It’s now offical – Google has integrated Adsense into Analytics. They are rolling this out to publishers now.

And now, we wait…

Karteset 2.1.1 was just released – a minor bug fix where certain cards caused the program to crash.

AdSense alternatives
Most publishers find that AdSense is the easiest and best way to monetize their site. However there are some alternatives today, that are well worth checking out. Two easy to use ones are Chitika, and WidgetBucks. Affiliate networks usually require more ‘work’ – you have to manually choose products, but if you find the right ones for your audience, it might be great. CJ is probably the best known network, and we recommend that you also try PepperJam network which is getting some traction. Finally you might want to check our RevResponse – which is rather unique. These guys offer a choice of online magazines for your readers, within a nice-looking and easy to use banner.

Getting ready for the recession… get cheaper hosting
Most people agree that soon we’ll have some hard times ahead of us. Now is a great time to get ready, and lower your operation costs. One of those is hosting. You might find that switching web hosts might be a good idea (or perhaps talking to your existing one and lowering your cost). We currently use HostGator, which offer cheap hosting, have great support, and they are even ‘green’ which is always a plus.

The new version (5.2.0) adds a new type of emails – HTML mails that include more statistics and even some trend graphs – better than the simple text ones we had so far (don’t worry – you can still get the old mails, or even both).

We have also added small banner ads to the ‘free’ and unregistered version…

Get the new version here

Google’s official AdSense blog (Inside AdSense) posted about the delays in AdSense stats, and GASS.

GASS stands for “Google AdSense Stats Syndrome” – which means that you just have to check your AdSense stats, all the time… Refreshing again and again to see if you earned some more money since the last check.

The first reason to make AdSenseLog was to make these checks easier, and have some software to do it automatically. Since then we added many more tracking and analyzing tools – although one of the major reasons to use the software is to easily stay updated and monitor your account all the time.

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.

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 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…

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 are  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.

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.