Adult Entertainment venues are always trying to improve their standing in the community by giving donations to children’s organizations. It would come as no surprise if the club got more money from the league’s little pee-weed fathers than it gave back but others are applauding the outfit’s generosity.

While some snicker at how low parents and the school board are willing to go to get their little guys on the field, the fact remains that without these g-string divas the league may not be getting the attention that it is currently.

And unlike the players from the 2005 movie remake “The Bad News Bears,” these little guys will not be wearing the logo from their strip club sponsor.

But this small donation is not enough to keep this league out of trouble: “To purchase the materials, the league is going to have to raise $65,000. That’s a tall order in an urban town so impoverished that the league offers a payment plan so families can afford the annual $85 per-player fee.” LLL is located in a shady part of L.A. and lacks the funding to truly operate. The beginning of the season kickoff used to include rock music, hot food, an jump houses but this year there were only a few inflated balloons tied to a fence and a first pitch.

Other funding streams like selling grilled and greasy hamburgers ran dry after they were voted down by the school board. Now the league is restricted to selling packaged goods.

So let me get this straight, to advance health concerns, the school board shot down the sale of hotdogs and hamburgers but accepted donations from a strip club?

School administrators failed to comment but they might strike a compromise that would re-open the snack shack. YouthBuild has offered to build the snack shack for free which would enable the LLL to sell hot foods once more.

Hopefully more appropriate sponsors come to the plate.

Sponsorships Work Better Than AdSense

Plenty of ‘make money blogging’ ideas abound on the Internet. They range from contextual advertising to affiliate marketing, to placing ads in RSS feeds.

Just as Web Analytics World marked its first year, Manoj Jasra looked at three approaches that didn’t pay off. He listed Google AdSense first as one of them.

"Embedding AdSense is a simple way to attempt to make money but if you’re not getting tens of thousands of page views, I am not sure if it’s worth it," he said.

A couple of affiliate programs delivered nothing despite a few hundred referrals sent to their sites.

As for Google’s latest purchase, Feedburner, its ad program returned about 22 cents after approximately three months.

In his site’s first birthday post Jasra did credit three sponsors, including his employer, Enquiro, with making the blog’s continued work possible.

It is fairly routine to see prominent blogs with display ads appearing on them.

No vagaries of whether an ad may or may not be clicked; those publishers generally enforce some semblance of ad quality, and most importantly they keep the money in-house.

People get into blogging for the right reasons and get out for the wrong ones.

Getting in should happen because someone is passionate about whatever it is they are going to blog.

Starting one up for purposes of monetizing it with ads is a lot more work than people realize.

But if ads are the motivation, keep in mind something Jasra noted about his search referral traffic.

94 percent came from Google. Knowing how and why Google users arrive at a site has to be the key piece of intelligence a publisher needs to understand these days.

Entrants will be required to submit original concepts for web applications by either designing a graphical user interface or by written explanation, clearly outlining their mashup concept making use of the new APIs.

AOL outlines Web AIM’s features and contest guidelines:

The winning developer will receive $5,000 for his or her efforts. All submissions are due by December 6th, and finalists will be selected on December 13th.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

Here’s the current Pilgrim Partners:

1. TextLinkBrokers – if you looking to buy links – for traffic or SEO – TextLinkBrokers has a vast network of link partners and great pricing.

2. Handy Recovery – if you’re like me, you’ve accidentally lost a file or two in your time. With Handy Recovery, you can recover files lost due to accidental deletion or a virus.

3. GoTo Meeting – I’ve used WebEx many times, but for ease of use and affordability, my vote goes to GoTo Meeting – I use it with all my client consultations!

If you’re looking for any of the above solutions, please consider using a Pilgrim Partner.

We have one spot left. If you’re interested in a 125125 ad on every post page, plus a text ad in our RSS feed, drop me a line.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

The new site will have content supplied by partners such as Allrecipes.com, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Everyday with Rachel Ray and Wolfgang Puck.

According to ClickZ, Yahoo Food launches with sponsors already in place.

The site goes live with Kraft as the premier marketing partner. Additional advertisers include Masterfoods USA, Sheraton Hotels and LendingTree. The food category attracts both endemic advertisers and those outside the category, according to Brown, due to its lifestyle and life-stage relevancy.

Yahoo plans to utilize its behavioral targeting tools to deliver relevant ads.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Funny, I was just filming a little sponsor segment for Seagate when I came across this. I’m sending this to them.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

osCommerce offers free “out-of-the-box” creation of online stores, licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Founded in March 2000, osCommerce has attracted over 10,000 online retailers using the company’s shopping cart software. OsCommerce says its success has been accelerated by a large, active webmaster community, in which members share ideas and assist each other in development.

“ChronoPay strongly supports the osCommerce project,” said Ido Schiferli, ChronoPay’s European Marketing Manager.

“The osCommerce shopping cart combines a rich feature set and powerful online shopping cart functionality, which will allow our store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimal effort and with no software costs, license fees, or limitations involved.

“When combined with the ChronoPay payment module for osCommerce, which is easy to integrate, our merchants are able to rapidly and economically launch their online shops.”

osCommerce’s software uses PHP web scripting language and MySQL database server, which allows it to run on 4.1+ enabled web servers running on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

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It was cool to see some of the contestants wearing the Ask “96″ t-shirts especially as it’s one of my favorite t-shirts. What does “96″ mean? Not wanting to steal Ask’s thunder, but this might help.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

StopBadware.org was spawned by the joint efforts of Harvard Law’s Berkman Center, the Oxford Internet Institute, and Consumer Reports WebWatch as an online support group (they call it a “Neighborhood Watch”)where users can describe problems they’ve had with badware, where downloadable applications are independently evaluated, and objective information is published.Consumer Reports WebWatch, a grant-funded project of Consumers Union, has agreed to a pro-bono role as special consumer adviser.

The website is intended to spotlight the companies that make copious amounts of money by getting Internet users to download malicious spyware, adware and malware programs they don’t want.

The Berkman Center and Oxford Internet Institute hope the initiative will deter companies that produce badware by publishing their names online. At the same time the site is aimed at educating software developers by providing principles they can follow to provide a positive user experience.

Internet users will be able to check to see if programs they want to download are badware and alert others to malicious programs they have encountered. StopBadware.org will also publish short reports on downloads they have identified as badware, as well as more detailed academic studies on the problem of badware.

“Intruders are now in your house without your permission,” said John Palfrey, co-director of StopBadware.org and Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

“They entered through your computer to bombard you with sneaky pop-ups and install tracking software to spy on your every move and steal your most personal information, such as credit card or Social Security numbers, in order to sell that data to a stranger. StopBadware.org will shine a much needed light on the unethical activities of these companies.”

Unlike viruses and worms, badware becomes embedded in a computer by downloading games or software or just by visiting certain websites. According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project, roughly 59 million American adults today have badware on their computers. Problems associated with badware have cost home computer users roughly $3.5 billion in 2003 and 2004 to replace or repair their hardware, according to Consumer Reports.

“WebWatch research shows these and other threats are turning almost a third of U.S. Internet users away from the Web,” said Beau Brendler, director of Consumer Reports WebWatch.

“For the last decade, we have been amazed and delighted by what we can do online. And yet people feel increasingly powerless to stop unscrupulous individuals and companies from infecting their computers with programs that they didn’t request,” said Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s founding fathers and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

According to a recent study from Webroot Software, badware today is a $2 billion-a-year industry.

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