Adsense Smart

Google Chrome update itself without warning

2009-11-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

Chrome update itself without warning, but it's not so "silently" and let me keep "using the browser without interruption", because the only thing I can do is just to look at my Good Old Laptop (more than five years), the hard disk indication light flashing, the cooler fan accelerated to it highest speed with squeaky noise, then a window pop up to let me choose "kill" or "wait" the web page in loading.

The updating normally starts shortly after I open chrome, it's quite frustrating to wait for it to finish updating, even worse when I did know this feature. I only found out this after my firewall program asks me if I let Chrome out to the internet because it has been changed.

This is said in the help document that Chrome use GoogleUpdate to check and install browser updates:

When you choose to install Google Chrome, GoogleUpdate is first installed if you don't have it already. It's then used to download Google Chrome and Gears, and install them on your computer. GoogleUpdate is also responsible for checking for browser updates. It does this by using the Windows Task Scheduler to run at periodic intervals. If an update is available, GoogleUpdate silently updates Google Chrome to the newest version so that you can continue using the browser without interruption.

But I can't find GoogleUpdate to change its setting if there is a choice, so I can be warned before an update.

The Google Maps API

2009-10-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

When I tried to create a new post here in Blogger and I got the error message:

The Google Maps API server rejected your request. the "sensor" parameter specified in the request must be set to either "true" or "false".
I searched the internet, there are reports that this kind of error happened when people was trying to use Google maps in browser.

I don't remember I use any Google maps in my blog.

And in this post, people reported the same problem, and other issues:

when I go into the blog post, and attempt to set the locate for the post, using the Google Map API, it says:

"Couldn't find location, please try another query"

This same issue happens independent on browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and IE.

Virgin Media Netgear Wireless Router Username and Password

2009-10-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

As Virgin Media customer, if you find your wireless router is Netgear, then you may type the router's setup URL into a web browser address bar. http://192.168.0.1 is the default Netgear router IP address. http://192.168.1.1 will work for some Netgear models. Mine setup URL is http://192.168.1.1.

Then you are required to enter a username and password. If you haven't change the default setting, it is "virgin" and "password", you may find that on a label stuck on the router.

This default username and password of Virgin Wireless router is different from that of the normal Netgear router. The default username of Netgear is admin and the password is either password or 1234.

Then you open the configure interface, change the settings, such as change your DNS server to OpenDNS.

For a normal Netgear router, if you forget the username and password, you can reset and restore the NETGEAR device to factory default settings. But I couldn't find any button on my router. So I think I needn't to bother.

Mysql Quota

2009-09-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

I installed a forum, and forget about it.

After several months, I received a Mysql Quota warning, and found that the forum has got thousands of registered users and posts. All of those usernames are randomly generated and posts are ads with many links, fortunately there are no adult photos and videos.

Here is the Mysql Quata warning email:

Dear Valued Customer

We are mailing you to let you know your free account has exceeded its mysql quota of 50mb.

The ability for your user to add new data to your databases has been revoked (denied) due to the quota breach.

You will be able to log into phpmyadmin (or possibly use tools in your script) to remove data from mysql.

If you are unable to reduce your database usage to under 50mb, we would ask you to upgrade.

Best Regards

Besides of the restriction of SQL usage, there are disk usage quota, bandwidth usage quota and daily CPU usage quota.

Will Adsense stop displaying on my site because of low click through rate?

2009-08-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

A strange things happened to me today, I have two forum sites, although pageviews are low, the click through rates are lower.

But today, Adsense doesn't show up on these two sites while it's normal on other sites and blogs.

Will Adsense stop displaying on my site because of low click through rate?

Any ideas, anyone?

Payments

2009-08-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

Google Adsebse offer Western Union in 23 countries.

Google also offer courier service in many other countries.

To receive your payments via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is quick and easy to set up. When payments are issued, there's no need to wait for the delivery in the mail -- the funds appear in your bank account shortly after they're issued. That
means if we processed a payment for you this month, your earnings would be in your bank account already.

Also, EFT is good for the environment, since a check doesn't need to take a ride by sea, plane, or land to reach you. In available locations.

Ad Manage Networks and Optimization Solutions

2009-07-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

DART for Publishers. To access DART for Publishers (DFP), you'll need to update your sign-in to a Google Account now. This will let you access all your DoubleClick and Google products with a single sign-on.

Google Ad Manager. Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.

Atlas. Provide digital media technologies for advertisers, agencies and publishers. platforms.

OpenX. Openx helps publishers maximize the price of their ad inventory and helps advertisers gain access to highly targeted, premium inventory.

Yieldbuild, Yieldbuild continually optimize and manage your contextual ad process.

Shall I Update My Account to British Pound Sterling Earnings?

2009-07-17T08:26:00.001-07:00

Local currency reports has been available for U.K. publishers for a while, it is currently optional, shall I click that button and update to pound sterling, or keep waiting until it become required in the future?

There are some changes of the terms and conditions, one of these is:

"The party that publishers are contracting with changes from Google Inc. to Google Ireland Limited."

The payment threshold will change to pound sterling, it says in the TOS that "payment due to You is greater than £60, payments to You shall be sent by Google within approximately thirty (30) days after the end of each calendar month",

About the VAT, it says:

You shall pay all applicable taxes or charges imposed by any government entity in connection with Your participation in the Programme. Google will not issue any VAT refunds to You.

In this post, Inside Adsense Team says:

"While you may receive your payments in your local currency, all payments are being made by Google Ireland, a company incorporated under the laws of Ireland, in accordance with the terms of your agreement with Google. Unless your business is in Ireland, you should not have an obligation to charge Google VAT or treat any of our payment to you as VAT that needs to be paid to any VAT authorities. If your billing address is located in Ireland, you may have an obligation to charge Google Irish VAT. Please speak to your local tax adviser if you have further questions."

Do I need to update my tax information if I changed to local currency?

There are un-answered issues, such as this: "Will I miss a payment because of changing currency reporting?":

I accepted the new adsense change to provide £ sterling currency reporting on my account but I am worried that my next monthly payment isn't going to be paid as is states on the site that "Any remaining US Dollar balance will be automatically transferred to your British Pound Sterling balance between the 12th and 15th day of the month". My reporting was changed on the 15th June and it hasn't been transferred so does that mean I will have to wait till next month for it to be transferred and get paid for 2 months instead of 1.

Jack Herrick's Tips to attract visitors

2009-07-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

Jack Herrick is the founder of wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. wikiHow is a wiki, which means that any visitor to the site can create or edit wikiHow articles. wikiHow is currently ranked as the 100th most popular site on the web by Quantcast, and receives over 16 million unique visitors each month. Jack shared three of his favorite tips to attract visitors.

Tip #1: Produce great content

The first tip is obvious, but it's also the most important. The articles on wikiHow vary widely in quality. We have some of the highest quality how-tos on the net, for example How to Hard Boil an Egg, and we also have some fairly ugly, unfinished drafts we call stubs. Interestingly, the high-quality articles don't get just a little more traffic than the mediocre articles, they get hundreds of times more. When you can produce the single best page on the Internet
on any given topic, people will find it and share it with their friends. Don't settle for acceptable content, always strive to produce amazing content that your readers can't resist sharing.

Tip #2: Learn to share

My second tip is more counterintuitive. To attract more readers to your website, consider putting your content under a Creative Commons license so it can be widely distributed. Everything on wikiHow is under a license that allows other websites to publish and even modify or adapt our content for re-use on their sites. In fact, we have a button at the bottom of every article that allows webmasters to copy and paste the HTML right onto their site. Many webmasters are afraid to share their content, because they worry they will only be aiding competition. By sharing, what you are really doing is encouraging your competitors to provide free advertising for you. The more people who see your content on other sites, the more likely they are to eventually come straight to you.

Tip #3: Make your community a team

Finally, I'd encourage you to allow real collaboration on your site. Lots of websites try to create online communities. To use a basketball analogy, most online communities are just groups of individuals shooting freethrows alone. On wiki websites, people play together as a real team. Humans are hard wired to want to work in groups and collaborate. By allowing this to happen, you can create a passionate community of people that will build something bigger than any one person could accomplish on their own. And that will in time attract a large audience.

Tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google

2009-06-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

Tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google:

Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site.

Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It's tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient.

Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions.

Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they've completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user's main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks.

Tip #3: SEO - only if it makes sense.

Only do search engine optimizations that benefit your users. For example, page titles that are relevant to the page content make it easier for your visitors to understand what your articles are about. On the other hand, there are lots of sneaky strategies out there for improving search engine rank. Most of those don't work anymore, and they might actually harm your site's reputation.

Chrome: Drag out a tab to create new window, is this process irreversible?

2009-06-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome has a cool feature that you can drag out tabs to create new window. Suppose you have two tabs opened in your Chrome browser and you want to move out one tab to a new window, just drag the tab out of the main window, and you get a new chrome window with the same page opened.

Google chrome tabs are separate windows process and as a result if one tab crashes, it won't affect other tabs!

But my mouse is pretty sensitive or my fingers are too clumsy, so when I click on one of my tabs it accidentally drags the tab out, I am NOT happy with it, and wonder if there is a way to restore the newly-generated window back to a tab window. You can drag out a tab to create a window, but as far as I know this process is IRREVERSIBLE, I haven't found a way to "drag" a Chrome window back to a tab.

And I wish there is a way to LOCK tabs so I can't drag out a tab to a new window accidentally.

Create a three column blogger template

2009-05-21T01:59:00.000-07:00

I found this tutorial about how to create a three column template in Blogger layouts, using the Minima template as a starting point.

You have to be careful if you use using Blogger's new "Layout" version..

This tutorial uses "left" and "right" as parameter, but blogger has changed these respectively to two variable $startside and $endside instead, so when you edit template html, you have to change accordingly.

#left-sidebar-wrapper {
width: 220px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */

#main-wrapper {
width: 410px;
float: $startSide;
margin-$startSide: 20px;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

Glosary

2009-05-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

Impressions: The number of times ads on your website have been viewed in that program.
Unique impressions: Number of responses to page requests from a visitor’s browser within a predefined time period (most Advertisers do not track this event).
Clicks:

Number of times ads on your website were clicked on in that program.
CTR (Click Through Rate): Clicks divided by Impressions times 100.

Unique visitors (UV):
- One click per visitor per predefined time period, for example; if the sameuser clicks on an ad 10 times in one hour that will register 10 clicks but only one unique UV.
- UVR (Unique Visitor Rate): UV divided by Impressions times 100.
Leads:
- The number of leads generated from the website in that program. Leads are generally completed actions without a sale, for example an application.
- LR (Lead Rate): Leads divided by Impressions times 100.
Sales:
- The number of Sales generated from your website in that program.
- GBP (or other currency): Generated commission.
- CR (Conversion Rate): Sales divided by Clicks.
- Order value: The total basket value of goods purchased via the website.
Digital wallet: Deposits and Withdrawals. Manual transactions that have been paid or removed by advertising agency or the Advertiser.
Commission: The total commission earned from your website.

YieldBuild' major improvements

2009-04-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

Microsoft pubCenter access!
Microsoft's AdSense challenger is still in private beta, but through our Premium Text Ad Program, you can start running pubCenter ads alongside your AdSense or other ads. Want to improve your revenue by seeing how ads from these two heavyweights play out on your site? Opt in to the Premium Text Ad Program to start!

Improved performance. Billions of ad impressions run across hundreds of sites over the past year and a half have taught our optimization algorithm a few things. Our publishers are seeing the top-line benefit of YieldBuild's enhanced format and network optimization.
Shorter training time. Improvements to our algorithm have brought down the training period to significantly shorter than the 100,000 page impressions we previously needed. YieldBuild will narrow in on the ad formats and layouts to test based on an intelligent understanding of your site's format, colors and structure.

Expanded network support. In addition to Google AdSense and Microsoft pubCenter, YieldBuild also supports contextual networks Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and Chitika, and display ad networks Advertising.com, ValueClick Media, Tribal Fusion and BlueLithium.

Kontera updated its TOS, no more $5 earnings minimum

2009-04-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Kontera removed "$5 earnings minimum" clause, this has been announced in their blog:

After releasing our updated TOS we’ve received some publisher feedback pertaining to an existing clause. The clause, stating a $5 earnings minimum in order for revenues to be rolled over to the next month, though not a new addition, raised some concerns among a small yet important segment of our publisher community.

Since publisher feedback is highly important to us and as a result, we’ve decided to remove this clause from our TOS effective April 1st 2009.

Is this a good news to 'a small yet important segment of our publisher community?' but I have removed Kontera code in most of my webpages after I have realized this, and feel very unhappy with MY 'stupidness'. I am sandbox publisher, I joined Kontera six months ago, none of my monthly revenue has reached minimum earning requirement (and I have to say, Kontera's CPC rate is very low!), so I have worked for Kontera for nothing for more than six months, because I have never read TOS carefully, I wrote to ask them and was told this is written in the TOS, I feel I am a fool.

Do I meet Google Spider?

2009-04-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

I check "Who's Online" in my forum, and notice one IP from Google, is that Google's spider?

In my SMF forum, login as admin, click "Who's Online", it show one guest's IP is 66.249.71.113, click this IP address, it takes me to "Track IP" interface, it shows five regions with ARIN (North America, a portion of the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa) in bold:

AfriNIC (Africa)
APNIC (Asia Pacific region)
ARIN (North America, a portion of the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa)
LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean region)
RIPE (Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia)

Then click the entry in bold, it takes me to "Search ARIN WHOIS for: 66.249.71.113" result:

OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US

NetRange: 66.249.64.0 - 66.249.95.255
CIDR: 66.249.64.0/19
NetName: GOOGLE
NetHandle: NET-66-249-64-0-1
Parent: NET-66-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.GOOGLE.COM
NameServer: NS2.GOOGLE.COM
NameServer: NS3.GOOGLE.COM
NameServer: NS4.GOOGLE.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2004-03-05
Updated: 2007-04-10

Blogger is a money machine

2009-03-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

I never noticed this blog has a "Monetize" tab until today, which let you look at Adsense reports without logining to your Adsense account.

Kontera ads in SMF: Template Parse Error!

2009-03-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

I wanted to integrate Kontera code into my SMF (Simple Machine Forum), but got "Template Parse Error!" message:

Template Parse Error!

There was a problem loading the /Themes/default/index.template.php template or language file. Please check the syntax and try again - remember, single quotes (') often have to be escaped with a slash (\). To see more specific error information from PHP, try accessing the file directly.

You may want to try to refresh this page or use the default theme.
syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ',' or ';'

One solution is to change single quotes (') to double quotes, for example, you change

var dc_AdLinkColor = 'blue' ;

to:

var dc_AdLinkColor = "blue" ;

Another solution is to escaped with a slash (\) as sugested in the error message, put a slash (\) before every single quote (').

Not comfortable using reports in Kontera

2009-03-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

I feel not comfortable using reports in Kontera. It is all confusing and not able to take out the reports I that would like to see. In Adsense it very easy and several report options are available, for example, it's quite easy to generate an "all the time", or "since last payment" report for Google Adsense, but as for Kontera, how can I get the report for all the time since I registered my account? There are custom dates for me to choose from, but it seems the starting date always keeps changing, last time I can get my report starting from 2008-9-19, but today I can only start from 2008-9-24, and revenues seem keep changing too, I mean, it seem doesn't increase all the time, sometimes decrease!

I double checked my Kontera report, and it does seem to drop some data. I saved my last report (date from 2008-09-19 to 2009-03-17), but this time I can not go back to 2008-9-19, I can only go back to 2008-9-24, so I generate anther report dated from 2008-9-24 to 2009-3-17, and found that at least in one channel click through decreased (not accumulated instead) from 311 to 308, and revenue decreased 9.95 to 9.83.

As far as I could recall from my bad memory, I found I had less revenue in my last report than the one before last.

I have raised this issue in Hubpage forum, and send an email to Kontera, and I got the quick response from Kontera, daily reports can only date back over 180 days, overall revenues earned since you joined can be obtained by sending them an e-mail with that request through the "Help" tab in the Kontera Publisher Center. In the "Select Issue" field select "Payment Issue" from the drop-down menu and your request will be automatically directed to our Accounting Department that will issue the comprehensive revenue report per you request.

Latest update:

Kontera only pays out for months in which an account has earned at least $5.00 in revenue, which means as long as during a particular month you earned at least $5.00, then that month's revenue is added to your account total.

This is unfair for small publishers. I joined Kontera six months ago, but to-date, my account has not yet met the monthly revenue minimum so far, consequently I have been working hard for Kontera for nothing!

If you are Sandbox Publisher like me, please be warned, read the TOS carefully before you join any advertise network. Or you will find yourself a fool.

About us dot org

2009-03-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

If you own a domain name and a website, aboutus.org is another good wiki to advertise yourself.

Aboutus will read informations from your domain registrar and your website, generate automatically entries about your domain identity.

You just type http://aboutus.org/your-domain-name/, and be the first peroson to privide all the informations about your business and domain name.

Here is two examples:

http://www.aboutus.org/DayABook.com

http://www.aboutus.org/DalRiadaBooks.co.uk

By the way, you can search Wikipedia for a relative entry, and add your blog into the external link, this will help people to find you.

Adsense Domain Strategy

2009-03-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

retsek shares his process of Adsense domain strategy in digitalpoint forum, he says:

-Research keywords. Not necessarily high paying ones, but keywords that have high advertiser competition and SE traffic but low competition from other sites.
-Once I find a keyword, I buy a domain and build the site. I use Wordpress MU ..it makes it easy to manage multiple sites. Use all the SEO tools available for wordpress, sitemaps, etc.

But I think, a blogspot sub-domain sometimes is better than a newly-registered bad domain name. For a blogspot blog, you don't need to worry much about generating a Google XML Sitemap, where to put Adsense code in the template, just keep on updating. And to my own experience, I give more credits to a Blogspot blog than others.

For beginners, sometimes you maybe better to try revenue sharing site, such as Hubpage or Squidoo or this forum, most of my earnings come from hubpage, I have never got any clicks from this forum yet, though.

The easiest way to upgrade Wordpress

2009-03-07T15:01:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned an error to auto-upgrade Wordpress 2.7 to 2.71, the reason is the problem of the free webhost byethost.

If you use byethost too, and need to update, here is the easiest way.

Backup your files and database. Of course you can use FTP to download all files to your local computer, but quickest is to make a copy in the server itself using Vista Panel File manager tool. Export your database, and save it as a file, just in case something go wrong during your update.

Delete wp-admin and wp-include, do as the instructions given out in the Upgrading Wordpress document.

Use Fantastico type installer to install the latest version of Wordpress. Byethost almost has the latest version of Wordpress as soon as a new version released. This save you a lot of work to download and unpack and upload to your server. Don't do the wordpress installation procedure.

Then go to File manager, copy all files except for wp-contents and wp-config and overwrite your old files.

There are no database upgrade from 2.7 to 2.71, so update success!

Sitemap for SMF and Verify it in Google Webmaster tools

2009-02-21T16:38:00.000-08:00

As an admin of Simple Machine Forum, two things are important and have priority, one is to give your SMF forum an XML Sitemap, another is verify your web in Google Webmaster tools.

Here you may find Sitemap mod, and it's quite handy to install this package. but one word for precaution, don't be confused by this sentence:

Google does not like SEF formatted URLs for the sitemap because it won't show the sitemap in the root directory

just do as the author tells you, make a .htaccess file under your root directory, and copy & paste the rewrite rule into this file and click save. My forum system files are under root directory, so I made a minor change, from /forum/index.php?action=sitemap;xml to /index.php?action=sitemap;xml.

After doing this you can view your XML sitemap by the address http://games.dayabook.com/sitemap.xml, or you may have to use this address http://games.dayabook.com/index.php?action=sitemap;xml

The second thing is how to verify your forum in Google Webmasters Tools. Here is a forum thread discuss this topic, the easiest way to add META tags in home page is to edit file "index.template.php" in your theme directory, If you use "SMF default theme - core", you may have to login to your theme directory, otherwise you may only login to your forum as admin, then go to "themes and layout settings -> Modify themes", then add meta tag in the html head section.

Problems of Automatically Update Wordpress 2.7 to 2.71

2009-02-21T01:02:00.000-08:00

I use byet freehost for my Simple Machine forum, and Wordpress blog. I feel quite happy that I can automatically update SMF forum, but had problems of automatically update my Wordpress blog, the error message is:

Unable to locate WordPress directory.

Installation Failed

There is some discuss in byet forum, but without satisfied answers.

Any help, please?

Iframe attack

2009-02-12T06:12:00.000-08:00

An IFrame (which isn't another Apple product - it stands for "inline frame") is just a way of loading one web page inside another, usually from a different server.

Malware writers can make the included page just one pixel square and obfuscate javascript which will run automatically.

Frame code would be inserted by hacking web servers, or adding it to banner advertisements.

Big websites often cache (store) the results of search queries run on their sites - say, the links for a search for "malware IFrame" - and then forward these to search engines such as Google, which can generate search results directly. Malware authors exploit the system by putting in a search query like "malware IFrame" plus all the malicious IFrame's text. If the site doesn't check search terms adequately for obfuscated Javascript, the IFrame data is stored and passed on. When someone then searches for "malware IFrame" and clicks a result, the attack is initiated directly from the search result, because the browser can read the obfuscated Javascript - even if you can't.

Malware distributors like this because they don't need to hack the server, and can use popular searches to benefit from the site's SEO (search engine optimisation) practices and get a high ranking at Google. The attack usually includes half a dozen "drive-by" exploits, and also uses "social engineering" to get users to install something else, such as a video codec that is actually a Trojan. (Source)