to join, please visit: http://www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=16558

More:
Barcelo Affiliate Program Launches on Share Results

Recent commentary suggests the placement and shape of online ads may be more important than size. This calls into question the strategy of using bigger, more intrusive ads on web pages to gain awareness and create impact.

In an Ad Age Digital article, Ken Mallon of Dynamic Logic says a recent study conducted by the ad effectiveness measurement firm indicated it was a modest 180-pixel by 150-pixel rectangular ad that performed best. While Mallon admits Dynamic Logic hasn’t done enough research on the relatively new “giant” ads, he says “…among the limited range, it looks like where they’re located on the page and their shape is more important than size.”

As the Ad Age article suggests, Mallon’s comments represent only one aspect of what may be the continuing fall in effectiveness of online ads that are too big or too intrusive. A June 2009 LinkedIn Research/Harris Poll found (pdf) that consumers were getting increasingly frustrated with certain types of online ads. For example, 80 percent of consumer respondents found ads that expand on the page and cover the content they are trying to read to be “very frustrating,” while 12 percent found them “somewhat frustrating.”

That’s a piss-off factor of over 90 percent! About the same percentage, shy a few points, found that ads where consumers can’t find the close/skip button, and ads that automatically pop up, were also “very frustrating.”

Mallon told Ad Age that he questions the effectiveness of old standbys such as skyscraper and leaderboard ads as well because, he says, consumers have developed “banner blindness.” Rectangular ads may be more effective because they are close to or even integrated into the content.

Dynamic Logic believes ads bordering content are least effective, and that simple Flash is an overused, weak format. Real media with video is preferable. The firm suggests changing ad placement from page to page so consumers don’t get used to finding them in the same place.

The current discussion reminds me of the old days when magazines would often find that ads mimicking editorial content, or ads with long, engaging copy, would outperform traditional display ads. Whether in print or online, ads are most effective when they intrigue, inform, and entertain rather than annoy and frustrate the consumer. This is why simple online text ads, and smaller display ads that are well-integrated with content, may ultimately be the most effective advertising of all.

See the rest here:
Ad Effectiveness Not All About Size

Are you a Canadian AdSense publisher? We’ll be hosting a small AdSense event featuring optimization and product seminars in Toronto in early October, and we have a few additional spaces available. If you’re located in the Toronto area and would like to attend, fill out our interest form, telling us a little about yourself, your site, and your history with AdSense. There are a limited number of spots left, so if you’re interested, let us know as soon as possible. We’ll let you know by email if you’ve been selected to take part in the event.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Posted by Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo – AdSense Optimization Team

See the original post here:
Calling all Canadians

If you’re a publisher located in Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Slovenia, or Vatican City, you can now switch to local currency reports to view your earnings in Euros. Once you make this change, any earnings generated from advertisers paying on other currencies will be converted to Euros each day. This also means that if you’re receiving payments in Euros, there won’t be any additional conversions at the end of the month when payments are issued.

Before you switch to local currency reports, we suggest you download and save copies of your past reports in U.S. dollars for your records. Once you’ve done that, look for the green prompt in the upper right hand corner of your Reports Overview page. Click the link in the prompt, and you’ll be asked to agree to a new set of Terms and Conditions. If you have questions or need legal advice on interpreting the new Terms, please don’t hesitate to contact your attorney.

We encourage you to switch to local currency reports soon, since we’ll be requiring this update in the future. You can learn more about these new reports in our Help Center, and we also recommend reviewing answers to a few FAQs we covered on the blog before.

Posted by Arlene Lee – Inside AdSense Team

View post:
Euro reporting for more European countries

What do you do when you have big news that’s worth sharing? What are your best ways of gaining visibility and publicizing your business?

The answer is a press release!

The blogs this week relate to optimizing your press release to ensure you get the visibility you want to help grow your business and avoid the clutter that swamps inboxes across the industry. Press releases have a significant impact on exposure if properly leveraged. That said, it is vital that your press release incorporate a well-blended mix of keywords and creative writing, while remaining professional and informative.

Top Rank Marketing Blog provides insights, resources and commentary on a range of digital marketing and public relations topics. Their Online Marketing Agency specializes in online marketing strategy, consulting, implementation and training services. Their blog titled The Lowdown on Press Release Optimization is a great resource for anyone interested in successfully optimizing their PR.

Affiliate Dogma publishes a blog that draws on almost 10 years of experience in webdesign, internet marketing and ecommerce. Their principle— “Affiliates make Sales makes Profits” — is a guiding light that enables them to think outside the box and use novel solutions to common problems.

Excerpted from:
BAMroll Update: August 27, 2009

My cousin is in first grade and sometimes she writes short stories for class. I try to share the stories with her grandparents, but because Japanese is their first language and they don’t speak English very well, it’s been tough. Today we’re releasing a feature for Google Docs to make this kind of multi-lingual sharing easier — you can now automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.

So for my cousin’s latest story, I helped her type it up in Google Docs and then clicked “Translate document” from the “Tools” menu. In a matter of seconds, Google Docs has translated the whole story into Japanese using Google Translate’s technology.

You can replace the original document with the translation or make a new translated version. I like keeping an English version for friends here and creating a separate Japanese version for her grandparents. All the formatting and layout is preserved no matter what language it’s in — translations aren’t perfect, but we are continuously working on improving translation quality over time. We hope this new feature helps you more easily share information without worrying about language barriers.

Posted by Rita Chen, Associate Product Manager Intern, Google Docs

More here:
Translate documents: sharing across languages and generations

We’ve just concluded our fifth Google Summer of Code, our flagship global program to introduce college and university students to open source development. Once again, the results this year have been impressive. Nearly 2,000 mentors from 64 countries participated in the program. They worked to bring 1,000 students from 69 countries into the communities of 150 free and open source projects. We’re particularly excited this year to have introduced several students to open source development that has a direct impact on social causes, from microfinance software to global educational initiatives to making government data more transparent and accessible. Three months and hundreds of thousands of lines of code later, 85 percent of our student participants have successfully completed their projects. We’ll be publishing more extensive program statistics and wrap up reports in the coming weeks on the Google Open Source Blog, so stay tuned there for more news about Google Summer of Code.

We’d like to congratulate all of our student participants for their hard work and tremendous achievements this summer. We’re excited to hear that many of our students have planned out the next few months of their coding work with their chosen open source project. Finally, our sincerest thanks to all of our mentors for volunteering their time and expertise to help these students more actively engage with open source development.

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team

Go here to read the rest:
Five years of introducing students to open source

Try doing a search for [Hamlet] on Google Books. The first few results you’ll get are “Full View” books — which means you can read the full text. And, because the book is in the public domain, you can also download a copy of Hamlet in PDF form.

Starting today, you’ll be able to download these and over one million public domain books from Google Books in an additional format. We’re excited to now offer downloads in EPUB format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It’s supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you’ll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format. That means that people will be able to access public domain works that we’ve digitized from libraries around the world in more ways, including some that haven’t even been built or imagined yet.

We founded Google Books on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture. We began digitizing these books because we thought it was important for people to be able to find and read them, and we want them to be able to do so anywhere — not just when they happen to be at a computer. This feature takes us one step closer towards realizing that goal by helping support open standards that enable people to access these books in more places, on more devices and through more applications.

To find out more, check out our post on the Google Books blog.

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager

Excerpted from:
More books in more places: public domain EPUB downloads on Google Books

We’ve been hearing your requests for new ways to generate revenue in AdSense, and new ways to maintain control over the ads that appear on your sites. With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce plans to give you the ability to allow multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on your site.

You may remember that we began to accept display ads served from qualified third-party vendors over a year ago, which helped increase the number of display ads competing on AdSense publisher sites. With this new change, participating ad networks can also bid in our auction to appear on AdSense sites. This new capability will help you generate the most profit for every ad that appears on your site, whether the ads come from AdWords advertisers or Google-certified ad networks.

Who are these ad networks? They’re ad agencies and companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don’t own themselves (much like AdSense). You’ll now be able to allow advertisers from these networks to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space. All reporting and payments will still run through AdSense as they always have, and the available ad formats will be the same as those offered for AdWords ads.

We take the quality of ads delivered to your site seriously, so we’ll be certifying all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. You’ll have control over which networks can show ads on your pages — you can choose to opt out of receiving ads from specific networks, or all networks completely. This means you can continue to show ads from only AdWords advertisers if you like. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing these account settings.

We’ll slowly begin allowing ads from Google-certified ad networks to appear on AdSense pages over the coming months, so you won’t see an immediate impact on your ads or earnings. As new networks are certified, you’ll see them appear in your account. This feature will initially be available to publishers in North America and Europe, but we hope to roll it out to additional parts of the world in the future.

Posted by Sean Harvey – Business Product Manager

Read more from the original source:
Getting the most revenue from every impression through AdSense

I only followed a handful of blogs when I first started using Google Reader, but was always on the lookout for more great stuff to read. Over time, I discovered that my friends followed lots of interesting sites, and my reading list grew from 4 to 34 sites and blogs as I incorporated their recommendations.

Since then, Reader has launched several sharing features that make it easier to find and subscribe to feeds that your friends like, and we thought that recommendations could make finding good stuff to read even easier. This time, instead of asking our friends, we approached leaders across a variety of fields and asked them what they read online. We received lots of great responses, which we’ve collected into our second edition of Power Readers. In this edition, we’ve expanded from Power Readers in Politics to include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies and more. We hope this will be a good place to find great things to read, whether you already have an extensive reading list or are totally new to Google Reader.

Plus, now we can answer some questions that have interested us for years: Where does Arianna Huffington go to get different perspectives on the news? When Paul Krugman surfs the web, what are his favorite economics sites? What blogs do tech, foodie and fashion bloggers read? Visit www.google.com/powerreaders to explore and subscribe to any of their reading lists, or to any individual items that they recommend.

A big thanks to all of the contributors who shared their reading lists with us.

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Finding great stuff to read with Google Reader

Keith Burtis, the Community Manager at Best Buy has put together a team of Social Media Superstars to create a presentation for SXSW – The South By SouthWest Interactive Conference titled “Prove it! Social Media ROI for Business”

The Panel includes Jay Berkowitz; Allan Isfan; Justin Levy; Amber Naslund and Jason Falls. Each of the panel members has offered to preview their presentation on their blog to give you a sample of the presentation. Here is my sample of Social Media ROI, and below are links to the other members of our esteemed panel.

Oh, and one small favor, please Panels at SXSW are voted on by you. If you like our topic, please take a moment to register for SXSW and vote for our panel!

The Most Important Way to Measure Social Media ROI

Google Analytics is free and it is a very reliable way to measure what happens on your website,. This program can tell you which websites people came from, and it can measure what they do on your website. It is very easy to add a conversion code on the sales confirmation page or ‘goal’ such as a completed Contact Us form. Every site that doesn’t have a high end analytics program should have Google Analytics in place.

Ten Golden Rules doesn’t sell products we are a B2B (Business to Business) site, we don’t measure direct sales, we measure leads on our site. In this example below, we looked at traffic to our Ten Golden Rules website from Social Media website Twitter. This site sent 492 visits from my www.Twitter.com/JayBerkowitz account. 2.44 percent of those site visitors signed up for our free eNewsletter, .41 percent requested a website consultation and .20 percent completed a Contact Us form, overall 3.05 percent of site visitors became a lead for our company or they opted-in to our database. We track the sources of our clients and we are able to determine the ROI from our Social Media activities.

Social Media Sponsorships = ROI

Another form of measurable ROI from Social Media can come in the form of sponsorships.

Our Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast, a recent SOFIE Award Winner for best Use of New Media, has had two sponsors, SilverPOP and GoToMeeting.

In addition, the Podcast has generated invitations for high profile speaking engagements, media coverage and clients for Ten Golden Rules internet agency.

Here are the posts from my fellow panelists on how to generate ROI from Social Media:

Two ways to generate and measure Social Media ROI – Allan Isfan

Read the rest here:
Prove it! Social Media ROI for Business – Please vote for our SXSW Panel