First Step To Fixing The "Smart Pricing" Problem

I've seen some scuttlebut online regarding "Smart Pricing" affecting publisher's and their Adsense income. I've been affected a couple of time from the Smart Pricing problem, and this is my two cents on the deal.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Smart Pricing click here. My quick and nasty explanation is simple. If your Adsense account has sites that recieve alot of traffic that just that does not (or deemed not to) convert well for Adwords advertisers, Google Adsense will start putting cheaper ads on your web site. This is all to protect the Adwords advertisers that spend some bigger bucks for their traffic. Keep in mind that Adwords is Google's bread and butter, so they are trying to protect advertisers as much as possible.

My speculation? We can only speculate how their system of Smart Pricing works, as there are many variables that will effect what the ads placed on your web pages, but I believe it's the following; (in order of importance)

1) Where your traffic is coming from. If the traffic you recieve to your pages is from a high grade source, such as the top of MSN, Yahoo!, or Google search results, Googles algo see this pattern and will award you with better paying ads. On the contrary, if your traffic mostly comes from crappy third tier traffic sources, the ads fed to your pages will pay less. If your traffic is mostly from emails, or forums, perhaps this also effects your Adsense dollars. Speculation yes - but I've tested it and it rings true.

2) Conversions for advertisers. If Adwords advertisers are seeing a high ROI (return on investment) from your traffic, you will be awarded with better paying ads.

3) Your CTR (click through rate) If your Adsense account CTR is higher, I believe the better paying ads will be placed on your pages. BUT only if speculations 1 & 2 are positive as well. If you have crappy traffic that won't convert for the Adwords advertiser, it won't matter what your CTR is - you'll still see low paying ads on your site.

4) My solution? How to keep the high paying Google ads on your site and avoid the Smart Pricing crunch. Work on the three positives above. Try working towards recieving the higher quality traffic, setup your pages for high CTR, and don't display Google Ads on your weaker, more pathetic sites. Use some other sort of monetizing on your lesser sites that get sporatic and fickle traffic. Keep only your premium sites in your Google account. This is also speculation of course, but the above worked for me.

Focus on more quality content and natural linking, to keep the Google bots loving your site(s) or blog(s).

Kenny

New Client's Site Added To Our Directory

Terry and I ;-) just teamed up to help out a new client who has a magnetic jewelry business. This is a thriving business folks. Huge mark-up, and a fantastic product to boot. They sell magnetic bracelets and magnet necklaces mostly, but they also sell chokers and anklets. Terry setup all their Paypal carts, and I focused on the blog itself.

It's such fun helping new businesses get their online start. Everyone get very excited about it, and it's up to the webmasters to follow through on the work. Traffic means money right. You can see their site here:

http://www.magjewl.com

Still have some Google Video to load up for this site.....fun fun!

Cool Blog I Found

Here is a blog I found recently that allows users to make their own posts. Very good idea. It's called Silii, which stands for SAY IT LIKE IT IS.

Users register, login and post their comments on any subject under the sun. There are some cool tutorials for beginners, showing how to register, login, and post.

What I find strange is that Silli is using a Wordpress blogging platform and the back end is customized. They also allow users to use up to 2 outbound links per article. They have administrators moderating at all times apparently.

Pretty smart idea.

-Kenny

My Top 10 “Things I would do differently if I had to start my blog again”

Here is the latest Zulit monster post all about blogging for money. Great for new-comers who want to build a power blog for lasting income.

Basically Terry outlines the 10 things he wishes he had done (and not done) on his first blogs. Invaluable stuff here.

-Kenny

Money Traffic Update

Well....Money Traffic has been up and running for around 2 months. Google did their update and it's presently showing a Google PR of 5. If you don't undertsand Google PR, click here.

Notice how when you include the address www in our domain you see a PR of 5, but when you remove the www you see a PR of 3. This is because other blogs are linking to us using the www in our address.

I'm not much on the PR thing. Don't really care. What I care about is traffic, and our traffic is beginning to climb on it's own now -- without posting on forums and posting at Digg, etc.

If you presently don't have the Google Toolbar, you can download it here -- OR you can use Google's Firefox browser which includes the Google Toolbar.

Blogspot To Be Blocked In India

Well..there goes all our traffic from India to Money Traffic. Read this article. India's government will be blocking all blogspot web addresses; India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites.

www.blogspot.com, www.typepad.com and www.geocities.com are know to be on the list to get whacked. It's a real shame becuase Money Traffic gets alot of hits from our friends in India.

Since private sites will not be blocked, I suggest our visitors living in India bookmark the money traffic blogroll.

-Kenny

Backing Up Your Content

Here is a good comment submitted awhile back. After seeing people lose their blogger accounts, it's timely.

Hi,

I thought of a small addition to your tutorial. When I build a new blogger
blog, I always include an BlogSend Address (located in the Email settings tab).
I do this so that in case my blog is ever deleted or banned for whatever reason,
I at least have all my postings and can quickly rebuild them.

Just something a little extra I do.

-Marcy