Christian Nielsen's Blog

There are a lot of reasons, but I think the main one is that their basic business model is not what I would call "fair". The idea of an auction-based marketplace seems like it's ok, but when you are dealing with something of a monopoly, it isn't. Sure, you can stop your AdWords account and use other systems and marketing methods, but if you vote with your business choice, will it make any difference to anyone besides you?

The real turning point was a couple of years ago when Google lifted the $100 cap on bidding. Before that you could only bid up to $100 and that kept things somewhat sane although it seems unsane to say that a click that costs you $100 is reasonable. That click could be a bot, a click fraud scammer, a competitor, or just someone who is curious because your ad was written in a way that doesn't discourage idle passers-by. Ka-ching.

The thing that got me started on this hopefully coherent rant, is the realization that while an expensive click may be worth it to the advertiser, the cost to provide that click is very small. We're talking tiny folks. How small? Well, without access to financial data I have to guess, but I would say it makes the soda pop industry look like one with massive overhead.

It's not "fair" because one player selling Yak Butter will be able to pay a fairly small amount of money to reach their customers, while others selling cars, homes, and other high price items have to pay a much higher percentage of their profits to maintain sales levels. Of course, the advertisers COULD band together, declare a periodic "Bid Reset Day" where all bidding is set back to some low level and people can start out-bidding each other again while saving money during the process. Or they could just agree to not bid more than a certain amount and let CTR, Quality Score, and other factors determine whose ads should be ranked higher. But of course people will cheat and raise their bids and not tell anyone.

So I don't have an answer for that. I do have an answer for the problem of click fraud and that is to offer a system when people can "bid" for exposure. You pay a certain amount and your ads are shown for a certain amount of time. If the ads work for you, you may have to bid higher to continue. If they don't work, you lower your bid or stop advertising on that loser site. This is nothing new as a concept but large search companies don't like it because it benefits the advertiser and not them. Why should they put your ad on a site and let you get 100 clicks for $30 when they can give you those 100 clicks for $300 or more?

Look, someone one told me that when I sell a domain name, I should not take into consideration what that person can "afford" to pay. The price should be the price without that consideration. When you sell something for thousands of percentage points over what it costs to produce, is that price gouging or just a nice business to have...?

I just think it's a shame that some of that bloated profit could not be kept in the hands of the advertisers, that's all. Wouldn't that benefit the economy more than going into Google's pockets or those of it's shareholders? I guess it's a matter of your point of view.

We launched a new blog last year and with a modest amount of effort it has become one of the most popular sites for people looking for information on web hosting[Not true!]. As the attached screenshot shows, the traffic has increased every month site the site was launched[That's true]. A Hosting Guide offers information and news on web hosting and domain names. It's actually 4 blogs in one and that may account for some of how well it has done. The blog has attracted more than it's share of spam comments, but you will see that we have approved many of them since they are so funny.

We are quite pleased with our choice of b2evolution as a blog platform. It has worked really well for the most part and they have done many things that make using and managing the blog or blogs pretty easy. The fact that it does so well with generating traffic is a huge plus. And this was done without much optimization. You can specify what keywords will be used in a post filename if you want, but we have not bothered with that much. And of course you can edit the meta tags but we have been a little lazy and worried more about getting content published and not SEO.

From my perspective, b2evolution could become very, very popular if more people knew about it. I would say it is not as newbie friendly as WordPress is and certainly does not have as many plugins and templates. But what it has is really good and I prefer it to WP.

If you get a call from someone that wants to help you fix your computer and run a program called "eventvwr", it may be the following scam:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/314295/windows_event_viewer_phishing_scam_remains_active/

They just called me and didn't realize that I trust no one and especially someone that wants me to type things in for them. It would be quicker if I just put a gun to my head...

If you are on the federal Do-Not-Call list, then report the call to the FTC.

[Update: Found an even better link about this:

nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/21/microsoft-dumps-partner-telephone-support-scam/

Comantra

I have been thinking about using a blog as a way to publish a book. I know I can do this, but I wanted to know who has been doing it already and what resources are out there. I did a little research but didn't find much. While I don't like reading on a computer screen much, it does seem the future of publishing will be in electronic formats more and more. Blog Authors

If you would care to share some information about publishing a novel, publishing a book, or using a blog to publish your writing; please contact me or leave a comment. Thanks!

Oh, if you are wondering why someone would want to do this, the main reason is to self-publish your writing at the lowest possible cost, while still reaching the largest number of people.

If you want to do well with Internet marketing, working with content may be one of the easiest ways to do well. But like so many other things if you are lazy about your work, you may be disappointed. I have had no patience with newspaper sites that whine about their dying industry and how they can't make money. For many, many years they lived large over-charging for advertising like for real estate ads and listings. Even crappy classified ads were much more expensive than I thought they should be. But what else are common folk going to do, advertise on TV?

There may still be time for newspapers to reposition their content for web sites and realize that if they just figure out what is common knowledge for all Internet marketers, they could be getting much more revenue from paid ads that related to the content of the page they are on. If I had been able to work with even a small newspaper site and kept most of the money generated by network ads, not even considering revenue from direct advertisers, I would be able to retire by now after paying for that small country I've had my eye on for some time.

And while I'm on the subject, aren't most newspaper sites just awful? It's almost like the have filters that keep out Internet marketers, application developers, web designers, and usability experts. I hope it doesn't take another full generation for all the news-centric owners and workers to die off and be replaced with web savvy whippersnappers...! If it works that way we may lose many good newspapers as we lost a lot of the good dinosaurs, oh so long ago.

Well, if I'm so smart why aren't I rich? Is that what you are saying? I'll tell you what: If you have content and are not making a lot of money from it, contact me here and I will give you some free consulting to see if we can't get that puppy working for you. If my ideas fail, then you own me nothing. But if I make some money for you then throw me a bone, ok...? And also write up something that describes how I helped you so I can charge big bucks to the next content-poor site owner that happens by.

And if you don't have much access to content but have some active web sites, let me know and maybe I can offer some suggestions how you can us what you have to get more content from what you already have.

I don't often post to other sites, but this one's worth it:
Off the rack gift cards - newest scam target

The article describes how you can buy a gift card from a display at a store and how scammers can steal some or all of the money from the card before the card is used for the first time. It doesn't sound possible, but once you read this you will understand how it can be done. And more scammers than ever may be doing this once the information is out there. The article mentions ways to protect yourself.

We didn't need another "Like" system to lie to us that our opinion means something, or so I thought when I heard about +1. Google now lets you have "managers" for google+ pages and you can transfer page ownership to someone else if they are a manager. I see +1 almost everywhere I see "Like", and sometimes I don't see "Like".

It's clear to me that Google is smarter than FaceBook with this simple move. Why, because if you think about it you will see that now people can easily buy and sell profiles and transfer ownership to others. In short time we will have as robust an industry as we do for xRumer and other such things. But unlike xRumer they may actually provide some tangable benefits to those that use them.

One thing that FaceBook may know that I need to get around asking them: Why are all the ads they now show me in Spanish? Now I am constantly being shown ads for things I don't want in a language I don't understand. Can't they tell that everything else on the pages I view is in English...?

(hris