tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82778689897308159472024-02-09T01:23:24.894+08:00eHOME BUSINESS WORLD AFFILIATeOnline Business Affiliation Marketing, deals to Market most Home e-biz Programs, Link you Globally to market different Products, Business Process Outsource Campaigns, Agent Partner Programs. Maximize Online Business Profits.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-6395195926814258102007-04-27T17:35:00.000+08:002007-04-27T17:36:50.527+08:00Avoid Pay Per Click Fraud ProblemsOne of the most important Internet marketing tools is PPC advertising. With Yahoo and Google leading the pack, the industry as a whole has grown immensely in the past few years. PriceWaterHouseCoopers reports that in 2004 alone, Internet Advertising brought in an estimated $9 billion dollars. Anybody can use this marketing system that is really quite simple in theory.<br /><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> With PPC advertising you choose "keywords/phrases," then bid how much you'd like to pay for each click. When a searcher goes to a search engine and types in one of your keyphrases, your short text ad appears, and if someone click on it your account is then charged. In a "perfect world" this is the way it would work, but thanks to unscrupulous people, there's a dirty little secret known as "click fraud."<br /><br /> Click fraud is simply the act of clicking on ads for the direct purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is recognized as the biggest problem today in PPC marketing. According to InternetWeek.com, 60% of people surveyed by the "Search Engine Professional Organization" have stated that fraud is a problem when it comes to PPC advertising.<br /><br /> PPC marketing can cost you a lot if you do not administer it right. Bad targeting plus fraud can be a costly problem. The main sources of click fraud are the following four:<br /><br /> <b>1) AdSense Users</b>:<br /> Google Adsense has a program called "Adsense" that pays website owners to run their Adwords ads and compensates them per click. Google does monitor this and it's against their terms of service to click on any of the ads on your own site. If they find a publishers doing this, they will lose their accounts, but some may still be clicking under the radar.<br /><br /> <b>2) Your Own Competitors</b>:<br /> Your competitors could be clicking on your ads over a period of several days in order to deplete your ad budget. This way they neutrilize your advertizing campaigns.<br /><br /> <b>3) Software</b>:<br /> There are those who use automated clicking tools, such as robot programs, to click on PPC listings.<br /><br /> <b>4) Paid Clickers</b>:<br /> In some Asian countries, people are often paid to click on PPC ads for hours. Many don't know why they do it, and don't care. The only important issue is that they will be well rewarded for their efforts. If you do a search on any search engine you'll see plenty of sites offering to hire people for just this purpose. Type in 'earn rupees clicking ads' in Google and you get quite a few leads.<br /><br /> Most PPC networks have measures in place to protect you against click fraud. Yahoo's Overture tracks more than 50 data points, including IP addresses, browser info, users' session info and what they call "pattern recognition." They have a "proprietary system" in place for detecting fraud and a specialized team that monitors things and works with the advertisers to stop it.<br /><br /> Google offers suggestions to avoid click thru fraud, such as "using negative keywords" to keep your ads from showing up for products and services that are unrelated. They also suggest adding tracking url's to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google. If you go through your log files, you'll be able to see your Google traffic at a glance.<br /><br /> If you suspect fraud, Google asks that you contact them right away, because they have a team of researchers that will investigate. They also take action to block future impressions from anyone they identify as committing click fraud. Like Overture, they also have "proprietary technology" that distinguishes between normal clicks and invalid ones. Google never bills you for any "bad clicks" that are caught by their system.<br /><br /> All honest website owners need to be alert to any "suspicious activity" by researching their server logs or stats. If you're experiencing a lot of clicks and no sales you'll also want to take a closer look. You need to watch for any spikes in traffic, usually on one keyword or phrase and coming from only one PPC source. You need to measure and track all of your PPC accounts closely.<br /><br /> A variety of new services have opened recently to help combat the click fraud problem. Some of them also offer web analytic tools that help improve your advertising productivity. You may want to look at these outside services to take care of problems for you. Here are some links:<br /><br /> <b>1) Keyword Max</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.keywordmax.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.KeyWordMax.com</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> Offers up a service called "Click Auditor," which monitors the activity on your PPC accounts and alerts you to any suspicious activity. You can request a free demo at the site.<br /><br /> <b>2) Click Detective</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.clickdetective.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.ClickDetective.com</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> A website monitoring service that uses sophisticated tracking mechanisms to determine whether "visitor behavior" is normal or not. Offering a 15 day free trial. Easy to use, you just copy and paste a snippet of code on your page and add a campaign ID by logging into your account.<br /><br /> <b>3) Click Assurance</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.clickassurance.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.ClickAssurance.com</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> An Internet Security Firm that specializes in click fraud. They will audit your PPC accounts and go after any refunds you are due because of fraud.<br /><br /> <b>4) Nami Media</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.namimedia.com/click_fraud.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.NamiMedia.com</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> Specializes in post-click actions and landing page optimization technologies. Offers to increase sales and give marketers the ability to intelligently define landing pages to achieve business objectives. Works on ASP platform.<br /><br /> <b>5) Who's Clicking Who</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.whosclickingwho.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.WhosClickingWho.com</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> An independent auditing service that tracks individual users for fraud. Can also detect abuse coming from proxy servers. A one month subscription is $79.00, which includes free installation and up to 50,000 transactions per month.<br /><br /> <b>6) ClickLab</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.clicklab.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.ClickLab.com/</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> This service isolates bad clicks with a scorecard based detection system. Pricing starts at $50.00 per month and is based on the number of sites you need to track and their page views.<br /><br /> ClickLab also offers white papers you should download while visiting, get them at the resources section.<br /><br /> <b>7) Tracking ROI</b>:</span> <a href="http://www.trackingroi.com/click_fraud.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">http://www.TrackingROI.com/</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;"><br /> TrackingROI’s Content Personalization System is truly a technological innovation that targets site visitors more closely. This system allows you to segment visitors to your site into groups and then provides personalized content through a Microsoft Word like tool! Your visitors can be segmented based upon each individual campaign. It offers ad tracking, site optimization, as well as click fraud control.<br /><br /><br /> Click fraud isn't going away anytime soon. Most probably, it will get worse before it get's any better. It's up to you as a vigilant website owner to do what you can to keep your PPC advertising costs down. You can't stop it, but with the right tracking in place, it can be managed and controlled, and hopefully kept to a minimum.<br /></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:-1;">Copyright © InternetWorldStats.com</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-58632978863964704452007-03-09T11:54:00.000+08:002007-03-09T12:28:12.475+08:00Google Guy Sergey Brin as The Youngest Rich Man in the WorldThe 100 World's Billionaires, According to Forbes Magazine<br /><br />The ranking of the world's richest people as estimated by Forbes magazine. Listings include rank, name, home country or state, age where known, wealth in billions of dollars and source of the money.<br /><br />Forbes says the research that went into compiling the rankings began in early 2006 and ended on Feb. 9, 2007.<br /><br />But what is surpricing to me is the Two Google Alien Guy namely Sergey Brin and Larry Page with $16.6 each of Wealth solely made from Google. Sergey Brin is now considered as the World Youngest Rich man at the age of 33 followed by his mate Larry to 2nd spot. I might no doubt that by the 4th quarter of this year, this two young man will enventually rise to Top 10. They buying more famous websites from telecom to blogs. I've read rising of countless online millionaires last year just because of Google Adsense mania and it still in demand to the online market.<br /><br />The below is the updated Ranking of the World richest people and Bill Gates is still too young to stay on top of the edge.<br /><br /><br />. William Gates III, Washington, 51, $56, Microsoft<br /><br />2. Warren Buffett, Nebraska, 76, $52, Berkshire Hathaway<br /><br />3. Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico, 67, $49, telecom<br /><br />4. Ingvar Kamprad and family, Sweden, 80, $33, Ikea<br /><br />5. Lakshmi Mittal, India, 56, $32, steel<br /><br />6. Sheldon Adelson, Nevada, 73, $26.5, casinos, hotels<br /><br />7. Bernard Arnault, France, 58, $26, LVMH<br /><br />8. Amancio Ortega, Spain, 71, $24, Zara<br /><br />9. Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong, 78, $23, diversified<br /><br />10. David Thomson and family, Canada, 49, $22, inheritance<br /><br />11. Lawrence Ellison, California, 62, $21.5, Oracle<br /><br />12. Liliane Bettencourt, France, 84, $20.7, L'Oreal<br /><br />13. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, Saudi Arabia, 50, $20.3, investments<br /><br />14. Mukesh Ambani, India, 49, $20.1, petrochemicals<br /><br />15. Karl Albrecht, Germany, 87, $20, Aldi<br /><br />16. Roman Abramovich, Russia, 40, $18.7, oil<br /><br />17. Stefan Persson, Sweden, 59, $18.4, Hennes & Mauritz<br /><br />18. Anil Ambani, India, 47, $18.2, diversified<br /><br />19. Paul Allen, Washington, 54, $18, Microsoft, investments<br /><br />20. Theo Albrecht, Germany, 84, $17.5, Aldi, Trader Joe's<br /><br />21. Azim Premji, India, 61, $17.1, software<br /><br />22. Lee Shau Kee, Hong Kong, 79, $17, real estate<br /><br />23. Jim Walton, Arkansas, 59, $16.8, Wal-Mart<br /><br />24. Christy Walton and family, Wyoming, 52, $16.7, Wal-Mart inheritance<br /><br />24. S. Robson Walton, Arkansas, 63, $16.7, Wal-Mart<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" >26. Sergey Brin, California, 33, $16.6, Google<br /><br />26. Larry Page, California, 34, $16.6, Google</span><br /><br />26. Alice Walton, Texas, 57, $16.6, Wal-Mart<br /><br />29. Helen Walton, Arkansas, 87, $16.4, Wal-Mart<br /><br />30. Michael Dell, Texas, 42, $15.8, Dell<br /><br />31. Steven Ballmer, Washington, 51, $15, Microsoft<br /><br />31. Kirk Kerkorian, California, 89, $15, investments, casinos<br /><br />31. Raymond, Thomas and Walter Kwok, Hong Kong, ages unknown, $15, real estate<br /><br />34. Francois Pinault, France, 70, $14.5, retail<br /><br />35. Suleiman Kerimov, Russia, 41, $14.4, stocks<br /><br />36. Vladimir Lisin, Russia, 50, $14.3, steel<br /><br />37. Jack Taylor and family, Missouri, 84, $13.9, Enterprise Rent-A-Car<br /><br />38. Vladimir Potanin, Russia, 46, $13.5, metals<br /><br />38. Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia, 41, $13.5, metals<br /><br />40. Oleg Deripaska, Russia, 39, $13.3, aluminum<br /><br />40. Michael Otto and family, Germany, 63, $13.3, retail<br /><br />42. Carl Icahn, New York, 71, $13, leveraged buyouts<br /><br />42. Abigail Johnson, Massachusetts, 45, $13, Fidelity<br /><br />44. Adolf Merckle, Germany, 72, $12.8, drugs<br /><br />45. Barbara Cox Anthony, Hawaii, 83, $12.6, Cox Enterprises<br /><br />45. Anne Cox Chambers, Georgia, 87, $12.6, Cox Enterprises<br /><br />45. Mikhail Fridman, Russia, 42, $12.6, oil, banking<br /><br />48. Vagit Alekperov, Russia, 56, $12.4, oil<br /><br />49. Charles Koch, Kansas, 71, $12, oil, commodities<br /><br />49. David Koch, New York, 66, $12, oil, commodities<br /><br />51. Silvio Berlusconi and family, Italy, 70, $11.8, media<br /><br />52. Nasser Al-Kharafi and family, Kuwait, 63, $11.5, construction<br /><br />52. Leonardo Del Vecchio, Italy, 71, $11.5, eyewear<br /><br />54. Alexei Mordashov, Russia, 41, $11.2, steel<br /><br />55. Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor and family, Britain, 55, $11, real estate<br /><br />55. Spiro Latsis and family, Greece, 60, $11, banking<br /><br />55. Birgit Rausing and family, Sweden, 83, $11, packaging<br /><br />58. Forrest Mars Jr., Virginia, 75, $10.5, candy<br /><br />58. Jacqueline Mars, New Jersey, 67, $10.5, candy<br /><br />58. John Mars, Virginia, 70, $10.5, candy<br /><br />61. Viktor Vekselberg, Russia, 49, $10.4, oil, metals<br /><br />62. Serge Dassault and family, France, 81, $10, aviation<br /><br />62. Charles Ergen, Colorado, 54, $10, EchoStar<br /><br />62. Michele Ferrero and family, Italy, 80, $10, chocolates<br /><br />62. Naguib Sawiris, Egypt, 52, $10, telecom<br /><br />62. Kushal Pal Singh, India, 75, $10, real estate<br /><br />62. Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, France, ages unknown, $10, Chanel<br /><br />68. Susanne Klatten, Germany, 44, $9.6, BMW, drugs<br /><br />69. Philip Knight, Oregon, 69, $9.5, Nike<br /><br />69. Sunil Mittal and family, India, 49, $9.5, telecom<br /><br />71. John Kluge, Florida, 92, $9.1, Metromedia<br /><br />71. Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Russia, 58, $9.1, telecom<br /><br />73. Rupert Murdoch, New York, 76, $9, News Corp.<br /><br />73. Hans Rausing, Sweden, 81, $9, packaging<br /><br />73. Reinhold Wurth, Germany, 71, $9, manufacturing<br /><br />76. Ernesto Bertarelli, Switzerland, 41, $8.8, biotech<br /><br />76. Pierre Omidyar, Nevada, 39, $8.8, Ebay<br /><br />78. Maria-Elisabeth and Georg Schaeffler, Germany, ages unknown, $8.7, ball bearings<br /><br />79. Rafael del Pino and family, Spain, 86, $8.6, construction<br /><br />80. Donald Bren, California, 74, $8.5, real estate<br /><br />80. George Kaiser, Oklahoma, 64, $8.5, oil and gas, banking<br /><br />80. George Soros, New York, 76, $8.5, hedge funds<br /><br />83. Nikolai Tsvetkov, Russia, 46, $8.4, oil, banking<br /><br />83. August von Finck, Germany, 77, $8.4, investments<br /><br />85. Dan Duncan, Texas, 74, $8.2, energy<br /><br />86. Mohammed Al Amoudi, Saudi Arabia, 61, $8, oil<br /><br />86. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair and family, United Arab Emirates, 53, $8, banking<br /><br />86. Kumar Birla, India, 39, $8, commodities<br /><br />86. German Khan, Russia, 45, $8, oil, banking<br /><br />86. Iskander Makhmudov, Russia, 43, $8, mining, metals<br /><br />86. Sumner Redstone, California, 83, $8, Viacom<br /><br />86. Shashi and Ravi Ruia, India, ages unknown, $8, diversified<br /><br />93. Philip Anschutz, Colorado, 67, $7.9, investments<br /><br />93. Galen Weston and family, Canada, 66, $7.9, retail<br /><br />95. Enrique Banuelos, Spain, 41, $7.7, real estate<br /><br />96. Stefan Quandt, Germany, 41, $7.6, BMW<br /><br />97. Maan Al-Sanea, Saudi Arabia, 52, $7.5, construction, finance<br /><br />97. Edward Johnson III, Massachusetts, 76, $7.5, Fidelity<br /><br />99. Sulaiman Al Rajhi, Saudi Arabia, 87, $7.4, banking<br /><br />100. Donald Newhouse, New Jersey, 77, $7.3, publishing<br /><br />100. Samuel Newhouse Jr., New York, 79, $7.3, publishingUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-19090147947719608652007-03-05T22:31:00.000+08:002007-03-05T22:35:16.287+08:00Finally Google Bought "YouTube" site<span style="font-weight: bold;">Numbers Out on How Rich TheTuBe Deal Was</span><br />By: Miguel Helft www.nytimes.com<br /><br />Everyone suspected that the investors, founders and early employees of YouTube made tidy sums when it was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock late last year.<br /><br />But until yesterday, few knew just how tidy those sums were. The answer, which Google delivered in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is now in: The sums are big enough to spark a new wave of envy across Silicon Valley.<br /><br />The biggest windfalls went, not surprisingly, to the company’s three founders and to Sequoia Capital, the main financial backer of YouTube, the popular video-sharing site.<br /><br />A founder and YouTube’s chief executive Chad Hurley received 694,087 shares of Google and an additional 41,232 in a trust. Based on Google’s closing price yesterday of $470.01, the shares are worth more than $345 million.<br /><br />Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and an additional 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million.<br /><br />Sequoia Capital XI, the Sequoia fund that invested close to $11.5 million in YouTube from November 2005 to April 2006, was listed as having 941,027 shares, which are valued at more than $442 million.<br /><br />The filing lists a Sequoia Capital XI Principals Fund owning 102,376 shares, valued at more than $48 million, and Sequoia Technology Partners XI with 29,724 shares, valued at nearly $14 million.<br /><br />Sequoia, considered one of the most successful venture capital firms in the country, was also a principal investor in Google.<br /><br />The third founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim, who left the company early on to pursue a graduate degree in computer science, received 137,443 shares worth more than $64 million.<br /><br />In addition, several funds affiliated with Artis Capital Management, a San Francisco hedge fund managed by Stuart L. Peterson that was a co-investor with Sequoia, were listed as having received 176,621 shares, valued at $83 million.<br /><br />When the deal was announced in October, YouTube was less than two years old and had about 70 employees. Several of the early employees are listed in the filing statement as owning thousands of Google shares.<br /><br />The acquisition, the biggest in Google’s history, put the Internet search giant in the leading position in the rapidly growing world of online video. But the acquisition has been clouded by threats that Google could be sued by movie studios and other content owners over the proliferation of copyrighted material on the YouTube site. Just last week, Viacom demanded that Google remove from YouTube more than 100,000 video clips it claimed to own.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-44125338359249650002007-03-05T21:10:00.000+08:002007-03-05T21:11:28.397+08:00Google Adsense Success Stories<div class="entry-body"> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The following is a list of the <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/the-internets-biggest-google-whores/">Internet’s eight biggest Google AdSense Money Makers</a> publishers. I got this from John Chow. His post provides a lot of detail with the list and I will not repeat the details here. It is interesting to see the big winners. Big corporate AdSense publishers like AOL are excluded. These sites all have content that people want and so this serves as a list of the content that people want on the web. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">1: Markus Frind: <a href="http://www.plentyoffish.com/">PlentyOfFish.com</a> - $300,000 per month, the biggest free dating site on the Internet. It has only two employees, as the post said, “Doubts about Makus’s Google earnings were silenced when he posted this $900,000 check from Google. According to Markus’s blog entry, the check represented two months of AdSense earnings.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">2: Kevin Rose: <a href="http://www.digg.com/">Digg.com</a> - $250,000 per month (guess), one of the biggest news sites on the Net, with over 400,000 members and over 200 million page views per month.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">3: <a href="http://www.shoemoney.com/">Jeremy Shoemaker</a> - $140,000 per month, a search engine marketer who knows how to take advantage of both Google AdSense and AdWords and uses hundreds of sites and thousands of domains, unlike all the others, who have one site.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">4: Jason Calacanis: <a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/">Weblogs, Inc</a>. - $120,000 per month (before AOL) as the post said, “Now that AOL controls Weblogs, you can bet it is making a lot more than a measly $120,000 a month.” His work was covered in Business Blogs: a Practical guide, along with two netwrok blogs, <a href="http://office.weblogsinc.com/">The Office Weblog</a> and T<a href="http://tabletpcs.weblogsinc.com/">he Tablet PC Weblog</a> by <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Orchant/">Marc Orchant</a>. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">5: <a href="http://www.freeweblayouts.net/">David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard</a> - $100,000 per month, gives away designs that people can use on MySpace. Not a bad idea.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">6: Tim Carter: <a href="http://www.askthebuilder.com/">AskTheBuilder.com</a> - $30,000 per month, “catering to an avid following of fellow builders on the site.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">7: <a href="http://www.adsense-secrets.com/">Joel Comm</a> - $24,000 per month, get rich quick guru who wrote the best selling e-book, What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">8: Shawn Hogan – <a href="http://www.digitalpoint.com/">DigitalPoint.com</a> $10,000 per month using a unique revenue sharing model that was not detailed on the post.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Here also is a <a href="http://earnmoneyfromblog1.blogspot.com/2007/01/ads-placement-hotspot-from-google.html">Google Ad placement Hotspot diagram</a>. Good luck and maybe you will be on the next list</span></p> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-83279226227095896092007-03-05T19:09:00.000+08:002007-03-05T19:11:24.466+08:00AdSense will fluctuate number of ads in an ad unit if it will make publishers more money<h3><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></h3> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">A new change was added to AdSense tonight, regarding the number of ad appearing in an ad unit. If the AdSense algo believes showing fewer ads is more advantageous to you, it will drop an ad and expand the remaining ads to cover the entire ad unit. So an under-performing or lower paying ad could be removed from an ad unit under this new change.</span></p> <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">To increase monetization on your site and improve the relevance of ads, AdSense now varies the number of text ads that appear in a given ad unit. In cases where we determine that increasing the size of the most relevant ads will improve performance, we'll drop the lowest-performing ad or ads and expand the remaining ones to fill the entire unit. Showing fewer ads works to your advantage, allowing the better-performing ads to draw more user attention and click-throughs. Google AdSense technology will automatically determine the optimal number of ads to display on any page and will only show fewer ads when doing so will make you more money!</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"> https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=22506 </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;">The biggest impact this change will have is to those publishers utilizing images above or beside ad units to draw attention to and showcase the ads. Because the images are generally lined up to appear with each individual ads in an ad unit, this new change will mean that the images no longer line up with the ads, if the number of ads in an ad unit changes.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-80844927485339375552007-03-05T19:02:00.000+08:002007-03-05T19:04:10.074+08:00Interview with the AdSense million dollar man<p><span style="font-size:85%;">When Jason Calacanis <a href="http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000403051129/">wrote in his blog</a> that he was on schedule to make a million dollars with Google AdSense over the next twelve months, he created a phenomenal buzz about the financial possibilities of running AdSense on blogs, as he does on his <a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/">Weblogs Inc. network</a>.</span></p> <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">If back in September when we started playing with Google Adsense someone told me it would turn into a $1M a year business I would have laughed. A million bucks without a sales person? Give me a break! </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;">However, yesterday we broke our $2,100 record with a $2,335 day. That’s an impressive number I know, because if we can take that number to $2,739.72 we’re at—wait for it—$1M a year.</span></p></blockquote> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">I asked Jason if he'd care to answer some questions on how he does it, he graciously did just that, sharing his thoughts, ideas and advice on AdSense.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Why did you decide to try out AdSense back in September?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>We were launching blogs quicker then we could sell advertising, so we figured we could either give the ad space away (like magazines do) or we could try to make a little money from it with 3rd party ad networks like AdSense, Tribal Fusion, Fast Click, and Burst.</em><br /><br /><b>Did you initially place AdSense on all pages, or did you gradually add it over time? Do all pages on Weblogs Inc now run AdSense?</b></span> </p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>We started with a couple of blogs and then quickly put it all over the network. </em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>What single change do you think made the biggest leap in your AdSense income?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>1. Taking off the borders around the advertisement<br />2. Making the links the same color as the links on the blog</em><br /><b> Why did you select the ad unit location that you did? (Curious because it is not generally a high CTR position).</b></span> </p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>We were sold out of leaderboards on our big blogs, so we figured we could slip the thin horizontal banner without it feeling like too much advertising. People tend to like--or not care about--Google Adsense ads. Which is great compared to graphical banners which people sometimes hate.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>How successful have you found rotating the ad unit colors to combat banner blindness?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Never tried that... thanks for the tip!</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>You use channels on your sites, do you also check your channel reports on a regular basis? Have they helped you with making decisions regarding AdSense?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>We do channels for each blog, and now we are doing channels for each position on each blog. This is a lot of work because we have seven positions across 80 blogs. I wish Google Adsense would automatically do reports by format (anyone listening over there?!).</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>How do you balance the user experience versus advertising revenue? Do you deliberately chose the less intrusive AdSense ad formats on Weblogs Inc?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>We don't like to abuse our users. We like to give a lot of content on one page (15 stories), and keep the heavy advertising up top. So, after the first page down your past most of the advertising.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>You mention that your AdSense revenue would be higher if it wasn't for advertising commitments already made on blogs such as Engadget. Is AdSense successful enough that you plan to place AdSense in those more prominent ad spaces when they become available, or is the current secondary placement on those blogs working well enough?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>AdSense doesn't reach the level of display advertising ($3-12 CPM) and it never will--unless Google started selling display advertising! Wait a second... that's a really good idea!</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Do you ever worry about someone attempting to target you for click fraud?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Not at all. Google has the issue totally under control. Besides, the advertisers correct click fraud by lowering the price of each click by what they think the cost of fraud is. So, if people were paying $1 per click, and they thought 5% were fake they would move their bid to .95. This is why the whole issue of click fraud is overblown: the advertisers look at the results and bid accordingly! People who bring up this issue--like the press--don't understand that Google Adword buyers are very, very smart and take into account a certain level of fraud.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Every system has fraud, look at credit cards! Should we stop using credit cards just because there is massive fraud? No, because on a percentage basis it is manageable. There is an acceptable fraud level in any economic system and we balance the freedom of having a credit card with the fact that someone could scam the system.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Do you plan to test Yahoo Publisher Network when it becomes available? What will be your deciding factor when choosing between the two - strictly revenue or something beyond that? What about some of the other contextual ad networks on the market?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>This is all about performance. If Yahoo Publisher Network makes us more money we will give them the inventory. However, we don't have all the time in the world to swap out these networks all day long, so we can't try every ad network out there. </em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>In fact, I've been telling the smaller ad networks that come to us now that they have to give us a "floor CPM." They would pay that floor rate in advance in order for us to even test their network. Out of the 10 ad networks I've told this to 8 think I'm crazy and two are considering doing it. So, I'm making some progress. :-)</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>In another year large publishers with quality products are going to be able to demand a minimum "floor CPM." Some folks might be getting this already. I would love to see Google or Yahoo say "we're gonna pay you at least a .25 CPM for your traffic, or 65% of the value of the clicks--whichever is greater." They could give you a report each month with both results.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>If someone is going to beat Google at this game that is how they will do it, with a guaranteed minimum CPM. If I were trying to beat Google I would do three things: 1. disclose the % of the split, 2. give a floor CPM, and 3. direct sell CPM based advertising on top websites. In other words, add the direct selling that BlogAds or Tribal Fusion does to what Google already does. Then an advertisers could say "I'll pay a $5 CPM for the top leaderboard on your site, and .50 for ever other click you can get on your site."</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>That is the future: blended buys through one ad network.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>I'm sure Google and Yahoo will offer this in the next year.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>What is the best piece of advice you have for a publisher brand new to AdSense? What would you have done differently when you started with AdSense, knowing what you do now.</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>I would have run four ads per page, taken off the borders, and made the links the same color as the links on the blog. I would have also made channels for each position and blog so I could track things better.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>How many times do you login to AdSense a day? Are you a stats junkie who checks every ten minutes? Or do you check only once or twice a day?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>I have about 50 saved Adsense reports in a folder on my Opera browser. Every day I click on it and autoload the 50 pages. I then scan and look for trends. Sometimes I find a CTR spike or an eCPM of note. However, it's pretty steady at this point.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>The best thing you can do to make more money is produce world-class content. That's what I spend my time on: finding people who can make world-class content... and pay them!</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>How successful have the AdSense for Feeds ads in your RSS been? Have you had a problem with readers not wanting ads in their feeds from you?</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Like three folks were upset about RSS ads. Now, we have millions of people coming to our sites every month so we're not going to stop the revenue for three freaks who want free content without advertising (don't we all want that?!?!).</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>If you did a survey and asked people watching Desperate Housewives if they would consider paying to have it without commercials people would say yes. You could ask the same group if they would like to save money by watching the Sopranos for free with ads in it and they would say they would consider it!</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Ads in RSS are no big deal. They are just like banners or text links on a web page. If you produce great content people will deal with the ads, and if you produce really great content a certain percentage of those folks will pay for the content (if you want to go that route). So, it's important that when you're running a business you ignore the freaks and listen to the real fans. Real fans of the site understand you need to make money in order to produce free content, and those real fans even visit the advertisers and buy their products knowing that it will support the product they love.</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Jason will be at <a href="http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/summer05/index.html">Search Engine Strategies</a> next week in San Jose, and will be joining myself on the <a href="http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/summer05/agenda.html#1100-4">Earning from Search & Contextual ads</a> session. You can read a bit more about the session <a href="http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/07/contextual_ad_p.html">here</a>.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Thank you Jason for the interview!</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-2347109272944846002007-03-03T14:53:00.000+08:002007-03-03T14:55:49.393+08:00Tips And Tricks for Adsense Optimization<span style="font-size:85%;">By: http://tipstricks.sinfree.net<br /><br />Webmasters place <em>advertisements</em> on their site to (hopefully!) help their web site visitors find additional information and products that are relevant to their site's theme and therefore what those visitors came to their website looking for. Of course, it also helps if those advertisements also <strong>make money</strong> for the webmaster! Unfortunately, serving advertisements online isn't always easy. Many advertisement companies offering the service of placing ads on our sites have managed to turn the advertisement business into one big mess. Thousands of sites are bogged down with non-relevant pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-ins and banners. What happens to our sites if these advertisements rarely hit their mark? No matter how many banners and pop-ups we show about herbal remedies to our visitors if we run a website about car parts they will not be interested and they will never <strong>click</strong> on those ads. Not only that, but this kind of untargeted advertisement can even have a negative effect on our traffic. Who wants to go to a site that requires us to close pop-ups every minute or for every page we view? In order to have advertisements that are interesting and relevant to our visitors there is now an <strong>special earning money program online</strong> called Google AdSense.<br /><a style="background-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);" href="http://www.google.com/adsense" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google AdSense</a> is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive <a style="background-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);" href="https://adwords.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google AdWords</a> ads on our website's content pages and <strong>earn money</strong>. Since the ads are actually related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll have a way to both monetize and enhance your web page content. The program is free, and <a style="background-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);" href="http://www.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google</a> pays you for <strong>clicks</strong> on the AdWords advertisements on your site. Google offers their <em>AdSense</em> program to just about all website owners. After signing up for the program with Google you receive code to enter on the pages of your site and Google will dynamically generate ads that are relevant to your own web site's content.<br />Whenever a visitor <em>clicks</em> on one of the links in the <strong>AdSense</strong> ad on your site Google credits you with a percentage of <strong>money</strong> that was <strong>paid</strong> by the advertiser for that ad. AdSense also provides us with the option to be selective in which type of ads we want to display on our websites making it possible to send our visitors towards a certain type of products. To make it possible for everyone to integrate AdSense into their sites the program offers a wide variety of settings that allow us to alter the ads appearance. The Google AdSense program is incredibly accurate. By stepping beyond the boundaries of simple <em>keyword</em> matching it has become one of the most prominent tools to display accurate advertisements. A list of <em>keywords</em> is still used as the basis of triggering ads, but complex algorithms now ensure that ads that are not related to your site's theme no longer show up.<br />An AdSense service can be set up within minutes from the comforts of your chair and by providing your website's visitors with a certain amount of directed ads. You can generate anything from a small to a sizeable <strong>income</strong> through the use of AdSense. Many publishers gain their revenue with joining this Adsense.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-64805062714703888402007-03-01T17:46:00.000+08:002007-03-01T18:00:18.596+08:0090/10 Principle That Will Change Your Life<span style="font-family: lucida grande; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);font-family:Comic Sans MS;font-size:100%;color:#004080;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Discover the 90/10 Principle. It will change your life.</span><br /><br />What is the 90/10 Principle?10% of life is made up of what happens to you.90% of life is decided by how you react. What does this mean? We really have no control over 10% of what happens to us. We cannot stop the car from breaking down. The plane will be late arriving, which throws our whole schedule off. A driver may cut us off in traffic. We have no control over this 10%.<br />The other 90% is different. You determine the other 90%. How? By your reaction. You cannot control a red light, but you can control your reaction. Don't let people fool you; YOU can control how you react.<br /><br />Let's use an example.<br /><br />You are eating breakfast with your family. Your daughter knocks over a cup of coffee onto your business shirt. You have no control over what just what happened. What happens when the next will be determined by how you react. You curse. You harshly scold your daughter for knocking the cup over. She breaks down in tears. After scolding her, you turn to your spouse and criticize her for placing the cup too close to the edge of the table. A short verbal battle follows. You storm upstairs and change your shirt. Back downstairs, you find your daughter has been too busy<br />crying to finish breakfast and get ready for school. She misses the bus.<br />Your spouse must leave immediately for work. You rush to the car and drive your daughter to school. Because you are late, you drive 40 miles an hour in a 30 mph speed limit. After a 15-minute delay and throwing $60 traffic fine away, you arrive at school. Your daughter runs into the building without saying goodbye. After arriving at the office 20 minutes late, you find you forgot your briefcase. Your day has started terribly. As it continues, it seems to get worse and worse. You look forward to coming home, When you arrive home, you find a small wedge in your relationship with your spouse and daughter. Why? Because of how you reacted in the morning. Why did you have a bad day?<br /><br />A) Did the coffee cause it? B) Did your daughter cause it?<br />C) Did the policeman cause it? D) Did you cause it?<br /><br />The answer is D.<br /><br />You had no control over what happened with the coffee. How you reacted in those 5 seconds is what caused your bad day. Here is what could have and should have happened. Coffee splashes over you. Your daughter is about to cry. You gently say, "It's ok honey, you just need, to be more careful next time." Grabbing a towel you rush upstairs. After grabbing a new shirt and your briefcase, you come back down in time to look through the window and see your child getting on the bus. She turns and waves. You arrive 5 minutes early and cheerfully greet the staff. Your boss comments on how good the day you are having. Notice the difference? Two different scenarios. Both started the same. Both ended different.Why? Because of how you REACTED. You really do not have any control over 10% of what happens. The other 90% was determined by your reaction.<br /><br />Here are some ways to apply the 90/10 principle.<br /><br />If someone says something negative about you, don't be a sponge.Let the attack roll off like water on glass. You don't have to let the negative comment affect you! React properly and it will not ruin your day. A wrong reaction could result in losing a friend, being fired, getting stressed out etc. How do you react if someone cuts you off in traffic? Do you lose your temper? Pound on the steering wheel? A friend of mine had the steering wheel fall off! Do you curse? Does your blood pressure skyrocket? Do you try and bump them? WHO CARES if you arrive ten seconds later at work? Why let the cars ruin your drive? Remember the 90/10 principle, and do not worry about it. You are told you lost your job. Why lose sleep and get irritated? It will work out. Use your worrying energy and time into finding another job. The plane is late; it is going to mangle your schedule for the day. Why take out your frustration on the flight attendant? She has no control over what is going on. Use your time to study, get to know the other passenger.<br />Why get stressed out? It will just make things worse.<br /><br />Now you know the 90-10 principle. Apply it and you will be amazed at the results. You will lose nothing if you try it. The 90-10 principle is incredible. Very few know and apply this principle. The result? Millions of people are suffering from undeserved stress, trials, problems and heartache.</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >There never seem to be a success in life. Bad days follow bad days. Terrible things seem to be constantly happening. There is constant stress, lack of joy, and broken relationships. Worry consumes time. Anger breaks friendships and life seems dreary and is not enjoyed to<br />the fullest. Friends are lost. Life is a bore and often seems cruel. Does this describe you? If so, do not be discouraged. You can be different!<br /><br />Understand and apply the 90/10 principle.<br /><br />It will change your life.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-28941237348664411832007-03-01T11:11:00.000+08:002007-03-01T11:27:48.967+08:00Tomorrow Can Be Too Late!<tt> If you're mad with someone , and nobody's there to fix the situation... You fix it . Maybe today, that person still wants to be your friend . And if u don't, tomorrow can be too late .<br /><br />If you're in love with somebody , but that person doesn't know... tell her/him. Maybe today, that person is also in love with you . And if you don't say it, tomorrow can be too late .<br /><br />If you still love a person that you think has forgotten you... tell her/him. Maybe that person have always loved you. And if you don't tell her/him today , tomorrow can be too late.<br />If you need a hug of a friend... ask her/him for it.Maybe they need it more than you do. And if you don't ask for it today, tomorrow can be too late.<br /><br />If you really have friends who you appreciate... tell them. Maybe they appreciate you as well. That if you don't and they leave or go far away today , tomorrow can be too late.<br /><br />If you love your parents, and never had the chance to show them... do it Maybe you have them there to show them how you feel. That if you don't and they leave today , then tomorrow can be too late. </tt>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-15155900395575439192007-02-28T14:35:00.000+08:002007-02-28T14:53:29.294+08:00Things That Hallmark Cards Don't Say"My tire was thumping. I thought it was flat, When I looked at the tire...I noticed your cat. Sorry!"<br />"Heard your wife left you, How upset you must be. But don't fret about it...She moved in with me."<br />"Looking back over the years that we've been together,I can't help but wonder..."What the hell was I thinking?"<br />"Congratulations on your wedding day. Too bad no one likes your husband."<br />"How could two people as beautiful as you, Have such an ugly baby?"<br />"I've always wanted to have someone to hold, someone to love. After having met you ..I've changed my mind."<br />"I must admit, you brought Religion into my life.I never believed in Hell until I met you."<br />"As the days go by, I think of how lucky I am... That you're not here to ruin it for me."<br />"Congratulations on your promotion. Before you go...Would you like to take this knife out of my back? You'll probably need it again."<br />"Happy Birthday, Uncle Dad!<br />(Available only in Tennessee, Kentucky & West Virginia)"<br />"Happy birthday! You look great for your age. Almost Lifelike!"<br />"When we were together, you always said you'd die for me. Now that we've broken up, I think it's time you kept your promise."<br />"We have been friends for a very long time ..let's say we stop?"<br />"I'm so miserable without you, it's almost like you're here."<br />"Congratulations on your new bundle of joy. Did you ever find out who the father was?"<br />"Your friends and I wanted to do something special for your birthday. So we're having you put to sleep."<br />"So your daughter's a hooker, and it spoiled your day. Look at the bright side, it's really good pay."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-90088100612882929802007-02-27T14:46:00.000+08:002007-02-27T14:48:26.843+08:00You Have To Know The Truth And Deserve To Be PaidThings are not fair on the Internet.<br /><br />Companies are making tons of money off us left and right. Every time we buy something, watch an ad, even search the Internet, money is getting dealt all around us. And we don¹t see a cent.<br /><br />There is one company out there that wants to change all that. It¹s called AGLOCO (short for ³A Global Community²) and their slogan is ³Get Your Share of the Internet². If we join, they will collect some of the money that usually passes between companies and give that money back to US. After all, we¹re the ones that generated it.<br /><br />When Google launched, a great search for free was a good deal. Now that Google is making over a billion dollars a month off our searches, obviously FREE IS TOO EXPENSIVE.<br /><br />If Google can afford to pay AOL 10 cents per search (which they do), they can afford to pay us the same. AGLOCO want to help us make that happen.<br /><br />So check out AGLOCO and sign-up. If we build the community and refer other members, AGLOCO recognizes that we¹re the ones making them valuable and we make more money. Sign up by clicking this link: <a href="http://www.agloco.com/r/agloXXXX"><span class="ag_k11"><span class="ag_k11"><strong>http://www.agloco.com/r/BBBZ7196</strong></span></span></a>. It has my referral ID in it and I get instant credit. Thanks!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-25884103696766427512007-02-27T10:29:00.000+08:002007-02-27T10:32:07.672+08:00Online Affiliate Program How To Pick The Right OneBy; Lance Brown, http://ezmakedollars.blogspot.com/<br />So you are on a quest to find an internet affiliate program.You like the fact that they handle all the orders,take care of the shipping, and collect payment from the customer.All you do is market your affiliate website and get a cheque from them every month.Nice and simple.The trouble is there is just so many to choose from and they all are boasting loudly.For the most part you have to get past all the advertising which borders on lying and get to the truth behind the company.The following is a list of things to check for so you can make a wise choice.<br /><br />#1 How many years has the company been in business.I wouldn't go near any company that hasn't been around for at least 10 years.Why?Because you may be signing up with a company deep in the red and about to go under.I am ashamed to say it but it has happened to me.All because I didn't check them out thoroughly.I don't understand all this hype about "pre-launch" and "get in now before we launch".To me that just means they are unproven and unstable.<br /><br />#2Personally if you can't pick up the phone and talk directly to Julie or Sally who works in the front office I would run for the hills.Flashing scam bells and whistles should go off in your head if you get an answering machine all the time.Sadly this is all too true on the internet.There should also be a physical address where the main office is that you could drive to one Sunday if you felt like it.<br /><br />#3Just how popular are their products that they market.Stay away from some new thing that the world just can't do without.Chances are the world will do without it and you will left holding the bag of purple widgets you thought everyone would buy.The more products they have the better.They should be selling things that sell well in the real world and are already well established out there.<br /><br />#4 Is the company a member of the Better Business Bureau.The better the reputation they have the better you should feel. I actually know of a program out there right now(which I won't say which one it is to protect the people involved) that people haven't checked out to well because one of the co-founders of the company actually has 42 Better Business Bureau complaints against him resulting from previous scams he had run.This should kill your enthusiasm and you should not be saying things like"maybe he has turned over a new leaf"or "I'll just pretend I didn't know that and carry on in this anyway".It amazes me how people can be duped like this when they ought to just cut their losses and start over.<br /><br />#5How extensive is the back office training.Do you have a mentor who is willing to help you and is his success tied to yours.Fire off a few emails to your future mentor and see if he gives a rip or if he is just trying to sell you something and say goodbye. Personally I like this type of affiliate program because it makes everyone accountable.<br /><br />#6Watch out for affiliate companies that only take one kind of payment.The more kinds of payment they accept the better.Why?Because if that payment processor should decide they don't like XYZ affiliate company (for whatever reason they may have invented) that whole affiliate company will go down with your investment.Personally I don't like companies that won't pay you by a cheque in the mail just because I have seen this very thing happen a few times.<br /><br />#7Your future affiliate program should be a free affiliate program to join but if you do pay something you should also be able to get out after a reasonable amount of time with your money back.Another good thing to look for is a discussion forum where you can login and learn about questions or problems other affiliates are having with the program.This can be very intuitive and give you an inside view before you get too involved.<br /><br />So there you have a few ways to look for an internet affiliate program.<br />As the beatles would say"speaking words of wisdom... let it be".Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-82366871786937904532007-02-21T14:34:00.000+08:002007-02-21T14:36:15.518+08:00How Pay-Per-Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>HOW CLICK FRAUD COULD SWALLOW THE INTERNET<o:p></o:p></strong></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">By: Charles C. Mann<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong><o:p> </o:p><br />Pay-per-click advertising is big, big, big business. So are bogus hits on Internet ads. It's search giants against scam artists in an arms race that could crash the entire online economy.<o:p></o:p></strong></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Stuart Cauff launched</strong> a charter-jet service in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Miami Beach</st1:City></st1:place> back in 2002. Being a 21st-century business, JetNetwork advertised on the Internet, especially on search engines. Anyone who Googled, say, "air charter <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Miami</st1:City></st1:place>" would be greeted with the familiar list of search results and, in a separate place, a plain box of text with a blue hyperlink to JetNetwork's Web site.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p>Search ads were perfect for Cauff's business. His potential customers - a diverse group of celebrities, photojournalists, medical evacuees, and people who just needed to get away from or to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Miami</st1:place></st1:City> in a hurry - were scattered across the country. To reach this audience with traditional advertising, he would have had to buy time on scores of television and radio stations and space in just as many newspapers and magazines, something that only wealthy, established companies could afford. Even if Cauff could pay for the ads, the vast majority of people exposed to them wouldn't care about charter jets, so most of his money would be wasted. But with search-based ads, JetNetwork's name would appear, at least in theory, only before people who were actually interested in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Miami</st1:place></st1:City> charter flights.</p> <p>Still, the ads were expensive. This kind of advertising is known as pay-per-click, because advertisers shell out money to a search engine every time a surfer clicks on their links. The price and placement depend mainly on how much the advertiser wants to bid for the search term - also known as the keyword in ad jargon. As other charter-air companies began PPC advertising, the cost of a click on a top-ranked ad rose to about $10 - in some cases as high as $30 - and there could be hundreds of clicks a month. </p> <p>Which is why Cauff was infuriated when he discovered that up to "40 percent, maybe more" of the clicks on his keyword ads apparently came not from potential customers around the nation but from a single Internet address, one that belonged to a rival based in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:City>. "If we get clicked fraudulently, it uses up our ad budget," he says. Advertisers usually set limits on how much they will spend, and search engines drop ads once they hit that limit. As a result, fraudulent clicking "literally pushes us off the page," Cauff explains. "And then our competition buys in at a lower price when we're not there."</p> <p>Cauff was a victim of "click fraud," the illicit manipulation of keyword-based advertising. In this case, the scam appeared straightforward - one company clicked on a rival's search engine ads to drive up its costs. More complex is a second type of bogus ad click that exploits a second form of PPC advertising: ads fed to Web sites - anything from personal blogs to the sites of major corporations - by search providers like Google, Yahoo!, LookSmart, and, soon, MSN. The search engine indexes the content of the Web site and matches it with a group of relevant ads. (The most familiar form is Google's AdSense program - the sets of links labeled <em>ads by goooooogle</em> that show up on pages across the Internet. The advertisements that appear on Google itself are part of a separate but related program called AdWords.) Thus, bloggers who write about their air-travel experiences and choose to host such ads may find links on their pages for JetNetworks and its brethren. If a blog visitor clicks on the ad, the search engine splits its fee with the blogger. Although these "affiliate" ads have been hugely successful for advertisers, search engines, and the host Web sites, the system creates an incentive for affiliates to cheat. "All you have to do to make some money is find a way to click the ad sent by Google or Yahoo! to your own Web page," says search marketing consultant Joseph Holcomb. "<em>Click!</em> - there's 10 bucks. <em>Click!</em> - there's 10 bucks. It goes on all the time."</p> <p>Pay-per-click is the fastest-growing segment of all advertising, reports the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Last year, Yahoo! alone ran more than 250 million individual listings, according to Michael Egan, the company's search-marketing director of content strategy. Yahoo! doesn't break out PPC earnings separately in its financial statements, but Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto believes that keyword advertising accounted for about half of the company's estimated $3.7�billion in revenue for 2005. PPC is even more lucrative for Google. According to Noto, Google will end 2005 with $6.1 billion in revenue. About 99 percent of that revenue comes from keyword ads (over 56�percent from AdWords, according to the company's most recent quarterly financial statement, and 43�percent from AdSense), making Google a bigger recipient of ad dollars than any television network or newspaper chain. All of which is to say that little blue text links, a type of advertising that barely existed five years ago, are poised to become the single most important form of marketing in the US - unless click fraud ruins it.</p> <p>If that occurs, the consequences will be felt throughout the Net. By splitting revenue with the sites that host the ads, search engines have become, in effect, the Internet's venture capitalists, funding the content that attracts people to the computer screen. Unlike the VCs who backed the boom-era Internet, search engines now provide revenue to thousands of wildly diverse sites at little up-front cost to them -�PPC advertising is one of the few income sources available to bloggers, for instance. If rampant click fraud overwhelms the system, it will muffle the Internet's fabulous cacophony of voices.</p> <p>The amount of click fraud is difficult to quantify; estimates of the proportion of fake clicks run from as low as 1 in 10 to as high as 1 in 2. In a widely cited recent study, MarketingExperiments.com, an online marketing research outfit, reported that "as much as 29.5�percent" of the clicks in three experimental PPC campaigns on Google were fraudulent. Whatever the exact figure, click fraud has become pervasive, and Google, Yahoo!, and the other major PPC firms have found themselves caught in a game of cat and mouse with its perpetrators. Even as the search engines shore up their defenses, click scammers are becoming more sophisticated, increasingly deploying complex software to disguise the origins of clicks. For now, the search companies and many of their clients maintain that the problem on their networks is under control. But some observers, like Holcomb, believe that click fraud is "a billion-dollar mess" that "has the potential of destroying the entire industry."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Last October,</strong> Boris Elpiner noticed something odd about the Web traffic coming to his company from its PPC ads. As vice president of marketing for RingCentral, an online telecommunications firm in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">San Mateo</st1:City>, <st1:state st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place>, Elpiner is in charge of its affiliate-ad program, which hired Yahoo! to distribute RingCentral's ads onto Web sites with compatible content. Poring over his records, he discovered that a keyword term ("fax software download") that had previously generated almost no clicks was suddenly pulling them in. The total cost to RingCentral for the clicks - $2,500 over about four weeks - "was significant, but not immediately noticeable."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p>Puzzled by the sudden change, Elpiner investigated further. When users visit a Web site, the site server notes the URLs from which they came, the visitors' IP addresses, and other data. Cauff, the charter-jet executive, had used such information to conclude that a competitor was clicking repeatedly on his ads. In this case, Elpiner didn't see an obvious pattern. At the same time, the URLs and IP addresses associated with the suspect clicks "didn't make any sense," he says. "Some of the URLs were error 404 messages, and a lot of the addresses didn't exist." </p> <p>Elpiner took the matter to Yahoo!, whose analysts "figured it all out quickly," he says. One or more Yahoo! affiliates may have generated deceptive clicks on ads served to their sites, using special software to disguise the source. The scammers, he says, "were clever enough not to take a whole lot from [the ads on] one site, but must have been trying to siphon off a little from many advertisers." Yahoo! gave Elpiner full credit. But it did not, as far as he could tell, try to identify the perpetrators. Instead, Yahoo! and other PPC companies are responding to click fraud by deploying new antifraud technologies. For example, Yahoo! analysts have created click fraud filters - algorithmic screens that sift through the sea of incoming clicks to find patterns suggesting fraud and then discard phony clicks without regard to source or motive. </p> <p>Although Google and Yahoo! will not, for security reasons, discuss their methods in detail, the advertisements themselves offer some clues. When affiliates sign up for a box of, say, Google ads, they are essentially hosting within their own Web page a small, separate page with its own, very long URL. According to Joseph Tierney, an Internet marketer in central <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:State> who describes himself as a repentant click frauder, that URL is embedded with a string of information including the time, in milliseconds; the last time the host Web page was updated, also in milliseconds; and other data used to track customer behavior. Analysts could use this material to match the various time stamps against one another, as well as other information provided by server logs. "If someone from such-and-such IP address clicks on the same ad four times in a second," says Elias Levy, a security architect at Symantec, "you can know that at least three of those clicks don't mean anything. It's inconceivable that Google wouldn't be looking at this."</p> <p>The company won't confirm it, though. "We don't discuss our techniques," says Shuman Ghosemajumder, a Google business product strategy manager. Nor will Google disclose whether invalid clicks are common or whether it has "a lot" or "just a few" researchers working on click fraud. "We have recognized invalid clicks as a serious problem from the beginning," Ghosemajumder says. "We've done a good job at being effective with these issues in the past, and we believe we will be effective in the future." In his view, PPC companies should be judged not by whether they have succeeded in stamping out click fraud but by whether their advertisers are satisfied.</p> <p>By that standard, Google and company seem largely successful, at least for now. Google is "very good at detecting multiple clicks from the same computer," says Ash Nallawalla, a former search engine advertising consultant in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Melbourne</st1:City>, <st1:country-region st="on">Australia</st1:country-region></st1:place>. "I am not likely to be charged for any of those clicks, not even the first one." (Marketers contacted by Wired say much the same about Yahoo!) Google typically knocks about a third off the Chase Law Group's bill to discount for click fraud, according to James Butler, IT director for the Los Angeles-based firm, which draws about 60�percent of its clients through Internet advertising. "If we get 500 clicks from their ads," he says, "they bill us for 320 or so." </p> <p>Not every customer comes away satisfied, though. Last summer Nathan McKelvey, president of the rent-a-jet firm CharterAuction.com in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Quincy</st1:City>, <st1:state st="on">Massachusetts</st1:State></st1:place>, discovered an old server in his office with records of every visitor to his company's Web site since 2002. Many of the visits came through Google's and Yahoo!'s PPC programs. But a substantial number of those clicks came from <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Denmark</st1:place></st1:country-region>, a country where CharterAuction did "exactly zero" of its business. When McKelvey asked Google and Yahoo! precisely which clicks he'd been billed for, neither company would tell him. All they'd reveal was how many clicks he'd paid for - not which ones or where they originated. Feeling stonewalled, he had his lawyer send a letter demanding refunds from both. "I have the strong suspicion," he says, "that we spent more than a quarter of a million dollars over a couple years on invalid clicks." According to McKelvey, the two companies have refused to refund his money or divulge further information. Google won't comment on specific actions with clients; Yahoo! says it is investigating the charges.</p> <p>PPC companies may have to become more transparent to retain customer confidence, because click fraud has mutated into new, more complex forms. Responding to the demand for fake clicks, shady firms in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> created click farms, facilities in which marginally employed people click on advertisements round the clock (these seem to have diminished in number or gone underground since 2004, when the <cite>Times of India</cite> revealed their existence). Companies also have begun attacking rivals with "impression fraud" - repeatedly reloading a search engine page where the rival's ad appears, without clicking on it, in order to eliminate it. (Google and Yahoo! routinely take steps to drop nonperforming ads.) In 2004, a programmer named Michael Bradley allegedly wrote click fraud software that disguised clicks' origins. He was arrested by the Secret Service and charged with attempting to extort $100,000 from Google by threatening to release the software on the Internet; a trial is pending. The action did not eliminate this kind of software - it is now readily available on the Net.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Other enterprising scammers manipulate the affiliate system by creating phony blogs - spam blogs, or splogs - that automatically generate content by continually copying bits from other Web sites, mixing in popular keywords, then signing up the resulting m�lange as a Google or Yahoo! affiliate. By using software to link themselves repeatedly to well-known real blogs, splogs trick search engines into listing them high on their results list, thus generating traffic, which in turn generates ad clicks. When unsuspecting Internet searchers visit splogs, they end up clicking the ad links in a frustrated attempt to find some coherent text. Thousands of splogs exist, snarling the blogosphere - and the search engines that index it - in spam. Splogs are too profitable to be readily discouraged. According to RSS to Blog, a Brooklyn-based firm that sells automatic-blog software, sploggers can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month in PPC income, all without any human effort.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p>Probably the most worrisome emerging threat is zombie networks - hordes of linked machines controlled by rogue software. Without their owners' knowledge, these boxes continuously send spam, transmit worms and viruses, participate in denial-of-service attacks, and execute a host of other antisocial tasks. These zombie networks can be enormous. In October, Dutch police charged three young men with controlling an incredible 1.5 million computers. In recent months, the owners of zombie networks have begun turning to click fraud -�with "very effective" results, according to Tierney, the former click frauder. The robot machines create clicks from all around the world at apparently random intervals, making them difficult to identify. </p> <p>But even if zombie click fraud becomes common, the damage can probably be contained as long as its targets are limited to individual advertisers. As Symantec's Levy points out, PPC firms can always give the victims their month's service free - reducing click fraud to a type of overhead, a cost of doing business. But the impact would be much larger, he notes, if someone decided to attack not single companies but the PPC system itself. "It would not be difficult to construct a worm that would go through the Net, clicking on every Google or Yahoo! affiliate ad that it saw," Levy says. "If enough of these were loose, you'd swamp the entire system in noise - millions or even billions of extra clicks. It would be very hard to defend against."</p> <p>Is this likely to happen? "I would like to be able to say that people aren't that stupid or greedy or aggressive or mindless," says Chase Law's <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Butler</st1:place></st1:City>. "But I can't say any of those things. That is definitely the threat - a threat to the entire system by somebody who is just doing it for the hell of it." </p> <p><strong>Type "click fraud"</strong> into a search box and you get links to more than 30 million Web sites and ads for the dozens of companies that have sprung up to help victims track the practice. Down the right-hand side of the page march the ad links: Click Defense, Clicklab, Clickrisk, ClickAssurance, VeriClix, Authenticlick, WhosClickingWho. Stoking advertisers' fears by claiming that the system is drowning in click fraud, these outfits nonetheless solicit clients with … keyword ads on Yahoo! and Google. Indeed, a recent Google search for "click fraud" turned up more than 30 companies. (One outfit, Click Defense, has matched its actions to its words; it sued Google in June, claiming it was getting click-frauded on its "click fraud" keyword ads.)</p> <p>Most of these firms simply provide ways for advertisers to outsource the tedious task of examining internal logs for fraud. Among those trying to do more is Visitlab, in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Santa Cruz</st1:City>, <st1:state st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place>. According to CEO Vikas Kedia, Visitlab's clients channel incoming clicks through his company, which screens them with software tailored for each customer. The software, now in beta, consists of modules that look for telltale behavior - the use of a proxy server, say, or clicks coming from geographic areas that are unlikely to have customers. By amassing data on click behavior and constantly adjusting the software, Kedia believes, it should eventually be possible to detect even a single fraudulent click. "Google could do all this," he says. "But nobody is sure whether to trust them. We're a third party." </p> <p>Bill Gross, the man who invented PPC back in the late '90s when he presided over the startup incubator Idealab, has argued that, despite the cleverness of the various methods used to fight it, click fraud will continue to cast a shadow over PPC advertising. Ultimately, he believes, advertisers will switch to another model, which he calls cost-per-action (others use terms like cost-per-transaction or cost-per-acquisition). Whatever the name, though, advertisers pay only when a click results in a specified action, such as a sale or a Web site registration. Gross started a CPA search engine, Snap.com, in late 2004. When customers enter the term "airline tickets" on the site, ads for airlines appear. But those airlines don't pay Snap a penny until someone who clicks the ad actually buys a ticket. Even if scammers used zombie networks, the system would ignore them, because it charges only for clicks that lead to an action. Snap, still in beta, is not exactly roaring ahead: According to its own statistics, the firm has 2,300 CPA advertisers. That's roughly 2 percent of Google's or Yahoo!'s advertising base.</p> <p>Yahoo! is not looking into cost-per-action, Egan says, because such a system requires businesses to share sensitive cost data with their advertising partners. "We start having to ask how much they've sold and what their margins are," he says. "And if we carry ads for their competitors, we know about them, too. This is not information that businesses like to share with third parties, and for good reason." For the near future, he says, "I don't believe PPC is going to be supplanted, which is one reason we take click spam" - Yahoo!'s preferred term - "so seriously."</p> <p>A possible answer to the privacy worries may be something called Google Wallet. This new initiative, not yet unveiled as of early December, is believed to be a payment scheme that surfers would use, for example, when they bought something after clicking on a Google ad. In theory, at least, Google could process the payment to the advertiser without having to know anything about its costs, profit margins, or other sensitive data. Like Gross's cost-per-action, Google Wallet would be immune to click fraud - zombie machines could click away, and the system would simply ignore them.</p> <p>Nobody thinks that these measures will eliminate click fraud. Keyword advertising - especially on affiliates - will continue to grow, making it an ever more inviting target to the Net's legion of bad actors. All the while, PPC will continue to be vulnerable to attacks by blackhats who want to disrupt the system as a whole, rather than defraud the individual companies that use it. In consequence, PPC providers seem doomed, at least for the near future, to an endless race against the scammers, spammers, and network jammers. "If you'd told me five years ago that I would be talking about 'fake clicks,' I would have told you that you were crazy," says John Slade, who leads Yahoo!'s click protection efforts. "Now it's all I spend my time on." </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-68189309771619246282007-02-19T09:30:00.000+08:002007-02-19T10:01:55.909+08:00What positive thoughts i have today?Well, its seems pretty much grateful for what I've been through during the weekend chores. Sunday mass, Home sweet home where i spent most the time with nephews and families. I'm grateful again today having this wonderful sunny Monday to live as it will be my last. And I'm thankful to God for giving me this wonderful day. Not like any other day, few of colleagues at work are easy and slow this time, so i thought they were still exhausted and stressed from this past Saturday basketball sponsored by the company.<br /><br />I'm thinking of visiting one of my friend after lunch today, she's still waiting of when should i go to visit her at work and make a little chit-chat. She might have good news for me about my other friend i personally attached with. Other than that, I will going to submit an assignment report to my Boss Arlene this afternoon and this need a rush. Tonight, i might as will be going straight home to finish some errands and spent some time with my nephews.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8277868989730815947.post-19036727919446960612007-02-17T14:31:00.000+08:002007-02-17T14:36:54.323+08:00Other Gaius<span style="font-family: georgia;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color:black;">There are three of the name of Gaius mentioned in scripture, probably not three people and a possibility that they are all the same person. The name Gaius means "lord, an earthly man." Paul was at <a href="http://latter-rain.com/background/corinth.htm">Corinth</a> during the writing of the Roman's epistle, a guest of a wealthy friend named Gaius. Paul writes, "Gaius my host, and of the whole church, salutes you. Erastus the chamberlain of the city salutes you, and Quartus a brother." <a href="http://latter-rain.com/earlychurch/tertius.htm">Tertius</a> may be at the home during the writing. Gaius may have been an inhabitant of Corinth and being the host of Paul, Christians may have also have come to his house to assemble. He was baptized by Paul, "I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name."</span></span><p style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:black;"> Gaius was with Paul during the silversmith riots at <a href="http://latter-rain.com/background/ephesus.htm">Ephesus</a> at about 54. That Gaius, man from Macedonia was an evangelist with Paul seems apparent. Paul, with his companions had been so persuasive with the people at Ephesus were turning to Jesus and rejecting the goddess Diana. This angered the silversmiths who made their living in the trading of false idols. The mob seized Gaius and Aristarchus because they could not find Paul, and rushed with them into the theatre. "Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught Gaius and <a href="http://latter-rain.com/earlychurch/arist.htm">Aristarchus</a>, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre. And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not. And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theatre. Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together." </span></span></p><p style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:black;"> Gaius was a man of Derbe, who continued with Paul after this into Asia on his return from Macedonia into Asia, probably to <a href="http://latter-rain.com/Israel/jerus.htm">Jerusalem</a>, that is if it is the same man. The man that was called a Macedonian is now identified as being from Derbe which is not even close. Again, it may be the same man that entertained Paul at Corinth but nothing connects these three except the name. "And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia. And when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece, And there abode three months. And when the Jews laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into Syria, he purposed to return through Macedonia. And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus; and of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus." </span></span></p><p style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:black;"> The apostle <a href="http://latter-rain.com/earlychurch/john.htm">John</a> also addresses Gaius in his third epistle. There is an obvious affection for Gaius by Saint John and says a lot about him in view of his spiritual maturity. He is well beloved and loved in the <a href="http://latter-rain.com/kingdom/truth.htm">truth</a>, he is faithful to the brethren and hospitable. What an honor it is to have been given to be the recipient of a letter devoted to <a href="http://latter-rain.com/theology/love.htm">love</a> from the apostle of love. These words have been taken throughout church history to have been written to us as well. </span></span></p><p style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:black;"> </span></span></p><h3 style="font-family: georgia; font-weight: normal;"><center><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:black;">The letter of John to Gaius.</span></span></center></h3><p style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:black;"> The elder unto the well beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.<br />Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your <a href="http://latter-rain.com/theology/soul.htm">soul</a> prospers.<br />For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, even as you walk in the truth.<br />I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.<br />Beloved, you do faithfully whatsoever you do to the brethren, and to strangers;<br /> Which have borne witness of your <a href="http://latter-rain.com/theology/charity.htm">charity</a> before the church: whom if you bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, you shall do well:<br />Because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles.<br />We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.<br />I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loves to have the pre-eminence among them, receives us not.<br />Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither does he himself receive the brethren, and forbids them that would, and casts them out of the church.<br />Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that does good is of God: but he that does evil has not seen God.<br />Demetrius has good report of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, and we also bear record; and you know that our record is true.<br />I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto you.<br />But I trust I shall shortly see you, and we shall speak face to face. <a href="http://latter-rain.com/genko/peace.htm">Peace</a> be to you. Our friends salute you. Greet the friends by name.<br />[292, BD, 380, Romans 16:23, 1 Corinthians 1:14, Acts 19, 20, III John]</span></span></p>(source: http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/gaius.htm )<br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;font-family:Comic Sans MS;" ><span style="color:#800000;">For some reason, it was fashionable in the 14th century to give personal names to birds. Thus we have the robin, the martin, the jay and the magpie (i.e. Margaret-pie).</span> <span style="color:#800000;">It is interesting to note that the name <i>jay</i> here is probably also the same as in <i>jaywalking</i>. These words come from the proper name <i>Jay</i>, which was considered a common enough name in Britain that it came to be used to refer to provincial folk in general. In the U.S. it referred to unsophisticated rural people, and <i>jaywalking</i></span> was something those country folk did when they got to the city because they weren't accustomed to dealing with traffic back home. <i>Jaywalk</i> is peculiarly American and dates from the early part of the 20th century. Oh, and by the way, <i>Jay</i> as a name comes ultimately from Latin <i>Gaius</i>.<br /><br />(source: http://www.takeourword.com/Issue087.html )<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0