Ohad's Internet News

Ad serving via Right Media

2008-09-16T10:34:00.000+03:00

As anyone can see from the link to the left of this blog, I am now serving ads on this site.
The ads served come from my company's (TLV Media - check us out) adserver named right media. If you have not heard of it before, right media is an exchange of ad networks allowing trading of media globally.

And now for a short sales pitch... If you are an advertiser looking for performance oriented campaigns, contact us to get exactly what you need and even more. If you are a publisher, contact us to see how you too can commercialize your site and earn even more then you are making today.

Introducing TLV Media

2008-08-02T22:12:00.000+03:00

Tomorrow is the first day of work at my new company by the name of TLV Media. TLV is a performance marketing agency focusing on optimizing display ads inventory using automated tools. While still in the process of setting up the company (legal & accounting takes time), I am already getting a very good reaction from customers, suppliers and potential partners. While the SEM market has become saturated with players working on performance basis, the display ads market still shows tremendous potential.

Wish me luck in the new business

The Human Race

2008-07-14T18:12:00.000+03:00

I am participating in Nike's run named "The human race". This run which will take place simultaneously in over 25 cities world wide, is a 10 Kilometer run. In Israel, the run will take place in Tel Aviv as it did last year and is sure to be an amazing event.
In the past 3 weeks, I have been training to make the jump from 5Km runs to 10Km. It's not easy but I am having fun training 3 times a week.
For those of you who can read Hebrew, feel free to visit the local run's website @ http://www.nikerunning.co.il/ or visit the Facebook Event for the "Human Race"

Run Forest, Run...

Republix widget - Will blog for widgets

2008-06-20T08:47:00.001+03:00

Hi all,
As I usually write in all my current posts... it's been a while since my last post :)
It's not easy getting back to weekly posting but I am making the effort to get back there.
In the mean time, here is an exciting widget that I placed in my blog by a company named Republix. I have been involved with them for the past few month and believe that their widget will change the way users interact in content sites. What Republix does is to integrate content sites with social networks by providing a widget that allows users to view what their friends read on the site they are on and interact with them. All users need to do to start enjoying the Republix widget is to click on the widget (left bar in this blog), install the Republix Facebook app and start communicating with friends over this site and others. While still in a closed beta, this is an amazing widget, but why trust me? Try it for yourself.

If you want this widget for your site as well, please comment here with a brief description of your site, traffic.

Joined Twitter - I am late but not the last to join

2008-05-04T09:01:00.000+03:00

I finally decided to join twitter.
After everyone I know is active there, I figured it was time for me to join.

What got me to join? A post (don't remember by whom) that explained the business values of Twitter. I will try it out and see how it works for me.

In the mean time, you are invited to follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/ohadgliksman

Onslaught - a new tower game

2007-12-19T11:25:00.001+02:00

Got some time to spare?
Here's a new cool flash game by the name of onslaught.
Onslaught is a tower defence strategy game like the ones Shock Defence, Desktop Tower Defense and Flash Circle TD. Although it holds the basic logic of these type of games, it is the one with most features that I’ve ever seen…

Firstly you don’t have to play on a single map like in the others, instead there are 7 different maps. Secondly, it has an improved tower upgrade mechanism. You can upgrade damage, rate of fire, and range individually. Lastly, the towers can perform combo attacks, meaning two or more towers can attack stronger if you place them on a correct pattern. In addition to these great features, you can use shortcuts for almost everything which makes things easier. The first 100 levels are not so hard, but it starts being a nightmare after 100…

What are you waiting for? Go play Onslaught

rssHugger - A new service for bloggers

2007-12-09T15:23:00.000+02:00

Here's a new directory I've signed up to.
rssHugger is a new service for us bloggers offering to publish our rss feeds.
To sign up to rssHugger, you need to either pay a one time fee of $20 or just write a review of the site. As you can see, I have chosen the 2nd option :)

I think the model of offering a free service for a review is a real good one and is suited for bloggers.

Are you signed up there already?

First impression - Rubicon Project

2007-12-06T10:57:00.000+02:00

I've signed up for the beta of the Rubicon project.
If you haven't heard of it by now, the Rubicon is a self-optimizing platform for websites offering ads from multiple ad networks such as Google Adsense, CPX, Azoogle and Shopzilla.
I have implemented their ad solution in my blog on the top header 468x60 and the left 160x600 banners. They currently support only a small number of placements, but I'm sure their list will expand in the near future.
My current feedback on their service is that so far, only a small number of networks show ads on my blog and the interface while well designed still lacks a number of important features.
Having said all this, I have a good feeling that once mature, this product will enable site owners to maximize their sites' income in a significant manner.

Other products claiming to offer a similar service (I haven't tried them out yet) are:
RightMedia direct
Pubmatic

Have you tried any of these or Rubicon?

Parking my domains at SEDO

2007-11-06T10:48:00.000+02:00

I just parked 7 of my domains at SEDO. if you are not familiar with it, then SEDO is a domain parking service that allows you to generate revenue from your inactive domains. I checked several domain parking services and narrowed my choice to 2 companies. The first was parked.com which seemed very impressive but insisted that I park at least 10 domains there. The second one was SEDO. They allowed me to setup my account very quickly and even generated a few cents on the first day of activity.

The domains I've parked there are:
babyguideonline.org
banner4me.org
giftphones.org
h2visa.net
newlcdtv.com
rigntone.net
rigntone.org

What do you think of these domains?

dj2.org - my new domain

2007-10-21T09:22:00.000+02:00

I just bought a new domain from GoDaddy. Their buying process is simply amazing from a marketing point of view. In every step, a new promotion or relevant special offer is displayed.
After going through all the required steps, I was asked to enter my payment details. One of the fields in the payment page is a promo code. I quickly searched Google for a "godaddy promo code" and found several sites offering valid codes, one of which entitled me to a 30% discount for any purchase over 25$.
So, next time you see a promo code or coupon field in the payment page, just run a search to see if you can find one.

You are invited to visit the new domain @ http://www.dj2.org

Google hot trends

2007-10-09T09:39:00.000+02:00

Take a look at Google's hot trends and find out the hottest 100 searches in the US right now.
All that's left now is to find a way to monetize it.

I started adding these words to my generic adwords campaigns to see if these keywords will convert. Can you figure out another way?

RSS shortlist: Internet marketing

2007-09-08T11:43:00.000+03:00

A friend of mine just quit his job @ Google and has some vacation time until he starts his new job.
In an email he sent to me, he asked me to share with him my RSS list for internet marketing news and resources.

The moment I sent him my list (grabbed from my Netvibes account), I figured out that this list I've compiled over 3 years could be valuable to my blog readers (Are you really out there?).

Here's the list. Let me know if there is any related feed you think I should include here.
The site list is to the actual URL and not the RSS feed so you can view these sites before subscribing to their feeds.

http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/
http://www.shoemoney.com/
http://www.jenniferslegg.com/
http://www.jensense.com/
http://www.cpa-affiliates.com/
http://www.problogger.net/
http://blog.seoptimise.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://sleepyblogger.com/
http://www.conversionrater.com/
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/
http://directory.sootle.com/directory-weblog/
http://www.cre8d-design.com/
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/
http://www.internet-marketing-blog.com/
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/
http://www.techcrunch.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/
http://www.marketingbabylon.com/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Adwords Editor 4.0 released

2007-08-03T17:13:00.000+03:00

My Adwords Editor just offered to download a new version titled 4.0
After downloading and installing it I found some new features.
The new features I've noticed (there may be some more) are:
1. Custom date range for performance stats.
2. Ability to upload a single campaign changes and not a full post
3. Much faster campaign downloading. I downloaded a 20K keywords campaign in under 2 minutes.

This new version is so far not being advertised by Google anywhere I could find.
Even the Release Notes still refer to version 3.5

Have you tried the new upgrade? Did you like it as I did?

RSS for SEO

2007-06-15T19:06:00.000+03:00

A little known secret that SEO experts use, is that adding RSS support to sites contributes to their inclusion in the major search engines (SERPS). As RSS has become a standard for updating users of new posts and changes of a site, it can be used to notify search engines of new content that needs to be crawled.

Even if your site is not part of a CMS (content management system), you can still enjoy this technique. The following steps elaborate how even static websites can communicate with the Google Bot and the other crawlers more effectively.

Step 1: Create a static RSS file in your root directory containing your latest pages. the format of this file should be like the one mentioned in wikipedia

Step 2: Register this feed in a feed publisher. My personal favorite is FeedBurner which has been acquired by Google recently. Feed publishers notify of your feed changes to the search engines.

Step 3: Update your feed whenever your content changes and the search engines will get notified by Feed Burner.

New version of Google analytics

2007-05-10T08:22:00.000+03:00

Have you seen the new Google Analytics interface?
Although it takes time to get used to, the new interface offers very nice and customizable reports.
It hasn't been deployed in all accounts yet and some of my managed Adwords accounts still haven't been implemented, but I think it's going to make the users far more comfortable using it to understand how their website visitors behave

New company website

2007-04-17T19:50:00.000+03:00

Most of my posts in the past few month have started with "It's been a while since my last post..."
I think I can blame my new job. Having founded a new company by the name of Inlight, most of my time now (24/7) has been put to use around it. The company provides our customers with SEM and SEO services focused mostly on the Israeli market with some international customers to make things more interesting.
I've just uploaded our new website and would love to get some feedback from you on how it looks (warning, the site is in Hebrew, so if you can't read it, feel free to compliment me on the smooth design). Just drop me a line here to let me know what you think.

Using the content network

2007-03-22T08:35:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I received a mail form one of my contacts that included the following sentence: "So you are Ohad from the blog. It's about time you updated it". I've taken this advice and this post is for you Alon.

Google Adwords allows advertisers to use the content network in addition to the search network, but most advertisers complain that they can't justify using the content network as it brings very low conversions. What I found was that if you separate your content network into another campaign and manage it as a different entity that does not behave like the search network, it can become a very useful channel. While this does not necessarily work for all my clients, for some of my campaigns the content network brought a better ROI then the search network.

The next campaign you open, try the following process:
1. create a campaign for the search network only and run it for a week.
2. optimize this campaign as you go along adding keywords and modifying ads.
3. After a week, copy this campaign into a new campaign targeted only at the content network
4. When adding a new keyword to the search network, make sure that it is also added to the content network

Let me know if it works for you

Google analytics videos

2007-02-28T08:24:00.000+02:00

I came across a series of 3 posts in the Conversation Marketing blog about using Google analytics.
If you are not using it yet, Google analytics is one of the best free web statistics software available on the market. The 3 posts include videos on the setup and usage of the analytics.

You might want to check out all three:
1. Setup
2. Essentials
3. Content and navigation

Adwords Editor 3.0 released

2007-02-26T08:20:00.000+02:00

If you are managing multiple adwords campaigns, then you are probably using the Adwords Editor application. The adwords editor is a windows application that allows mass changes to be performed on adwords accounts. The new version of the adwords editor has just been released for download and contains several features that were really needed in the past such as: word count and CPM campaign management.

If you are already using it, just upgrade your version.
If not then now is the time to start and get better control of your campaigns

Alexa now shows geographical info on sites

2007-02-17T19:11:00.000+02:00

I just saw that Alexa added geographic information on their website.
This means that you can now see what countries your visitors are coming from as well as see the relative alexa rank your site has by country.

For example, my blog is ranked 429,364 but in Israel it's rank is 44,870
See for yourself in the alexa report on Ohad's Internet News

Does this make Quantcast irrelevant? What other info can I get using Quantcast that I can't get from Alexa?

My LinkedIn network

2007-02-03T09:03:00.000+02:00

My LinkedIn Network is over 140,000 users. This means that I can use my network to contact lots of people when looking for an introduction or a reference.
Is this what I use LinkedIn for? No, LinkedIn is a good way to let people find you. While my network is large (1.5% of the available network in LinkedIn), I have no use for it on a daily basis.

So what am I using LinkedIn for?
1. Contact management - Keeping in touch with my direct contacts.
2. Visibility - Allowing people to find me online to offer new business opportunities.
3. Fun - I was a member of a network by the name of 6 degrees which tried to achieve the same purpose. It failed due to hardware and bandwidth issues. That was about 6 years ago and I really enjoyed feeling like everyone in the world was connected to me via 6 degrees of separation.

What are you using LinkedIn for?

LinkedIn - Managing My Contacts

2007-01-27T15:56:00.000+02:00

I've been using LinkedIn for a few month now. In case you are not familiar with it, LinkedIn is an online network of business professionals all around the world. LinkedIn allows me to publish my profile online and manage my contact through them.
LinkedIn is based on connection circles, which means that you can see your list of contact, their list of contacts (2 degrees separated from you) and so on. While this model has been tried in the past and failed, LinkedIn targeted the business community and has become a leading tool for it.

Posting my profile online enables me to connect (and reconnect) with my contacts.

Contact me if you want through: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ohadgliksman

Adwords Tip: Use the ARROW

2007-01-18T08:21:00.000+02:00

Here is a very nice insight by ShoeMoney on dynamic keyword ads.
According to ShoeMoney, if you place your dynamic keyword at the beginning of the ad title, again at the end of the first line and finally in the beginning of the second line, you get an arrow like shape from these keywords which increases CTR rates.

Interested? Read more here

Quantcast Internet Rating System

2007-01-15T08:43:00.000+02:00

I've just installed a new web analytics software for my blog by the name of Quantcast.
Quantcast is an internet rating system whose aim is to quantify the internet.
According to their site, stats collection should take a few days.
Stay tuned for some more updates on this...

Great excuses

2006-12-15T18:37:00.000+02:00

I've got plenty of good excuses why I didn't post in the past week.
1. I am working on a new business
2. Customers get my first priority
3. There are only 24 hours a day, and I sleep through some of them
...

When you finish reading through my excuses, you realize that that's all they are, excuses.
In the meantime, here is a great site by the name of Conversation Marketing which is full of content for the internet marketeer. So, if marketing is your game, spend some time reading the articles at Conversation Marketing

Adwords text ad approval

2006-12-08T17:59:00.000+02:00

Last week was full of action for me as two newly signed customers ask for their adwords campaign to be up and running almost immediately. To complicate the picture, one of them asked for a campaign to promote their sales day (this was a car dealership) and had one week to run the campaign. The team I work with had this campaign created very quickly but impressions were quite low. After following up on this issue with the local Google team, it seemed like our ads have not been approved yet and were getting only minimal impressions. After some help from the good people of Google Israel, we started getting some impressions (not enough mind you) and the campaign was quite successful. While we didn't use the entire budget the customer set for us, we were the most effective channel when measured in cost per lead.

Lesson learned from this: Getting results from an adwords campaign takes time. You or your customer should never try to get results in such a short time frame.

Speed type game

2006-11-26T19:28:00.000+02:00

Here's a nice game by the name of Qwerty warriors which will help you improve your speed typing skills. In this game, you need to type the word that appears under each enemy and hit enter to fire at him. Type quickly and accurately if you want to keep playing. This game starts out easy but gets real tense after a while.

Adwords tip: Know Your Enemy

2006-11-21T08:45:00.000+02:00

Online advertising is a lot like war. It pays to know what your competitor/enemy is doing right now. When starting a new adwords campaign, the first question you ask is how tough is the competition in this niche? A good answer to this question can be found using SpyFU.com (formerly known as GoogSpy). SpyFU constantly gather information on popular topics and searches and can offer you great insight into your competition's activities.
Let's say that I am offering domain hosting services. Running a quick search on hosting in SpyFU shows the following results. As you can see, the average CPC is $1.08, the clicks/day are 3,318 and you can even view leading competitor ad text.

Can anyone tell me how they do this?

Musicovery - music discovery player

2006-11-20T08:42:00.000+02:00

Following up on a previous post by the same name Musicovery - music discovery player, I tried to find out if musicovery.com is up and running again. Well, it's running and playing all sorts of great music. Their controls allow me to select my musical taste by setting the my channels (Blues, jazz and others), my timeframe which is set by start and end year of the music to be played and by music color which can be somewhere between dark and positive and between energetic and calm. The revenue model of musicovery.com is what I really liked. They offer you free streaming radio at loFi (which is good enough for your PC speakers) but ask for 2 Euros a month for HighFi which is a CD level sound.

SEO for AdSense

2006-11-16T08:11:00.000+02:00

There are any guides online that deal with ways to maximize your adsense earnings. Some of them are true while some are not. The following guide will not teach you how to make lots of money from adsense but rather how to get your ads to be more relevant to your niche which might (or might not) generate more revenue and CTR.
As SEO is all about the content of the page let's start checking our page's structure:

1. Page title - the page title is the most important aspect of the page as far as adsense is concerned. Does it include any of your significant keywords?
2. Meta tags - consider meta tags as additional descriptors of your page. By adding a meta description and meta keywords to your page, you assist adsense (and search engine spider) in understanding the context of your page.
3. H1/Bold/Italic - When you wrap a text in your page in any of these tags, the adsense crawler knows that it should assign more weight to this text then the rest of the page. The reason for this is quite simple. If you've decided to bold a word for your readers, it must be more significant then the rest of the text.
4. Positive section targeting - section targeting allows you to let the adsense crawler, which part of your html code is more relevant by adding the following tag at the beginning of the section and adding the following tag at the end . Just don't overdo it.
5. Negative section targeting - you can also decide which sections of your page are irrelevant for adsense ads. In the case of my blog, my entire sidebar does not contribute any important content that I want the adsense crawler to use. To implement negative section targeting just place the following tag at the beginning of the section and end the section with the following tag .

Implementing these tips is a sure recipe for increased relevance of ads. Now it's your missions to write good content.

You might also be interested in reading the following posts:
Adsense Competitive Ad Filter
Adsense notifier

Adsense Competitive Ad Filter

2006-11-13T15:26:00.000+02:00

Google Adsense is a great revenue generator for any site but especially for blogs. But what can you do once your RPC (that's revenue per click) starts dropping? Answer... Use the Competitive Ad Filter. The Competitive Ad Filter is a list of up to 100 url's that won't show in any adsense unit in your site. AdsBlackList allows you to generate a personalized list of blocked urls to use in your ad filter. All you need is to provide your url and a list of keywords for your site and you can generate your own list.

You might also be interested in reading the following posts:
SEO for AdSense
Adsense notifier

First day of work

2006-11-12T16:05:00.000+02:00

Thursday was my last day of work at DSNR, and today was my first day of work at Inlight (no site yet). Starting a new company includes going through lots of legal papers. Sign the company foundation papers, register the company, open a bank account...
Even though all these processes take time, there is a certain excitement in the air. I can't wait to get the first customer up and running.
Are you out there?

Last day of work

2006-11-09T10:27:00.000+02:00

Today is my last day of work at DSNR. It's been 2 years since I've started working here and I've grown attached to the place and the people. Even though I am starting a new road, I feel sort of nostalgic for this place. Since I started working there in September 2004, the company has changed in many ways, growing from 30 to 800 employees and penetrating new markets. Now all that's left are memories, friends and a nice picture of me with a tie taken for the company website.

Starting a new job

2006-11-07T09:49:00.000+02:00

For the past 3 month I've been working on starting a new company. It wasn't an easy process and took far longer then I've expected but it finally happened. The new company will provide SEM services for the Israeli market and benefit it's customers (already in the pipeline) with our intimate understanding of search engine marketing as well as automation tools for campaign management. At this time I am not able to share some more info on the new company but I will followup on this subject.

Reasons to remove social network links

2006-11-05T20:44:00.000+02:00

Here are the reasons why I removed all social network links from my blog.

1. Most people never use them. Those that would probably have some bookmarklet or add-on in their browser for this.
2. They take space.
3. It takes focus from the actual content
4. They link to social network sites but I'm not getting enough links back
5. Now that they are gone, my blog looks much neater
6. I am popular as is - Suggested by Yanir Alter
7. I am here to help you find your way , not to get lost - Suggested by Yanir Alter

Got some more reasons to add?

Adsense missing feature - ad size report

2006-11-03T10:03:00.000+02:00

In a recent post by the Inside Adsense Team, a recommendation was made to put the most successful ad size as the first one in the page which would cause it to display the most high valued ads. To calculate which ad size is most effective, they suggest that we create custom channels for each ad size and then use the reports to figure out which ad size generates the highest ROI.
I have to disagree with this concept due to the following reasons:
1. Not all ad sizes and formats are suited to be displayed as the first ad of the page. You can't place a skyscraper in your header for example.
2. If the ad size is so important then why isn't Google providing us with reports by ad size without having us go through the setup of custom channels.

Adwords tip - competition names

2006-11-02T16:58:00.000+02:00

I've been planning to write a post about using your competitor's name in an ad, when I stumbled upon MindValleyLabs's post about the same subject. In their post, titled Ads to Take Business From Your Competitor, they buy the competitor's brand and create textual ads such as "Read This Before You Buy [Enter Competitor]". Read more about it here.

Alexa rank and power users

2006-11-01T12:49:00.000+02:00

There's an ongoing debate in the internet marketing community on the accuracy of the alexa page rank. Alexa, is an Amazon.com company. Alexa's primary product is their web browser add-on toolbar that shows a numeric rank for each site visited. The top 3 ranked are:
1. Yahoo
2. MSN
3. Google

As the alexa toolbar and ranking system has become a must-have tool for internet marketeers, some feel that it does not reflect what the users like but what marketeers and other internet power users like. If such is indeed the case, then why should I care about my alexa rank (525,489 if you must know). The answer to this is simple, it depends on your target market. As my blog becomes more and more focused on internet marketing, It's relevance to marketeers increases. The connection between technology and marketing content in a blog and the alexa page rank is so tight that as soon as I started posting about adwords and PPC campaigns, my alexa rank started rapidly climbing.

What do you think? Is Alexa rank still valid? Are you using it? What for?

blogger trackback

2006-10-30T14:35:00.000+02:00

A recent post of mine by the name of TrackBack in blogger described how to add trackback notification ability to blogger.com based blogs. The solution described requires Firefox and Greasemonky. Having worked on another computer, I did not want to install Firefox and decided to check for standalone trackback solutions. Running a quick search in Google was all it took to find the following Standalone Trackback Pinger. All you need are the following details to use it:
1. The trackback URL of the post you link to.
2. The Permanent URL of your post.
3. Your blog name.
4. Your post's title.
5. Up to 250 characters excerpt of your post.

Related posts:
TrackBack in blogger

Text ads and banners combined

2006-10-28T15:56:00.000+02:00

I have to admit it, I am a real big fan of contextual advertizing (Google Adwords is a good example). I like the fact that I can plan what search phrases to show my ads for, use a matching text ad and get the customer hooked. I really feel that the time of the banner ad is long gone and that it is the dawn of the contextal ads era.

While looking in my RSS reader, I found a new post by Seth Godin. The new post is all about how using banner ads for brand awareness can significantly increase following contextual ads of same brand. The post is titled "the 249% solution" and reviews a 249% improvment of contextual ads after a banner-based brand campaign.

Related posts:
Adwords and email marketing similarities
Adwords tip - consistent message
Adwords tips - coming soon

Tags: Marketing, Adwords, Email marketing, PPC, SEM

Adwords and email marketing similarities

2006-10-26T17:43:00.000+02:00

Adwords campaigns have a lot in common with email marketing.
Their primary building blocks are:
1. Target audience and segmentation.
2. Subject line.
3. Call to action.
4. Landing page

Email marketing:

Most eCommerce sites ask their users to leave their email address for future communications. The collected email is stored in a list and can be segmented by various parameters such as Country, Gender and previous product acquisitions. To create an effective campaign, we need to figure out who our target audience is. If we try to sell an electronic gadget, it might make sense to target existing customers who bought a similar or related product.
Next up is the subject line. What many marketeers fail to understand is that this is the most important part of the campaign. Based on our copywriting skill, our potential customer decides whether or not to open this email!!! It's crucial to try several different subject lines and test them using a/b split tests before sending the whole campaign out the door. Remember, if your audience does not open the email, there is no chance of them buying a product.
The email body, also known as the sales pitch, is where we try to convince our potential customers to visit our website. In this place we want to send a clear and short message followed by a call to action. A call to action should be a link to a landing page on our site.
Landing page is where the actual action takes place. Here we show the customer, the product we wish to sell and try to get him to purchase it.

Adwords campaigns:

The first step in any adwords campaign is to figure out what search terms we want to show our ads on. The search terms should maintain some sort of logical connection to our product. If trying to sell an MP3 player, then MP3 and music players are relevant search terms.
Choosing a compelling ad title is what gets our potential customers to spend some time reading our ad. It should be short (under 25 characters) and clear. Most people know better then to spend their time on ads like "Just click here" or "The best offer ever". If your product offering is good, just let them know what it is.
The ad's text is our call to action. It should tease our viewers to click on it. A good message can be "Fine Wines from Around the World Offered at Consistently Low Prices.".
Like the email marketing campaign, this is where we show the goods to our (potential) customer and try to convince him to pull out his/hers credit card.

Can you see the similarities? Both marketing channels share similar steps. If you have a successful email marketing campaign, consider trying the same process in an adwords campaign and vise versa.

Related posts:
Adwords tip - consistent message
Adwords tip - word capitalization
Adwords tips - coming soon

Adwords tip - consistent message

2006-10-26T08:51:00.000+02:00

In a recently posted article by MindValleyLabs, they measured the impact of two emotion based words in the ad text. The test compared the words "transform" and "improve" and the results showed an increase of CTR (click through rate) for "transform" but far better conversion for "improve". Read more about it in Using Emotions is a Double Edged Sword.

While I really like the way they show their ad testing results, what was missing from their article was the bottom line. In my opinion, the bottom line of this test is that you need to maintain a consistent message all along the path your user goes. This means a certain logical connection between the search phrase, the ad text, the landing page and the payment page. If any of them conveys a message that is inconsistent with the rest, it might cause the users to be disappointed and just leave.

Related posts:
Adwords tip - word capitalization
Adwords tips - coming soon

Digg traffic usage

2006-10-25T18:46:00.000+02:00

Here's a nice post by Neil Patel on how to get the most out of digg traffic.
Neil has some great insights on blogging, design and marketing and I've been following his posts for a while now. To summarize his post, even though digg traffic is not as good as organic or other traffic, you should try to get the readers to interact with the site via comments and RSS. If you can succeed in this interaction, they might be more prone to coming back again to your site/blog.
Read it to find out more here.

Related posts:
Digg - find your story

My FireFox extensions

2006-10-24T10:29:00.000+02:00

What I really like about Firefox is that it can be customized and extended in so many ways. Today it is my browser of choice and I think it is fast becoming the standard de facto of the blogosphere.

I currently use the following extensions:
1. Gmail RTL - allows automatic changing of text direction when detecting Hebrew based text in Gmail.
2. IE Tab - Some pages cannot be displayed in FireFox. IE Tab allows you to view specific tabs in Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
3. SearchStatus - Shows alexa and google rank for the current page. Gives you a sense of the publicity of the page/site you are currently viewing.
4. GreaseMonkey - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. I use scripts for trackback capability and for adding technorati tags.
5. CoComment - Tracks my comments and responses to them on any site.
6. AdSense Notifier - shows my adsense earning in the status bar.

What other extensions are you using?

Happy birthday to me

2006-10-23T07:48:00.000+02:00

My birthday arrives once a year on this specific date. It's just another day like any other, but I am trying to make it different. It starts by taking a day off work and taking it easy. The schedule will probably look like: Eating breakfast, going to the gym, taking an afternoon nap and later on an evening dinner with my family at a Mexican restaurant I like.

Plans for next year? Quite a lot, but I can't reveal them yet :)

What are your plans for your birthday?

Blog post title - how to choose them

2006-10-21T10:02:00.000+02:00

Here are 3 post titles taken from various blogs I subscribe to:
1. How do you get it all done?
2. Landing Page Optimization Tip: How We Boosted The Conversion Rate By 31% in less than a minute
3. Firefox 2.0 or IE7?

Why is the post title important?
1. Your RSS/email subscribers decide if they want to read the post based on the subject line. Is it relevant for them? Is it interesting?
2. Most blogging platform give the post a URL based on the first few words of the title. If the first few words are not relevant, you will not get this post indexed by search engines.
3. My blog features over a hundred posts. When going over my old posts, I want the title to be significant so I can easily figure out what a post is all about.

What do you think of the 3 titles? Are they good? Are they bad? Do they mean anything to you? Will you read these posts based on their titles?

Adwords tip - word capitalization

2006-10-20T18:32:00.001+02:00

I've always wondered if word capitalization in an Adwords ad is good for conversion. The answer to this question as well as other is testing. You should try out more than one option and measure their performance. In a recent test conducted by MindValley Labs, an ad was tested using word capitalization in all words versus remove capitalization of non significant words (e.g "to" is non significant). The results was that "smaller" words should not be capitalized. For more details on the conducted test, read Google AdWords Tip: Should You Capitalize small words such as ÂtoÂ? Answer = NO

Bump It - new voting system added

2006-10-19T20:24:00.000+02:00

Have you noticed the bottom of my blog posts now sports a "Bump This!" button?
It's a cool voting system powered by BumpBox.com that allows you to vote for posts you liked.
It's a new feature in my blog that will allow me (and you) to figure out which posts more readers like. So, don't be shy and BUMP this post.

Adwords tips - coming soon

2006-10-19T08:47:00.000+02:00

Coming soon to this blog... Some posts on Adwords campaign management.
While there are many PPC platforms, I believe that today Adwords is the best one, especially for someone just making their first steps into search engine marketing.

Here's a quick tip for now.
When selecting keywords for your campaign try using the following groups:
1. Your brand name - choose keywords that remind potential customers of your brand, product or company.
2. Product category - select keywords that describe your product or customer requirements. If you are selling mobile phones, a good keyword would be "GSM"
3. Competition - use your competitors brand and product names. Use this group only if there is already a dominant competitor in your field that customers know it's brand.
4. It's related - profile your potential customers to find out what other stuff interests them and try buying keywords related to their interests. This is probably the least effective group and should be priced accordingly.

Comment spammer types

2006-10-18T09:07:00.000+02:00

Here's a great post about the 9 personality types of comment spammers that I had to share with you. At least two of these types tried to leave comments on my site (can you guess which?). My personal favourite of the types was The combatant.

Technorati popular abused

2006-10-16T16:08:00.000+02:00

In a recent article, I covered the tracking of technorati's popular tags to get a sense of what people are searching for in the blogosphere. As mentioned in the previous post, you can figure out subjects that people want to read about and post about them. While playing with technorati's popular page, I came across a blog named Sissenah's space that outright copied the content in technorati's popular page tags to get a better rating in technorati. I feel that this is a serious misuse of technorati's power to connect bloggers and hurts readers as they are directed to non relevant content.

What do you think? Should such acts be allowed? Is Technorati supposed to ban this blogger or is it our job?

Adsense multiple custom channel usage

2006-10-16T08:51:00.000+02:00

The adsense team recently announced that multiple adsense channels can be applied to a single ad unit. How does this affect me, you ask? I think there are two important measures that I like to track by. The first is ad size (e.g. 200x200) while the second is by ad placement (e.g. homepage). A good way to implement the multiple channels would be to track by both and then use different reports to compare the values and start making changes if needed.
I have to say that this feature is really nice to have but not what I am really waiting for, which is dynamic URL channels. As a blogger, I like to see the affect of each post on my readers and my revenue. This is something that is impossible in adsense unless I define each and every post I add as a custom URL channel in adsense. I think it might be a good time for the adsense team to pick up the glove and figure some way to add this feature for us bloggers.

What other features are you missing?

Adsense notifier

2006-10-10T17:20:00.000+02:00

My blog shows google adsense ads. In my opinion, adsense is the best way to monetize a blog. All I had to do was setup some adsense code in my template and check the reports every once in a while to see my income. Now would be a good time to state that I am not writing for money but I feel that getting some sort of compensation for the time spent on this blog is only reasonable.

Adsense notifier is an extension of Mozilla FireFox which automatically checks your adsense account status and displays it in the status bar of the browser. All you need to do is to download the extension, configure it to your account and start getting your adsense stats on the status bar.

Technorati tags and searches

2006-10-09T17:52:00.000+02:00

Have you ever looked at technorati's popular page? It shows the top tags posted as well as the top tags people search for. There is a lot of insight to be gained from comparing the two lists.
If you substract the posted tags from the searched ones, you can come up with content that people are searching for but that is not that often posted about. Let's check today's list for example (listed below). The tag Video is searched for but not tagged. I see that so does the combination of Google Youtube which is only partially covered in the Youtube tag. I think the interest in Video/Google/Youtube comes from the expected anouncement of Google buying Youtube.

Let's see what tomorrow brings...

Top Searches:
1. North Korea
2. Jonny
3. Taschengeld
4. Battlestar Gala...
5. Video
6. Youtube
7. Foley
8. Google Youtube
9. Anna Politkovsk...
10. Armandinho
11. Google
12. The Paranoid St...
13. Death by Instan...
14. Firefox
15. Paginas Da Vida

Top Tags:
1. Bush
2. youtube
3. North Korea
4. Iraq
5. Microsoft
6. Comedy
7. foley
8. north-korea
9. Terrorism
10. War
11. web 2.0
12. mark foley
13. Republicans
14. web-20
15. sexy

Games - from the archives

2006-10-08T08:38:00.000+02:00

Here's a list of the most popular online games featured here. Got some time to spare? These games are sure to spend it for you.

Catch 33 - a fun online game
ClickDragType - game with no instructions
Red Square game - a good way to pass the time
Puzzle land - short quest game
Sling - new flash game

The blog is e-volving

2006-10-07T08:41:00.000+02:00

I guess it's time, I said to myself. My blog is 6 month old, has a decent amount of visitors daily as well as a growing RSS subscriber list. I think it's time to do some fine tuning.

So, where do I start?

Header: The blog's name is taking a significant part of the screen today due to it's font size. Now would be a good time to minimize it.

Description: In the past few month , this blog featured more and more articles on SEO, PPC and the art of blogging then new websites. If this is the new character of the blog, then is the blog's description still valid? The current description is "Digital culture. Learn of sites and technologies as they shape our life in the digital age". I think the new one should be focused on marketing.

Navigation bar: Our next stop is the left navigation bar. It currently shows the following elements (by order of appearance): About me, Get email updates, Archive (combined with RSS link), Previous posts and the blogger logo. I think the "About me" is in the right place but all others should be reconsidered. I think the "get email updates" should be grouped with the RSS link as a single section titled "Subscribe". Another change I want to make is to place the "Previous posts" before the archive. I think most users might find an interesting post title in the previous posts section before checking the archive.

Got any more suggestions for me? Don't be shy.

Google testing new search engine

2006-10-04T16:33:00.000+02:00

Google is an amazing company. It never stops to release new internet related products and features. The latest product in testing is a new search engine by the name of SearchMash, which serves as a testing ground for new features. According to the about page of SearchMash, "SearchMash lets you search the internet in new ways. It is constantly evolving as we come up with ideas and figure out what works and what doesn't."
Current features include "start typing" which means that the search box reacts to what you type even if your mouse cursor is not on it, "Image search" which shows you up to 3 images for your search phrase and "reorder results" that allows you to reorder search results for yourself (can you think of a reason to do this?). All in all, this is a great initiative by Google and will allow them to test new features in a more controlled environment.

Do you like the new interface? I think the current Google search looks better.

Dell homepage design

2006-10-03T08:53:00.000+02:00

I have been thinking of posting some guidelines for a good homepage. Even though I have some ideas about how I want the post, it's still premature. In the meantime I wanted to share with you a post by Neil Patel of Pronet Advertizing about Dell's homepage design. As ever in the blogosphere, there is value in reading the post and the comments as well. What I really liked about this post is that Manish Mehta of Dell's web team actively participated in the comments and answered some of our questions. It feels like more and more companies understand the power of the blogosphere and interact with it.

Netvibes updated - Cinnamon

2006-10-02T10:31:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Netvibes upgraded their personal dashboard solution. The upgrade had some minor bugs and issues, but overall went well, at least from a user perspective. I am not sure how many hours their R&D team spent slaving to tackle all the issues. If you are not sure what Netvibes is, I suggest you read my post about Netvibes - your personal dashboard. The new release features improved control pannel, smoother styling and UI, content localization and other features. As an avid Netvibes user, I think it's a great solution for anyone who needs to use more then once computer to access his online data. For more details on the new features, read the netvibes blog.

How to get more RSS subscribers

2006-09-29T18:46:00.000+03:00

Random visitors to my blog are nice but getting a new RSS subscriber to my feed is great. I feel that this is truly the most important parameter of a blog, how many people are monitoring it for new posts. So, how does one go and get more readers to subscribe?

Place your RSS feed subscription in a prominent part of all pages to make it easier for readers to notice it
Track the feed using services such as Feedburner to get more insight on what gets readers interested. (you might also want to consider using the non free ProStats for the reasons discussed in Pronet advertising's What I learned from FeedBurner TotalStats)
Allow subscription via email to your RSS feed
Set your posting frequency to one that your readers are comfortable with. Posting on regular times makes your reader expect your next post
Insert call to action into your RSS feed. Allow people to forward via email or recommend this RSS to a friend
And the most important one is ... Write stuff that your readers are interested in. I know that this is a real tricky one as no two readers are the same, but knowing your readers allows you to create better and most suited content for them.

I got the idea for this post from Conversion Rater's post named Believe It Or Not, This Blog is Growing which is a blog that I really like.

Related posts:
Tips on finding breaking news
Increase traffic to your site
Web stats from my blog

Selling a product... Pasta cooker

2006-09-27T18:08:00.000+03:00

The Internet marketing guru Seth Godin just published a post in his blog about the Pasta Express. The Pasta Express is a plastic tube in which you place your pasta and add boiling water. I have to admit that I actually considered buying one when I heard of it. After reading Seth's post named Your pasta problem, I am pretty sure that I won't be buying it anytime soon. This is truely an amazing peace of product marketing that makes me feel I was fooled.

Related posts:
Zune - hidden media player
TrackBack in blogger
Digg - find your story

Tips on finding breaking news

2006-09-27T08:43:00.000+03:00

Here's a nice post from ProNet Advertising about finding news sources that can be used to generate content for your blog. It's always hard to find new content for a blog and this tip can bring great value.

Related posts:
Digg - find your story
Increase traffic to your site

Spreeder - learn to speed read

2006-09-23T12:57:00.000+03:00

Spreeder is an online utility which trains you in the skill of speed reading. How does it do this? The main reasons that cause people to read slowly are their natural tendency to verbalize the text they read as well as backtracking to the beginning of sentences to understand the context of a word. Spreeder solves this by showing the text one word at a time at a speed that can be configured. Many people who played around with this application claim it improved their reading skills by more then 200%. Can it improve yours? Try Spreeder and let me know.

Technorati Tags: Reading, Speed Reading, Skill

Sling - new flash game

2006-09-23T11:17:00.000+03:00

It's been a while since I found a new flash game to share with you. But here comes Sling.
Sling is a green glob of goo consisting of a hand attached to a head by a long strip of springy slime. Players use the mouse to click and drag on Sling’s head, pulling him around to attach him to different items, or pulling back and releasing him to ‘slingshot’ him to another location. Real-world physics are used to model Sling’s springy arm, his motion and collisions.
Just see for yourslef:

Related posts:
ClickDragType - game with no instructions
Red Square game - a good way to pass the time

Technorati Tags: Sling, Flash Game

Increase traffic to your site

2006-09-23T11:00:00.000+03:00

I found a great collection of articles named "How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic - The Ultimate Guide". This list is a great source of knowledge for any website owner (or blogger) who wants to increase their website visitors. I really liked Seth Godin's "How to Get Traffic For Your Blog".

Related posts:
What is Technorati?
TrackBack in blogger
Digg - find your story

Technorati Tags: SEO, Digg, Traffic, Website, How to

What is Technorati?

2006-09-20T09:00:00.000+03:00

If you don't know the answer to this question, it might be a good time to checkout Preetam Rai's post about The “tagged web” and Using Technorati for some more information. The basic idea is that Technorati is a tag based index of the blogosphere that allows you to do tag based searches of topics you are looking for. I am using Technorati to get insight on what readers are interested in.

Related posts:
TrackBack in blogger
Digg - find your story

Technorati Tags: Technorati, Blogosphere, tag

Microsoft takes on YouTube with Soapbox

2006-09-20T08:49:00.000+03:00

In an attempt to stay ahead on current online trends, Microsoft launches a beta version of their YouTube competiton under the name of MSN Soapbox. Login is still by invitation only, but there is a real silly video on the front page for you to check out.

Related Posts:
Zune - hidden media player
YouTube - Video sharing site

Technorati Tags: Soapbox, MSN, Microsoft, YouTube, VIdeo

Zune - hidden media player

2006-09-19T15:00:00.000+03:00

There is a lot of buzz going around the Internet these days about Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPod... Zune! So, where can you find more information about this new product? The most obvious answer would be Microsoft's site but they seem to hide it somewhere where it can't be found. Could it be in the Zune marketing site? Nah, nothing there but some flash fun. What's the matter with you people? Don't you want us to know more of your product? I got it, this is probably some sneaky marketing trick?

Zune currently has around 1.8 million search results in Google

Technorati Tags: Zune, iPod, Microsoft, Media Player, Apple, Google, Marketing

Pope online - the vatican web site

2006-09-19T12:03:00.000+03:00

Following up on the latest news on the Pope's speech on the Islam, I tried to find some more information on this story and where better to search then the Vatican website?
Well, the Vatican website is probably aimed at holier people then myself as I was not able to find any mention of the speech or make sense of this site at all.

Can you?

Technorati Tags: Pope, Islam, Vatican, Website

TrackBack in blogger

2006-09-18T16:21:00.000+03:00

Trackbacking in the blogosphere is considered to be the polite way of letting someone know that you've linked to their post. While most blogging platforms such as WordPress support this, Blogger does not. In the past few weeks, I have searched for some sort of hack to allow me to send trackbacks to my fellow bloggers and found a solution which is described below in a manner that anyone can implement.

Adding a trackback ability to blogger posts:
1. Use Firefox
2. Install GreaseMonkey - GreaseMonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior.
3. Install the Blogger Trackback Userscript and get trackback functionality directly from your Blogger dashboard. Every time a post is published you will be asked for trackback URL that you wish to inform.

I am just rounding up the data here but the real honors should go to the people who developed Firefox, GreaseMonkey and of course the Blogger Trackback Userscript

Related posts:
blogger trackback
How to get more RSS subscribers
Technorati tags and searches

Tags: Firefox, GreaseMonkey, Grease Monkey, Blogger, Trackback, Userscript, Ping, BlogSpot, Ajax

Go2Web20 - Web2.0 directory

2006-09-17T10:48:00.000+03:00

Looking for a Web2.0 company? Go2Web20 is the place to find it. A very cool flash interface allows you to search by date, tags or just free text for the company you are looking for.

Related posts:
New widget in my blog - MuseStorm
Digg - find your story

Technorati Tags: Go2Web20, We 2.0, technorati, technology

ClickDragType 3 - 5 new levels

2006-09-16T09:50:00.000+03:00

One of the most popular posts on my blog is ClickDragType.
It's a great flash based game that leaves you in the dark as it does not provide any instructions on how to play it. A new version of it is just out named ClickDragType 3 and offers 5 new levels to the existing 10. Try it out and you won't be dissapointed.

Related posts:
ClickDragType - game with no instructions
Red Square game - a good way to pass the time
Getting paid to play games

Technorati Tags: game, ClickDragType, flash

Digg - find your story

2006-09-16T09:39:00.000+03:00

If you haven't visited Digg.com then now is the time. Digg is a user driven story rating system that allows users to post links to new stories and URLs and have other users rank them according to their likes and dislikes. If you browse Digg's homepage or category pages you will be exposed to what is really happening online in real time. Bloggers use Digg for 2 major reasons. The first is to publish their own posts and get more traffic to their blog while the second is to monitor uprising trends and blog all about them at the right time. While there are many sites that are based on user content ranking, Digg is regarded as the market's leader.

You can also read some more about this at Guy Kawasaki's How to Use Digg to Get Traffic or at Neil Patel's Using digg and Netscape to get traffic

Related posts:
Web stats from my blog
TalkDigger - track your blog links
Digg traffic usage

Tags: Digg, social network, user generated content, traffic

Free Antivirus by AOL

2006-09-08T18:31:00.000+03:00

Antivirus is probably one of the most important software you need on your computer.
While my office PC is protected, my home PC (it's really a laptop) has gotten used to numerous trial versions of leading antivirus programs. I have just found out that in a new marketing campaign, AOL is offering a free version of Kaspersky Labs antivirus which is considered by most people I know to be the market's leader. All you need to do to get your copy is to register at their website with your email (if you don't want your email exposed just read my post about one time email) , download your copy and activate it using the activation code sent to your email.

Let's see if more companies start offering valuable software for free as part of their marketing campaigns.

Download link: free antivirus

Technorati Tags: Free, antivirus, AOL, Kaspersky, security

Web stats from my blog

2006-09-02T10:36:00.000+03:00

I have been using all sorts of web analytics software to try and find out what my users want and like. The too web analytics tools I currently use are 103Bees and Performancing Metrics.
I try to spend a few minutes every week seeing what posts were popular and which ones brought new traffic to my blog.
Here are some stats for you from last month's reports:
Most popular page was the homepage while the second most popular was Red Square game - a good way to pass the time.
The best referer to my blog was Keyword Misspelling Tool from Matt Cutts's Problogger followed by a search in Google for google vs office.
Most popular search term was red square game closely followed by clickdragtype hints
Top rated outbound link was Red Square

Does your site implement some sort of web analytics? If so what are you doing with those stats?

Related posts:
103bees - SEO oriented analytics
SEO tips - avoid spellchecking
Google Trends - what are we searching for?
How the Internet changed the way we communicate

Technorati Tags: Web Statistics, SEO, analytics, 103 bees, Performancing metrics, stats

Color blind? take these tests

2006-08-26T10:22:00.000+03:00

As a kid, I have been diagnosed to be color blind. Anytime I tell someone that I am color blind they start asking me questions like: "What color is this shirt?". So, if you want to know if you are color blind or just what color blind people can see, take the following 2 tests and find out:

Test 1 - Numbers
Test 2 - Shapes

Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu strategy

2006-08-26T09:53:00.000+03:00

If you've read my post about Getting paid to play games, then you must know how excited I was about Moola.com which is the first site (that I know of) who offers people money to play games.
Having played their games for a while now, I have figured out a strategy for playing one of their games named Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu which is an advanced version of rock,paper and scissors.
If you haven't played Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu before then I suggest you try it out first and then return here for your Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu strategy guide.

The strategy:
In each of the 6 rounds of the game you must choose either rock,paper or scissors. Rock loses to paper but beats scissors, Paper beats rock but loses to scissors and scissors beat paper but loses to rock. In each round the grandmaster offers you additional points for not choosing a specific selection (e.g rock) but what this means is that given that most players will want those additional points they are left only with 2 choices of which one always beats the other. My strategy for this is to choose that dominant option (in the case that rock is excluded, you should always choose scissors).

Let's take a look at a potential round where paper is the excluded option.
If paper is excluded then we are left with only rock and scissors of which rock always beats scissors. The wise choice would be to select rock anytime.

If your opponent selects scissors then you win and gain 3 points while both of you get 2 points for not using paper.
If your opponent selects rock then you have a tie and the points move to the next round.
If your opponent selects paper the he wins the 3 points but you get 2 points for not using paper.

Note: in the case of a tie, you might want to break this strategy and choose the excluded option which might give you the 2 round points (6 points) but lose the 2 point bonus.

Related posts:
Getting paid to play games

Technorati Tags:
Moola, Games, Money, Strategy, Ro-Sham-Bo-Fu, Rock Paper Scissors

Unmaintainable Code - developer job security

2006-08-26T09:46:00.000+03:00

Having read this funny item about ensuring programmer job security by writing Unmaintainable Code, I just knew I had to share this one out. While most programmers try to keep their code neat, tidy and well commented, this item just does the exact opposite.

Got a suggestion for writing such code? Let me know

Related posts:
Ajax tutorial provided by MuseStorm

CrunchGear - gadgets, gear and hardware

2006-08-15T15:09:00.000+03:00

Remember my top gifts for men post? Here is another great site by the name of CrunchGear to do with gadgets, gear and computer hardware. CrunchGear is part of the TechCrunch network.
The site is blog based and features some really cool products such as the Razer ProType iPod/Zune Dockable Keyboards which has an iPod/Zune docking cradle as well as some USB ports and audio line-out.
It's a cool site if you like to drool over new gadgets.

Related posts:
top gifts for men
Nintendo WII - next generation game console

Technorati Tags: CrunchGear, TechCrunch, Gadgets, iPod, Zune

Best of July posts

2006-08-10T19:44:00.000+03:00

Is it too late to do a "best of July" post? Hmmm, not sure. Let's try anyway as there are some posts that really deserve some more attention.

July 3rd: Pay Per Post
Can I really get paid to blog?

July 10th: One Red Paperclip
All about the guy who traded one red paperclip for a house in Canada.

July 18th: Get One Mail - one time email
One time email? what will they think of next?

July 24th: Match My Pet
A dating site for pets...

July 27th: Visual meditation
Some visual fun with images

And a parting comment, do you know what post is most popular in this blog? Red Square game

Visual meditation

2006-07-27T08:44:00.000+03:00

Need some time off work? Take a look at this web page that offers what I call visual meditation. Once the page is loaded (shockwave required), a buetiful image is displayed on the screen and allows you to drill down into it's details. As you get closer to the image you find out that it is comprised of other pictures into which you can also drill.
You can also find other related stuff in the homepage of the group who created this page

WARNING this site is highly addictive

Related posts:
Red Square game - a good way to pass the time

Technorati Tags: meditation, shockwave, image, interact10ways

103bees - SEO oriented analytics

2006-07-26T21:26:00.000+03:00

In a time when you can find dozens of web analytics solutions (some even for free), it gets harder to compare what you get by their feature list without experiencing it first hand. After playing around with several solutions including Google Analytics and Performancing Metrics, I came across a really cool solution by the name of 103bees. What 103bees offers is a very light weight solution that does not affect the load speed of my sites and gives great insight on the organic traffic my site gets (organic traffic is what comes from search engines). The reports I get from 103bees show my traffic trends, popular search phrases and top keywords. Setting up 103bees in my blog was very easy and I started seeing my stats in realtime.

For anyone who wants to understand their search engine traffic, this would be the solution I recommend.

Related posts:
SEO tips - avoid spellchecking
Searching - can you find what you want?

Technorati Tags: Web analytics, Google Analytics, Performancing Metrics, 103 bees, search phrases, SEO

Match My Pet

2006-07-24T16:14:00.000+03:00

Many pet owners feel their pet is a part of the family and refer to them as he or she and not it.
A new site by the name of MatchMyPet wants to become the leading community for pet owners offering videos and articles as well as pet personal cards, But what I really liked about MatchMyPet is the way they enable us pet owners to find partners for our pets for breeding purposes or just as friends. I have a small Maltese dog who fears most other dogs and it would be great if I could find a friend for her there.

Let's see if you can guess what her name is.

CoComment - track your comments II

2006-07-20T23:16:00.000+03:00

I have just received an email from coComment regarding a major upgrade to their service.
The most important feature released is the ability to track non-coComment user comments.
Not sure what coComment does? Read more about it at my previous post CoComment - track your comments

technorati tags: coComment track conversation

Get One Mail - one time email

2006-07-18T21:25:00.000+03:00

Whenever I am asked for my email in order to register to a site or service, I know that I am going to get tons of spam emails. Yesterday, I saw a site that solved this problem by the name of
Get One Mail. What Get One Mail does is to provide you with a one time email allowing you to register to a site by using this temporary email address and then for get all about it.
I think this is a great anti spam solution that I plan on using in any site that asks for my personal email address and I am not sure if it will be misused.

Can you think of other uses for Get One Mail? Let me know

technorati tags: Get One Mail Anti Spam Email

One Red Paperclip

2006-07-10T17:19:00.000+03:00

Have you heard of Kyle MacDonald? He's the guy who traded one red paperclip for a house in Canada. How? Kyle started a blog under the name of One Red Paperclip in which his path to house ownership is described. By making 14 different trades he got to a house in Kipling Saskatchewan Canada. Want to learn more about this? Visit Kyle's blog

Musicovery - music discovery player

2006-07-08T09:06:00.000+03:00

This is my first time writing about a site that is unavailable. Musicovery is a music discovery player that uses a graphic interface to show how songs interact and enables their users greater control of the played music.

If you visit Musicovery's site, the following message is displayed:
"We will be back soon...

Hello, We are sorry to have to stop temporarily the radio. The number of visitors has reached such a level that given the way we currently operate the broadcast the cost has become too high. Thanks to all who encouraged us, made comments on the service and recommended it around them. We plan to rapidly provide the service again on a more sustainable basis."

I really want to see if Musicovery can compete with Pandora or if it's just a gimmick.
I promise to update you as they as they are up again.

Related posts:
Getting started - Pandora.com

top gifts for men

2006-07-05T10:20:00.000+03:00

There's a site by the name of uncrate where all the goodies a man dreams on buying are listed (no, it's not a porn site). This site simply shows amzing items that most of us would have liked to buy. Some like the Baldwin-Motion 1969 SS-427 Camaro are way behind our reach (priced around $169,000) while others such as the Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag are more reasonably priced at $60.

Yes, the Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag is an acceptable present from my readers (I thought I'd try)

No clicking please

2006-07-03T16:23:00.000+03:00

The following is based on a true story.
You are all alone in a high level conference room and you find a hidden red button under the table. What would you do?

a. Try to ignore it.
b. Try harder to ignore it.
c. Click on it no matter what happens next.

If your choice is c then I think it's time you try the following red button

Last chance, don't press it

Pay Per Post

2006-07-03T13:48:00.000+03:00

Have you heard about PayPerPost? They are offering to pay bloggers for publishing posts about products that publishers are willing to create news for. At first glance the entire concept annoyed me, but then I read the weekend newspaper and figured out that most newspaper post do not just make news (I am talking about articles and not news items) but are the result of careful PR by some party or another. If that is the case then how can a sponsored blog post be any different? Not that I see myself publishing a post about office furniture or other products but I think it's fair to say that we're going to be seeing quite a few bloggers adopting this new for of revenue generation. Is it really that far from affiliate links? Let me know what you think...

technorati tags: PayPerPost affiliate links blog revenue

Best of June posts

2006-07-02T17:52:00.000+03:00

June was a bit of a slow month, at least af far as Ohad's Internet News is concerned.
While I have many reasons (excuses) for this, I have no plan to use them.
See my list of June's best posts:

June 4th: How the Internet changed the way we communicate
a work in progress on the Internet's effect on our communication skills

June 5th: The fastest browser
a review of browser speed test

June 19th: Red Square game - a good way to pass the time
be warned, this game is addictive

June 26th: Ajax tutorial provided by MuseStorm
a much need toturial on creating ajax web desktops

June 27th: Google VS Microsoft
a personal opinion on the Google VS Microsoft front

June 30th: Talking to a robot
robot chat trascripts always amuse me

Related posts:
Best of May posts

Talking to a robot

2006-06-30T22:08:00.000+03:00

I am very interested in the subject of using robots in customer care systems, and have tried many online robots to see if they can respond in a semi-inteligent way to my questions.
Imagine how curious I was when I saw a new post on one of my favourite blogs by the name of Techie Buzz trascribing his session with the MSN Encarta robot. I think it's a pretty good example of what robots can and can't do when interacting with us humans.
Read all about Talking to a robot on MSN Chat

technorati tags: Robot MSN Encarta Chat techie-buzz

Web Future Carnival

2006-06-29T19:11:00.000+03:00

I have decided to open up a new carnival under the name of Web Future Carnival.
This carnival will be a focal point for all bloggers with thoughts about the internet's evolution and how it will look like in the coming future. Instead of commiting to a specific publishing date, I've decided to publish as soon as we have at least 10 good posts worth reading. What are you waiting for? There is already one post in the carnival and 9 more will get us rolling...

If you have a post to contribute to our coming edition of Web Future Carnival, please post it at the following link

technorati tags: carnival web future Internet future post

Google VS Microsoft

2006-06-27T16:12:00.000+03:00

Following on Google's announcement of their online spreadsheet product, I had a chance to chat with a friend who works at Microsoft. In the discussion we had, I expressed concern for his current workplace due to this move by Google. "Why should Microsoft care?" he asked, to which I responded with the following theory:

Facts:
1. Microsoft's major sources of revenue are from their Office and Windows products.
2. MS Office is dominating the market and has no real competition.
3. MS Office runs only on Windows (or primarily runs on windows)
4. Google recently bought an online word processing tool by the name of Writley
5. Online applications are gaining popularity over desktop applications.

Estimates:
1. Google to release an online version of office during 2006/2007
2. Once people can get office for free, Microsoft office sales figures will drop
3. If I can get most of my applications online using a browser only interface, there is no need to buy an OS but use free ones such as Linux.

I heard of Microsoft vision of moving their applications online but to this I say "it might be too little and too late"

Let me know what you think...

technorati tags: Google Microsoft Spreadsheet revenue office MS Windows desktop Linux Writley
del.ico.us tags: Google Microsoft Spreadsheet revenue office MS Windows desktop Linux Writley
icerocket tags: Google Microsoft Spreadsheet revenue office MS Windows desktop Linux Writley

Ajax tutorial provided by MuseStorm

2006-06-26T21:57:00.000+03:00

Having played with web technology for the past 12 years, I found Ajax to be a great method of transferring web pages into real applications. However, most web developers did not have the knowledge it took to understand how to code in an Ajax environment.

The following Ajax tutorial, explains in very detailed steps how to create Ajax Desktops on your own. Interested? I suggest you go view the Ajax tutorial

Related posts:
New widget in my blog - MuseStorm
Goowy - next generation personalized dashboard
Netvibes - your personal dashboard

Avant Browser gets more good reviews

2006-06-25T08:24:00.000+03:00

As mentioned in my previous post about browsert selection titled 2006 Browser wars, I have switched to using avant browser which I consider to be the best available browser today.
With each day that goes by, I convince more and more of my friends to try it out and they get hooked very fast. Here is another review of avant browser features and capabilities as an alternative to today's common browsers.

Related posts:
2006 Browser wars
The fastest browser

New widget in my blog - MuseStorm

2006-06-20T18:10:00.000+03:00

Have you noticed the cool new widget in my blog's sidebar that allows searching google news? I have been taking part in a closed beta of MuseStorm, which brings the Web 2.0 revolution to everyone even without knowledge of AJAX, XML, SOAP and Client/Server technologies

Well...That's all I am really allowed to say about them for now with more details coming soon.

In the meantime, why not try it out and let me know what you think.

Red Square game - a good way to pass the time

2006-06-19T19:06:00.000+03:00

Here is a nice game to pass the time.
All you have to do is to hold the red square with your mouse and avoid all other objects on the screen. Do that for 18 seconds...
My score? 17.45 seconds.

Let's see how you do

Related posts:
ClickDragType 3 - 5 new levels
Getting paid to play games
Free Antivirus by AOL

Technorati Tags: red square, game, flash, mouse, high score

What Google should develop next

2006-06-05T16:06:00.000+03:00

New products being announced by Google every month and it's getting pretty hard to guess what they will come up with next. Here is a nice guess as to what ten products Google should develop next.
My personal favorite? It has to be Google Sing & Draw Search.

On the same note, Have you seen the screenshots for Google Spreadsheet or the videos here?
Even if they are not the first to come up with an online spreadsheet, I think Microsoft should start getting concerned about their entire office sales targets.

Related posts:
Video ads offered by Google
Google NoteBook
Google Trends - what are we searching for?
New toolbar from google offers auto completion