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On-Demand Video Encoding: Guide To The Best Cloud-Based Services

Daniele Bazzano — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:00:00 PDT

Are you looking for an on-demand video encoding service? Do you need a cloud-based alternative that works seamlessly across any type of hardware or operating system? Are you looking for an easy way to convert videos to publish on your web site or watch on your iPod?

Photo credit: Robert Mizerek

On-demand video encoding services allow you to convert and encode video files or raw footage of your camera into any kind of video file. All with a cloud-based approach that saves you from installing software on your computer.

Let's go into more details to better understand what these cloud-based video encoding services can do for you:

Encoding is the process of taking your original video, either recorded by your video camera, web-cam or whichever capture device you use, and preparing it for delivery in a particular medium.

Cloud-based services live and work entirely on the web with no software, plugins or any other stuff installed on your machine.

To use these cloud-based video encoding services, all you need to do is upload your video file, specify the output format you need and then sit back while the encoding service does the rest. When your file is ready, you are notified and given a download link to save the converted file on your computer.

On-demand video encoding services allow you to convert and encode your video files from / to most popular video formats like 3GP, AVI, FLV, MOV, MPG, MP4 or WMV. Professional video encoding services will also convert the ratio of your video (from example from 4:3 to 16:9 or vice versa), preserve the quality of your clips if you are converting high-quality or HD videos, and support de-interlacing, 2-pass encoding and H.264 encoding.

What is cool about these on-demand video encoding services is that you do not need a brand new machine nor the fastest Internet connection in the world. Any type of hardware, operating system and broadband connection will do just fine.

To help you better understand the characteristics and to facilitate your job, let me share with you the key features and traits that characterize these on-demand video encoding services:

Free:
- Web-based: Encode your videos without downloading software on your machine and with any type of hardware or operating system you are using.
- Web video encoding: Download and convert videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo and other video-sharing sites.
- File conversion: Convert from / to not only videos, but also text documents, image files or audio files.

Professional:
- 2-pass encoding: Get better video quality and reduce the encoded video file size using multiple passes.
- Custom presets: Use ready-available settings to choose the optimal encoding package for web streaming, iPods, mobile phones, etc.
- Real-time monitoring: Keep track of all your video conversions using a web-based dashboard.

Besides these key general features and traits, I have used some additional characteristics for both free and professional on-demand video encoding services to prepare a set of comparative table and individual reviews to put all of these services through their paces.

The comparative criteria I have selected include:

Free:
- Input formats: File types supported to submit your video.
- Output formats: Resulting file types to encode your video.
- Max file size: Maximum file size allowed to upload your video.
- Custom presets: Ready-available encoding settings for different destinations (mobile phones, iPods, web streaming, etc.).
- HQ / HD support: Availability to encode videos while retaining high or HD video quality.

Professional:
- H.264 support: Availability of the H.264 codec for video conversions.
- 16:9 support: Support for 16:9 ratio for encoded videos.
- De-interlacing: Prevent odd and even lines of a video frame to be drawn alternatively to smoothen the perception of motion by the viewer.
- Distribution: Send your presentation automatically to multiple video-sharing sites.
- Price: Cost of the on-demand video encoding service.
- Premium features: Key advanced features available in premium paid accounts.

Here all the details:

On-Demand Free Video Encoding Comparative Table

On-Demand Free Video Encoding Services

Zamzar

Zamzar is a free on-demand conversion service you can use to convert and encode your videos. Without even registering, you can start converting videos from / to the following formats: 3G2, 3GP, AVI, FLV, GVI, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPG, RM, RMVB, VOB and WMV. Each video must not be larger than 100MB. If your video is already on the web, just provide the URL and choose one of the supported formats to start your conversion. You will receive a message on your e-mail inbox with a link to download the encoded file. No custom presets nor HQ / HD support are available.
http://www.zamzar.com/
Media-Convert

MediaConvert is a free service that performs on-demand conversion from / to different file formats like text documents, images, audio files and videos. Registration is not necessary. For online videos, you have a wide range of supported formats available: 3G2, 3GP, AMV, ASF, ASX, AVI, DV, DPG, FLI, FLV, GVI, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPG, NSV, OGG, OGM, RM, RPL, SWF, VOB and WMV. You can customize different options to enhance the conversion (or encoding) process like: video resizing, audio quality, video quality, video length, and more. MediaConvert supports files up to 200MB. To speed up your conversions, you can also choose a custom preset with ready-available settings for popular mobile phones or iPods. To receive your converted file, wait for the on-screen notification or provide your e-mail address to get a download link when your file is ready.
http://media-convert.com/
Media Converter

Media Converter allows you to convert media files online, free of charge, including videos. Registration is not required. Supported video formats are: 3G2, 3GP, AVI, FLV, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGG, RM, WMA and WMV. Files uploaded for conversion or encoding must be under 100MB. You can also provide a URL from a list of popular video-sharing sites and encode a video in FLV format. Files to convert can also be queued. You have 5 free conversion per day without registering to the service. No custom presets, nor HQ / HD support.
http://www.mediaconverter.org/
YouConvertIt

YouConvertIt is an on-demand video encoding service that helps you convert your video files to any format, without spending a dime. Registration is not mandatory. Supported file formats are: 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, RM, SWF and WMV. Maximum file size for converted files it is not clearly specified. You can also convert online video directly from video-sharing sites like YouTube by copying and pasting the URL inside YouConvertIt. The service will then encode the video and give you a download link when your video is ready. Custom presets and HQ / HD conversions are not supported.
http://www.youconvertit.com/OnlineVideo.aspx
MovAvi

MovAvi is a free on-demand video converter and encoder that works both with uploaded files or online videos. Without registering, you can submit a file from your hard-disk or a URL from a video-sharing site, choose an output format and wait for your conversion to take place. Supported input formats are: 3G2, 3GP, AVI, MOV, MP4, MPG and WMV. Output video formats are instead: 3G2, 3GP, AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4 and MPG. Each video file must be limited to 10 minutes and 100MB in size. You also have a list of custom presets to speed up your conversions with ready-available settings for popular devices like mobile phones or iPods. HQ conversions are fully supported, but HD videos cannot be converted.
http://online.movavi.com/
OnlineVideoConverter

OnlineVideoConverter allows you to convert video files from / to major popular formats, free of charge and without registration. Supported formats are: 3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, MP4, M4V, MKV, MOV, MPG, OGGì and WMV. Files to convert must not be larger than 100MB. You can either convert a file on your hard-disk or an online clip available on a video-sharing site like YouTube. You also have several customization features to choose for optimizing your conversions like: video codec, audio codec, video quality, audio quality, video resolution, etc. To facilitate your conversions, you can use one of the ready-available presets with customized settings for popular devices like iPods or mobile phones. HQ and HD conversions are supported.
http://onlinevideoconverter.com/
UEncode

UEncode is an on-demand video converter that allows you to encode and convert video files in multiple formats. Registration is necessary. Free to use, the encoding service supports the following formats: 3G2, 3GP, AVI, MOV, MP4, MPG and WMV. You can convert any type of video file, no matter how big is the video. To start your video conversion, upload a file to UEncode, choose your preferred settings and then wait for an e-mail with a download link to your encoded file. your You can either choose your settings or use a set of custom presets to obtain the best results for popular devices like mobile phones or iPods. HQ encoding is supported, but HD encoding is not available.
http://www.uencode.com/

On-Demand Professional Video Encoding Comparative Tables

On-Demand Professional Video Encoding Services

Hey!Watch

Hey!Watch is an on-demand video encoding web service. The service supports conversions from / to the following video formats: 3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVI, DVD, FLV, MP4, MOV, MPEG, MPEGTS, MJPEG, MPEG2, PSP, RM, SVCD, VCD and VOB. Hey!Watch allows you to customize several options while encoding your video, like: de-interlacing, conversion from 4:3 to 16:9 video format or vice versa, H.264 encoding, HD support, 2-pass encoding, Theora for HTML 5 support, watermarking, and more. The service also makes available a REST API to externalize your encoding tasks while focusing on your core business. Hey!Watch works with a pay-as-you-go philosophy. The price for each video you encode or convert depends on the length of the video itself and the type of conversion you make (standard quality or HD). You pay for the service by purchasing credits which cost $0.10 each. Each time you use Hey!Watch, you spend one or more credits. No distribution nor premium features are available.
http://heywatch.com/
BetterEncoding

BetterEncoding is a free on-demand video encoding solution. The web service claims to convert from / to any video format with no limitations neither in size, nor in the length of your clips. BetterEncoding uses a proprietary algorithm which operates a particular type of compression that is capable of shrinking the size of your videos by a 40% - 60% less than other similar encoding services. All without sacrificing the video quality. Each conversion can be customized on your specific needs by selecting options like: de-interlacing, H.264 conversion, 16:9 support, 2-pass encoding, and more. BetterEncoding does not make its API available for easier customization of your video encoding processes. No distribution nor premium features.
http://www.betterencoding.com/
Encoding.com

Encoding.com is an online service that allows you to convert and encode your videos on-demand. The service recommends the following input formats for optimal conversions: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4, M4A, M4V, MPG, MPEG, MJPEG and MJPEG2. Other video formats may be accepted but are not tested to work. Encoding.com lets you customize your conversions with different options like: de-interlacing, H.264 conversion, HD conversions, 2-pass encoding, 16:9 support, audio quality, video quality, and more. The service also provides an API to integrate the Encoding.com conversion engine into your web service or online publishing platform. To speed up your conversions, you can also use one of the custom presets, which are ready-available settings for web streaming, mobile phones, iPods, and other media. Encoding.com pricing starts from $19/month for maximum waiting time of 30 minutes before video processing, 1GB of monthly encoding bandwidth, 5GB of max encoding bandwidth per hour and email support. Premium plans start from $49/month and give you the following privileges: maximum waiting time of 10 minutes before video processing, 10GB of monthly encoding bandwidth, 15GB of max encoding bandwidth per hour and email / phone support.
http://www.encoding.com/
Flix Cloud

Flix Cloud is an on-demand video encoding service which is completely web-based. Flix Cloud supports the following input / output formats: 3GP, 3G2, AVI, DV, FLV, MOV, MP4, MPG, MPEG, MJPEG, OGG, RAW and VOB. The service also supports several customization options to get the best out of video conversions: 2-pass encoding, HD conversions, de-interlacing and H.264 encoding among the others. Flix Cloud also makes available its API for easier integration of its conversion engine into your web service or online publishing platform. Flix Cloud is priced by how much video data you transfer in and out of the service (source video size and converted video sizes). The costs are: $0.00175 / MB for input data and $.00225 / MB for output data. No distribution nor premium features available.
http://www.flixcloud.com/

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on September 29th, 2009 as "On-Demand Video Encoding: Guide To The Best Cloud-Based Services".

The Web Hosting Providers Guide: How To Choose The Ideal Hosting Solution For Your Web Site

Daniele Bazzano — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:39:00 PDT

How do you choose your ideal web hosting provider? Are there specific questions to ask when looking at different web hosting plans? What are the key elements to look at when evaluating a web hosting solution?

Photo credit: Francesco Bisignani

This web hosting providers guide has been designed to help novice web publishers identify and select their ideal web host. It includes:

a) A reference table showcasing key features and price ranges you should expect to get from any qualified web hosting provider.
b) A mindmap illustrating the key criteria and features to pay attention to when analyzing alternative hosting solutions.

c) A detailed list of the above key selection criteria and features with a clear explanation for each.

d) The best available online articles and reports which provide useful information on all relevant aspects of selecting an ideal web hosting provider: from the technical stuff to the economic and legal issues.

Here all the details:

How To Choose The Ideal Web Hosting Provider - Comparative Table

Inside the comparative table below you can find four recommended setups for different kinds of web publishers, from bloggers to online entrepreneurs, that are looking for a web hosting provider. The first three setups refer to a shared hosting solution, while the fourth setup is advised for a professional publisher who needs a dedicated hosting server.

Key Selection Criteria For Choosing a Web Hosting Provider

Here below, a list of key selection criteria to help you choose the ideal web hosting provider. These are all critical features that identify what you should request and expect from your hosting provider to save stress and time.

Customer service: Check if your hosting provider has a customer service that is competent and ready to help if you have a problem. Send your requests and see how quick the customer service replies. If your hosting provider claims to have 24/7 support, test it by sending an e-mail during the weekend. You may also want to be sure that you receive help by friendly people, who are not there just because you are a paying customer.

Online reputation: Sign up with a web hosting provider that has reputable credentials that can be trusted. Reputation can be measured just by looking at these simple things: reviews the hosting provider receives from customers, comments inside the forum of the provider web site and whether the hosting provider has been short in business.

Money back guarantee: Pay attention to the refund policy of your web hosting provider. Does your provider give your money back if you are not satisfied with it? Do you get a full refund or just a part of your money? Make sure you read your contract very carefully.

Guaranteed uptime: Look for a minimum uptime of 99.5%. 99% is too low for a web hosting provider that claims to be reliable, because a 0.5% of downtime translates into several hours when your site is down and unreachable. Notwithstanding this, keep in mind that you will need clear and documented proofs to show your hosting provider it has not matched its promise.

Monthly, not forced yearly pre-payments: Choose a monthly solution to pay your bills to the hosting provider. When you are still testing different options and companies, you might opt to go monthly and not to pay in advance for a year-long contract. By paying monthly, you can switch to another hosting provider whenever you want, without feeling forced to stay with a company for a fixed time. You might consider to pay in advance for a yearly plan only after you have long tested your hosting provider.

Quality of user control panel: To manage your web hosting files you need a control panel, which is a personal web page that you use to upload files, scripts and perform other operations on your site. Having a user interface that is clear and understandable for anyone, and not just for geeks, is very important to avoid stress and mistakes. Request a demo or a screenshot of the control panel and judge for yourself if it is the right solution for your competences.

Monthly bandwidth: Check whether the hosting provider gives you sufficient monthly bandwidth to ensure efficient data transfer. The bandwidth is the amount of data that goes in and out of your server when your viewers watch a video, read content, make a purchase or do anything else on your site. Make sure that the amount of bandwidth supported by your hosting plan matches your needs.

Disk space: Be aware of the amount of disk space you get from your web hosting provider. Even though providers tend to give you way more space than your web site needs, you should be concerned if you publish lots of videos, offer large files for download or manage content that requires several disk space to be hosted.

Log file analysis tool: Check with your hosting provider which software is used to analyze log files and generate statistic reports. The standard in the industry is Webalizer, but your hosting provider may go for a different solution. Also check if you are able to export log files to your computer and use your own tool to manage statistic reports.

E-mail management and support: Look at the e-mail management solution your hosting provider gives you. All providers support e-mail management, but not everyone has advanced features like auto-responders, mail forwarding, virus protection or junk mail filters. Check also the number of separate mailboxes you are allowed to create inside your domain.

Number of separate FTP accesses: Having different FTP accesses allows you and your collaborators to manage your web site independently. The site owner can thus allow other people to work on her site without giving away her personal credentials.

Publishing platform integration: Verify if your hosting provider supports a pre-installed publishing platform like WordPress or Movable Type. You may save the time and stress of setting up a publishing platform on your own and also receive support from the same customer service of your hosting provider.

Backups: Having persistent, automatic backups of your data is highly recommended. If something goes wrong, you can always recover your data and start again without losing hours or even years of work. Be sure to check with your hosting provider which data is backed up (files, databases, server settings, etc.), how often (daily, weekly, monthly) and where backups are stored (off-server or off-site).

PHP, Perl, MySQL support: Make sure your web hosting provider supports fully and explicitly PHP, Perl and MySQL databases. You will need all of these elements to run a professional web site which needs advanced customization and scripting.

The Web Hosting Providers Guide

How To Choose a Web Host - by Ben Coleman - Real Free Websites

What Beginners Should Check To Pick a Web Hosting Provider

Looking through hundreds of free hosting providers out there and feeling overwhelmed? Learn how to choose the best free hosting provider for your needs and identify the key concerns of using a free hosting solution.

How to choose the best free web hosting companies (Factors to consider) - by mrbrigante80 - eHow

Basic Tips On How To Choose a Web Hosting Provider

If you are a novice in web publishing, choosing a web hosting provider can be somewhat intimidating. There are so many aspects to consider that deciding which one is best for you may be very confusing. In this article you can find some basic tips to help you gauge which web hosting provider is the best for your needs.

How to Choose a Web Host - by Tung Do - WPdesigner

How To Choose Your Hosting Provider If You Are a Novice Or a Pro Blogger

Getting the wrong kind of hosting for your site can be a costly mistake. If you get something too powerful for your needs, you could wind up paying far more than you need. Also, if you get something not powerful enough, you might be frustrated by downtimes and lost business. Read on for some good tips to make the right choice.

What's the Best Web Hosting For Your Site? - by Jonathan - WhoIsHostingThis?

Tech Specs To Consider When Looking For a Web Hosting Provider

In this article, the author suggests a set of advanced criteria to select a good commercial web hosting service. Your main concern should be focusing on a web hosting provider that is reliable and does not leave you in trouble when disappearing after just one month of service.

How to Choose The Best Commercial Web Hosting Service - by Setya Putra - SetyaPutra.Org

Crucial Differences Between Dedicated and Shared Hosting Services

There are basically two different types of web hosting: shared and dedicated. A dedicated solution gives you a personal web server to host your site while the hosting provider is responsible for all the support and maintenance. Shared hosting instead, works by having your web site co-exist with other sites inside a common web server. With a shared hosting solution, all the oversight and control of your site is up to you. Read on to discover in more details the specific differences of each web hosting alternative.

12 Crucial Differences Between Dedicated and Shared Hosting Services - by Amy Armitage - Web Host Industry Review

How To Determine If a Hosting Provider Is Reliable

Before you sign-up a contract with a web hosting provider, you must ensure that your provider is reliable and will not leave you in trouble along the way. Here are 5 tips that will help you evaluate the reliability of your hosting provider.

How to Find the Best Possible Web Hosting - by Gregory Go - About.com

Common Pitfalls When Choosing Your Web Hosting Provider

Have you noticed how many hosting providers are out there? The answer is simple. In most cases, what you see is not web hosting, but rather reselling. What this means is you often get a second-hand web hosting plan run for you by a middleman provider. Learn in this article how to spot resellers from real web hosting providers.

How to Pick a Web Host - by John Stone - Dev Mechanic

How Not To Get Screwed By Your Web Hosting Provider

There are several sad stories on the web of people who got screwed badly by their hosting providers. In this article there are 15 suggestions to protect yourself and learn how to spot bad web hosting deals.

15 tips on how not to get screwed by your web host - by Jerry Low - Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Free vs. Commercial Hosting Providers: What To Look For

What is the difference between free and commercial web hosting providers? In this article you will find a list of the key recommendations to keep in mind whether you are choosing a free hosting solution or a paid plan.

How to Choose a Web Host - by Cristopher Heng - The Site Wizard

Economical and Legal Aspects On How To Choose a Web Hosting Provider

In selecting your web hosting provider, you must pay greater attention to those economical and legal aspects which may not be so obvious at a first glance. Read this article for an overview of some of the aspects of your contract you should not overlook when signing up with a web hosting provider.

What To Look For In A Web Host, an Important Decision - by Mathew R. Miller - Code And Coffee

The Help of Customer Reviews To Choose a Web Hosting Provider

Your website hosting choice is crucial: it’s the foundation of your website success. A web host delivers your web site to the world and in case you make a bad choice, you risk getting into trouble. An helpful way to narrow down your choice is to turn to customer reviews.

How To Choose Web Hosting Service: Customer Reviews - by Ann Smarty - Search Engine Journal

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on September 14th, 2009 as "The Web Hosting Providers Guide: How To Choose The Ideal Hosting Solution For Your Web Site".

Photo credits:
What Beginners Should Check To Pick a Web Host - Ewa Brozek
Basic Tips On How To Choose a Web Host - Pete Favelle
How To Choose Your Host If You Are a Novice Or a Pro Blogger - felinda
Tech Specs To Consider When Looking For a Web Hosting Provider - Zbigniew Kosmal
Crucial Differences Between Dedicated and Shared Hosting Services - Gunnar Pippel
How To Determine If a Web Host Is Reliable - Sergei Didyk
Common Pitfalls When Choosing Your Web Hosting Provider - Aris Sanjaya
How Not To Get Screwed By Your Web Host - s-dmit
Free vs. Commercial Web Host: What To Look For - Geoff Byrne
Economical and Legal Aspects On How To Choose a Web Host - stustock
How To Choose Web Hosting Service: Customer Reviews - orson

Free Web Server Monitoring Tools: Guide To Best Online Services

Robin Good — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:11:00 PDT

Monitoring automatically your web server allows you to be alerted anytime the server "goes down" or when there are some serious performance issues with it. This is crucial especially when you run a commercial business online and your business depends on the ability of your web visitors to access your content without hindrance. In this guide I have reviewed and compared the best free web server monitoring services available online.

Photo credit: Alexander Sabilin

By utilizing a web server monitoring service you can see at anytime the health status of your server, its ability to serve rapidly your content and the impact that the traffic is having on it. Plus, when there are serious issues, or your web server "crashes" for one reason or another, you can be immediately alerted in one or multiple ways (RSS, e-mail, SMS, IM, etc.).

In general, an automatic web server monitoring service works by running periodical tests (every 1, 5, 30 or 60 minutes depending on the service being used) by collecting specific data that is organized into reports, and by launching alerts and notifications when specific parameters or values are not met.

More specifically, web server monitoring tools send so called "pings" to the designated server(s) to make sure that data is received correctly and to measure its specific response time. If the ping is not successful, or if the conditions you have set are not fully met, the monitoring service sends you a notification via e-mail, SMS, RSS or via telephone, depending on your selected tool and preference.

Key traits that make for a good automated web server monitoring service are:

Multiple testing sources: The service tests your servers from multiple worldwide monitoring stations for better accuracy of the results.

Thorough reporting: You get detailed and persistent reports on the status of your web server. This might be useful to foresee potential issues.

Multiple tests: The monitoring service allows you to monitor not only your web server but also mail servers, FTP and authentication processes to have complete control over all the activities of your site.

Access from multiple platforms and mobiles: Keep track of your web server from anywhere, even via a mobile phone.

If you are ready to take these free web server monitoring tools for a spin, here are also the additional criteria I have used to compile this mini guide reviews and comparison table:

Notification channels: Server alerts distributions via SMS, e-mail, RSS or other.

Multiple servers monitoring: Number of web servers you can monitor at the same time.

Monitoring Intervals: Time interval at which web server tests are run.

Registration-free: Service can be used without registering.

Pro features: Advanced features available with premium paid accounts.

Here all the details:

Free Web Server Monitoring Tools Comparative Table

Free Web Server Monitoring Tools

HostTracker

HostTracker is a free web server monitoring tool. You can check up to two web servers every 30 minutes. HEAD / POST / GET HTTP-methods are all supported as well as operations on CGI scripts. Your servers are checked from multiple locations across a global network of 71 nodes and 48 hosting partners. Registration is compulsory to utilize the service. No notification channels are available at a free level. With $4.99/month, you can upgrade to a starting premium plan and have up to five servers monitored every 10 minutes, receive 10 alerts via SMS if your web server goes down and also obtain detailed reports about the status of your web servers. HostTracker homepage also allows you to check whether a website is up or down by sending a ping request to a specific URL.
http://host-tracker.com/
Mon.itor.us

Mon.itor.us is a free monitoring tool that lets you monitor one web server in real-time. You can either check HTTP / HTTPS / FTP web sites, TCP ports, Pings as well as DNS, UDP, POP3 and IMAP mail servers. If your web server goes down, you get immediate notifications via e-mail, IM, RSS or through a widget installed on your Mac or PC. With mon.itor.us, you can also track your visitors in real-time from multiple locations using the same dashboard that monitors your web server performances. The service provides a free API that allows developers to build useful add-ons or extend Mon.itor.us current features. Registration is mandatory. No premium plans available.
http://mon.itor.us/
Pingdom

Pingdom offers free accounts to utilize its web server monitoring tool. Available check types are: HTTP / HTTPS / TCP port / Ping / DNS / UDP / SMTP / POP3 and IMAP. You can track the performance of one server with time intervals spanning from one to 60 minutes. You also get free email notifications and 20 SMS alerts to be warned if your web server goes down. Web servers are persistently monitored from multiple locations. Registration is necessary to use Pingdom monitoring tool. With a premium account priced at $9.95, you can check up to five web servers with 1-minute monitoring intervals. Additional features inside premium account include the ability to purchase more SMS alerts and get detailed reports about the status of your web server.
http://www.pingdom.com/
Montastic

Montastic is a free monitoring tool to check up to 100 web servers at the same time. You can either check HTTP / HTTPS web sites and port numbers. The service tracks the status of your web server from six to 20 times per day. Servers are monitored from two different locations for better accuracy of results. Any downtime is reported through alerts via e-mail, RSS or a widget you install on your Mac or PC. Montastic requires a registration process to be used. Premium accounts are not available.
http://www.montastic.com/
Free Network Monitor

Free Network Monitor from Paessler is a Windows software that lets you check your web server in real-time. Free Network Monitor utilizes 10 sensors to monitor the health of your web server, including PING / HTTP / SMTP / POP3 and FTP. You can extend the range of monitoring sensors from 10 to 20 by placing a link back to Paessler on your web site. The service also allows you to receive alerts on the status of your web server via e-mail, SMS and pager. No registration is required. First level of premium account unlocks up to 100 monitoring sensors, detailed reports and advanced features to control web server uptime and downtime for $195.
http://www.paessler.com/prtg/download
BasicState

BasicState is a free monitoring tool to check an unlimited number of web servers at the same time. Only HTTP and HTTPS web servers are supported. Each web server is checked every 15 minutes. In case of a downtime, you get an immediate alert via e-mail and SMS. Public interest e-commerce sites are checked every 5 minutes. BasicState also provides you with a detailed report of your web server conditions. Registration is required to utilize the service and no premium accounts are available.
http://basicstate.com/
Site24x7

Site24x7 is a monitoring tool that allows you to check the status of one web server free of charge. Each server is checked from a single location every 60 minutes. If the web server goes down, you get a quick alert via e-mail, SMS and RSS. Site24x7 also lets you check your web page content. Registering to the service is mandatory. Premium accounts starts from $1/month per URL and allow you to monitor not only your web servers, but also web apps, mail servers and DNS servers. With a premium account you reduce the monitoring time from to 1 to 60 minutes as well as having your web servers checked from multiple locations. Additional SMS alerts are available upon request.
http://site24x7.com
FreeSiteStatus

FreeSiteStatus allows you to check the status of your web server from 13 worldwide monitoring stations. Free of charge, the health of your web server is tested every 60 seconds. If a downtime occurs, you receive an e-mail to take immediate action. FreeSiteStatus runs only on Ping and HTTP (limited to port 80) web servers. Registration is compulsory. Upgrading to the Professional Account ($2/month) allows you to decrease the monitoring time of your web server to one minute. You also get advanced monitoring tests and unlimited e-mail contacts. Additional SMS alerts are priced at $0.25 each.
http://www.freesitestatus.com
Are My Sites Up?

Are My Sites Up? is a free, ad-supported web server monitoring tool. You can monitor up to five different HTTP web servers. No other web server types are supported at a free level. Your web servers are tested in time intervals of 60 minutes each. If your server experiences a downtime, you are immediately alerted via e-mail or SMS. Registration is needed to utilize the service. If you need further options regarding your notifications, you must purchase a premium plan. Starting from $35/year, the first level of premium plans offers you up to 25 web servers monitored every 30 minutes, RSS and Twitter notifications and an iPhone app with push notifications. Premium plans also support HTTPS web servers and are ads-free.
http://aremysitesup.com/
Monpage

Monpage is a free web server monitoring tool that checks the status of your servers and the responsiveness of your web pages. The service checks up to 3 different web servers every five minutes, but it is not clearly specified which kind of web servers you can test (HTTP / HTTPS / FTP / etc.). Monpage website interface is optimized for mobile phones and you can access detailed reports on uptime / downtime of your web servers. Registration is mandatory. No alerts nor premium accounts are available.
http://monpage.com/
PA Server Monitor

Server Monitor by Power Admin is a free software for Windows that checks the integrity of your web server. You can run your tests at custom time intervals. In case your server goes down, you are immediately alerted through e-mail. Registration is needed to utilize the service. PA Server Monitor checks include HTTP / HTTPS, Ping and mail servers. To access advanced monitoring tools, receive notifications via SMS or pager and also get detailed server activity reports, you need to purchase a premium license starting from $49.
http://www.poweradmin.com/ServerMonitor/Free.aspx
Observu

Observu from Moving Labs is a free monitoring tool for web servers. You can keep track of an unlimited number of servers in real time. If one of your servers goes down, you are promptly alerted with an e-mail. You need to register to utilize Observu and premium plans are not available. It is not specified which type of web servers you are allowed to monitor.
http://www.observu.com/
Livewatch.de

Livewatch.de is a free monitoring tool that you can use to check the status of your web server. After registering, you select one server to have it tested every 5-10 minutes. No details are give on the type of web server you are able to monitor. If your server experiences a downtime, you can choose to receive alerts either via e-mail / SMS / Twitter or IM. Please note that with a free account you have only 10 SMS available and that you can use just 1 SMS per month. If you need to monitor more than one server or have reduced monitoring time intervals, you can upgrade to one of the premium plans that start from around $4/month. With a premium plan you also have up to 8 SMS alerts per month and 3 phone calls notifications. Registration is needed to use Livewatch.de.
http://www.livewatch.de/en/
Service Uptime

Service Uptime is a free web server monitoring tool that allows you to test and receive alerts if your server is not responding. The service checks your web servers every 30 minutes and alerts you via e-mail and SMS in case your server is down. You can test HTTP / HTTPS / FTP / Ping servers, POP3 /IMAP mail servers and much more. Registration is needed to utilize Service Uptime. By purchasing a premium plan (starting from $4.95/month), you get multiple alerts, a facility to perform schedule maintenance on your server and you can also set custom monitoring time intervals.
http://www.serviceuptime.com/free_monitoring.php

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on September 7th, 2009 as "Free Web Server Monitoring Tools: Guide To Best Online Services".

How Much Is My Site Worth? Best Services To Estimate A Website Value

Robin Good — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:24:00 PDT

Is there a way to find out the actual value of your blog or website? If you wanted to consider accepting new publishing partners or were caressing the idea of selling out to someone else, would there be tools to help you gauge how much your site could be worth?

To be really honest, if I were you, I would use one of the traditional brick and mortar approaches to estimate your website value by multiplying your annual revenue for at least two or three years and setting that resulting value as an indicative market price you can sell most any business at. If you want to experiment a little with this standard approach, fly to CNN - What's your business worth - really? which provides info and an easy to use calculator to estimate the potential selling value range of your business.

On the other hand, there is a growing set of free online web tools which claim to be able to provide as well an estimate of your website value. And if you have ever been wondering how much your site is really worth, these free online web services, will indeed provide some initial indication. But that's where the value ends.

As a matter of fact, you may have a hard time finding any two of these free website estimation services returning the same value estimate for any website you submit.

Each one has likely a different approach to calculate how much your website is worth, and in most cases how this is done is never clearly disclosed on the service website.

In general, these web site value estimation services analyze the number of inbound links you have from other sites while assigning a monetary value to each. Additionally, some track your web site presence inside major directories (e.g.: DMOZ), your ranking on Alexa, your Google PageRank or additional data coming from other web site traffic data sources (e.g.: Compete, Quantcast, etc.).

The final result is that these website value estimation services are not really instruments on which to establish a business plan or an acquisition strategy but rather tools that you can use mostly to:

a) get an idea of what your site could be worth (by averaging some of the results obtained)
b) compare your site value to other competitors in your niche

c) measure trends over time

d) show off to your friends and colleagues how much your web site is worth

If you want to give these website value estimation services a spin, I suggest you check what differentiates each service from the next by looking at the comparative criteria I have utilized in the table below:

Procedural Approach: explanations of how results are calculated

Sources: Data sources utilized to estimate site value

Results customization: options to personalize results or data sources used

Embeddable Widget: opportunity to republish site value on other sites

Custom URL: reference URL providing your site value

Here all the details:

Best Services To Estimate A Website Value Comparison Table

Best Services To Estimate A Website Value

SiteValueCheck

No other free web service inside this guide is as clear as SiteValueCheck to explain how much your website is worth and WHY. Instead of giving you just an estimate of your website value (providing little or no explanation of how that result was obtained), SiteValueCheck shares detailed info on each and every criteria that is used for scoring your site. Data used to estimate your site is: Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, backlinks depth, average popularity of related web sites, age of search engine presence, and webpages load times. Unfortunately, the report you get is not customizable nor you can reach it at a specific URL. You cannot share your website value using a widget.
http://sitevaluecheck.com/
Stimator

Stimator measures the value of your website using the following data: relevance of the domain (.com scores more than .org or .net), inbound links, ranking of your site inside search engines, financial market fluctuations, and social media mentions. Stimator also indexes your website value for future reference. You won't find a clear explanation of the procedure used to evaluate your website, nor any option to obtain a customized value (e.g. for a specific period of time). You can share your website score using a widget or a dedicate URL which is unique for your site.
http://www.stimator.com/
ValueMyWeb

Unlike the other services included in this guide, ValueMyWeb does not provide you an immediate result of the worth of your site, but rather processes your domain and e-mails you a unique link to access your own report. (Not customizable) data taken into account is: Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, organic keywords value, and social media mentions. At the bottom of the webpage with your report, there is also a small piece of HTML code you can copy and embed onto any website to show people how your website has scored.
http://www.valuemyweb.com/
URL Appraisal

URL Appraisal is a web service that evaluates your website using a proprietary algorithm. The service uses data from your domain age, Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, Google inbound links, Yahoo! inbound links and URL marketability. Inside the About Us section of URL Appraisal website, you are explained how data is processed and calculated. The report of your website value is not customizable. You can share the score of your site using an embeddable widget or a URL which is unique to you.
http://www.urlappraisal.net/
WebsiteValued

Website Valued estimates how much your website is worth using data about your daily visitors, advertising revenue, sales revenue, and active subscribers. To get a tailored report of your website value, choose a specific period of time and then let the service generate again your site score. Unfortunately, you are not explained how Website Valued calculates the value of your site. With a dedicated URL for each site submitted to the service, you can access or share your own report page without launching Website Valuated again. No widget available.
http://websitevalued.com/
MyWebsiteWorth

MyWebsiteWorth appraises your website by looking at data from your Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rankings, unique visitors, and total visitors. The service shares no info on the process to obtain the value of your site, and you have no option to get a tailored value which refers to a specific period of time or webpage. You can share your website score by giving people the custom URL of your result page. No widget is available.
http://www.mywebsiteworth.com/
DnScoop

DnScoop analyzes the value of your website checking your Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, and domain age. You cannot narrow down your website score to a specific period of time or a specific web page. DnScoop does not allow you to share your website value with unique URL (but a widget is available). A clear outline of the steps taken to generate your website value is also missing.
http://www.dnscoop.com/
Welcomia Website Value

Welcomia provides a free tool to estimate the value of your website according to the following parameters: Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, backlinks, host IP, domain age, Google Adsense potential, DMOZ inclusion, search engine backlinks, and Google indexed pages. Unfortunately, the precision of the (not customizable) data you get, does not match a clear explanation of how data is processed during the estimation procedure. No custom URL is available to check your results at a later time, or share your score to other people. An embeddable widget is also missing.
http://www.welcomia.com/
Site Value Calculator

Site Value Calculator gives you an estimate of the value of your website or blog. A brief summary displays the criteria that Site Value Calculator uses to evaluate your site (Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, backlinks, domain age, DMOZ inclusion), but there is no explanation of what these results mean, why they matter, and how they are processed. You can share your score using a dedicated widget and a URL which is unique for your own site.
http://www.sitevaluecalculator.com/
WebsiteOutlook

WebsiteOutlook generates an estimate of the value of your website using the following data: net worth, daily pageviews, daily ads revenue, Alexa Traffic Ranking, Google PageRank, backlinks, DMOZ inclusion (a large open directory of human-reviewed web sites), host IP and server location. Unfortunately, Website Outlook does not provide any info on how your website data is calculated. WebsiteOutlook does not allow customizable reports. You can embed your website score using a dedicated widget or sharing a custom URL which is unique for your site.
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/
CubeStat

CubeStat appraises your website using data from: Alexa Traffic Ranking, Quantcast Traffic Ranking, Compete Traffic Ranking, Google PageRank, backlinks, Yahoo! Ranking, DMOZ inclusion (an open directory of human-reviewed websites), host IP, server location, and domain age. CubeStat fails to provide a clear explanation of which data is used to produce your website value. You cannot customize the way your website value is created or delivered. An embeddable widget and a custom URL for your website value result are also not available.
http://www.cubestat.com/
Ninja Website Appraiser

Ninja Website Appraiser is a free web-based tool that makes a quick evaluation of your website value using data from your PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rankings, average backlinks from major search engines, text link ads, product placement, and independent advertising sources. You get no info on how the data is processed, and you have also no additional option to narrow down the results and get a tailored report. To share your website value you can use a customized embeddable widget, but not a unique URL which points directly to a webpage which contains your site results.
http://ninjawebsiteappraiser.com/
YourWebsiteValue

Your WebSite Value uses some of the data related to your site (Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, inbound links, domain age) to generate an estimate of your website value. It is not clear (and not explanation is provided on the official website) how Your Website Value analyzes the data and produces the score for your site. You cannot get a customized report of your site value on a specific period of time. Your Website Value allows you to share the score of your site using a widget or a custom URL.
http://www.yourwebsitevalue.com/
Website Calculator

With Website Calculator you can appraise your website and check specific indicators used to score your site: Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, Alexa traffic details, backlinks and IP geolocation. The service does not explain the procedure used to get your results, nor shares any info about what is PageRank, ATR, or any other estimate indicator. Website Calculator results cannot be customized and there is no specific URL that points to your website value. An embeddable widget to display your score is also not available.
http://u2ws.com/index.php
How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

How Much Is Your Blog Worth is an applet that calculates the value of your site using Technorati.com API. You cannot customize how the applet works (e.g. to generate your website value for a specific period of time). Also missing is a link back to Technorati.com that you can use to verify which data is taken into account and help producing your website value. You can share your website score using a widget, but not a unique URL.
http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/
Sootle Directory

The free tool from Sootle Directory analyzes the backlinks of your website and gives you an estimate of its value. Once you get your website worth, you are given a piece of code to embed on any web page to show how much your domain has scored. The code is automatically updated when new backlinks are discovered. No custom URL is provided to check back your score without re-submitting the address of your site.
http://directory.sootle.com/website-worth/
WebValuer

WebValuer is a free service you can use to estimate your website. Your website value is calculated by gathering data from Alexa Traffic Ranking, daiy pageviews, daily visitors, daily revenue, backlinks and inclusion inside DMOZ. Like other competitors, WebValuer fails to provide a clear explanation of how data are really mixed together to generate your website worth. You cannot customize the way your website value is created, but an embeddable widget and a custom URL for your value results are available.
http://www.webvaluer.org/
Worth.im

Worth.im appraises your website by looking at your Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rankings, daily pageviews, DMOZ inclusion, Whois information and several other data. The service shares no info on the process used to obtain the worth of your site and you have no option to get a tailored value which refers to a specific period of time or web page. Your web site score can be shared through a custom URL. No widget is available.
http://www.worth.im/

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on May18th, 2009 as "How Much Is My Site Worth? Best Services To Estimate A Website Value".

AdSense Optimization: Essential Tactics For Optimizing Your Google AdSense Ads On Your Site

Mel Ann Chan — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:16:00 PST

AdSense optimization is a series of tactics to help you to improve Google AdSense performance on your blog site. One of the key issues you face when you decide to use AdSense is WHERE to place ads. Above the fold? At the Bottom? Left or Right column? The monetization power of your site depends on the choice you make.

Photo credit: Inside AdSense

To help you better understand WHERE to position your AdSense ads, The Inside AdSense team has released a series of three short videos, entitled "Optimisation Essentials", that can give you some good basic guidance on how to do ads placement, and how to increase your revenues with a rational design of your site.

In summary, here is what they recommend:

a) Use big ads.
b) Integrate your ads with the layout of your site.

c) Place your ads where users are more likely to see them.

Here all the details:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Optimisation Essentials (Part I - II - III)

Bigger Is Better - for AdSense Ad Units

Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site's design, and we always point them to these three:

300x250 medium rectangle

728x90 leaderboard

160x600 skyscraper

These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for both publishers and advertisers.

Advertisers favour these formats, and if you've receiving all ad types, you'll find that advertisers will specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they're interested in.

When you're considering how to design your site, our testing has shown that displaying at least one of these ad formats on your page can increase your AdSense earnings potential.

So remember, sometimes bigger is better!

Dress for Success - Impressing Your Audience

Over the years, we've seen some colorful ad unit designs.

Some publishers design ad units that contrast with their site so that they stand out. Although this can work in some cases, we've found that ad units that match your site's design tend to perform better in terms of revenue and click-through-rate.

Users are more likely to read ads when they're well integrated into your site.

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:

Use colours that either blend with or complement your site's colours. Make the ads a part of your site.

Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.

Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.

Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.

So give your ad design and colours some thought, and you'll notice the difference!

Position for Performance - Be Noticed

We've also made a heatmap to show you where the best placements are on a typical page. Great positions include:

Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)

At the end of an article

Aligned with content

But don't just take our word for it - every website is different. Make sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to determine good ad placements.

Position your ads so that they're visible, but be careful of intruding on the experience of your site's visitors.

Most of all, think like a user and you'll be able to balance your website's content with a successful ad strategy.

Where Should I Place Google Ads On My Pages?

The best location for Google ads varies from page to page, depending on content.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering where to position your ads:

What is the user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?

What do they do when viewing a particular page?

Where is their attention likely to be focused?

How can I integrate ads into this area without getting in the users' way?

How can I keep the page looking clean, uncluttered and inviting?

Certain locations tend to be more successful than others.

This "heat map" illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

While this heat map is useful as a positioning guideline, we strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad location. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them.

You'll find that the most optimal ad position isn't always what you expect on certain pages.

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, "What can I do next?" Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them.

Additional References

AdSense Placement Optimization: User Behavior

Improve AdSense Performance: Step-by-Step Video Guide From The AdSense Team

Online Ad Management And Optimization: The Google Ad Manager Is Here to Optimize Advertising ROI

Online Advertising Strategy - Ads Relevance Is The Key

Do you want to learn more about AdSense and other key strategies in professional web publishing? Check out POP, a new video blog site where Robin Good shares his expertise with "in-depth" video tutorials to help professional online publishers to monetize their sites.

Originally written by Mel Ann Chan for Inside AdSense and first published between November 3-18 as "Optimisation Essentials (Part I) - Optimisation Essentials (Part II) - Optimisation Essentials (Part III)"

Online Ad Optimization: YieldBuild Explains Itself - Paul Edmondson Video Interview

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:50:42 PDT

Online ad optimization is the science of identifying on the basis of statistical data the best performing ads / ad network providers as well as the best performing ad position, layout, color and font style on your web pages in order to optimize online advertising revenue.

Paul Edmondson, Co-Founder and CEO of YieldBuild, an online web service designed to "take the guesswork out of ad formatting", has kindly agreed to have a good conversation with me to understand better how this optimization service differs from already established online marketing services that focus specifically on real-time ad network optimization (such as Pubmatic and the Rubicon Project).

Paul was in San Francisco and I was in Rome, when, a few days ago, I recorded this interesting video conversation.

Below is the complete recording and a full English text transcript of my conversation with Paul on internet marketing and online ad optimization. Check it out:

Interview With Paul Edmondson - CEO and Founder of YieldBuild

Full English text transcript

Intro

RobinGood: Hello everyone! Here's Robin Good from Rome, Italy and I am here today with Paul Edmondson who is the CEO and founder of a very interesting company: Yieldbuild.

I don't know if my Italian pronunciation is the best one, but the service is, to my eyes, really interesting because, at least in my superficial knowledge (I haven't signed up yet), just like PubMatic or the Rubicon Project, this is supposed to be a service that allows you to optimize different ad networks and make the best of money, while not fixing yourself with just one advertising partner.

From what I understand, Yieldbuild allows you to test out a number of things and in real time you can select for you what is the best solution that you should adopt. But let's find out from one of the fathers of Yieldbuild, Paul! How are you doing in San Francisco today?

Paul Edmondson: Doing very well, thanks for having us Robin.

What is Yieldbuild?

Robin Good: You're very welcome. Thank you for reaching out and asking to have a conversation. That's only what it takes indeed. Why don't you introduce briefly yourself and Yieldbuild. What is Yieldbuild, from your take, in a short one, and what do you do over there?

Paul Edmondson: Sounds good. You got it right, I'm one of three founders of Yieldbuild and what we really set out to do is to help publishers make more money and that's about helping them manage the monetization on their website through the various ad networks they choose.

To start, Yieldbuild it's really about text ad optimization and what that means is we help publishers to pick out the right combination of elements. For example, let's say you are a Google AdSense publisher. You wanna know: "should my background be white, should it be blue, should it be gray, should it have borders, what should font color be, what should the link color be..."

So what Yielbuild brings in is a set of heuristics that figures out, tests algorithmically, to find you the best combination of ads. Then after on that site it will also do your ad network management.

Easier Ads On Your Site

Robin Good: Good. I was not completely on-track, actually quite off-track and that is great that I didn't know correctly what you're doing because I'm much more curios now.

While you do have some of the ad optimization facilities, your key focus as is about understanding what is the best combination of components in a text ad to make it work, is that correct?

Paul Edmondson: Yeah, I think that's a great way of summarizing it.

What we do is really specialize in the placement. There's the placement and the formatting of those ad. Think about your page and how a publisher may lay out the ads on it. For example, they may put a 720x90 at the top of the page, a 300x250 in the sidebar, maybe another 300x250 in the content footer ad, maybe another ad on the other side.

We'll find the best combination of the formatting attributes combined with the placement. Then, once we get a real good understanding of that, then we go into the ad network management.

A Solution For Publishers

Robin Good: Let me understand. This service is more targeted to an advertiser, who wants to understand how to best package his punch to an ad, or is it for a publisher to optimize the delivery and click-through of the ads he is carrying from his inventory?

Paul Edmondson: That's a great question.

It's a publisher solution.

For example, use AdSense. Most publishers that are getting started online use AdSense. It's very easy to get going, just a little JavaScript that goes in your page. What they don't know is really how to optimize their AdSense for the best performance for their site.

It's a publisher solution and what we do is we help them tune their ads for the best response.

Overcoming Competitors

Robin Good: In this respect there are similarities or overlaps with the options offered by apparently similar services like PubMatic, the Rubicon Project or even some of the Google's own tools that have been coming out in the last few months. I guess I'm thinking specifically of the Site Optimizer. What do you say?

Paul Edmondson: Yeah, first technical problematic at PubMatic and Rubicon is that I can't speak for too much for those sites and those services. But I would say that what Yieldbuild does is it optimizes your entire ad layout of ads. It's aware of all the different ads that you have in your page. It'll do the formatting and the ad network optimization.

Our best understanding of Rubicon and PubMatic today is that they really focus on the ad network management behind one given spot.

We try to think about your page holistically and all the different ads that you have on your page and how they work as a ecosystem of ads for the publisher, so all the different rules that go behind their networks, all those types of things to give you the best monetization experience as a publisher.

The great question about the Site Optimizer for Google. One of the things that's really interesting about the Site Optimizer. It's built on multi-variant type testing. Let's say for example you have a landing page and you need to figure out does the "buy now" button here work better than "save 15%". Something like that. And what it does, it requires the publisher, requires the web site operator to go in it to find those tasks and set out those pages.

Yieldbuild is quite a bit different. In the sense that it goes in and sets up all the tasks algorithmically. It examines your site, figures out things that are about it and then it uses our optimization system to do all of that automatically. So no user setup for all the different tasks.

Placement Does Matter

Robin Good: That's very cool indeed. And that's something that had been bothering me about the Google Site Optimizer, so you're right on the spot in thinking a way that, even if I only read about it, it made sense and motivated me to try it out. And I'm indeed motivated to go after you and your service.

I'm a Premium AdSense partner, I use AdSense as my main resource of income for now. I'm opening new business lines, but as of now it remains my main one.

I have recently signed up with a major advertising network in the US and the issue of not only optimizing the different solutions but make them live together is part of our daily work. I mean, you just can't do it all by yourself. Secondly, I've even a person dedicated on a daily task of testing AdSense.

The idea that this AdSense testing time could be saved and put to use in other direction, while some software magically could think as well as he does and develop all the possibilities that we're trying out, is definitely interesting. I understand this is not Disneyland and the software can only do so much.

I suppose that if we contribute our help in defining where we wanna try out things, I'm now imagining your tool displaying the ads with different colors, different fonts and styles until it finds a better click-through and then stays on that set of options that it has found. Is that how he dynamically learns about it?

Paul Edmondson: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that you talked about:

First, when you set up a site to get tested by AdSense it requires you to put in a piece of ad code in the page and then to continually move it around to find the different placements that work best for you.

But, with our system is you can put all the snippets of code in the page that you wanna possibly testing an ad location for. For example, let's say you only want to show two ads at one time. You can put three or even five, or six zones in your page and then YieldBuild will look at those combinations of placements and do the best. Then it will do all that formatting placement, bold, all the different text options that you have for the given ad networks.

A Worthy Dish

Robin Good: Wow, well you know what, this is really exciting. I don't know if to trust you or not but I gotta go try it out!

In your words this is just godsend for a publisher. I'm glad I reached you without having tried the service, because I got the opportunity of you really opening up for me the idea of what the service is.

It looks like you said very clearly and we're gonna find out now that is clearly different from your competitors in some specific ways which are not insignificant.

Why waste more of your precious time and possibly sliding to the hyping part when you've just given the best facts and then what I'm gonna do now it's just go out and try it.

You know what? I think that the best video conversations are the ones that are like precious dishes at restaurants. They bring you this big dish with a small little thing on it and some fancy food decoration. You eat it and it feels like: "God, where's the rest man? This is gonna cost me 35 bucks and there was nothing here!" But you know you're not gonna forget that dish in that restaurant.

I think we got some jewels from you and I just wanna thank you. I don't wanna go forward with more, I wanna go sign up and try it!

Paul Edmondson: Great! Hey Robin, thank you so much for having us. It was a lot of fun being out here.

Robin Good: Alright, have a great day in San Francisco and I'll talk to you right after I try it!

Paul Edmondson: You too, take care!

Robin Good: Ciao!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on September 4th 2008 as "Online Ad Optimization: YieldBuild Explains Itself - Paul Edmondson Video Interview"

About Paul Edmondson

Paul Edmondson is one of co-founders and CEO at YieldBuild. He held group management positions at MSN Entertainment over product management, quality management, operations, and business management. He also worked for MongoMusic and Hewlett-Packard after graduating from California Polytechnic University.

Video Metrics And Analytics For YouTube Clips: YouTube Insight

Robin Good — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:14:09 PDT

"Insight turns YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups." (Source: Google Blog)If you have a YouTube account and you do upload video clips to it you may be interested in knowing that YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload, has been made accessible to all YouTube account holders who upload videos to the site.

Official demographics for viewers of the YouTube Robin Good channel - 5-2008

If you had not yet heard about it, YouTube now offers to all of its users a free video metrics and analytics service, which allows you to check traffic trends and statistics of your video clips on YouTube according to a number of variables which include world geographic area and relative popularity of the specific video clip you are interested in.

In essence, this new service, called YouTube Insight, gives you access to specific visual stats on the number of views per day your video received, where those viewers are in the world, and how popular your video is compared to other videos in a given period of time.

"For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks."

Here more details and a short introductory video from Google:

Overview

YouTube Insight is a free web-based tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account -- users, partners, and advertisers -- to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload.

YouTube Insight gives both publishers and advertisers an inside peek at the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and provides them with relevant distribution and delivery information that can help them increase video views and better target their specific audience traits.

Just to make a simple example, thanks to YouTube Insight you can now learn how different parts of your distributed identity on the web (via your Blog, Facebook or Twitter presence) is effective in driving traffic to your video content on YouTube.

Video publishers could also leverage this opportunity to reach out to form relationships with those sites who consistently point readers to their videos on YouTube.

Finally, since advertisers can now access reports detailing the search queries that lead viewers to their videos, they can make more informed decisions about the keywords and bids they select to appear on Google.com.

Key Metrics Offered

YouTube Insight video metrics show most popular videos for Robin Good channel

YouTube Insight video metrics show popularity of Robin Good's YouTube channel across different world regions (darker green more popular)

Viewing trends of Robin Good's YouTube

With YouTube Insight you can also see:

1. How often a video is viewed in different world geographic regions

2. How popular a video is relative to all videos in a market over a period of time

3. How much time it takes for a video to become popular

4. What happens to video views as popularity peaks

Some new metrics are also being rolled out now and will soon appear in your YouTube account as well. These include:

A discovery tab now shows how viewers found your video, whether by searching on YouTube or Google, browsing under "related videos", receiving a link to the video from an email or website, or watching it in an embedded player away from YouTube.

In this view you can also see a search results breakdown for YouTube and Google search queries that led to your video, as well as for the external websites driving traffic to your content. (Insight will show up to 50 inbound links.)

(You can find these new metrics under the "Discovery" tab within the Insight dashboard. Click on the "Insight" button under "Account > My Videos." )

Benefits of Using YouTube Insight

By using the YouTube Insight data, you can learn more about what works and what doesn't by doing a number of tests. Now that you have precise and detailed access to this data, you can gauge a lot better what factors may be influencing the most your successful videos.

By studying your video traffic trends you may also learn a great deal about which days and times may be most appropriate for posting or releasing your new clips. Though you may think this may have a marginal value, when you add up all of this factor and you plan for a strategic video viral campaign, each and every one of this factors has some tangible importance.

By knowing more you can better customize your video content, packaging and delivery to address the specific traits of your target audiences.

Where Do I See These Statistics on my YouTube Account?

Go to your "My Videos" page and then you will see an "Insight" button next to each one of your video clips.

Next to each one of your video clips you will find an extra button labeled "Insight", just like the one I am pointing at with my cursor here below:

By clicking on it you get to access the statistics for that specific video in a screen like this one:

To go and see all of your YouTube viewing trends you can also click first on your "Account" link. Once you are on your Account page scroll down to the bottom where you will see on the left a link to YouTube Insight.

Here is a screenshot:

More information:
YouTube Reveals Video Analytics Tool For All Users

Web Traffic Monitoring In Real-Time: Track And Interact Live With Your Site Visitors With Woopra

Robin Good — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:59:13 PDT

Woopra is a new real-time web traffic monitoring service which provides extensive visitors and traffic data, alongside some very cool analysis features and the unique ability to track and live interact with your selected site visitors.

Woopra, the new advanced real-time traffic tracker

As a matter of fact I have been looking for a new alternative to my now forever closed WebsideStory/ Hitbox account. Nonetheless all of the negative experiences as a customer I have had with Hitbox and which have forced me to take a critical final step only a few months back (Dec 07), Hitbox Professional was a great service, especially because it provided easy to understand web site traffic data in real-time in a way that, notwithstanding its own limits, I haven't found in any other traffic monitoring tool I have tried to this day. Too bad the company behind seems to have no interest in the small to mid-sized web publisher, has limited ability in fixing its own technical issues (they have not been able to ever resolve mines) and is clearly interested only in very large web publishers and corporate institutions who can pay them thousands of dollars per year.

Given the above and the disappointing alternatives available on the market I got pretty excited as soon as I was given early access to Woopra, this new web traffic monitoring service which really packs a hell of great features into a service that, nonetheless has its share of bug-troubleshooting and refinements to be made, is brand new and is definitely above the average in this small but rapidly growing field of real-time web traffic monitoring services, which will inevitably need to expand further.

(I am really appalled to see great sites and highly popular blogs tracking their web traffic via tools like SiteMeter or ShinyStats - I mean these are OK tools, and they do allow you to see your web traffic, but there is a lot more to traffic analytics than what these tools have been offering for the last few years... c'mon.)

As a matter of fact, nonetheless there is already Google with its Analytics service ready to capture a great part of this market, even Google's own service is still marred by lots of limitations, a significant delay on your ability to see what's happening (Google Analytics data is not in real-time), and, in my opinion, a great deal of improvement still to be made to the interface design and organization.

For all these reasons I am definitely excited to invite you to sign-up and try out this new real-time web analytics solution which I find full of useful data reports and sporting an interesting set of compelling data analysis features alongside a cool facility to filter, select, tag and interact live with individual visitors on your web site or blog.

This last feature by itself may be worth the whole price of admission, which for now amounts to nothing, as Woopra is fully in Beta and has only now started to accept sign-ups from the Internet public at large.

Head over to Woopra right now and sign-up for this valuable free service. If you have a small site in terms of monthly traffic (< 5,000 visitors) you will probably never have to pay a price to Woopra, who appears to be setting up a business model where only sites with a certain level of traffic or wanting more advanced features will have to pay a monthly fee.

To find out more about Woopra and how it works, take a short 5-minute tour of this new web traffic monitoring tool with me in the video clip I have just prepared for you.

Here the details:

Web Traffic Monitoring With Woopra - Video Introduction

Robin Good introduces Woopra and its key basic features

Full Text Transcription

"Hi guys, this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and this is Woopra, the new real-time web traffic monitoring service that really goes a little bit beyond normal tools that we have available today to check out our traffic.
First of all you're seeing here in front of you the traffic as it is moving in real-time on my site: start looking from the dashboard on the left side here where you see actually traffic moving across the continents and coming from the different cities online and coming to MasterNewMedia.

Here the visitors are coming through and they're assigned a unique serial number but you can even "tag" them and give them a specific identification number.

For each one of them not only you see immediately from which country they're coming from, but you get all the data about the browser platform, operating system, screen resolution, what article they're looking right now and whatever navigation path they're taking and whatever referrers sent them over to your site.

There are a number of other very interesting things: if you go into the analytics section you can see all of the referring web pages, referring domains, the search engines, you can check up the specific searches, the queries and the keywords being used on the site, you can check out the outgoing links for example that are happening on your sites.

But the most interesting thing is that you can actually arrange for custom messages to be sent to selected visitors. You can create the so called Event Notifications, which allow you basically to say "hey, look, whatever visitor is coming from the country U.S. Virgin Islands, only those people, and when they come and check out one of my articles that talks about YouTube, then you may want to say to these guys check out my other videos about Caribbean Islands that I have over here and give them a specific URL". I mean you can create messages that will pop-up very discretely on the browser of your visitors when certain conditions are met.

But listen to this: there's more! While they're moving on your site, I said you can tag your visitors, that is, if I knew that now some guy that I just sent on the site was coming over, I can actually recognize him, I can tell him to go to a specific page and see him come through... I can tag him and give him a specific name and I will see him each time he will come back while I will see in front of me all of their navigation history on my site.

And not only that. I can actually start a conversation with them.

So, let me see, somebody coming from Italy...OK let's see...I can pull up this window and can actually say: "Ciao, I am Robin Good and I am testing un nuovo sistema per chattare live con i miei visitatori, scusa l'intrusione" that is "I apologize for intruding, I'm just testing it".

OK, so now the guy who's visiting my pages is receiving this message via a little pop-up window on the bottom right of his screen which he can decide to look at and can decide also to respond to or not. He's probably not going to answer it because I am really intruding in his experience and maybe he doesn't know what to do. I'm not really inviting him to react but if he does react I can have a direct chat conversation with this person at any time.

I can also filter visitors then in a number of ways, and not only track in real-time what they're doing but actually I can interact with them and create even special notifications that happen only when certain conditions are met.

Go out and check it out, Woopra at www.woopra.com and you can get all this wonderful information including the live number of visitors, your top referrers, the queries people are doing moment by moment on your site, and much more at absolutely no cost.

This is still in beta, they're having still some rough corners to be smoothed out but for the rest is definitely something you want to check out.

Woopra!

From Robin Good, for MasterNewMedia this is all for now.

Ciao guys."

More Information

Woopra key features

Woopra Sign-up Page

Woopra FAQ

Woopra Demo and Screenshots

Download Woopra (PC, Mac, Linux)

Analyze Your Web Traffic With Google Analytics: Video Tutorial

Robin Good — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:44:22 PDT

One of the most useful things you can do to better understand and improve the quality and quantity of web traffic on your site or blog, is to learn how to track, monitor, measure and make sense of the large quantity of data your web visitors leave on your server.

Comparing web traffic on www.MasterNewMedia.org via Google Analytics

Thanks to Google anyone can have easy, free and immediate access to one among the best and most powerful web traffic monitoring and analytics tool: Google Analytics. If you are not yet using it, I suggest you to give it a good try.

As a matter of fact, if you have no previous experience in web traffic monitoring and analysis, Google Analytics may actually scare due to the richness of its data sections and the good amount of new terms you are not going to be familiar with.

Even for more experienced professional web publishers Google Analytics may pose some challenges,
as some of the terms used may be different than what you have been used to elsewhere and getting to the hot zones of the traffic reports may not always be as easy as it should be.

To help you out on this front I have brought here for you two short video tutorials, produced by the official Goggle team and explaining clearly both the basics of analytics if you have never used it, as well as the fundamentals of how to go about doing some serious web data analysis on any site.

I must say, that even after many years of studying and using web traffic and monitoring tools I have learned a few new very useful things myself by looking at this two nicely produced videos.

Take a look yourself.

1) Beginning Analytics: Interpreting and Acting On Your Data (Advanced)

"If you've just started to use Google Analytics and aren't sure which reports to look at, this video provides a helpful 1st-time analysis walkthrough. You'll learn how to interpret what you see in these key reports and what actions you should take as a result."

2) Google Analytics Interface Tutorial (Basic)

"A brief overview of how to use the Google Analytics interface. If you are new to Google Analytics or you'd like to pick up a few tips on how to use some of the different features, this video is a good place to start."

For more informationanalytics google help
on Google Analytics please see:

Getting Started

Account administration
- User permissions
- Other account issues

Reports central

Call The World For Free - From Your PC To Any Mobile Or Landline On The Planet: GizmoCall Is Here

Robin Good — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:45:07 PST

Newly launched GizmoCall gives everyone the opportunity to call just about any mobile phone or traditional landline anywhere on the planet for free. You don't even need to register to do so. You just go to your favourite browser (no mater what type of computer you may have) and you just type the number you want to call.

The first-time you do this a small plugin (about 1 MB) downloads to your computer to enable all of the GizmoCall functionalities.

The better news is that you can enjoy five-free minutes of phone calling to anywhere on the planet for each and every day in the future. That's right. And if you can spare that extra minute to fill-out a registration form, your free calling bonus goes up to 10 minutes per day.

Too good to be true?

Get this then: not only you can call any traditional telephone or mobile around the world, but you can also dial any GoogleTalk, Gizmo Project, Windows Live Messenger, or any SIP device user, including contacts on Nokia's N800 tablet and N80 wi-fi mobile phones.

My friends at JaJah have finally some serious competition to keep them going. But do not trust my word. Go and find out by yourself how easy and effective GizmoCall really is.

Here the details:

GizmoCallGizmoCall is the latest product innovation brought about by the same team standing behind GizmoProject voice and IM software, one of Skype early and most serious competitors, as well as behind the SIPphone VoIP platform.

Calling Rates

What about when you want to use GizmoCall beyond the basic "daily" 5 to 10 free minutes?

As you may expect GizmoCall allows extended calls by offering competitive call rates similar to those offered by Skype and JaJah.

Here are all of the detailed GizmoCall rates.

Some terms of comparison:

Calling a Mobile in:

USA
SkypeOut - 0.017
JaJah - 0.024
GizmoCall - 0.020

UK
SkypeOut - 0.205
JaJah - 0.141
GizmoCall - 0.210

INDONESIA
SkypeOut - 0.125
JaJah - 0.115
GizmoCall - 0.177

JAPAN
SkypeOut - 0.125
JaJah - 0.122
GizmoCall - 0.165

AUSTRALIA
SkypeOut - 0.165
JaJah - 0.139
GizmoCall - 0.193

BRASIL
SkypeOut - 0.170
JaJah - 0.300
GizmoCall - 0.200

SPAIN
SkypeOut - 0.017
JaJah - 0.162
GizmoCall - 0.258

(prices are expressed in US dollars)
(JaJah rates vary depending where you call from - my values are set as if I was calling those destinations from Italy)

For more information on comparing these rates please see:

SkypeOut calling rates.

JaJah calling rates.

GizmoCall rates.

Registration (optional) benefits

While registration is not mandatory to be able to make a free phone call via GizmoCall, registering for the service has its advantages, including:

a) Talk for longer than your free 10 minutes a day with no restrictions
b) Utilize the Caller ID function to screen who is calling in

c) View your personal call history including all calls made and received

d) Get charged only a penny per minute for calls to the U.S.

Call Me Links

"Call Me" links are a quick and easy way to have other people make free calls to you as well as an effective way to promote to anyone the benefits of GizmoCall.

Simply type gizmocall.com/18005551212 (replace 18005551212 with the number you want to dial) into your browsers address bar. A GizmoCall page will appear wit your selected number-to-call already embedded in it, and a "Call" button awaiting your confirmation click.

To create your own personalized "Call me" link, which you can then add to your own email signature, blog or web site you only need to fill out a mini-form just like the one here below and then paste the resulting code into your final destination.

Dial 1-800 Toll Free Numbers from any country in the world

Yes, also here you have read it right. With GizmoCall you can finally call north-American toll-free numbers starting with 1-800 with no more problems. Also these calls are completely free.

Conclusions

GizmoCall is the latest and easiest way to to make free web-based calls developed to all types of telephones out there from any Flash-enabled web-browser.

In terms of ease of use and user experience, GizmoCall offers the most direct and easiest approach for dialing a phone call straight from your computer.

Relative to costs benefits on long distance and international calls GizmoCall is positively not the winner, but its calling rates are not that far away from those of its closest competitors. Once again, considering the ease of use, directedness and free calling time that GizmoCall offers, this is a tough offer to beat.

Though JaJah may greatly simplify life for those who do prefer using a traditional telephone handset, GizmoProject it is sure to gratify:

a) all those computer-based users who have already a headset, use Skype, but have not gotten yet to open a SkypeOut account to dial into international phone numbers.
b) computer users looking for a web to telephone solution that does not require downloading and installing Skype or similar tools

c) anyone who has a fast call to make to a far destination and has no money to make a call, but does have access to a computer with a headset.

Note that GizmoCall does not provide you with a "standard" call back number like SkypeIn. When you dial any telephone number or mobile out there the receiver sees a US-based phone number, which if called back plays a recording saying that he was called from a GizmoCall user.

Definitely worth a try.

System Requirements

Windows
* Windows 2000, XP
* Microphone and Speakers
* Dialup or Broadband Connection

Macintosh
* Mac OS X 10.3.9 +
* Microphone
* Dialup or Broadband Connection

Flash installed on you browser.

Supported Web browsers

Windows
* Internet Explorer 6.0+
* Firefox 1.5+
* Opera 9.0+

Mac
* Safari 2.0+
* Firefox 1.5+
* Opera 9.0+

Support Information

Direct support page at Gizmo.

Gizmo official Forum.

Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia.org