Archive for September, 2008

AdSenseLog 5.1.0 released

Monday, September 29th, 2008

AdSenseLog 5.1.0 was just released. This new version includes new ‘total’ reports. These reports combine all of the three AdSense products - Content, Search and Feeds. This means you can now view reports with your total eranings - whether in graphs or tables. We also added the reports split by product. So you can see how your earnings on feeds compare to your earnings on seach, etc.

The new version can be downloaded here.

AdSense split-testing (a/b testing)

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

One of the easiest ways to increase your AdSense earnings is to optimize your page ads.

Basically you can try different ad sizes, colors, types, and location. Obviously you can also try different ad providers, not just AdSense.

The best way to see which is the best combination is to do split-testing (sometimes called a/b testing). Split testing means that you keep changing between combinations - usually with a simple ‘random’ way (or a round-robin). This means that the next visitor will get ad type 1, and the one after that will get ad type 2, and so on. This is better than changing the ads once per day, or a week, because it will be very difficult to find out if the performance is indeed better in one combination over the other - maybe the traffic profile changed over the days/weeks? (for example, the day of the week makes a lot of impact, and the traffic source is also important).

So making the combinations change ALL the time makes the test more reliable.

Following the results in AdSenseLog is easy - you can simply add a custom table report with all the combination channels, and see the difference. Obviously you should wait a little bit till you have enough traffic… otherwise the stats might not be relevant.

If you want to read some more about split-testing, see this post in ProBlogger.

alltop

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Alltop just accepted both OLED-Info and MRAM-Info as news sources for their tech site. The site is simple - it includes several (too many?) blogs on a certain subject (like technology, in this example). It’s by the guys behind truemors (somehow connected to Guy Kawasaki).

Anyway if you have a good-quality blog, you can ask them to consider it for inclusion (everything there is hand-picked). Don’t expect a lot of traffic, especially if you’re down at the bottom of the list…

Distributing your content or services

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

I believe that the internet is currently undergoing an interesting shift of focus. There are so many web sites and services, that people are losing their patience. Establishing your web site as a site that people will visit frequently is getting harder every day. Many web publishers tend to rely on Google Search for traffic…

But today there are platforms available that allow you to distribute your content or application outside of your own site. Those platforms include Widgets (of many kinds), social applications (such as the Facebook platform), toolbars, open APIs, and more.

Recently we have done quite a bit of work on those platforms -

  • A few weeks ago we released the Tao Te Ching widget - you can easily add this fun and free widget to your blog or site and personalized page (iGoogle/Netvibes), and get daily quotes of Chinese wisdom.
  • We are working towards an AdSense API, currently in first beta testing.
  • We have several toolbars available, including the AdSense toolbar. This toolbar includes a small web application - your AdSense stats built right into the toolbar, and it’s getting quite popular.
  • We have written the TripTouch travel widget - get local events, restaurants, travel information, travelers, attractions, and more. This widget is available for Netvibes (native UWA code) and iGoogle (native iGoogle code).
  • Also for TripTouch, we released the Facebook TripRecord application - which lets you state the countries you have visited, and check out where your friends have been.

We areĀ  happy to offer our development services for web publishers who want to distribute their content or services - If you need a widget or toolbar application, please keep Metalgrass software in mind - I’m sure we can do a great job for you.

AdSenseLog 5.0.0 released

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

We’re happy to announce the release of AdSenseLog 5.0.0. This new version includes support for AdSense for Feeds data, along with other minor bug fixes. You can download it here.

We have also raised the price to 69.95$… This is to reflect the lower US$ rates, and of course the amount of work still invested in AdSenseLog - to keep it updated and include new features. People who purchase get a year of free updates, and also discount for later updates.

AdSense Toolbar v1.1 released

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

We have just released a new version of the AdSense Toolbar.

We have added support for Feed ads, a new AdSense feature. The toolbar will auto-update for all users that already installed.

Tao Te Ching widget

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

We have released a new widget for sites, blogs or personalized pages (iGoogle, Netvibes, etc.). This widget simply displays the daily quote from the Tao Te Ching book. The widget was developed for the iGoogle platform and then imported into Widgetbox to enable more distribution options.