Many publishers are getting invitation from Google Adsense team to join their new Cost-per-action program. According to the mail some of the points that one might find interesting are:

• Right now the program is open by invitation only. So you have to wait if you wish to join.
• You get paid whenever a visitor clicks on the ad AND performs a specified action, such as generating a lead or purchasing a product (hence the name cost-per-action).
• Ads would run on a separate network - the Content Referral network and would not compete with contextually targeted ads.
• You are allowed to put text like "Try BeachDating today" next to CPA ad unit.
• Earning report is on weekly basis only.

If would be interesting to know how many more publishers have received such invitations from Google.

Technorati Tags : Click, Per, Action, Google, Adsense, ads, only, by, invitation 

• Click the "Download" link just below the template snapshot.
• You will see a text file with html code in it.
• Select All and copy the code.
• Post the code in your blogger.com account's template editor.
• Save and republish.

Ok So this is my first template in "Nature" theme.
Click Image to enlarge
click here to Download template

In less than two days after going back on the market, BlogExplosion has found a new owner.The new owners are a large group that have extensive blogging background. And unlike the last time this time the new owner have "definitely has the experience and the resources to take BE to the next level. They have a large development team that will produce better site functionality and have the means to raise the awareness of BlogExplosion moving forward."

It seems that google is sending mails to adsense publishers and conducting survey and to make the whole process exciting they are also giving away gift cards worth hundreds of dollars. From the past experiences I can say that not all publishers would get that kind of emails as google is known for sending emails randomly.

• Bill gate steps down, announces retirement.
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• Maximize ad profits with eBay's 'Get Contextual Keywords' tool. 

Probably the most talked about site in dating circle is Plentyoffish and no its not because of the fact that this site, run by a single person Markus, is making around half a million dollar per month only from google adsense.

Plentyoffish is discussed for its design, or should I say for its lack of any design. Yes, if you visit this site you will see that its probably one of the worst designed site which is making such huge money. Many webmasters believe that the high earning might be because of the bad design and not inspite of it. According to them visitors are more likely to click on ads when they are on a poorly designed sites. If thats true then I might have to change this blog's design very soon :-(

You have a well established site about football and you are running Yahoo ads on it and even making good money from it. Everything sounds so great. Except one thing, you might get banned before you know.

The problem might be with your keyword. While in the US what we call "soccer", millions of fans worldwide calls it "football". So if you have a site on "American football" (which is known in US simply as 'football') which is optimized for keyword "football" then it might be pulling in lot of international traffic. Many YPN publishers got banned in February for getting non-US traffic and again few weeks back on getting "low quality traffic".

Many banned publishers received mails like this from YPN:

We have terminated your Yahoo! Publisher Network beta account [ACCOUNT ID] for breach of the Terms and Conditions and/or Program Policies. Your breach includes but may not be limited to sending traffic from users located outside the United States, in violation of Section 11(l) of the Terms and Conditions. In accord with Section 6(a), we will not include such amounts in your payment. We have refunded amounts generated from the non-US users to our advertisers and will pay any remaining amount owed to you in accord with the Terms and Conditions.’

So in my opinion its best to check the kind of traffic your site is receiving. You can never be too careful.

If you want to see maps, movie updates, news or even relevant ads of Europe on your PC then all you have to do is switch-on your TV.

That's right, google's new research paper which also won 'Best Paper' award at Euro ITV 2006 which took place couple of weeks back, focuses on using broadcast viewing to automatically present relevant information on a web browser. In other words its going to collect sound from TV and parse it to get some keywords and going to present the surfer with real-time forums, ad-hoc chat rooms, actor profile and even maps of locales within the movie.

This is real exciting and I can't wait to see google implement it. I wonder what's going to happen when you are surfing for latest gadget and tech news and your wife is watching "Desperate Housewives" ;-)

In the last week of April BlogExplosion announced that they have been sold for in excess of $100,000 but the recent update is that the buyer is not able to complete securing financing.

So its up for sale again.

• Meet Ivan the optimiser -- but please, no paparazzi.An interview with Ivan Heneghan, a Dublin-based AdSense optimisation specialist, to learn how 'optimisation' differs from 'optimization'.
• Meet Mike Gutner, AdSense Optimization Specialist.An optimization specialist here at AdSense.
• So you're a successful, savvy AdSense publisher. Want to work for Adsense? Well, AdSense is hiring.

If you are a thinking of getting a new Adword account AND if you are from India then there is some good news for you. Google is giving away 1000Rs Adword vouchers for new accounts. Go on and register here and hey.. don't forget to buy me a beer :-)

source Shoemoney

• Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a Mac Video Player. Mac version of Google Video Player.
• Viral Videos that Swept the Nation. A look at 8 videos that have exploded on the Net.
• Why zero impressions?. Mystery of new or edited ads which receive no impressions gets cleared.

Do you like to set a target for yourself or do you prefer to take every day just as it comes. While living without a goal can be fun, hassle-free and without any guilty feeling many people prefer to have a goal in life. And they don't stop just there. They breakup that goal into many small goals - goal for the year, goal for the month and even goal for the week. They claim that it keeps them organized and helps in reaching that bigger goal without actually thinking about it all the time.

After reading some inspirational books and articles I have decided to give this 'goal thing' a shot. And the timing could not have been better, here I got free from long vacations and there Darren Rowse started a new Group writing project - Blog Goals, where he suggests all his readers to "making some of your blogging goals public as a way of adding accountability and motivation to reach them".

Now what should be my goal and what should be the duration? Money seems to be a nice motivating factor... so.. how about getting that magical '4 figure per month' earning from Adsense within next 12 months. Sound great.. but like all big boys suggests, one should not blog just for money. So lets modify this goal into something more 'reader oriented'. I am sure Darren would be glad to know that I am putting my readers before money :-) . So lets see.. if I wish to earn 1K a month then I should be getting around... (top secret mathematical calculations here) .. 10K visitors daily.

This is where I got headache, went back, checked my earnings, read some forums, re-calculated the 'top secret data'. Man.. this figure is really scary. This is next to impossible, even ProBlogger.net gets around 4K/day visitors. I must have made some mistake. I need to do more. Ok, what other options do I have - start some more blogs/sites, get a day job, write ebooks a la Joel Comm :-)

I guess I would give this blog 12 months before trying any other options. Many bloggers have said in past that most of the blogs do no survive more then first few months. So I have decided to give this blog 12 months and even if I don't reach my goal I won't kill it before next june 2007. So lets get back to the task on hand. Yes goals!.

Now that Big Goal of 1K a month is decided, lets break it into following smaller goals:

1. Get More traffic. I am sure most of the readers can break this into even more smaller goals like: Get more backlinks (submit articles, comments and more), write more posts, do research on the topic, tag posts etc.
2. Organize blog. I still remember one of Darren's post where he talks about how he like to visit 'about' page and how important is that page for a blog. There are many such small changes that I need to make on this blog to build loyal readers.
3. Build relationship. Just like any community even in blogosphere you need friends, and I plan to make some real good friends here. This is more to do with make blogging fun and exciting and less to do with money.
4. Learn something everyday. There is so much useful information on the net. People share so many interesting tips on their blogs and in forums. I wish to learn at least one new thing everyday from these people but at the same time I would try not to get addicted ;-)
5. Unlearn everyday. I am going to maintain a record of my blog's performance and would keep adding something new and removing something old that don't seem to work. Not only the blog's content but its design and layout would be constantly changing and evolving.

If I complete above 5 sub-goals then I am sure I should be able to achieve my Big Blog Goal for next 12 months.

To keep you updated this is what I am going to do. I am going to post my Adsense earning stats(updated weekly) in the top right corner of the blog for everyone to see.

wish me luck guys!

ps: Before posting this post I updated this blog's 'About' section with the help of 'expand' trick. I am so sincere :-)

Finally the wait is over, This morning google has accepted my Google Analytics account request. Lets see how this thing really works. I am very excited about all this especially because I got this mail after one full month while many of my friends have said that i might have to wait for as long as 3-4 months. So if you are interested in how this baby works then stick around.

Chao

Google's latest launch is Adsense Calendar.

To make long story short here is the list of things you can do with it:

1. You can find monthly payment schedule.
2. record of AdSense blog posts.
3. Future system maintenance periods and upcoming events.

How to get it:

1. You can subscribe via Google Calendar.
2. You can also view it using a feed reader or iCal-compatible program.

Get it now from here.

Great news for web publishers! But first let me tell you a story and if you are a newbie then you should definitely pay attention.

Couple of weeks back when Google introduced a new referral Picasa I noticed many blogs that wrote about it and in the end added a line saying "if you want to download Picasa and also if you wish to help this blog then you can download it from my referral button". I know, it was a big mistake and totally against TOS but many innocent bloggers including myself used to belief that referral buttons are like selling something so you can promote them.

Anyway long story short now you don't have to worry about such issues because now you can use Google Adsense APIs  which enables you to integrate Google AdSense into your website offerings and increase your revenue without risking getting banned from Google. Think of it as a bonus.