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WP Adsense Plugin Alert

By Elena

This is a quick post to alert anyone who is using WP Adsense plugin by Naeem (here is his site). For quite a long time I used Naeem’s plugin and was very thankful, however after latest update my ads were gone and replaced with his ads.

I want to believe it’s a mistake of some kind, but let’s face it, it isn’t. I have no idea how he thinks, but he puts his own Adsense account in danger first and foremost.

If you are using this plugin deactivate it immediately. I suggest removing all his files, as you never know what else he is up to. Once you deactivate the plugin things will be back to normal, except of course that your ads will not work.

Filed Under: Wordpress Tagged With: Adsense policy violation, Advertising, contextual advertisement, monetization, Wordpress

Planning Sweepstakes – Any Advice?

By Elena

A few months ago SBI’s superstar Elad made an interesting interview (available here) where he actually revealed the secret of his traffic. Well, he might have many other secrets – Elad is obviously a very clever guy, but still he revealed enough.

prizeThe interview was made to promote SBI!, however if you watch his interview and listen carefully, you’ll realize his success has nothing to do with SBI! Well of course, that’s how he started, but then he discovered his own unique way to success which he shared in that video.

Doubting? His new printables website is not hosted by SBI! In addition, it appears he transferred some of his old websites away from SBI!. I am not saying this to take another chance to pick on SBI! I don’t really hate them, although I didn’t like to be there. Here’s the proof – today they are going to make another interview with one successful lady and I am going to watch. I like new ideas! This post is not another SBI! scam or legit post. I don’t want to be dragged into that. It’s about traffic generation.

Elad nailed it – contest, prizes, particularly cash prizes are the key to driving traffic. John Chow does it all the time. It must be the way. I am tired of my petty dependence on Google. I want to break free. I decided to run sweepstakes with cash prizes. No, guys, not here. Not yet 🙂

I am really new to this. Does anyone have any constructive advice? Any useful links? Any warnings (laws for example)? Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.

Edited to add:
just found something useful http://www.savingforsomeday.com/blog-law-is-your-giveaway-legal/

Filed Under: Advertising Tagged With: Advertising, SBI, Site Build It, SiteSell

Unexpected Checks in the Mail – It Finally Happened to Me!

By Elena

Yes, it did! And this didn’t require any type of meditation or any other crazy stuff you might hear from advocates of what they call Law of Attraction.

In fact, I was feeling quite negative yesterday as I was obsessing about two checks from Hostgator that were apparently lost in mail. I was sending them angry emails, making a lot of noise in forums and was threatening to pack my stuff and leave to another host. As you’ll see, it got resolved later. Poor guys have really no idea why my checks are getting lost. Yesterday was a big payday!

Few months ago I wrote about my experience with BlogAds.com here. It was very positive and I can attest that it only got better. I still work with them and think it’s going to be a long relationship.

Unexpected Checks in Mail - It finally Happened to Me!BlogAds says the minimum payout for checks and bank transfers is $750 (for PayPal it’s only $75), however my yesterday’s check was for about $200 – that’s why it came as a surprise. It was hand-written by a real human – something I came to appreciate in this digital world!

Upon closer investigation I discovered that BlogAds still has minimum threshold of $750 for checks and bank transfers – nothing changed here. However, they pay out all earnings regardless of amount once a year on February 15! How weird is that? That’s exactly what happened.

As for Hostgator’s issue, it got resolved within a few hours. They had to cancel two lost checks and pay me via PayPal. Technically I can’t use PayPal in this country, but the problem with Hostgator’s checks forced me to think a little harder. Finally, I came up with solution to have an agreement with another person (my husband that is ;-)) who has a bank account in another country. Hostgator was able to send the payment there. I am all happy now!

This new arrangement with PayPal is somewhat inconvenient, because I will be losing money on currency exchange rates and won’t be able to cash it out immediately. On the positive side though, the limitation of PayPal (or lack of thereof) isn’t there anymore and now I can work with many other companies who have only PayPal as a payment option. I can also buy stuff I never could buy before, because some vendors simply assume that everyone has PayPal.

In addition, there was Adsense money yesterday. It was kind of hard to find MTCN for Western Union after they upgraded my account to a new payment system. Hopefully, I will get used to new layout.

This fairy tale continued into today, when local customer who always pays his hosting fees at least six months later called me to say they want to get it covered until 2014.

There are pretty amazing days in life.

Filed Under: Advertising Tagged With: Advertising, monetization, news

Marketing Secrets: Got Any?

By Elena

I make it a point to have a walk every day. My favorite place for this is Beirut downtown. It’s a beautiful place fully restored after long civil war. It was restored to look exactly the way it did before it was turned to ugly ruins. Beautiful traditional buildings, arches and of course Arabic lamps!

beirut arches and lamps

More arches…

Marketing Secrets: Got Any?

There are many lovely restaurants typically located all in one line. There is basically no difference in quality or level of comfort. Because people prefer to sit outside anyway, the interior doesn’t really matter. This is how it looks…

beirut downtown

But for some reason people flock to one particular restaurant. It looks really weird. A long street, empty restaurants on both sides and then you have one restaurant that seems to work like a magnet. I have no idea why. It’s not better. Maybe reputation? But they are all good. Location is certainly not the reason. Advertising is not involved either. Prices are same sky-high like everywhere in Beirut. It’s a real mystery to me.

This reminds me of my frustration with all marketing lessons I have taken. You have one guru telling you one thing and then you have another guru telling you exactly opposite. The only one who made money is the guru who sold you his course. While people like you and me are trying to make sense of all this, little restaurants like this one are thriving. They just can’t afford wasting time.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, affiliates, monetization

Does Adsense Increase Your Bounce Rate?

By Elena

Depending on your website and your goals, Adsense can be a bad idea for many different reasons. However, there was one thing that everyone seems to agree on and that is Adsense increases your website’s bounce rate.

bouncingPerhaps it’s different for different sites, but it turns out that for my website it made absolutely no difference. My average CTR (click-through rate) was about 1.5%. My ads were strategically placed inside the content body and there was no way to avoid them as you scroll down to read.

I removed my Adsense ads two days ago and so far my bounce rate didn’t decrease. In fact, it was unusually high yesterday. Apparently bounce rate is not as straightforward as it seems, and honestly, I am questioning the accuracy of Google Analytics.

About a month or two ago the impression count in my Google Webmaster Tools fell from 10,000+ per day to 3,500 a day and stayed this way until today. There was no change in rankings or in actual traffic numbers. I’ve seen some people report the same but there was no official explanation to this phenomenon.

While I don’t blame Google and am very thankful for all these amazing tools they provide for free, they seem to me not very reliable. This is disturbing because many of us take very important decisions based on this data.

Perhaps if your ads are above the fold and are basically the first thing your visitors see, you will have a higher CTR and a noticeably increased bounce rate, but if your ads are below the fold your CTR will probably stay unaffected.

Does Adsense increase your bounce rate?

Filed Under: Advertising Tagged With: Advertising, contextual advertisement, monetization

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