Link Building Without a Dime

In “Marketing your SMB with Time & Elbow Grease,” I explained that I’m committing to a series of articles for Little Biz that will give actionable advice on how to improve your rankings or revenue from search with no dollar investments — aside from the time it takes to research and implement these changes.

Because you demanded it, today we’ll discuss how to obtain a strong inbound link profile without spending any dollars out of your budget. Link building like this definitely takes time, so we’re not talking completely free — just no out-of-pocket money involved.

These tactics can work for the smallest of sites and have very nice benefits. First, some things to remember:

• Not every link will become a Google backlink.
• Not every link will make you move up one ranking.
• I don’t know how many links it takes to be number one.
• Every little bit of conscious effort helps.

Have Something Worth Linking To

Nobody wants a link from someone who has horrible, irrelevant content on their Web site. You can request a link, request a link exchange, or post a blog comment, but if the person in charge of approving that link doesn’t think your site is decent, you aren’t going to get it.

The first step in finding good links actually started a while ago when you got to work writing great content . If you haven’t done that yet, what are you waiting for?

Don’t be Afraid to Copy Your Top Competitors

Start link building without a budget by scoping out the top ranking sites for the best keyword phrases you can find for your products or services. Review all of their incoming links using Yahoo Site Explorer and mark any they do have that you don’t have.

Next, parse through those links and find ones that can be obtained for free. It can be as simple as making a comment on a blog post or exchanging a link with a relevant business.

Blog Comments

Many bloggers allow those who post comments to have a link back to their site. This is a great way to contribute to your niche community as a whole and, in some cases, obtain a nice link back to your own Web site.

Here are some tips for commenting on blogs:

• Don’t put a keyword phrase as you name. I delete these, every time! You’re a person, and I highly doubt your real name is Buy Viagra Online, so don’t leave that as your name in the name box. Yes, anchor text links are fine. But if the comment gets deleted, you didn’t get the link — and you wasted time submitting the comment.
• Leave a meaningful comment. Don’t say “nice post” or “I found this very useful.” Why did you find it useful? What can you add to the conversation?
• Provide a link back to relevant content on your site that supports the content in the blog post, or as closely as you can.

Sponsorships, Volunteerism, Partnerships

Many nonprofit organizations have a Web site and they love having volunteers. Next time you do some work for your local charity walk or fundraiser, see if they have a links page on their Web site. This may not be 100-percent relevant, but if you volunteer in your business’s name, maybe they’ll have a page that lists the volunteers with links. Don’t volunteer only to get links, though. Have some fun, too.

Relevant Link Exchanges

I like link exchanges, especially if you’re exchanging with a product or service that can provide direct benefit to your Web site users. Are you a plumber that recommends a certain type of furnace or A/C unit? See if that company will agree to link to your site — and offer them a link in exchange. You’re adding value, “playing within your own neighborhood” and getting some nice relevant links in the process.

You should limit how many reciprocal links you have. One hundred percent is definitely too much; 50 percent is probably too much; but less than 40 percent is probably just fine.

These tips take elbow grease and time, but no dollar investments. What you put into the process is directly related to what you receive back.

Credits to: Carrie Hill

Using SEO for real-time search in Twitter and Facebook

With Twitter and Facebook taking on real-time search and rumors that Google will soon do the same, there will be an increasing need for companies to learn how to use search engine optimization (SEO) to attract people looking for up-to-the-minute results.

With this in mind, Mike Dobbs writing at Mashable says there are a number of tips people can use to make sure their Twitter – and potentially other real-time search engines – are working in their favor for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Dobbs says one of the most important thing to remember is to make sure the username and account name reflect the brand a company or individual is looking to represent.

But when tweeting, Twitter users should also consider how search engine optimization (SEO) might factor into what they’re writing, especially in light of how Google presents the tweet in a results page.

“The ‘lead-in’ of each tweet appears to be important for SEO as it will determine what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google,” writes Dobbs. “Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet.”

To get into the real-time search world, Facebook recently announced it is testing an “up-to-the-minute” search function which will allow users to find results from friend’s profiles, fan pages and from users who have set their privacy settings to allow others to view content.

Credits to: Brafton.com

Display URL – Traffic Tricks Used By Hijackers

The display URL is the part of your ad copy text that tells consumers where they will go if they click on your ad. Therefore, it is a very important tool for branding yourself, as it is how consumers will recognize you in list of sponsored results.

Each of the major search providers typically enforces the following rules with regard to the format of display URLs:

• The top level domain of the display URL must match the top level domain of the ultimate landing page (excluding redirections e.g. for tracking URLs).
• The display url can be a sub-domain e.g. ’something.topleveldomain.com’
• The display url can be an indexed page e.g. ‘topleveldomain.com/something

Brand hijackers

In this article, the term brand hijackers means any advertiser using another advertiser’s trademarks without permission. For example, an advertiser who is not an obvious reseller or company affiliated with the brand holder.

The display URL is an excellent place for brand hijackers (”BrandJacker”) to exploit your brand, as well as the credibility and trust you have built with consumers. Brandjackers will attempt to disguise the display URL causing its listing to appear to be you. I have noticed the following tricks deployed by brand hijackers in order to divert traffic to their own web pages using your brand as a lure.

Trick #1: sub-domains

This method is where the brandjacker uses your brand as part of a sub-domain so that at a glance the display URL appears to be yours or endorsed by you. Sub-domains are allowed by all three search providers. The landing page rule is not broken because the top level domain of the display URL and the landing page DO match. There are several techniques used here:

• Brand appears before the ‘dot’. Display URL example: chuck.99-styles.com

• Brand appears before the ‘dot’ and top level domain is an offer for something free or for a discount or deal. Display URL examples:

1. fisher-price.now-at-low-prices.com
2. playstation3.price-discounts.com

• Your complete URL appears before the ‘dot’ in the display URL. URL structure example:yourdomain.com.topleveldomain.com

Trick #2: mis-directed display URLs

This method is where the BrandJacker uses your domain as the display URL, so that the ad looks 100% like your ad, but then sends the traffic somewhere totally different.

We find examples of this type with large retailers like Walmart being exploited. Here is a live example, if you run a search for the keyword ‘ walmart‘ or ‘ wal-mart‘, you may find ads that look something like these:

Wa‍lmart – Official Site Your Source for Top Brands & Much More at Wa‍lmart Now! Walmart.com

ShopWal Mart^TM On-Line Save Today At Wal Mart .com Shop Our Official Online Store Now www.walmart.com

The display URLs in the above ads clearly indicate that the advertiser is ‘Walmart’. A consumer will click on these ads expecting a Walmart web site. That is not what happens. When a consumer clicks on these ads, the consumer may land on a web site that offers one of the following user experiences:

1. A site which collects consumer email addresses. The landing page looks like it belongs to Walmart – it has Walmart colors, logo, and a mocked-up giftcard that looks like a Walmart card. It promises $1,000 for free. To get started, you need to provide your email address. There is a disclaimer on the web site in small print that tells you the site is not endorsed by Walmart:

“[site name removed] is an independent rewards program and not associated with any of the above listed merchants or brands. The above listed merchants or brands in no way endorse or sponsor [site name removed] ’s offer and are not liable for any alleged or actual claims related to this offer.”

2. Another site which also collects consumer email addresses. The landing page looks like it belongs to Walmart. However, this site is not walmart.com as promised in the ad copy text. The logo and colors match what you would expect, there is a lady jumping across the page holding shopping bags with the Walmart logo on the bags. To get the giveaway you need to provide your email address.

Although the search engines have rules that require the display URL to match the top level domain of the landing page, clearly in the above examples the rule is being skirted. To avoid the rule, the brandjacker may initially point the ad to the matching top level domain site, using a redirect tracking link as the destination URL. Next, as expected the search engine’s editorial bot will crawl the ad to confirm that it complies with its top level domain policy. The brandjacker waits until after the editorial bot has crawled the ad. Once confirmed that the ad has been crawled, the brandjacker switches where the redirect URL points so that now the redirect URL lands traffic on the brandjacker’s web site instead.

What can you do?

If your brand is being used in the display URL without permission, you can complain to the search provider. Most of the trademark policies do not cover the display URL. Your strongest arguments will be editorial rules that guide what can and can’t be used in the display URL. For more ideas on what you can do, The Search Monitor has published a white paper available for download: a Step by Step Guide to Combat Trademark Abuse on Paid Search, which provides a list of ideas to help you to stop these types of tactics.

Lori Weiman

The Bogus Google Give-Away

Here’s a new one on me. I just got an email telling me that I’ve won nearly $1 million from a “drawing” randomly selected from those searching on Google. Suffice to say, it’s a scam. I can assure you that Google’s done no drawing like this. Add the spam to those about missing fortunes in Nigeria or government grants.

I did some looking around, and the Google scam seems relatively recent. Apparently there was a Google “anniversary” scam in April 2008. For this latest “give-away” one, I spotted talk of it from April of this year. But since this particular spam made it past the filters in Gmail (but not past Outlooks spam filtering), perhaps more people will be exposed to it.

For the curious, the pitch:

GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!! This E-mail is to inform you that your e-mail emerged as a winner of £500,000.00 GBP (Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds) in our online Give-away draws. Over £20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million British pounds) is to be given out for this Draws. No purchases of tickets were required. Participants for the draws were randomly selected from a world wide range of web searchers who use the Google search engine (Googler) and other Google ancillary services. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, Google is running an e-mail beta test.

Your email address was linked with our Computer Generated Profile Numbers(CGPN) and attached to the following details: Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):7-22-71-00-66-12, Ticket number: 00869575733664, Serial numbers:/BTD/8070447706/06, Lucky numbers: 12-12-23-35-40-41(12), was picked among our lucky winners to receive £500, 000.00 British pounds. Winners were selected randomly through a computer ballot system from worldwide users of the Google search engine.

YOUR WINNING DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOW: Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):7-22-71-00-66-12 Ticket number: 00869575733664 Serial numbers: / BTD/8070447706/06 Lucky numbers: 12-12-23-35-40-41(12)

To claim your give-away prize, send the following. Your full names…………….. , sex………………………….,Location……………………….Alternate e-mail address………………Your winning details……………..

Credits to: Search Engine Land

Spam2.0: Fake user accounts and spam profiles

You’re a good webmaster or web developer, and you’ve done everything you can to keep your site from being hacked and keep your forums and comment sections free of spam. You’re now the proud owner of a buzzing web2.0 social community, filling the web with user-generated content, and probably getting lots of visitors from Google and other search engines.

Many of your site’s visitors will create user profiles, and some will spend hours posting in forums, joining groups, and getting the sparkles exactly right on the rainbow-and-unicorn image for their BFF’s birthday. This is all great.

Others, however, will create accounts and fill their profiles with gibberish, blatherskite and palaver. Even worse, they’ll add a sneaky link, a bit of redirecting JavaScript code, or a big fake embedded video that takes your users off to the seediest corners of the web.

Welcome to the world of spam profiles. The social web is growing incredibly quickly and spammers look at every kind of user content on the web as an opportunity for traffic. I’ve spoken with a number of experienced webmasters who were surprised to find out this was even a problem, so I thought I would talk a little bit about spam profiles and what you might do to find and clean them out of your site.

Why is this important?

Imagine the following scenario:

“Hello there, welcome to our new web2.0 social networking site. Boy, have I got a new friend for you. His name is Mr. BuyMaleEnhancementRingtonesNow, and he’d love for you to check out his profile. He’s a NaN-year-old from Pharmadelphia, PA and you can check out his exciting home page at http://example.com/obviousflimflam.

Not interested? Then let me introduce you to my dear friend PrettyGirlsWebCam1234, she says she’s an old college friend of yours and has exciting photos and videos you might want to see.”

You probably don’t want your visitors’ first impression of your site to include inappropriate images or bogus business offers. You definitely don’t want your users hounded by fake invites to the point where they stop visiting altogether. If your site becomes filled with spammy content and links to bad parts of the web, search engines may lose trust in your otherwise fine site.

Why would anyone create spam profiles?

Spammers create fake profiles for a number of nefarious purposes. Sometimes they’re just a way to reach users internally on a social networking site. This is somewhat similar to the way email spam works – the point is to send your users messages or friend invites and trick them into following a link, making a purchase, or downloading malware by sending a fake or low-quality proposition.

Spammers are also using spam profiles as yet another avenue to generate webspam on otherwise good domains. They scour the web for opportunities to get their links, redirects, and malware to users. They use your site because it’s no cost to them and they hope to piggyback off your good reputation.

The latter case is becoming more and more common. Some fake profiles are obvious, using popular pharmaceuticals as the profile name, for example; but we’ve noticed an increase in savvier spammers that try to use real names and realistic data to sneak in their bad links. To make sure their newly-minted gibberish profile shows up in searches they will also generate links on hacked sites, comment spam, and yes, other spam profiles. This results in a lot of bad content on your domain, unwanted incoming links from spam sites, and annoyed users.

Which sites are being abused?

You may be thinking to yourself, “But my site isn’t a huge social networking juggernaut; surely I don’t need to worry.” Unfortunately, we see spam profiles on everything from the largest social networking sites to the smallest forums and bulletin boards. Many popular bulletin boards and content management systems (CMS) such as vBulletin, phpBB, Moodle, Joomla, etc. generate member pages for every user that creates an account. In general CMSs are great because they make it easy for you to deploy content and interactive features to your site, but auto-generated pages can be abused if you’re not aware.

For all of you out there who do work for huge social networking juggernauts, your site is a target as well. Spammers want access to your large userbase, hoping that users on social sites will be more trusting of incoming friend requests, leading to larger success rates.

What can you do?

This isn’t an easy problem to solve – the bad guys are attacking a wide range of sites and seem to be able to adapt their scripts to get around countermeasures. Google is constantly under attack by spammers trying to create fake accounts and generate spam profiles on our sites, and despite all of our efforts some have managed to slip through. Here are some things you can do to make their lives more difficult and keep your site clean and useful:

• Make sure you have standard security features in place, including CAPTCHAs, to make it harder for spammers to create accounts en masse. Watch out for unlikely behavior – thousands of new user accounts created from the same IP address, new users sending out thousands of friend requests, etc. There is no simple solution to this problem, but often some simple checks will catch most of the worst spam.
• Use a blacklist to prevent repetitive spamming attempts. We often see large numbers of fake profiles on one innocent site all linking to the same domain, so once you find one, you should make it simple to remove all of them.
• Watch out for cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities and other security holes that allow spammers to inject questionable code onto their profile pages. We’ve seen techniques such as JavaScript used to redirect users to other sites, iframes that attempt to give users malware, and custom CSS code used to cover over your page with spammy content.
• Consider nofollowing the links on untrusted user profile pages. This makes your site less attractive to anyone trying to pass PageRank from your site to their spammy site. Spammers seem to go after the low-hanging fruit, so even just nofollowing new profiles with few signals of trustworthiness will go a long way toward mitigating the problem. On the flip side, you could also consider manually or automatically lifting the nofollow attribute on links created by community members that are likely more trustworthy, such as those who have contributed substantive content over time.
• Consider noindexing profile pages for new, not yet trustworthy users. You may even want to make initial profile pages completely private, especially if the bulk of the content on your site is in blogs, forums, or other types of pages.
• Add a “report spam” feature to user profiles and friend invitations. Let your users help you solve the problem – they care about your community and are annoyed by spam too.
• Monitor your site for spammy pages. One of the best tools for this is Google Alerts – set up a site: query along with commercial or adult keywords that you wouldn’t expect to see on your site. This is also a great tool to help detect hacked pages. You can also check ‘Keywords’ data in Webmaster Tools for strange, volatile vocabulary.
• Watch for spikes in traffic from suspicious queries. It’s always great to see the line on your pageviews chart head upward, but pay attention to commercial or adult queries that don’t fit your site’s content. In cases like this where a spammer has abused your site, that traffic will provide little if any benefit while introducing users to your site as “the place that redirected me to that virus.”

Written by Jason Morrison, Search Quality Team
Credits to: Google Central Blog

MasterClass! – Adobe LiveCycle Designer Tutorials

New Release by vtc.com – “MasterClass! – Adobe LiveCycle Designer” by Geoff Blake. Duration of the course - 3 hours.

PDF-based forms created in Adobe LiveCycle designer provide a robust method for distributing electronic forms while maintaining design integrity. Discover the tools, commands, and palettes that LiveCycle offers that makes form creation easy. Learn how to create common form objects like text fields, check boxes, and drop down menus as well as how to work with pre-created form objects. Then follow along and see how easy LiveCycle makes it to format a form’s overall look and design. Finally, create buttons to control your form and learn how to manage back-end form data. Work Files are included. To begin learning, simply click on one of the video topics.

MasterClass! – Adobe LiveCycle Designer

Google Slides On Ranking Issues

We hear lots of questions about site architecture issues and traffic drops, so it was a pleasure to talk about it in greater detail at SMX London and I’d like to highlight some key concepts from my presentation here. First off, let’s gain a better understanding of drops in traffic, and then we’ll take a look at site design and architecture issues.

Understanding drops in traffic

As you know, fluctuations in search results happen all the time; the web is constantly evolving and so is our index. Improvements in our ability to understand our users’ interests and queries also often lead to differences in how our algorithms select and rank pages. We realize, however, that such changes might be confusing and sometimes foster misconceptions, so we’d like to address a couple of these myths head-on.

Myth number 1: Duplicate content causes drops in traffic!

Webmasters often wonder if the duplicates on their site can have a negative effect on their site’s traffic. As mentioned in our guidelines, unless this duplication is intended to manipulate Google and/or users, the duplication is not a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. The second part of my presentation illustrates in greater detail how to deal with duplicate content using canonicalization.

Myth number 2: Affiliate programs cause drops in traffic!

Original and compelling content is crucial for a good user experience. If your website participates in affiliate programs, it’s essential to consider whether the same content is available in many other places on the web. Affiliate sites with little or no original and compelling content are not likely to rank well in Google search results, but including affiliate links within the context of original and compelling content isn’t in itself the sort of thing that leads to traffic drops.

Having reviewed a few of the most common concerns, I’d like to highlight two important sections of the presentation. The first illustrates how malicious attacks — such as an injection of hidden text and links — might cause your site to be removed from Google’s search results. On a happier note, it also covers how you can use the Google cache and Webmaster Tools to identify this issue. On a related note, if we’ve found a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines such as the use of hidden text or the presence of malware on your site, you will typically find a note regarding this in your Webmaster Tools Message center.

You may also find your site’s traffic decreased if your users are being redirected to another site…for example, due to a hacker-applied server- or page-level redirection triggered by referrals from search engines. A similar scenario — but with different results — is the case in which a hacker has instituted a redirection for crawlers only. While this will cause no immediate drop in traffic since users and their visits are not affected, it might lead to a decrease in pages indexed over time.

View Slides – http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?id=dc75gmks_22ht5dh9hb

Site design and architecture issues

Now that we’ve seen how malicious changes might affect your site and its traffic, let’s examine some design and architecture issues. Specifically, you want to ensure that your site is able to be both effectively crawled and indexed, which is the prerequisite to being shown in our search results. What should you consider?

• First off, check that your robots.txt file has the correct status code and is not returning an error.
• Keep in mind some best practices when moving to a new site and the new “Change of address” feature recently added to Webmaster Tools.
• Review the settings of the robots.txt file to make sure no pages — particularly those rewritten and/or dynamic — are blocked inappropriately.
• Finally, make good use of the rel=”canonical” attribute to reduce the indexing of duplicate content on your domain. The example in the presentation shows how using this attribute helps Google understand that a duplicate can be clustered with the canonical and that the original, or canonical, page should be indexed.

View Slides – http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?id=dc75gmks_73dvznqhd5

In conclusion, remember that fluctuations in search results are normal but there are steps that you can take to avoid malicious attacks or design and architecture issues that might cause your site to disappear or fluctuate unpredictably in search results. Start by learning more about attacks by hackers and spammers, make sure everything is running properly at crawling and indexing level by double-checking the HTML suggestions in Webmaster Tools, and finally, test your robots.txt file in case you are accidentally blocking Googlebot. And don’t forget about those “robots.txt unreachable” errors!

Credits to: Googoe Webmaster Central

Google Adsense May Be King But There are Other Options

When it comes to making money with a website, one of the most popular methods is running text and/or image ads on various pages. It’s referred to as contextual advertising and “inline ads”. Text or image ads are shown which match the content of the pages. Inline ads appear as highlighted words on the page when the visitor hovers over highlighted text on the page. Ads appear in small boxes. Contextual ads are often displayed to the right or left of website copy, or as blocks within sections of the text. The ads shown are related to the content of each individual page. As visitors click on these links, you earn cash.

Probably the largest and most used of the contextual ad programs is Google’s Adsense. Google really is a giant when it comes to the Internet, and their talents go far beyond just being a search engine. Adsense is used by many site owners to bring in a monthly income.

If you’re interested in running Adsense ads, first you’ll need to apply and get approved. Once approved for one site, you can place Adsense on any other site that you own. You can decide to run only text ads or choose from image and text. Various sizes are offered, and you can custom select colors to match the look of your site. Once the code is generated, you paste it on your HTML pages where you want the ads to appear. Simple & easy.

But what happens if you’re not approved by Google, or for some reason your Adsense account were to be terminated? What would you do then? There are other ad network options out there and I’ve gathered some of the best alternatives together here.

Before signing up for any ad program, make sure you read their terms of service and any requirements to make sure it’s a good fit for your website. Also, review the payment options so you’ll know how and when you can expect to be paid. Let’s review:

1) Text-Link-Ads.com:

Once your site is approved, you insert the code on your page and they sell simple text ads that appear on your site. You have final say over any ads being published. Payments are made via Paypal or Clickbank. You receive 50% of the sale price for each link they serve up. This ad network is acceptable to be run on the same page as Google Adsense as this is not considered contextual advertising.

2) Adbrite:

A variety of ad formats to choose from. You can run text ads, banners, inline ads or even full page ads. You can choose to approve or reject ads before they appear on your site. Pays monthly with the default minimum check amount of $100.00. Once your site is approved, ads will appear within 24 hours of your pasting the code. Adbrite has no policy against using other ad networks on your site at the same time.

3) Kontera:

Contextually relevant ads and ad units which are linked to keywords on your web page. Ads displayed will match the content of your site. For your website to be approved it must be in English, be content rich with more than 50 words per page. You can run text, image, billboard, and video ads.

4) Quigo.com:

Quigo offers content-targeted advertising to those with strong traffic. Publishers with 500,000 or more monthly page views are encouraged to apply. Once approved, simply copy and paste the code.

5) Yahoo Publisher Network:

Works very similar to Google’s Adsense program. You design your own ads, choosing colors and formats, then paste some code on your page. You’ll be paid per click. Advanced ad targeting and display capabilities can sometimes improve your results. You can choose to be paid via Paypal once your earnings are $50.00, or a check when you hit $100.00.

6) Chitika.com:

A full service online ad network which serves over two billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites. Chitika ads are not contextual and can be run on the same page as Adsense. Twenty-four different ad sizes are available. Payment is via Paypal once your account is at $10.00, or a check when you reach $50.00.

7) Miva:

Miva offers a wide variety of ad formats to choose from: content ads, inline ads, search ads. You’ll be paid on a per click basis. Payments are made monthly by check or Paypal once your balance reaches $25.00. You can also block competitor ads from appearing on your site.

8.) AffiliatesGarage.com:

A different type of ad network which allows you to display affiliate ads in an “Adsense Style”. You can run Clickbank and Paydotcom text ads on your site or blog and earn up to 75% commission.

9) Bidvertiser.com:

Display text ads on your website and let advertisers bid against each other. Ad formats are skyscrapers, banners, rectangles, buttons. They even have ads for your RSS feeds. Payout is monthly via Paypal once your balance is $10.00. This one pays on a cost per click basis.

10) AmaSense Ads:

This service allows you to create Google Adsense styled ads for Amazon products. Different ad formats are available which makes it easy to integrate into your site. Amasense can also be used side by side with Google Adsense without any problems.

As ads are clicked on, you earn a percentage of the product which is paid by Amazon depending on the type of product that is bought. You must have an Amazon associate account first before signing up. To get one go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com.

As you can see Adsense is not the only game in town when it comes to running ads on your site. If you have multiple sites, you may want to use one of the services mentioned above, then test, to see which one is a better earning opportunity. You might be surprised at what you learn.

It’s against Google’s terms of service to run another contextual ad service on the same page as Adsense, but there are exceptions to the rule. Most of the services above will tell you if you can run their ads alongside Adsense.

If your websites are mainly information based, network advertising is an excellent way for you to earn an income with little effort on your part. No matter if you use Adsense or another service, it just makes for good dollars and cents.

Credits to: Merle’s Mission Blog

Russell Brunson Affiliate Training Show on UStream

Russell Brunson Affiliate Training Show on UStream – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/affiliate-training

If you have not attended a live training show before, the training is typically 30 minutes and you are able to ask me questions live on the show.

As our top affiliates from our Micro Continuity launch all had big lists- we are going to have a list building training.

To access the training please go to the link below: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/affiliate-training

AdWords API 2009 Launch

The AdWords API team is pleased to announce the launch of AdWords API v2009 in production! v2009 offers more speed, scale, and flexibility to developers, at a lower cost.

Back in April, we released a sandbox for our newest version of the AdWords API so you could begin experimenting. As mentioned in that blog post, we’re using a new version naming convention to highlight the significant differences between this version, called AdWords API v2009, and v13.

This launch is a production beta, and we’re asking developers to sign up for access here. We’ll add you to our whitelist on a rolling basis,and send each of you a confirmation email once you’ve been added.

We’ve made a few policy changes in the API v2009 as well:

• Revised Terms and Conditions – We’ve updated our Terms and Conditions to improve clarity. This change includes a more comprehensive explanation of our policy regarding the commingling of data, and also redefines the required minimum AdWords functionality for third party developers. You can see the list of required and optional features here.
• Lower costs - v2009 comes with a new Rate Sheet that reflects the improved efficiency of the new system. We’ve lowered the cost of v2009 for the average developer by approximately 20% through reducing the unit cost of our most commonly called operations — add criteria, add add, and set adgroup.

Getting started with v2009:

Once you’ve applied for access, you can find comprehensive developer documentation on our v2009 homepage.

While you’re waiting for access to the v2009 beta, we encourage you to begin experimenting immediately with the v2009 sandbox. The sandbox doesn’t charge for quota, and all you need to access it is your current Google account username and password. Please remember that the sandbox is a testing and development environment, so changes made there won’t affect your live AdWords account. You can read more about sandbox best practices here.

What to expect next:

Over the next few months, we’ll continue to introduce new features and additional AdWords functionality. Prior to moving added features to production, they’ll be released to the v2009 sandbox so that you can try them out in advance. As they become available, we’ll announce them on our blog. Some of the most notable are:

• Partial failure acceptance – We plan to support partial failures, which means that large posts won’t be completely rolled back due to a few small errors. This allows you to keep moving forward with development without halting to re-do posts.
  
• Asynchronous calls – We’ll offer asynchronous calls, which will allow you to work with large sets of data faster and more easily. Instead of having to wait for our system to fully complete your request before you can make another one, you’ll be able to make another call as soon as the API service confirms that it’s received your previous call. No more waiting for large requests to be finished. (Synchronous methods will still be supported as well.)

• Keyword Tools – With new keyword management tools, you’ll be able to directly access new URL-specific keyword suggestions from the AdWords Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool through the API.
• MCC and Reporting functionality.

While we continue to roll out these offerings, both AdWords API v13 and v2009 will be fully supported. We’ll begin the sunset countdown for v13 once we remove the v2009 whitelist and all developer have acquired access. Because we’re introducing more changes than usual with this version, we’ll extend the normal sunset period for v13, so it won’t sunset until early 2010. By signing up for the v2009 whitelist now, you have the opportunity to get a head start on development.

Credits to: Google Webmaster Blog