Google Toolbar Tracks Your Movements
Posted by Mitch on Feb 4, 2010
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Do you have Google Toolbar installed on your browser? I do, and I have to admit that I find it as a convenience in two ways. One, I know I can click on the Google button and it’ll pull up the Google search page. Two, I also use Google Desktop, and the icon for it sits on the toolbar, easy to find.
One thing I’ve rarely done, however, is type my search term into the little box next to the button. I almost never think about it sitting there. What’s funny is that, as I look up there now, I see the search terms I typed into the actual Google window the last time I was there waiting for me, as if I’m going to type them in again. That’s a quick way to search for something; I wonder why I have rarely used it.
Turns out there might have been a good reason not to do it, and I was just lucky. It seems that every time you put a search term into that little window and click the button, you’re sending information to Google telling them what you’re searching for. They in turn use that information to try to target ads specifically to you based on where you live and what you’ve been searching for. They store this information away, waiting for the next time you use it so they can do more calculations, trying to figure you out.
It seems this has been written about often enough, but I’ve always missed it. The last article I saw comes from Mashable, where they found that even if you disable the tracking part of the toolbar it still continues to track your movements.
Of course, you can look at that and gripe, or you can decide to gripe about the issue of Adsense reducing its payments from 75% to 72% to its publishers, of which most of us are. Man, working on getting our money coming or going; how fair is that?
January Income Report – Changing For 2010
Posted by Mitch on Feb 1, 2010
I want to preface this report by saying that, for now, it’s going to be my last report. I have to admit that the numbers are disappointing to me these days, and they don’t seem worth reporting until they start getting much better. So, after this report, you won’t see this type of thing again until I have my first $500 month. And since I don’t see anything to indicate that could be coming up any time soon, it could be awhile before we get another one of these.
So, without further ado, here’s how things looked this month:
Adsense – $64.75
Infolinks – $22.50
Commission Junction – $20.50
Google Affiliate Network – $.90
Grand Total – $108.65
Once again, most of my money was earned via my medical billing site, but the money has gone down, somewhat being replaced by Infolinks. The CJ sale was another one time fluke, and the GAN sale was someone buying a DVD from Barnes & Noble through one of my links, that’s a pretty low percentage, isn’t it?
Here’s the thing. I’ve been giving more and more thought to income lately. Though I’ve said I don’t expect to make a lot of income from this blog because of its nature, it wouldn’t depress me to make something more than once a millenia. The same goes for my other sites as well. The basic ideas are twofold; one, you work on selling your own product, where you get to retain all proceeds from the sale, or two, you work on selling the products of others and accept your percentage from that.
Those are really the only two ways of making any real money online, though some folks will make big money off Adsense by having multiple websites. Frankly, I don’t see myself as a guy who will ever own more than 10 to 15 websites, period, and that could be pushing it. Hundreds of websites; no way! So, since I don’t see myself as a web mogul in that fashion, trying to earn more money through Adsense seems to be illogical. I’ll be happy with what I’m getting now and try to move onto other things.
For instance, the CJ products. That money above was for one lousy sale; if I could get more of those, life wouldn’t be all that depressing. Some of my advertisers market some fairly technical and pricey stuff. For instance, imaging the commission I would earn if someone decided to buy this HJ Namdar Diamond Ring; I’d be living large for a month. I’d be a happy camper if someone decided to purchase one of these World Imports chandeliers
also; stunning stuff.
But to get people to buy things like that, I really have to push the sale, market it well, and say some pretty good stuff about it. I’d also have to know it, and truthfully, I only know what I like to look at when it comes to jewelry, and my tastes in chandeliers only goes so far since many times I don’t even notice them (though I’d notice that one for sure). At least I’d feel like I’d have to know them if I were going to talk about them on a blog; if I set up product pages, I might not have to know as much.
Kind of like my sales page over there; I don’t have tons of products on it, as most of the deals are via banner links, but I easily could select products to push and, if there’s a code, indicate that there’s a timed sale of some sort. By the way, I’ve never gotten any feedback really on what people think of that type of sales page, the one next to me holding the parrot, which is always changing because the sales end and new sales come up. What do you think of something like that in general?
Anyway, onward and upward, as the saying goes. Let’s see what the financial future holds in store for me.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
December Income Report – Something To Build On For 2010
Posted by Mitch on Jan 1, 2010
At least I can say that December was better than November. Actually, my December income was higher than October also, so maybe I should just shut up. But I really have to drastically increase these numbers in 2010, and I need to get it done quickly, though not necessarily through this blog. But this blog should be generating something, I figure, so some changes will be made.
First, the income numbers:
Adsense – $60.04
Commission Junction – $5.17
Infolinks – $14.84
Firetrust – $14.97
Voxant – $.01
Grand Total – $95.03
So, I made just under $100, which means I was under average for the year. This doesn’t bode well for my 2010 goals, but so be it; we all have to start somewhere, right?
First, you’re probably wondering where the income is from the book I helped promote, Beyond Blogging. I got one person who signed up under me as an affiliate, but that’s as far as it went. I don’t even know if anyone clicked on any of the links, to tell you the truth. All I know is that I didn’t make any sales, though I said I’d consider my part as being successful if there were even 3 sales. No problem; I’m still going to list the book over there on the side for awhile.
Second, I think it’s time for some physical changes to this blog on how I’m advertising things. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do, but I do know that some of the affiliate ads you see now will be removed. There will still be a product or link of some kind at the end of each post, with more products than in the past, and more links to products within a post if something fits. Unfortunately, products don’t always have anything to do with the post, and I’m not going to try to be conscious enough to do that because, well, that just ain’t me. I also want to concentrate on finding more ways of driving traffic to my products, which you see here, but I know that I’m going to have to change up those sales pages to draw more visitors from search engines as well.
Third, I know I’m going to do something with both my Reviews of Everything and Services & Stuff sites, where I’m going to create more sales pages within both of those. My Reviews site will have reviews of some of the affiliate programs I have, since I know something about many of them, and when I review a product, I’m going to make sure to only advertise that product on a page. That will make a lot more sense than what I’ve previously done.
Fourth, my medical billing site is still my biggest Adsense producer, while my anti-smoking site has generated almost nothing, but my medical billing site used to generate way more money than it is now. I’m not sure if Infolinks has taken away from that, but one would hope that the two together would at least equal what I was making before.
No matter. I have big financial goals for my online activities this year, and I figure that my January report has to show at least an increase of 50% over this month to even make me think I have a chance on increasing finances. What you can still believe in, though, is that I still won’t be writing any paid posts, that I won’t be recommending anything I haven’t checked out first, and that I’ll be telling y’all what the heck I’m doing while trying to move forward.
And with that, onward and upward!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
November Income Report – Going Backwards
Posted by Mitch on Dec 2, 2009
When I posted my October income report, I really thought that was about as far back as I could possibly go. Well, I was wrong. This month’s income is even worse, and I have to admit that I don’t have high hopes for December at this juncture.
First, the numbers; short indeed:
Adsense – $50.62
Google Affiliate Network – $3.07
Infolinks – $7.90
If there’s any bonus for the month, it’s the strong jump in income from Infolinks. What I decided to do early in November is add it to my Medical Billing Answers site on a trial basis. Seems it’s working, and I’m going to leave it there for now. I also decided to add it to my Smoke Not So Much site as well, but that site generated almost nothing. However, that site did generate its first Adsense money in November, so maybe it’s close to being ready to start generating something positive.
I guess the good news is that I’ll be getting an Adsense check at the end of the month; who-hoo! I probably need to figure out a better way to drive people to my sales page, which is highlighted by me holding that parrot on the right, as well as figure out how to drive more people to my other sales pages, if I’m going to continue doing this stuff. At least this blog sent 6 people there in November, Commission Junction should be bringing in nice money; I know I’m doing it all wrong, though.
And that’s that; let’s see what the final month of our first decade in the 21st century has in store for me.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Problems Getting Into Google Adsense Account
Posted by Mitch on Oct 7, 2009
So, just what is it with Google anyway?
Every once in awhile, I’ve had problems getting into my Adsense account. It will tell me that I have a Google Adsense account and to log into it, but it just doesn’t work.
Once again, tonight I’m having that same problem, and it’s irking me to no end. Usually after a few tries at it it’ll pop back and start doing right, although I have no idea what I’ve done. This time, it’s just not letting me in at all.
I went to the Google page and saw where, it seems, there’s a lot of people complaining about it this time around. Google says they’re working on it, but Google is one of those sites where they don’t often answer people’s questions. Kind of like how some of us complain about big time bloggers never responding to comments on their blogs. It reminds me of putting in my request to get my page rank back, knowing that they’ll never write me to tell me if I get it back or not, just that it’ll either show up one day or it won’t.
But not being able to get into my Adsense account is problematic. I can’t check my revenue. I can’t change any of my ads, nor add any new ads. Basically, I can’t do anything, and that stinks as much as the first week of August when I, and many other people, weren’t generating much revenue, if any at all, without any explanations from Google.
Anyone else having this problem tonight? Man, I hate when my money is being messed with. This stinks, so I need to take steps to get rid of the stink. What do you think about my ad below?
Update – I finally found a workaround for this issue. It seems Google is doing something with the logins and acknowledges that they’ve messed up; in their own way, of course. So, the workaround is to log in, and if you get something telling you to go back and log in again click on this link and it’ll take you there:
https://www.google.com/adsense/login3
Update 2 – You know, Google’s just messing up these days. The above fix worked only for a day. Then they came out with a new messages saying to go to this site, https://www.google.com/accounts, change your password, and all will work again. I went ahead and did that, and it’s working once more. I hope this is it.
Removed Whydowork Adsense Plugin
Posted by Mitch on Jul 16, 2009
Sometimes the attempt to do something that will help automate processes doesn’t quite work. In this case, I’ve realized that I had to remove the Whydowork Adsense plugin from all of my blogs.
What is that? It’s a plugin that allows you to have Adsense automatically put into your blog posts at certain times and in certain places of your choosing. I actually thought it was pretty neat, as it gave me the opportunity to monetize older posts by putting Adsense into them without my having to go back and put it in myself. I also had it set to populate the 3rd and 5th posts on the main page of each of my blogs, since you’re allowed 3 instances of Adsense per page.
The problem I noticed is that, for whatever reason, it sometimes locked up the blog or a post, making people believe my site might be down. I kept wondering why it would give me problems every once in awhile when I tried getting into the site also. Well, if you’re paying attention, and I was, usually you’ll see what link a page might be trying to load. In my case, I noticed it was Google syndication. And I also knew it wasn’t the Google sidebar ad because it was already showing. So, I knew it had to be the ads within the posts themselves. And, since it was happening on all 3 blogs, I knew it had to be that plugin.
Therefore, I’ve removed it, and so far I haven’t noticed any of the blogs hanging up anymore. But this does prove that those of us on WordPress have to always be vigilant in checking our plugins, because we never know what might suddenly start messing stuff up. I actually learned that again last week after I upgraded my blogs to WordPress 2.8.1.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
March Statistics; A Dichotomy Of Success
Posted by Mitch on Apr 1, 2009
A new month, some new statistics, and, as I said, a dichotomy of success to talk about.
First, here are the actual numbers, only talking about what made me money:
Adsense – $101.63
Paid Advertising – $25.20
Kontera – .84
LinkXL – $2.50
Chitika – .06
Infolinks – .32
Commission Junction – $0, with qualifications
Grand Total – $130.55
Let’s look at a couple of things above. This was my first month making at least $100.00 with Adsense, and I’m proud of that. Almost all of it came from my Medical Billing Answers site, and as long as that one stays prominent, it gives me something to build on. The Commission Junction thing, well, if you remember yesterday’s post about the affiliate who hasn’t paid me, you see that I actually made sales that I didn’t get credit for, and if I’d gotten credit I’d have made at least $60 this month, which would have prompted my receiving a check in April; that’s irksome, but I’m doing what I can there. Overall, February was still my best month ever, but this month easily could have been.
I still have my gripes about Chitika and Kontera, with the low sales, but I’m going to make a change. I’m going to remove Kontera from this blog, which has been somewhat irritating for some visitors anyway, and I’m going to use it on alternate pages on my Reviews Of Everything site instead, as I already have Infolinks on that site. I haven’t even had Infolinks a month yet, but that’s not the issue here. I’m thinking that type of site is more geared towards this type of text marketing, so that’s where I’m taking it.
Also, though I don’t want to do it, I’m thinking that I may move my leadership book and my leadership CDs lower onto the page, while still keeping my one internet marketing book up there at the top, and moving some other things around. We’ll see about that one, though; after all, traditional wisdom still says it’s always better to market your own products first, but talking about leadership and motivation may not work as well with this kind of blog, although it should! Yeah, I said that!
And there we are. Not so bad, a slight step back, but with qualifications, and it’s on to April.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
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