The updating has already begun. Now "conversions" columns are labled Conversions (1-per-click), while "transactions" columns are called Conversions (many-per-click). 1-per-click means if one click leads to multiple conversions, it’s counted only once, but many-per-click means each conversion counts each conversion that occurs after a click. Emel Mutlu of the Inside AdWords Crew explains:

Here’s an example to explain the difference: Let’s say you’re selling gardening supplies online and you’ve set up conversion tracking on your "Thank You For Your Purchase" and your "Newsletter Subscription Confirmed" pages.

If a customer clicks on your ad, buys a bag of peat moss, then subscribes to your newsletter, you’ll see two many-per-click conversions, but just a single 1-per-click conversion in your account. If the same customer returns to your site a few days later and buys a trowel (but doesn’t click on one of your AdWords ads to get there), you’ll now see three many-per-click conversions, but your 1-per-click conversions will still remain at one.

More information can be obtained at the Help Center. The metrics will be introduced into AdWords Editor, the AdWords API, and the new AdWords interface over time. Google says they’ll also improve conversion tracking for display advertisers through the release of view-through conversion tracking.

In other AdWords news, TechCrunch is reporting that Jeremy "Shoemoney" Schoemaker is suing a Google employee for AdWords ToS violations.

I talked to Wu and got to know him a little better. We found out that he’s a young man who lives in an apartment, and lives on Subway and weekend drinking. I can relate to that. When I was 22 I had a similar lifestyle, except you could replace Subway with McDonald’s and $15 million with basically broke.

Yes, Wu certainly did something right. But what was it that he did so well as to net him such an astonishing amount of money for a blog that he had only been running for a little over 2 years? What was so enticing about Bankaholic that BankRate was willing to plunk down $15 million?

I talked not only to Wu, but to hugley successful blogger Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney (see our video interview with Schoemaker at BlogWorld) as well. I asked Schoemaker why he thought Wu had gotten such a great deal, to which he replied, "Simple. It was an authority in the banking industry.  Especially with all the banking news going on, now those keywords are hotter then ever."

There’s no question that the keywords Bankaholic ranks for played a role in the acquisition. Bankrate even talked about the hot keyword traffic in the press release, but was that the sole motivation for BankRate to pay such an expensive price for the blog? 

Wu himself said that Bankrate was a "traffic hungry financial powerhouse looking to broaden their portfolio of online properties." We at WebProNews have speculated that perhaps they were looking for a property to allow for more user engagement. When you look at Bankrate.com, there is not much of a community or social element, a blog is the most obvious way to engage readers, and when you have a blog that can bring in such a good amount of  organic traffic, the potential for opening up that engagement increases tremendously.

Schoemaker didn’t really think that the engagement factor was integral to Wu’s deal with Bankrate. When I asked him if he thought it played a particularly big role, he said, "In this case I do not think so.  I think the most important factor was that it was an authority in a very highly competitive niche." That’s not to say that Schoemaker was downplaying the importance of engagement in general. In fact, he places a "huge amount" of importance on it when it comes to the success of a site. "There are millions of blogs out there that never have any direct interaction with their audience," he says. "You can set yourself apart by doing this." He cites responding to commentators and meeting users at shows specifically.

Responding to commentators is huge indeed. I’ve talked about this at SmallBusinessNewz before. You should treat your blog like your own social network. Wu does this. It is not uncommon for a post at Bankaholic to have over 40 comments, and within those comment sections, Wu is actively participating. He’s engaging his readers in conversation.

Engagement tends to come natural when you love what you do though. Wu doesn’t seem too concerned about retiring just yet. He’s going to continue blogging at Bankaholic. "I like blogging, so I don’t mind," he says. "Especially right now, with the financial world in total chaos, there’s no shortage of topics to write about. This is history in the making, and it’s fun to document it." He will remain blogging at the site for an undetermined amount of time, but he said that if he were BankRate, he would hire additional writers as well, so it’s hard to say if he is looking at this as a permanent gig.

Authority leads to engagement.

If you can become an authoritative source for information as a content site in your particular niche, engagement will naturally follow if you allow for it to do so. Enable commentary from your readers. Participate in discussion with them, so they know you are involved. It’s amazing the amount of discussion that can be generated, and not only will this benefit those involved in the discussion itself, but it will be there for all readers to read and learn from, which is why I still consider new media to be a legitimate source for information.

Advertisers will also be drawn to a site that is seen as an authority in its niche, particularly when that is evident by the level of user engagement. If a site has a lot of legitimate comments, advertisers will see this basically as a community of professionals in the target market they are interested in. With enough authority and user engagement, a site is likely to attract offers from potential buyers as well. Just ask Johns Wu.

What are your thoughts on the combination of authority and user engagement? Is this the recipe for success?

Update: I’ve posted a follow-up interview with Wu. It was originally supposed to be included as part of this article, but due to conflicting schedules, we were unable to get it together. He talks about negotiation, and engagement.

Joost has taken a step back and looked critically at the situation and determined that decision making is what really is separating the internet marketers from one another. No one disagrees that SEO is evolving, whether what we see as today’s SEO will be around in the same format two years from now is still open for debate, but Joost makes the case that internet marketers who are following the wave of change are really pressed to decide when is it appropriate to adopt change?

Many marketers looking to the future, jump on the next bandwagon long before the old reliable one has started to show any real signs of failing. Joost uses the timing of when internet marketers stopped advocating the use of paid links as an excellent example in his post.

It seems like a disservice to yourself and or the clients you work with if you give up on a technique that still works to adopt a new one that hasn’t yet matured as an effective marketing tool, yet many internet marketers and SEO’s more specifically are jumping off of the bandwagon when they see future, but long before it has arrived. I am all for planning for the future, but giving up on the moment while doing so is a major mistake and a key point that Joost and I both agree on.

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Until web designers learn proper semantic markup, like H1, H2, are structural tags first and foremost, and visual elements second, an SEO is always going to have to come in and clean up the mess. Until designers learn how to use a CMS properly and separate content from context, an SEO is always going to have fix the nightmare they have created. Want to solve that problem require your designer read Designing With Web Standards before they give you a single markup or deck.

Until programmers and developers learn that cool widgety, pop-up, slide-out, spinning flaming skull javascript based mystery meat navigation is completely uncrawlable, and renders your website invisible to every search engine, and an SEO has to come in design a flat text based alternative navigation, SEO is alive and well. Until your programmers and developers learn that no matter how sexy the UI is, if your users and customers cant figure out what to do, SEO’s with a firm grasp on usability will always have a job. Want to solve that problem give everyone on your team a copy of Don’t make me Think by Steve Krug still relevant after 8 years.

Until CEO’s learn that flash websites with lots of eye candy and sizzle are great for entertainment, but don’t work because they break basic web functionality like the back button, an SEO is always going to be needed to bring things back down to earth. Want to help them really get the point, show him the flash website on an iPhone, then get them to read Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed and Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen.

Until old school marketing people like Peter Sealey stop thinking of search engines and the company website as an afterthought and SEO is always going to need to convince executives this interweb thing isn’t just a flash in the pan. Until companies start to realize they are slowly losing the ability to control the message and need to embrace that customers can control what the internet says about you, an SEO is always going to have to use techniques to address reputation management problems. Want to fix that problem start handing out copies of Small Is the New Big by Seth Godin.

Until Advertising and Copyrighting departments learn that the medium is shifting from a top down model to a more conversational one to one model, an SEO is going to have talk about content. Until companies start to understand you have to be more than brochure ware and solve someone’s problem if you want people to use and link to your site, and SEO is going have direct content creation. Want to solve that problem reread the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Until Public Relations departments understand that a press release isn’t exciting or useful to anyone except journalists and reporters, an SEO is going to have to explain viral marketing. Until clueless people like Clive Thompson realize that fame, ego, and cold hard cash can motivate people, you are going to need an SEO aware social media consultant to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot. Want to fix the problem read Tipping Point, Made to Stick and Trendsspotting.

Until your legal department realizes being politically incorrect is really an asset, an SEO is going to have to explain the concept of appealing to the linkerati. Want to fix the problem get them to read The Big Moo.

Until Web 2.0 startup companies and Venture Capitalists start considering SEO as part of their business plan from the start, an SEO is going to have to save a company from shooting itself in the foot at every turn. Want to fix the problem get everyone to read the Dip.

Until everyone realizes that a good SEO is also part marketer and all they have to do is push the right buttons we are going to have these debates about SEO being dead or not. Until people realize just like good lawyers and bad lawyers there are good SEO’s and bad SEO’s it’s really just a semantics debate.

The question is are you learning anything from the debate? Are you learning how to get links from it, how to get attention, and how to turn them into billable accounts and hours? If you aren’t, and you are just in it for the drama, then you really aren’t an SEO, you’re an SEOFakester (&tm; sugarrae).

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Even if you had no intent to monetize a post, it just became easier to monetize accidental rankings. If you use analytics to track your stats and notice that you start ranking for some good keywords you can use Triggit to embed links to merchant products directly in the text of your blog post.

Shoemoney created this quick video to show how Triggit works

Unlike the automated ad solutions like intellitxt or AdSense, these Triggit ads

• look like other regular links on the page (so they should get a high CTR)
• can easily be applied on a page by page level (so you do not have to clutter up every page to monetize the few pages that can make a lot of money)
• link to products recommended by the editor (to preserve editorial integrity)
• can link to merchants that pay via affiliate payout or CPC (offering multiple monetization models)
• allow you to keep your pages clean (and easy to link at) until they rank, then have you add monetization after you have a leading market position for related keywords

Triggit ads are easy to set up and should require little maintenance on the end user’s side, but they are still a small start up, so if you start doing well with them make sure you remember which pages do well so you can keep monetizing the pages if the Triggit partnership stops working, and so you can track which pages you should try to monetize more aggressively and/or build links to.

As blended semi-editorial in content ad networks like these evolve, the distinction between optimization and spam blurs. And since Google has a similar product, it is going to be hard to view this in a negative light without looking hypocritical in the process. From Google’s pay per action page:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: "Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today." (Mousing over the link will display "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Though the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters, we’ve found that shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

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Lets take a little look at why they might have done this.

Google Is A Business

It is actually quite a large business, and each division within a division is probably accountable for their own earnings. The Adsense referral program for new business is probably individually accountable.

Current (Old) System Earnings

Based upon quarterly and yearly reports, Google on average pay publishers only 29% of advertising revenue. Larger publishers probably get a larger piece of the action, so it is quite possible a new publisher only receives 25%

For every dollar earned, Google receive $4

Referrals Changes the Math

For the first $5 of earnings in 6 months, they pay a referral fee of $5, thus Google only make 50%

If a publisher earns $100 in 6 months, Google pay a referral fee of $250, thus of the $400 they receive in advertising revenues, they pay out $350… plus there is a bonus

For 25 people who make $100 within a 180 day period you get a bonus payment of $2000, that is $80 per person

In theory, Google could pay out $430 for every $400 received

This is potentially a loss leader…

In practice only a small number of people make it even to $5, and even less to $100 within 180 days. Darren mentioned in his article that he has never achieved the bonus, though if he comes close, those $250 fees for the ones that do make $100 must be reasonably lucrative.

The New System

The Adsense Team are reverting back to $100 for $100 earned in 180 days with no bonuses.

Also the countries are now restricted to North America, Latin America, or Japan – for the referrer.

What Darren and Shoemoney didn’t pick up on is that is existing referrals don’t qualify by the time this is introduced, it seems like you will only receive compensation based upon the new structure, not the old. That is significant if you were in some way paying for advertising based on anticipated earnings over 6 months based upon prior statistics.

Gaming Adsense With Referral Hydras

For me the obvious reason why they would restrict this to only partners in certain counties is fraud, or gaming the system. Google is made up of regional offices, so it would be hard to separate Eastern Europe from the rest of Europe, or Australia from others in the Pacific region.

If you look at this from the point of view of a person in a low income country, there is a potential $430 that could be earned instead of $100 for the clicks you might receive on a website you own that has reasonable traffic, all you need is new Adsense accounts.

Here is how such a system could work

1. Find 25 people who would be interested in earning $100 from Google just for providing their personal details

I can’t honestly imagine this wouldn’t be hard in many developing countries

2. Place the advertising units from those referrals on your own websites such that they will earn $100 within a month
3. The person referred gets $100 in Adsense earnings
4. You get to cash $330 instead of $100

Rinse and repeat

If you don’t want to give $100 away, you could always set up shell companies., but I don’t think it is really worth the effort, it would be easy to find people willing to earn $100 for doing nothing.

If you are just doing blackhat stuff this provides an unlimited supply of fresh Adsense accounts, and you earn everything 100% "legitimately" as just the referrer.

Can It Really Be That Many People Doing This?

If you were a slightly shady blackhat, wouldn’t you like to keep your Adsense earnings 100% clean, and earn 3x as much?

Especially if you were living in a slightly poorer country, or had contacts in one… China, Russia..

Would This Hurt Google Financially

Certainly if it got out of hand. Most of these referrals would earn their $100 and then drop off the face of the earth after they cached their checks.

Could It Be Another Reason?

I am sure growth rates outside 1st World countries are fast enough without the financial incentive for referrals, and there is always a question of scaling up support costs, and the lack of competitive advertising.
With low paying clicks outside the English speaking world, those that are active Adsense publishers are often more inclined to experiment with more grey or blackhat methods, because they don’t necessarily have to create their own content to make money.

Too Good To Be True

I always looked on the referral program to be full of holes

• You don’t know who you referred so you can’t help them, unless it is by arrangement
• You can’t honestly declare you make money by referring people, it is against the referral program terms, though they encourage word of mouth marketing.
• The reporting was always a little on the basic side
• The time period for qualification was far too long and it seems that has come back to bite people

For a negative change such as this, you would expect a full 6 months notice, or for referrals who qualify within 6 months to be paid at the old rate.
For referring publishers outside North & South America, and Japan, they are effectively being told that all those referrals they have made that haven’t quite earned $100 by the end of January will not be paid.

I am glad I haven’t promoted Google Adsense for 2 years.

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*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney said a really smart way to monetize your blog was through affiliates. Schoemaker said, " I feel affiliate and direct ad sales are the best way to go." He touched on affiliate marketing saying, "The key in affiliates is finding your niche." Everyone has an affiliate, so you should do what you like.

He advised on not using AdSense for blogs and that for affiliate income, banners are also something to stay away from. As for monetizing your blog he said, "Money should be second nature. You can’t plan for when something is going to blow up. It’s all about timing, you don’t know when it’s going to happen."

Rebecca Weeks of Real Girls Media Network spoke about her site Divine Caroline that is aimed at women. She said because of the success of the site they had to launch Real Girls Media to support their strong advertisers demand.

On monetizing your blog she said, "If you have not monetized your blog, you really need to do it." She added "There’s actually no down side with working with an advertising agency."

WebProNews Video anchor Abby Prince contributed to this report.

But I’m gonna have to say that it’s been a rough first week. First, Mike Arrington catches what looks like a backhanded compliment Jalichandra pays to quasi-rival Techmeme in an interview with Wired:

WN: What’s your take on TechMeme’s leaderboard?

RJ: It’s a great little site and there are a lot of cool things on there, but when I look at the assets we’re sitting on it’s clear that we’re doing something different. They don’t track 100 million blogs and they’re not nearly as embedded in blog community. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in terms of how deep we can go, I feel like we’re in a pretty good place.

(emphasis added)

Jalichandra wisely responded to the TechCrunch post, saying that he admires Techmeme (which he says was conveyed by his tone in the interview), and has long liked the site. Still, it’s not a good foot to put forward first.

Today, Shoemoney notes that the latest version of WordPress (now about 2 weeks old) has dropped its use of Technorati “and now use[s] Google Blog Search to see backlinks.” Shoemoney states that WordPress’s initial use of Technorati may have lead to the site’s initial dominance—and its abandonment could lead to its demise.

TechCrunch’s post contained a similarly dim view of the company and its fortunes:

Technorati managed to burn through $20 million in capital and has created little more than the second most popular blog search engine after Google blogsearch (and with how quickly Google is indexing blogs and other news sites, many loyal blog searchers simply search google.com today anyway). They missed huge opportunities – Techmeme (rapidly [sic] passionate readers), MyBlogLog (social network around blogs) and Sphere’s related search product (stole Technorati partners like WSJ and Washington Post) are all opportunities that Technorati just plain missed, and shouldn’t have.

Jalichandra still sees a bright future, however. He tells Wired that for the future “We’re really centered on trying to create a wholly unique media experience and improving our properties.”

Good luck.

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Now pay attention: within 36 hours after doing that, my account was disabled!

I’d put quite some work into that account; I was editing 9 categories at the time my account was disabled. I did NOT put all that hard work into it for some meta to come along and ban me on sight when he sees something he doesn’t like, without sending ANY email or other notification.

If AOL is serious about wanting to improve DMOZ, this would be a good place to start. For now, I’ll join the crowd of people saying Google should stop using DMOZ. Of course there are editors who do a good job, but these mob like practices make it impossible to work with and for.

Login removed screenshot
Screenshot of my DMOZ profile

Update: Having seen some of the discussion in the DMOZ forums, it looks like I was banned because I had BOOKMARKED shoemoney.com, with the simple reason of wanting to add a note to it… My god.

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Instead of telling you more things beyond what’s already in my bio, I’d like to focus on 8 things I’ve learned about affiliate marketing.

Here are the tag rules:

Here are the tag rules:

• Each player must post these rules first.
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write about their eight facts on their blog.
• At the end of your blog post, choose eight people to get tagged, list their names, and link to them.
• Don’t forget to contact them telling them they’re tagged. Also, point them to your blog post so they know what to do.

Here’re the my 8 “facts”:

1. Payouts don’t tell the entire story. If an offer doesn’t convert, even at $150 a lead, it doesn’t do you any good.
2. The Affiliate marketing big guns are using PPC (PayPerClick) traffic to drive traffic in great volume to their sites. Check out Gauder Chaudry’s PayPerClickFormula and blogs from PPC Super Affiliates like Shoemoney, Amit Mehta, Kris Jones and Geordie Carswell, Andrew Johnson, Shawn Collins’ Affiliate Tip and Aojon’s Affiliate Marketing Blog among others if you want to gain the competitive edge.
3. Knowledge is going to be your biggest weapon and who you know is going to be a big part of it. I like visiting and more importantly, contributing to forums like the WickedFire Affiliate Marketing and 5Star Affiliate Marketing Forum. Once I get a number of projects off the ground, I plan to get more involved in ABestWeb. If you haven’t listened to ABestWeb founder Haiko De Poel’s “Affiliate Marketing Today” podcasts on WebmasterRadio from back in 2004 and 2005, you’re missing out.
4. Join a quality CPA network. Do your homework, check network reputations with other super affiliates. Make sure you have a great affiliate manager supporting you. Besides giving you marketing tips, they can help bump your commissions once you start generating quality leads. I like Copeac (Danielle Iovino), AzoogleAds (Erin Hughes) and MaxBounty (Jessica Dagg). [If you join as part of my affiliate network through my links. Drop me an email and I’ll help you get started].
5. Internet Marketing is more about “Marketing” than merely the “Internet”/tech side of things. You need to be able to establish rapport, build relationships with merchants, affiliate networks and fellow affiliates. If you’re a prima donna, you get relegated to the “has beens” once your numbers drop. Build bridges, create connections to key players in your market. Do whatever you said you’d promise to do. [Many marketers fail on this point…]
6. Constantly add value in whatever you do. If you’re looking for the quick fix, or a shortcut to bumping your affiliate revenue, you can probably game one of the sites out there and get a blip on your commissions for the month, but it’s not likely to be long term. Focus on building a long term business and it’ll continue bringing you income even when you’re not tending to it (which was the original intent of starting a business, wasn’t it?)

Ok, I better add 2 personal “bits” to conform to the meme.

• I grew up mostly in Singapore, which is a small diamond-shaped island about 30 miles long and 50 miles wide. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not in China, but rather in the proximity of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Singapore was a British colony in the 19th and early 20th century, so our education system is British-based. Planet Andrea AKA Andrea Schoemaker remarked that I spoke like Austin Powers the first time she met me.
• I like country cooking. There’s nothing better than biscuits and gravy, grits, hashbrowns, farmers sausage and Texas BBQ for me. [I head over to the local IHOP and Waffle House for some chocolate pancakes whenever I’m in the US]. Mudpies and Cold Stone Creamery ice-cream rank up there too.

The meme stipulates tagging 8 (yes, that’s EIGHT) people to propagate the meme further, though I’ve noticed that most folks have been tagging 4…

My tags go out to:

• Reformed Black Hat Marketer Howie Schwartz
• PPC Super Affiliate Geordie Carswell
• Content Guru Matt Sherborne
• MyBlogLog Community Manager and Fellow Blogger SleepyBlogger Robyn Tippins
• Instigator Blogger Ben Yoskovitz
• Traffic King Ross Goldberg
• Internet Marketer Rachel Rofe
• 5Star Affiliate Linda Buquet

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