For the last 2 weeks, I started plaing with AdWords again. I setup a campaign, got 8k impressions, 82 clicks and it cost me less than $4. The effort of setting up the campaigns completely outweighs the cost. But the effort is expended once to setup the campaign and lasts for as long as I ready to run it. I might have to tweek them a bit and update the keywords. For now, I'm gonna keep adding ad groups, ad text and keywords to increase the amount of impressions I'm getting daily. Which hopefully means more clicks.

One unfortunate thing is that I can't really test the ads, because they never appear for me in the Google search results. I wonder if they are being directed to the correct landing page? I wish there was a way I could test them. Any ideas?

Today, YouTube asked me if I wanted to monetize my videos. Well, they aren't that good, but they do get some views. Anywho, I agreed. Doubt I'll make much money, if any.

I have 80 videos and over 100k views.
http://www.youtube.com/user/randymorin/videos

Read more.
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=72866

Years ago, I came up with a great AdWords strategy and built up my business partially using this very successful strategy. As the years went on, I simply stopped using AdWords because I became to preoccupied with running the business. I should never have. That was stupid.

Now, I'm getting back into it, since hits have been down these last few months. Gonna find out if the strategy I used years ago, still works today. Will report back.

Last month, I received an email saying that gambling ads are coming to AdSense. Unfortunately, the ads only run in areas where gambling ads are allowed. That's pretty much no-where of importance to many of us. Further, you can't immediately toggle gambling ads on and off. You can't request them. You can't deny them, unless they are already running as a popular category on your site. In fact, you might have a website running gambling ads in some countries, but you don't see them, because gambling ads are illegal in your area. You may not even know that gambling related ads are running on your site. Since many religions frown on gambling. Many of you may be serving ads that you don't want.

On the other hand, gambling ads will increase your bottom line. Especially for many of the sports related sites that I run. I doubt they'll do much to improve my CPMs, because my sites generally get hits from regions that don't allow gambling ads.

Some good here. Mostly bad.

Got a crazy AdSense warning the other day. I was warned, if the following blog entry wasn't fixed, that my domain would be blocked. They don't provide exactly what the problem is, so I can only guess. At the very end of the blog entry, I state...

As long as AdSense keeps paying, I should be able to make ends meet and save piles of cash for rainy days and my kids education.

I've decided to simply remove the blog entry entirely. Whatever!

Something I've always hated about AdWords is that you can't get notifications when someone creates or modifies campaigns using your account. I have to wonder how many people have had their Google Accounts hacked and later find out a campaign was setup to milk then using AdWords. I really wish that Google would setup a notification to email me when campaigns are created and modified. Otherwise, I really don't trust having this around. Am I simply missing this feature? Or does someone have a solution for me?

I've setup daily emails to track my campaigns, but the spreadsheets are zipped which means I have to open the email, then the zip file. It's kind of a pain to do this everyday when all I really want to know is when my campaigns change.

If you have an online business, or are just looking to gain a position of prominence, you should be on numerous social networking sites. Sites including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all provide online businesses and entrepreneurs with great platforms to market themselves and to present a solid brand; however, they can also present numerous problems if not properly managed. To make sure that you are using social networking sites to your best advantage, you should employ the following Reputation Management techniques:

Diversification

Don’t limit yourself to one account on one social networking site. Sign up with as many social networking sites as you can even if you don’t believe that you will use all of them. Not only will having numerous accounts allow you to reach more potential clients, but it will also help you maintain your Online Reputation as it will keep your brand name safe from malicious individuals who may be out to slander your brand name.

Frequency

To keep your customers and clients engaged, you must post everyday to your individual or business page. Clients love to be continuously updated about your business as it gives them something to look forward to. Also, by frequently posting to your social networking accounts, you will keep clients and customers from negatively posting on your accounts.

Speed

One of the biggest issues facing businesses regarding social networking sites is negative press. Social networking sites, in particular those which rate businesses, such as Angie's List, can quickly become a hotbed for negative comments if not dealt with immediately. To make sure the brand damaging slander doesn’t enter the web, businesses need to be vigilant and quickly and politely respond to any negative comments which do pop up. If customers see that you are trying to repair any problems, they will be more likely to forgive you and continue giving you their business. However, if you neglect to respond, the angry comments will only continue and your brand could be forever tarnished in as little as 30 minutes.

Multimedia Use

Just because most social networking sites are text base doesn’t mean you should limit your page to text only posts. People love to see what is going on in your business which is why they like to see you post every day, and if you can throw in videos and photos too, they will be more likely to return to your site. They will also be able to see those working for your company and the events that take place within your business walls allowing them to get a more complete picture of who you are and what your brand stands for.

Consistency

In order to promote a positive image of your brand, you will not only need to provide a great product or service, but also convey trustworthiness to your potential customers. The best way to convey brand trustworthiness is by remaining consistent across all social networking platforms you use. Conveying one image of yourself on one site only to convey another on a different site will make your clients believe you are willing to falsify information to gain a customer base, and they will quickly turn from you for it.

Social networking has greatly enhanced online visibility, and has made it more possible for even the little guy to get ahead in business. However, with these new applications comes greater responsibility. If you wish to succeed, you need to have multiple social networking accounts. But if you wish to have long-term brand success, you will need to properly manage these sites on a daily basis.

In the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, it can be easy to get distracted. When that happens, we often forget about important meetings and appointments and fumble with task lists and appointment books. Worst part of it all is, we can't even seem to find the time to get ourselves organized. But with the fairly recent invention of the smartphone, we no longer have a need to waste paper on appointment books and stickynotes.
Instead we have applications which can serve entirely the same function, but with some added benefits. Here are some which can help us get through our everyday lives.

Reverse Lookup (by esMobile)
If you have ever received strange calls from unknown numbers, chances are your number has been sold to or acquired by telemarketers and other solicitation companies. This can be particularly annoying when trying to sleep or during a very important meeting.

With this AnyWho app, you can map the location of the call, as well as block the number, among many other functions.

Out of Milk (by Capigami)
This multi-use app is a great tool for getting organized. Its three main functions are the shopping list, inventory, and task list. The task list is pretty self-explanatory. You can type in or speak into the microphone your task and it will add it to the list, and you can mark it off, edit, or delete it from your list. The inventory list is basically a listing of items you already have in your pantry. You can either type them in, or use the handy barcode scanner function, and can separate your different items into categories, like "spice rack" or "in the fridge." Lastly, the shopping list function is pretty handy, as you can manage multiple shopping lists, and use the barcode scanner to either add items in or to mark them off your list.

TripIt (by TripIt, Inc.)
Traveling often causes us a lot of anxiety, as there is so much paperwork to fuss with just to get on a plane. The TripIt app is easy to use and can organize your entire trip itinerary into one user-friendly list. If you have a Google Mail account, it can sync up with your flight confirmation email and automatically generate the itinerary for you.
For those of us who travel for business purposes, there is also the TripIt Business edition, which can sync multiple itineraries for people embarking on the same trip.

Bump
Taking down someone's information or transferring files can also be quite a hassle when on the run. Rather than writing down a reminder to email a file later or writing someone's number on your hand, just use Bump. When two devices have the Bump app open, all they have to do is gently bump phones together and the files or contact information are automatically transferred over. It's easy and time-efficient.

My Cars
When we're super busy, it probably means we rely tremendously on our vehicles. And while we use them so much, we can easily forget that we need regular maintenance on the car. With My Cars, you can manage the status of multiple vehicles. Every time you go to the pump, just plug in your mileage information, and the My Cars app will automatically generate performance charts to indicate whether your car is functioning to its full potential.

These, and many more apps that can help with our everyday lives, are available on the Android market.

Today it seems that anybody can start their own business online. Yet doing so comes with varying degrees of success. In order to become a successful entrepreneur online, you must have the drive and patience to ensure that your business is successful. Neil Patel, founder of two successful online businesses and a blog that helps people learn about online poker, found his success in his online business before he even graduated high school. And now he holds the title of one of the top 100 bloggers according to Technorati, and the Wall Street Journal named him one of the most influential people online.

Taking the steps listed below will help you become successful like Neil Patel. Before you even consider starting up an online company, consider whether you have all of these tools to get started.

1. Find Your Specialty

You can't have a business without any ideas! Figure out what you are good at and what you enjoy and turn it into a profitable business! But first, check out the competition. Search for your business idea online to see if there are other businesses like it.

If you find a few, don't fret! Do your research; take a look at them and see how they do business. Your idea or business model could be completely different from what the others are doing, which will help you stand out against the competition.

2. Network

Most knowledge can't be learned through a textbook or guide online. Most of it will come from the people you know in the industry! These are people with experience, who have varying methods of how they became successful. Getting out and networking with these people will get your name out there, and open the door for more opportunities as you plan to expand and grow within your industry.

Locate a professional organization within your industry. Larger organizations have groups in most major metropolitan areas, so there should be one fairly close to you.

3. Know the industry

You can't be successful if you don't know the ins and outs of the industry. In the online world, there is so much terminology and strategy to know that even the seasoned veterans of online entrepreneurship don't know everything. Take some time out every day to do a little bit of research, just to help you build your knowledge. The world of marketing is especially important in the online world regardless of your specific industry, so take a look at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Also integrate yourself into the online world to get your name out there. Join a few social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and start your own personal blog. This will not only put your name out there online, but will also provide you with a little more inside experience with the different social networks.

4. Keep a Budget

Being your own boss online can be quite confusing when it comes to budgeting your time and money. If you are a guest writer for several blogs, you will find that it may be a bit difficult keeping track of who paid you, and how much. You may also need to know how much time you spend with each blog as compared to what you are getting paid.

The best thing you can do is keep a budget log for every time you get paid. Mark down the time spent with each blog and how much money you are getting from each. You may discover that the time you spend with one blog is drawing much less pay than another blog.

Now that you have read this, have you already accomplished these tasks? If you have said yes to all four of these, it's time to take the next steps into starting your new business. Remember that the most successful online entrepreneurs are those who stay focused and have a strong drive to be successful. It is up to you to maintain those qualities.

Hearing about your reputation from other people either flatters or disturbs us depending on whether we’re praised or slandered. Regardless, it’s not too difficult to figure out your standing as an individual, brand or business by networking with people. There is another reputation, exclusive to a digital venue, with which you may be unfamiliar: online reputation. Small, fledgling businesses as well as leviathans like Apple conduct online reputation management (ORM) to keep their professional slate clean. 

Quite simply, ORM is the process of searching the Internet for disparaging, falsified criticisms and then nullifying them by taking proactive steps. Individuals who take their blog seriously need to execute ORM just as much as a business does. Look over these tips to get started with ORM. 

Be your own worst enemy. It’s hard to counter what your opponents have to say about you if you don’t know what it is. Spend time online searching for your name, your company name or derivatives that insult either (e.g. John Doe sucks). Although Google has a strong hold on the search engine market, branch out. Google searches are confined to the Big G’s servers. Try search engines of yesteryear, such as AltaVista, Dogpile and Yahoo. If you’re seeing top results that are sharply critical, it’s time to take action. Either you need to treat your customers better or it’s time for some damage control via ORM. 

Ask for testimonials. This strategy does two things. First, you’ll find out what customers really think of your business. Ask loyal clients to write brief testimonials for you. If they’re hesitant or refuse to, then you probably need to work on your rapport. Second, you will hopefully find that your customers appreciate you. Then create a page on your website for these testimonials. If customers are uncomfortable giving you testimonials directly, refer them to Yelp. 

Develop your brand online. There are several things business do to expand their brand. It never hurts to start a blog that offers insight on your respective industry, sheds light on your company’s operations and/or gives advice to others in your field. Starting a forum on your website is sure to please customers who would be able to get a direct answer from you. Of course, social networking is crucial to developing your brand. If handling several social networks at once gets to be too grueling, try a free program like HootSuite to manage everything from one place. 

ORM never ends. It’s an exhaustive duty at times. Consider delegating the task to a web-savvy employee or ensure that you can set aside the time to fully conduct ORM. If you’re on your own, then make ORM a top priority. 

The last four months, I've been making $3.60 to $6.63 in referral revs. Over the years, the referral revs on Chitika have been paying off and on, but I always make a few bucks. Considering that I haven't blogged about Chitika in a long while or even used it, the revenues are pretty good.

I first tried Chitika in 2005 and 2006, but I found too many problems with Chitika. They would report one earnings and pay 50% and more less. Some months, I didn't get my checks on time. Then CPMs decreased to worthlessness.

Because of the constant referral money, I'm gonna try them again on kbcafe.com. See how it goes and report back here.

http://chitika.com/publishers.php?refid=randymorin

For years, when I wanted to find out the whois data on a domain, I simply when to Google and typed whois {some-domain}.com and usually the 1st result was exactly what I was looking for. I think a lot of ppl were doing this and the SEOs decided to take advantage and submit tons of whois {some-domain}.com results into the Google SERPs. Now you get a bunch of crap, mostly spammy sites trying to convert Google referrals into ad clicks.

If you work at Google, then please fix. Thanks!

It's amazing how Google's search engine has created this enormous industry around links. I know that if my current projects fail to give me the revenue I need, I can always return to blogging and get paid to write reviews (with links).  PayPerPost and SponsoredReviews are enormous gold mines for bloggers. In addition, I'm constantly contacted directly for much more profitable blogging.

Anybody could do this full-time and make a living at it. You simply have to write a dozen non-paid blog entires per day and watch the paid blogging opportunities fall into your lap. This week, I was paid $200 to post two guest articles on some of my blogs. I didn't have to write anything. With PayPerPost and SponsoredReview, you can approach advertisers who are willing to pay you $10-100 per post. I'd love to find someone who is willing to take the time to make this work. I doubt it'd be that hard. I simply don't have the time for it. Too busy with more profitable stuff (www.Talk-Sports.com).

The new Google AdSense interface is completely borked. I first reported problems when it was first released. It didn't work on my BlackBerry and I couldn't switch back to the old interface on the BB either. I never heard back from Google and the problem persist. Now, it's also broken on IE and Chrome. Sorry, didn't bother trying Firefox and Safari. Here's the error I get with every pageview. Fortunately, I can switch to the old interface.

I just implemented AdSense for Search on Talk-Sports.com. I added one ad at the beginning of every search result page. It proved a bit of a challenge. You have to add three blocks of HTML and javascript code and customize them to death. There's a code generating available online, but even then I had to tweak the code by hand to make it work with my webpage.
https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/afsao1/Welcome

You can see a sample on the following page.
http://www.talk-sports.com/search.aspx/Sidney+Crosby

Love Analytics! I was quickly able to turn the data into a top 50 pages on Talk-Sports.

1. Sidney Crosby's Girlfriend (211k views)
2. Dale Earnhardt's Girlfriend (116)
3. Jonathan Toews's Girlfriend (111)
4. Mike Fisher's Girlfriend (73)
5. Tony Stewart's Girlfriend (43)
6. Sidney Crosby (42)
7. Mike Richards's Girlfriend (32)
8. Derek Jeter's Girlfriend (29)
9. Joaquin Benoit's Girlfriend (28)
10. Joe Mauer's Girlfriend (26)
11. Tim Lincecum's Girlfriend (24)
12. Aaron Rodger's Girlfriend (24)
13. Patrick Kane's Girlfriend (24)
14. Jonathan Toews (22)
15. Sidney Crosby's Pics (21)
16. Alex Ovechkin's Girlfriend (21)
17. Brian Wilson's Girlfriend (20)
18. Darren Sharper's Girlfriend (18)
19. Jonathan Toews Pics (18)
20. Daniel Gibson's Girlfriend (16)
21. Brent Seabrook's Girlfriend (15)
22. Maxime Talbot's Girlfriend (15)
23. Evgeni Malkin's Girlfriend (15)
24. Dale Earnhardt Jr Sucks Forum (14)
25. Ben Roethisberger's Girlfriend (13)
26. Maxime Lapierre's Girlfriend (13)
27. Jay Cultler's Girlfriend (13)
28. Jeff Carter's Girlfriend (13)
29. Alexander Semin's Girlfriend (12)
30. Derrick Rose's Girlfriend (11)
31. Barry Zito's Girlfriend (10)
32. Niklas Hjalmarsson's Girlfriend (10)
33. Dirk Nowitzki's Girlfriend (9)
34. Carlos Bocanegra's Girlfriend (9)
35. Dale Earnhardt (9)
36. Patrick Sharp's Girlfriend (8)
37. Adam Burish's Girlfriend (8)
38. Nicklas Backstrom's Girlfriend (8)
39. Alex Rodriguez's Girlfriend (8)
40. Kasey Kahne's Girlfriend (7)
41. George St Pierre's Girlfriend (7)
42. Jordan Staal's Girlfriend (7)
43. Danny Briere's Girlfriend (7)
44. David Wright's Girlfriend (7)
45. Terrell Owen's Girlfriend (7)
46. Mike Fisher (7)
47. Shane O'Brien's Girlfriend (7)
48. Dale Earnhardt Jr Pics (6)
49. Pau Gasol's Girlfriend (6)
50. Brett Favre's Girlfriend (6)