Do you trust Alexa? Ever wonder where the traffic from your niche really is? If your competitors run Adsense then launching a Google Adwords campaign is a great way to find them — and get an inside picture of how they are doing.

Why spend the money when you could just look at the top rankers on the SERPs? Looking at search engine rankings is going to give you an inaccurate picture if competitors are a) drawing traffic from alternate sources (email, Myspace, other PPC) or b) involve lots of returning users.

Here are the steps you need to take to “discover” other sites in the niche:

First, set up a Google Adwords campaign with search disabled and content enabled. You do this by checking the tick box next to a campaign group, clicking the Edit Settings button, and under Networks uncheck Google search and ensure Content network is checked. Also take note that several days may pass before the campaign become fully syndicated across the content network.

You need to have a way of logging referall URLs. I do this with custom programmed software. If you are not a programmer, ask your programmer how to save the full referring URL strings to a database. The reason being is stats programs like Webalizer will just display “http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads.” You need the full string, which should look something like this:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client
=ca-pub-1234567890&dt=1234567890&lmt=1234567890&format
=728×90_as&output=html&channel=1234567890&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.somedomain.com&color_bg=FFFFFF&color_text=1234
5&color_link=5ccc00&color_url=12345&color_border=FFFFFF&ref=
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.somedomain.com&u_h=768&u_w=1024&u_
ah=734&u_aw=1024&u_cd=32&u_tz=-240&u_his=1&u_java=true

If you are thinking this tip is worthless for newbies, you may be right. Running a test like this could cost you anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars, and you are going to have to pick through the data by hand (unless you can have a script written to do it.) On the other hand, knowing the most successful competitors that monetize their sites through PPC can give your valuable intelligence when executing your own internet publishing strategies.

I did an interview with Andreas over at SEO-Vault.de and he has already translated it into German. I am not quite sure what I am saying here, so if any of my readers are fluent in German, and some stuff sounds strange, let me know

I also did a recorded interview with EarnersForum recently; I haven’t recieved word when it will be posted, but I will place a link here when it is.

The approach of 2007 can no be counted in hours. Time is rapidly running out to finalize your taxes and complete goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year.

Just before Christmas last year I dropped a bunch of money on a premium domain name, developed it, and built a pretty sizable forum around it. In terms of members, and content goals this project was a success. In terms of numbers, its at break even.

However, 2006 brought suprise opportunities that more than made up for this. If there was one big lesson I’ve learned its that sometimes small things can bring in very big numbers. The scalability the internet allows can create windfall profits from virtually nothing.

Again this year, just before Christmas I made another big move. I am bringing on board my first full time programmer. Imagine that, had I remained in college I would be graduating in one semester. Instead of sending out my own resume in 5 months, today I am looking other people’s resumes.

This is the one message I try to get across to all of my readers — take your business seriously. If you want to succeed you need to be willing, and able, to live on virtually nothing. When you are 18 or 19, or even into your 20s, doing this is easy. When you have a family to support and mortgage bills to pay the rat race sucks you in fast. This is the reason why many Americans want to own their own business, and most that do fail.

If you are not happy with 2006, ask yourself why. Then, instead of feeling sorry about it, figure out what you need to do to be successful in 2007 — and start doing it today!

With an exploading multi-billion dollar internet advertising industry on top of a multi-trillion dollar global economy, scarcity and competition is not your biggest challenge. Your biggest challenge is yourself. The things you do tommorow and perhaps even a year from now may not give you a six figure income or make you a millionaire. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that by immersing yourself in the internet business world right now you will build skills, connections, and assets that will one day pay off exponentially.

I am suprised it took Amazon.com this long to get up to date with standard payment practices. I just recieved this in an Amazon Associates e-mail:

“Beginning January 1, 2007, your Amazon Associates payments will be monthly instead of quarterly, paid approximately 60 days after the end of each month. For example, referral fees you earn in January will be paid at the end of March, and payment of referral fees earned in February will be paid at the end of April. As part of this change, referral fee tiers will be adjusted to reflect monthly instead of quarterly item quantities”

DNJournal reports Vodka.com was sold to Russian billionaire Roustam Tariko, owner of Russian Standard vodka, for $3 million. Earlier this year Tariko had offered $1 million for vodka.com, but after a face to face meeting in St. Petersburg with domain owner Roy Messer and Sedo’s Director of Brokerage Christian Kalled the new deal was accepted.

The org extension is doing very well, date.org sold for $150,340; loan.org sold for $105,500. Credit.info sold for $36,000.

As for wierd names showing up in the top sales list: slimesoccer.com for $2,650 and chickeninvaders.com for $3,877.

Google has publicly published what is and isn’t allowed in terms of image placement next to Adsense ads.

A simple summary — don’t place images that make an ad look like site content or navigation. This little trick has made publishers millions of dollars and is particularly common in Myspace layout sites, game sites (flash & web based), Photoshop tutorials, and the list goes on.

Another clarification Google has stated — “What if I place a space or a line between my images and my ads? Would that work? No.”

This official statement on Google still leaves room for interpretation, or the “grey” area as Shoemoney would say. However, Google’s image examples of what isn’t allowed sends a clear message of what you are not allowed to do (click blog link and scroll to the bottom to see.)

Have you ever been uncertain if you should use a search engine optimization technique or not?

I recently looked back at some of the first sites I built and noticed an unsuprising trend. The sites I had built using strictly “white hat” SEO techniques were doing great. The sites I had built using greyer SEO techniques weren’t looking to good.

This was hardly a suprise. In an attempt to gain short term traffic & revenue I had traded off the long term success of the site. Does this mean we should stick strictly wiith “what hat” SEO techniques? Perhaps not.

The darker arts of SEO have their benefits, the most obvious being speed. Collected data can give you an accurate picture of the most rankable, and profitable, keywords.. Forget the manipulated Overture suggestion tool, your own stats tell the true picture.

For your next project you could create two parallel sites. Use one as a testing bed and data collector — the other treat as a baby, avoiding all questionable links and SEO techniques.

To be safe, avoid interlinking the two sites. To really, really be safe, use different domain whois info and host each site on a seperate account (with different c-class IP addresses.)

I am sure some of you are interested in which “grey/black hat” techniques you could use, here are some ideas. I don’t know how effective it still is, but one thing I have used is the Digitalpoint co-op ad network. Preferably you should not actually place the links on the domain you want to drive backlinks to. To quickly locate potential keywords you can use a fake content generator like RSSGM. Want more? Check out Quadzilla’s $100-a-month SEO Blackhat Forum.

Long term, using black and grey SEO strategies on your most prized sites is just dumb. High quality backlinks and viral link baiting are the new “blackhat.” And thats the way Google wants it.

I hate tearing into journalists who may not be an expert at the particular subject, but hey this is fair game. Alice LaPlante wrote a particularly sloppy article for Forbes reporting that the ROI for PPC marketing is, in her words, “notoriously hard to prove.”

Affiliate marketers on WickedFire.com had their own opinions to share. Rob_TID said “That’s a great article. The more articles like this in big respected publications like forbes, the less competition we will have from big business.”

Here is the punchline from the article, that makes it enter sloppy territory “There are a number of shopping sites..that offer an alternative to the PPC model. With these, advertisers only pay when there’s an actual transaction.” Hmm, could this be something called, affiliate marketing? Ever wonder how super affiliates make so much money? Its no secret, its pay per click marketing.

I think this writer could have done a wee bit better job than this one page article reported. Yes, absolutely some segements of pay per click marketing are horrendously unprofitable. Its even more unprofitable when you don’t understand the conversion process, have a mediocre product, or are just plain lazy (another quote, this one from a small business owner, “‘The best keywords are too expensive, and what’s the point of buying the more obscure ones?‘”)

Pay per click certainly is a hard game to play, but thats hardly an excuse for a sky-is-falling no-one-makes-money-from-this article from Forbes.

For affiliate marketers making lots of money from PPC ad buys, this is great. For web site publishers, this sloppiness is unneeded.

One of the reasons I started a blog was so I knew people were reading, and properly crediting, what I wrote.

Burried deep in a forum thread or in blog comments carefully crafted words are easily missed. By creating a page where you own words control the headline and primary content you leave a far great footprint. This footprint results in personal branding and more recognition.

Certainly there are great benefits of using an establish medium to immediately communicate to a targeted audience. Social networks form around existing communities. Strands connect these communities together forming a far reaching web of knowledge.

Whats the point? If you are going to put in much effort in your writings on forums and other’s blogs, you should begin directing the audience to your own blog (through links) to establish greater visibility and credibility for yourself. After all, you’ve already done the work, why not compound its effectiveness with just a little more time & effort.

Aaron Wall made an eye-opening post about Adsense titled “Google Adsense as a Terrible Business Model.” If you think you are going to take things nice and steady and still be making money off of Adsense 10 years from now, you should probably read it.

I’ve decided to list a few positive things about Adsense.

1. It works. If you have lots of diverse content its just about impossible to monetizing it with affiliate offers, your own products, etc. Some people have discovered you can make a ton more money from free, openly indexable content than hiding it behind a brick wall and charging a cover fee.

2. Its a pretty sure bet. This is what gave me the idea to write this post. I was just looking through my files and noticed I have enough failed projects to make a grown man cry. These are sites I build that never made a dime. In contrast, nearly every Adsense site I’ve created and bothered to get a couple of links to makes money. Sure, the total revenue isn’t breath-taking, but its there.

3. Its easy. You have content, you add a code to the content, bam you start making money. Some very basic color/placement testing can have a big impact on your earnings.

These pros are also the reason why there are cons. Truth be told, it works, its a sure bet, and its easy when you have the skills a web publisher needs — being able to write, use a computer, do market research, linkbait, etc. Thats something not everyone can do. Had I paid the market rates for people to do all of this work for me, hell yeah, Adsense sucks as a business model.