HitTail looks like a pretty cool application, if you're trying to make a little money blogging for the purpose of getting Google referrers to click on your AdSense. Watch the demo!

http://www.hittail.com/

Thanks to Scott Kingery for the link [play tag with me candidate]

eBad is a term I derived from "Bad eBay Ad". To play, search Google and get points when you find a funny eBay ad!

http://www.dealcafe.com/funnies/searchgame.html

Amazon has started a new associates product unit called Omakase.  If you log into your Amazon Associates account, you'll see a new option under Build Links. This is a PPA (pay per action) program, that is, the end-user actually has to buy the product before the publisher gets any money. I'll fire off an email to AdSense, just in case they prohibit use of Omakase and AdSense on the same page. A sample product unit follows.

More links...

• Omakase FAQ
• Dave Taylor's review
• Kent Newsome's review

Update: Google responded to my query about publishing Omakase and AdSense on the same webpage.

According to our program policies, Amazon ads may be displayed on the same page as Google ads on your site.

I just wrote a cute little utility that generates a sitemap for a website. I use the Yahoo! Explorer API to extract the URLs, so you have to be indexed by Yahoo! to benefit. But, if you are well indexed by Yahoo! and not well indexed by Google, then this is likely the utility you were always looking for. A limitation of Yahoo! Explorer API limits the sitemap to 1000 webpages.

Click on the link, open the zip file and run the executable inside (requires .NET 2.0). Type the website address you want to create the sitemap for and click the Generate button. Either copy the generated XML or click the Save button to save the XML file to disk.

http://www.webvertization.com/ExplorerToSitemap.zip

iMedia Connection: U.S. advertising spending through the first quarter of 2006 rose 5.6 percent over the same period last year. Internet advertising saw the biggest gains of all the media monitored with a 46.4 percent increase.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/10430.asp

For the last few weeks, I've been test driving the FeedBurner FAN feed ads and website ads. I had quite difficult time at first, but after emailing their support and a couple friends who work with FeedBurner, all was quitly resolved. It would be interesting to hear other report on their initial successes with FeedBurner, but from what I can tell, this is not easy enough for the mundane blogger. I also still get a lot of javascript exceptions from the FeedBurner ad <script> and I rarely ever see the ads myself [I'll send them screen capture]. Past all the negative stuff, FeedBurner is paying a good CPM for an ad format that you can run alongside AdSense.

http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/adnetwork

Randy: I can't reproduce the javascript exception anymore, but I can reproduce the no ads.

On one hand, ExpoActive pays very well. On the other, I can't believe how bad their website is. Too often, the ad script hangs up your website, but even worse, their website barely ever responds. I currently have $130+ worth of direct ads waiting for my approval, but I can't approve them because their website doesn't work. I've tried Firefox, IE6, IE7, various computers and various IP addresses, same problem. I've previously sent ExpoActive support emails on this subject, but they chose to ignore them. It's hard to turn down the money I make with ExpoActive, but their service is pathetic.

http://www.expoactive.com/

Niall Kennedy: If your site currently generates an Atom feed for use as a Google Sitemap you may want to hold back upgrading your feed to Atom 1.0. Google Sitemaps currently accepts Atom 0.3 only and will throw errors when it encounters the Atom 1.0 feed.

http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/07/google-sitemaps-2.html

Randy: You can also use an RSS 2.0 feed. If you have a choice, then use your RSS 2.0 feed with Sitemap and upgrade your Atom from 0.3 to 1.0. Version 0.3 of Atom was long ago deprecated.

I noticed today that the FeedBurner FAN ads are misbehaving in both IE6 and Firefox. Click on the screenshots to view the actual pages.

In IE6, the ads cause large gaps in the content. In Firefox, the Ads by FeedBurner branding overlap other content.

I've been testing FeedBurner FAN ads for a few weeks now and I'm sad to say that I'm disappointed. When I first signed up, I got a welcome email from a FeedBurner employee with instructions on how to enable the ads. But when I followed the instructions, they were faulty. It turns out, they hadn't enabled me for ads yet. Next, I setup the Besting AdWords blog to receive ads and a little later some ads were there to be approved. Unfortunately, the ads were on the wrong feed. After an exchange of emails, the FeedBurner team switched the ads over to another feed, but again the wrong feed. But this time, I decided to move forward even with the wrong feed. Still, there were other problems getting ads on both my site and then on my feed. It proved extremely difficult with lots of communication back and forth with the FeedBurner employees before I was finally able to get ads in my feeds. Finally, they ran well and seemed to pay well, but now the ads are borked. Sorry FeedBurner! It's not working out.

I'm usually a big fan of ExpoActive, as it pays a very high eCPM, almost as high as AdSense. But, for the last week, the ExpoActive website is no longer responsive. I can't approve ads, create new ad blocks, request a check, get reports, etc. The entire website beyond the homepage is simply non-responsive. I've tried IE6, IE7 and Firefox, on multiple computers and on several subnets. Worse, the ad units are slow to load which is causing my webpages with ExpoActive ad units to load slowly. I've even sent ExpoActive an email asking what's up, but I haven't received a reply. Anybody else notice the same?

http://www.expoactive.com/

Wow, I asked Google about AdBrite and AdSense on the same webpage, for both network and direct ads and I was surprised to get the following answer.

According to our program policies, AdBrite ads may be displayed on the same page as Google ads on your site.

Reader Email: I want to say thanks. I took your advice, signed up for a google ads account and am making close to $10 a day by just placing a google adds box on 2 of my most popular pages.

Randy: The best thing about $10 per day is that it's $3,650 per year. And this guy is just starting. This is so easy.

A year ago, I got a new website that wasn't being properly indexed by Google. I posted a comment on Matt Cutts blog and he fixed it. Now, I'm having trouble with Yahoo! and they don't answer their emails (except Jeremy Zawodny). My question is whether anybody at Yahoo! works other than Jeremy. The answer is that I now know why Yahoo! sucks and why Google is kicking their ass.

Bill Slawski: In Pay-Per-Percentage vs. PPC, Shimon Sandler points out an interesting new paper from the folks at Microsoft Research - Pay-Per-Percentage of Impressions: An Advertising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud (pdf). As Shimon notes, the idea is that this type of advertising approach would be "immune to both click fraud and impression fraud."

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060703-124948

Randy: Huh? This is 100% false. Pay-per-percentage would incur the exact same amount of impression fraud as Pay-per-Impression (CPM). Think about it. Let's say that 10% of impressions are fraudulant? That means 10% of the impressions in PPM are also fraudulant. Whether you pay for 20% of 1 million hits or the same for 200 thousand hits, poop still stinks.