Fire fox version 2 . Tweak it up baby with this guide.

Folks,
This is a must read for all those firefox fans out there. As you all know fire fox just recently released its version 2 (if you did not know it is high time you get out from under that rock). I just came across this tweaking guide for the browser written by Koroush Ghazi. It is a very well laid out guide. As he calls it it's a true objective TweakGuides tweak guide, and not a gushing ad for a free web browser.

I am was so happy when firefox released it latest version and now I guess with this guide we already have something to play around with the new browser toy for the big boys. Since he has a big intro and all I suggest you start reading from page 6 onwards because the basic tips and tweaks starts from there and the advanced tweaking part starts from page 8.

Digg it or you can go directly to the guide here.

More adsense and other useful tips from the blogosphere.

Yesterday I had posted about adsense tips from the google adsense expert and today I had spent more time at the google adsense blog and I thought I wld share some of the information I found useful. Also at the bottom of the article I have given links to other useful related resources I find useful for people who are planning to make blogging their profession and earn some money out of it with ofcourse the primary focus being on providing people with good articles.

GENERAL ( For any website)

• Try using large Rectangle Ad (336 x 280) or the the 728x90 Leaderboard, 160x600 Wide Skyscraper, and 300x250 Medium Rectangle. Try to pick the three among this which you think would best suit your site.

• Increasing ad unit presence on your site and placing ads 'above the fold' (i.e., the area visible on a page without scrolling down) can enhance the likelihood that people will see and respond to your ads.

• Article based pages are an exception, as placing ads directly below an article can lead to a greater number of readers clicking through.

• Embed the ads. If you wanna know what that means check it out here.

• Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

• Google strongly recommends putting your users first when deciding on ad placement.

• On pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, "What can I do next?" Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them.

Three more tips specific to blogs:-

• Blend your ad units into the background of your blog. Choose a bold color for the ad title to help draw attention to your ads, then make sure that the background and borders of your ads are the same color as the background of the area where the ad is placed.

• In general, wider ad formats tend to be more reader-friendly. Placing an ad unit after the first post will likely catch your readers' attention. Take a look at the Google sample implementations to get some ideas.

• Also, consider placing a Skyscraper (120x600) or vertical link unit on the right side of your blog. If you're using Blogger, you can find instructions on placing AdSense code in your blog's sidebar at blogger.com

The sciencedaily.com website had some great success with adsense and here is how it happened:-

According to Hogan the person who set up the website "It was easy to get started, even with setting up sophisticated ad filtering, but the real value of AdSense was apparent once the ads began running." Using AdSense for content, Hogan matched his own site's color scheme and content, maintaining a presence as a serious science daily. "The ads really match our articles," he says. "For visitors, the AdSense ads are a useful extension of our content. That's what's great about Google AdSense—the ads are appealing and appropriate." Read the article here.


The effectiveness of Hogan's cost-per-click ads on AdSense is four to five times that of the other ad networks.
Based on Google's recommendations and his own testing, he moved ads from the bottom of pages to the directly below articles. Average eCPM immediately jumped by 10 percent.

"AdSense for search performs extremely well. It gives us an exceptional click-through rate of 10 percent and generates 10 to 20 times the clicks of a job search service we've tried," Hogan says. "Plus, by using Google site search, I can now drive traffic to content on ScienceDaily that visitors might not find otherwise."


Content.

But just like google says you should remember that it is the people first and hence the content. And also a lot depends on your website's layout. Basically the ads must blend with your website's design and yet stand out. But if there is no good content it will be of no use. The ads should be an useful extension of the content not the other way round. If you don't have a passion for what you write and say it will certainly show.

If you need some tips about writing you can find some at these folksonomy and problogger pages.

Also at stevepavlina's blog he has written a very big article about how one should approach if you are thinking about making blogging your profession and trying to make some money out of it. You can read the article right here.

As I learn things I would like to share and I hope this helps the people who haven't been able to keep track of this things due to some reason. Also it is always good to go around checking the established websites and blogs and analyse how they have structured it.

Tips from the google Adsense optimization specialist (For those who have missed it).

Even though most of you must have read this in the google adsense blog or at some other blogs, these tips I came across I found to be very informative and wanted to share with some of my readers who might not have come across this.

To start with what amazed me was the story of a website who turned their adsense earnings around from $10/day to $1700/day in a matter of few days just by changing the adsense layout. This goes onto show how choosing the proper lay out and blending it properly to go with the design of the site prompts more visitors to click on them. It is a great psychological factor. The sites name is webelements.com and here is a snap shot of
the site with the adsense layout that revoltionized their adsense earnings. They found success by adding link units to each page of their site, placing Large Rectangles directly before and after their content, and adding a Wide Skycraper to their left sidebar. I guess this site must have already been having a pretty good traffic and just that the visitors were not clicking on the ads since they were poorly placed before the changes they made.

In the words of the google adsense optimization specialist Ivan Heneghan "They were using a 468x60 Banner at the bottom of their pages, but started experimenting with two 300 x 250 Medium Rectangles -- one placed just at the top of their content, and another placed directly under the main content on each page. They also tried using more blended colours. Things went crazy from there and earnings shot up to $700 per day. Finally, they moved one of the 300x250 Rectangles from the top of their page to a location more embedded in their content. After that, earnings went to over $1,700 per day!"

Ivan also gives his top three tips. They are:

1. Use wide ad formats. Many publishers find the 728x90 Leaderboard outperforms the 468x60 banner by about 70%. I particularly recommend using the 728x90 Leaderboard, 160x600 Wide Skyscraper, and 300x250 Medium Rectangle.

2. Embed Google ads in your content, and place Google ads at the end of your articles, news stories and reviews. Placing a 468x60 Banner in the typical slot at the top of page, or a 120x600 Skyscraper along the right-hand side of page, work well for cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) ads. However, for cost-per-click (CPC) contextual advertising, AdSense tends to work best when integrated with your content.

3. Blend your ad colours into your website. After running a test with a bright pink 728x90 Leaderboard on a black background, I learned that complementary colours often work better. Try blending the background and borders of your ads into your site, and use a text colour that stands out but already exists on your site. Blending decreases ad blindness and users are more likely to notice ads that interest them.

Source 1
source 2
Link to google's adsense optimization page.

(I mentioned about this here in my blog for the sake of those readers who might have missed this one and I hope it helps them)

Four more cool websites I like.

Memepool Not the kind of website you would imagine it to be. No graphics but just simple plain text. But then you go there you don't expect to see graphics but real good information. Yes this site is a treasure house for info addicts. Lots and lots of information on various subjects with hundreds of links taking you to almost anything you want to read about right from in depth info and pictures about the flight 77 that hit pentagon to the man gliding without a glider or wings. One might hardly notice the search and archive links on the links to navigate since they are too small and apparently the owners of the site has put in all their focus on gathering information than designing the site. And they have a done a good job on that part.

Avweb This site would be the perfect landing place for the aviation addicts. Well laid out site which is a premier independent aviation news resource. The news section has columns, features, accident reports and special events. The video section is cool too with a video of the week updates. They have set up a special address for the viewers to recommend videos.

Roadsideamerica The site announces "Your Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions". And yes it takes you to some offbeat tourist destinations through their well laid out page.This is an interesting place to check
out some cool destinations that one might not have even thought about. There is a tips section provided by the travellers and by roadsideamerica.com and also guys check out the site of the week section where the spotlight a cool tourist site every week and dig the archives if you are interested to see more. There is a whole lot of info there archived since 2002.

Thecookingschool If you ever wondered what was the recipe to make one of your favorite cookies you can find out the recipes for popular foods such as the Chocolate Chip Cookies, McDonald's Shakes, Nabisco Nilla Burger King and a whole lot more here. There is a search facility to take you to the right table where the
recipe for your favorite snack would be served.

Pandora This is a must be place for any music addicts. Created by the music genome project this is an
amazing site where you can create your own personal radio online that will help you listen to all bands that are very similar to your favorite band using the macromedia flash player. What this player offers is not just play the music from the genre of your favorite band but infact it looks for songs and kind of bands that are very similar to your favorite band or songs. To start with just type in the name of your favorite band and the player will look up all bands in the same genre. And you don't have to wait for the song because the skip option immediately takes you to the next song and you can rate the songs or deleted it and thus build a good radio for yourself. You can even email the radio a friend once you created your station. And moreover it gives you the info about the music and why it played that particular song. For that just put your cursor over the label of the song that is playing and choose menu by clicking on the up arrow. And you can always delete the station or create a new one. click on the guide us button on the player if you need to know more.This is more or less like having a personal DJ who instead of talking just concentrates on bringing up the music you want. Now all you gotta do is turn up your speakers and throw the party.

More pixels making money!

Yesterday I had posted an article about the unique ideas and how it has opened up the way to materialize many a dreams through the internet. I got comment a from an anonymous person introducing me to his new website and asking me how I feel about it. His idea is about taking up from where Alex of the milliondollarhomepage.com has left off. Mr.anonymous ( at least you should have left your name) even though has taken the original idea from Alex has added a twist to it. This time it is the video instead of banner ads.

I went and checked the anonymous person's website. It is called itsyourstage.com. Even though the idea is not unique i feel the approach is. He is selling a million pixels for 10 cents/pixel to slot your videos linked through youtube for promotional purposes. At 10 cents/pixel even though it won't give him a million dollar it would give him $100,000.Already there are two people who have bought 700 pixels. How well it would succeed depends on how uniquely he promotes his site.

And i have no idea as to how many copy cat pixel sites are out there competing. The more it crops up the more it will lead to the public's interest getting weaned. Well this kind of things might get noticed but unique and original concepts are the only thing that is really gonna make one stand out. But on a different note I should say that not every product that in the market was an original idea or invention of one person. And many caught on to that idea or invention with their own unique approach and promtion and branding and have built empires. Everytime we think of a television we don't think of the inventor J.L.Beird. We only think of the brands that have been successful in building up on that product because they, even though it was the invention of one person, have stamped their unique seals on the product by adding their own innovations and marketing techniques to it. But a product is differnt from an idea. Alex marketed his idea and to build around that idea and give it an unique touch is a much more tough call.

Blazing a trail is unique in itself and if you can uniquely follow that trail there is potential in that too. There are perishable and non perishable original concepts you can build around on. so it is always good to choose the non perishable ones to build up on.

I hope that his dream about selling his million pixels with a twist would become a reality soon and wish him luck. I mean i like the way he has approached the pixel selling idea.But I don't think that there will be another millionare emerging out of a million pixels.

What is up next? Selling cells on your body? Talking about it I heard that one girl on ebay is selling a part of her body (probably a visible part) to be tattooed by the highest bidder to promote their product or website.

What's up next?

Right now it seems pixels are getting hotter than a million dollars.

Unique ideas and money on the internet

Over the past few days I been reading about people who have hit the jackpot through sheer uniqueness in their ideas and some well executed marketing and promotional strategies which in itself is unique. Alex who owns the milliondollarhomepage.com, after hitting the million dollar mark is "already up to something new. Something that could be REALLY big" according to his blog. By now almost everybody know abt the milliondollarpage which started with the somewhat crazy yet convincing idea of having a million pixels on the page being sold for $1/pixel placing ads. The crazy yet unique idea caught like wild fire and coupled with some great marketing strategies where he even employed a PR person in the US once he hit the $4,00,000 mark paid him rich dividends. According to him employing the Imal Wagner as his PR person was one of the best moves he ever made. Some unique ideas well executed was the secret behind his success.

He will be releasing a e-book soon to reveal his secrets behind the success. Alex is only 21 now and is already a marketing genius. I can't wait to see what his next project is gonna be even if he has not revealed anything yet.

The site was even knocked down with a DOS(denial of service) attack before the last 1000 pixels was bought by milliondollarweightloss.com's owner at an e-bay auction for $38,100. The only thing the DOS attack did was to get him more press coverage. So ummm crime pays? Yeah i guess in this case it paid the owner of the site well by giving him some free press coverage. And to whoever did that attack I have only one thing to say...focus that energy on creativity and uniqueness.

A lot of pixel-copy cat sites has sprung up trying to emulate his success but if you are not unique and don't have something to sell for urself people are not gonna sit back and take notice. In Alex's own words "no other individual will become rich from a Million Dollar Homepage copycat site. Do something different!"
And talking about doing something different..how can I not include Eric Bauman the dude who has made millions by posting other people's homemade grossout videos to his Web site. It is said that he has not spent a single money on direct advertising and yet he gets an estimated 1.2 million hits a day. According to wired.com's article about him he even has a pact to bring ebaum's content to cell phones. His annual ad revenue over 2005 was $10 million. Talk about the potential about earning revenue just through ads and this one shows how great a potential it is. But it is not been all easy for Eric.

The dude who posts all that funny and gross videos to his site is not always laughing coz he is getting even death threats apart from his site being attacked and his office vandalized. According to wired's article Kevin Flynn and animator is thinking about slapping him with a class action suit for "ripping off his viral ditty". I mean it is not easy to be funny all the time when people say that "Bauman built his empire on stolen goods – snatching obscure media from around the Web, erasing or denying credits, slapping on the eBaum watermark, then selling millions of dollars' worth of ads around the purloined content." But now if someone wants to upload content all submissions must be made through an upload form, which includes a thorough consent-and-release agreement requiring authors to relinquish all rights to their material. In exchange, eBaum's World has begun paying for content.

From what i read, Eric Bauman always had a different take on things even before he started ebaum's and filled it with clips he had gone on to put a bid on a non existent sports car his site through ebay and it helped to mutually promote e-bay and his site. By the way his girl friend is the content manager for the site. Yeah so while we sit in front of the monitor and laugh at the videos he is laughing his way to the bank all coz he started thinking differently and he is only 26.

Basically when you look at it the money is for the idea. These are just plain simple ideas that are just unique but the person had the conviction that it is gonna work and stuck on it like superglue and just went on executing it well. How can one forget David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard, two 20-year-olds in Louisville who started freeweblayouts.net with the idea of giving free weblayouts to the millions of myspace.com's users. I am sure when they started it they must not have even imagined opening a bank a/c but thanks to google's adsense their dream has become their life style now. According to USAtoay.com's article "Google and Yahoo dominate the booming online search advertising business, which is expected to grow to $5.6 billion in 2008, from $2.7 billion in 2004. Profit from search advertising enabled Google to more than double its revenue in 2004, to $3.1 billion." The owners of the freeweblayouts site are supposedly making $100,000 a month.That is what I have been reading.

Marcus Finch of plentyofish.com had an altogether different idea when it came to making money out of the internet. To bring in the millions of souls looking for the better half together..all for free. And most of his revenues come from adsense. He runs it with his wife from his home. And what he makes? A cool $300,000 per month. And he manages to serve 20 million dynamic page views a day on plentyoffish using a single web server and 1 database server. This guy not only knows how to make money by bringing people together but he knows his computers too. He talks about it in his blog.

The owners of the hotornot.com site makes $15,000 a day! I mean a picture rating site making that much money is awesome. Talk about building popularity. All they had to do was drive it by the internet readers who provided all their resources..the pics and the rating. They thought about it and the idea stuck. Wait! the list is not over. Netguru's Matther Daimler is another person that I really appreciate for turning his simple idea of giving the flyers a smooth journey into a website that earns him $10,000 to $20,000 a month. And that is just the money he earns through adsense.

When Matther Daimler, 28, used to be just a traveler he used to look at the better situated traveler and think "He has more legroom. I want that seat next time." From there it just turned into an obsession to find a better seat and to a website where he started to rope in like minded travelers who can get an idea about what seat positions are available and get it through his website. He has now 21 airlines in his website and it has become the gathering place for all those long legged and comfy addicted travelers. His site is now not only about getting the best seat but also about getting the best amenities.

And by owning blogs Jason makes more than a million dollar a year just through adsense. He owns the weblogsinc.com site. You can read an interview with Jason here which would give you some insight into how he went with it.

I mean these are people whose ideas have metamorphosized into million dollar bank accounts and when you think about that you can't stop to think about the guys behind youtube.com Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, whose idea of having a place for people to upload and share their videos with a change using flash players online lead to a $1.5 billion purchase by google and when you realise that the site started operating only in feb 2005 and google bought it for that amount when the site was just over a year old it is just amazing. And how can one forget Tom Anderson who founded myspace.com. An idea of having a social networking site resulting in a purchase for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in July 2005. It is amazing to think that the original myspace.com domain was owned by some other company that provided online storage and file sharing for customers but collapsed due to the slow speed and lack of revenue.

On the other spectrum of the internet there are a group of people making a life through their creativeness and passion to write. Yes blogging is yet another aspect and I will be touching on that in the coming days.
By the way if you need more info on adsense and the related stuffs and how you can wisely use it to bring in some money i suggest you go to Darren't Rowse's blog site problogger where he generously gives you a lot of tips.

There are other bloggers too whom I find useful and I will be talking about them in a later article.
Most of the great marketeers and businessman are made on the streets not on the business schools. But yes if you have the talent the business schools can horn it. But it is the innate passion that distinguishes people. So follow your passion. It's all about the unique creative ideas, passion and executing it well.