Engineeringtalk talks

There is a case study on improving the performance of AdSense. Some of the wisdom includes:

Next, the team experimented with AdSense designs, focusing on optimization through typography and placement. They found the biggest influence on CTR was the similarity between the AdSense type (size and font), and the main body text of the page. The more similar the type, the higher the CTR. The Engineeringtalk team found little difference in CTR between left-versus-right positioning. So they opted for the right side, which proved useful a few months later, when the final piece of the jigsaw arrived - the introduction of link units. After another round of testing, it was no surprise that the link units worked best in the "prime position" as seen on the "heatmap". The new design can be seen here.

Give it a read, there is some good ideas and interesting links from someone who has been successful at making money off AdSense.

Building User Base

To quote Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog

As I wrote a week or so ago, building a user base isn't about rewriting functionality that works well today, it's about identifying efficiencies and differentiation, and innovating to create value for consumers.

Mr. Schwartz is in the same situation on a grander scale than many of us are. He is trying to enhance a user base, so often his thoughts are right to the subject of this blog. Besides, he's just got a fun blog to read. The bottom line is that people do not want the wheel reinvented, they just want something to make their lives a little better. Find some niche that is not being filled, and fill it.

7 Advanced Money-Making Strategies For Affiliates

1. Mailing List Build your own mailing list of prospects. Keep promoting different affiliate programs to the people on your list, as opposed to losing the visitor forever once they clicked over to the merchant's site. 2. Success Stories Write an inspirational success story on how this product helped you or someone you know. After identifying with your success story, many people will be ready to buy. 3. Reviews Write a detailed review of the product with pros and cons. Of course, the pros should outweigh the cons. People will trust a review much more than a sales pitch. 4. Articles Write articles releated to the product or service you promote. At the end of your articles, include your author bio with your affiliate link. 5. Pay Per Click Try Pay Per Click advertising on Google Adwords and Overture. Start out with a small budget to test the waters. If your sales commissions are greater than the cost of advertising, continue and expand your Pay Per Click campaign. 6. Blogs Start a blog on a subject related to the affiliate programs that you promote. Add affiliate links to your posts. Search engines love blogs, so you will get a lot of traffic. 7. Tracking Always track how many visitors you are sending to each affiliate program, and how many sales you get from those visitors. This way you will separate the winning affiliate programs from the losers, and focus on promoting the most profitable ones. About The Author: Melanie Mendelson owns a weight loss affiliate program that converts like crazy and pays a whopping 60% commission to affiliates. For more information, visit http://www.foolproof-diet.com/affiliates

Ten Ways to Keep Your Website Unnoticed on the Internet.

If you are a person who likes to keep up with current trends you will know that it is important to have your own website. After all anybody who is Anybody Important has a website of their very own. However one of the dangers of having a website is that someone browsing on the internet might discover it one day and what is worse, actually pause to visit your site and read its contents! They might even be interested stopping for a while to read what you wrote in it, or want to buy the widget you thought might be good to sell as you have more than one of them. If you would like to reduce the possibilities of that happening be sure to follow these ten tips, and you can be sure that very few people will even know your website exists. 1. Choose an obscure domain name. Make sure the name you select has no relevance to the content of your site, to you or your business. Whatever you do make sure the domain name contains NO keywords that would indicate what your site is about and attract attention when someone searches for a site with your content or product. 2. Do not submit your website URL to any search engines, especially the big ones like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Do not participate in any offers for your website to be submitted to search engines for free. 3. Never add fresh content or pages to your website. In fact it is a better idea to identically duplicate your content on every page. 4. Avoid reading anything about how to promote traffic to your website. One of the strategies might sink into your sub conscious, and you might find yourself promoting your site by accident. 5. Set up your website and then just leave it. Try not even to visit it yourself if possible in case your computer has tracking cookies. Any visits to your site could attract attention. 6. Make sure that you have a generic e mail address that you use all the time. An example of this might be a hotmail or yahoo address. Then when you write emails no one can track down your website through your email address. An address like me @mywebsite.com would just give the game away. 7. Even if you are passionate about writing, do not even consider writing an article and submitting it to a free article submission site such as Articles Beyond Better.Com. The problem with submitting an article is that you have to put something in the resource box which tells other people who you are and how to visit your website and buy your widget. It's amazing how just one article can be reprinted all over the internet, and read by people all over the world. That kind of exposure is very harmful to secret websites which do not want to receive any visits. 8. Do not put a blog or bulletin board on your website. This just encourages all sorts of visitors who want to read what you write and ask you questions. Some people often make return visits, or even become regular visitors to blogs, forums and bulletin boards. After all it would be terrible if someone actually 'bookmarked' your site and came back because they liked it! 9. Do not ever mention or put your website address on your business card, any promotional business material, or as a signature file on every e mail you send. 10. Choose an unreliable hosting service that has a bad reputation. In this way the server will not be up all the time, and people will not be able to access your site even if they wanted to. By following these guidelines you can be pretty sure that no one will notice that your website exists. I hope you have plenty of money though, and are not wanting to make any income from your website. The problem with a website that is un noticed is that you still have to pay your hosting server every month for the privilege of your website taking up space on their server even if no one comes to visit it. About the Author Barbara White of Beyond Better Development is a Speaker as well as an Internet Entrepreneur. Barbara's passion is to empower others to become Beyond Better. For more informative and inspirational articles visit http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com and http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com