November 15, 2008

The Big Secret for Adsense Earnings

by Brian Turner

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting!There is a lot of focus on monetising websites via Adsense, but what many people don’t realise is that there are four key factors in developing income from Adsense:

1. Integration
2. Traffic
3. Sector
4. Audience

There is a lot of focus […]



November 14, 2008

Microsoft Office Web: For Windows, Mac and Linux

by Brian Turner

According to a report at Computer Weekly, Microsoft’s up and coming Office Web will be available for users of Macs and Linux machines, as well as ordinary Windows users.
Office Web is Microsoft’s big foray into internet-based services, providing a virtual desktop and storage online.
This is not least in response to other online services, such as […]



Nominet bitch slaps self over domaining

by Brian Turner

Nominet directors are involved in a fight among themselves, resulting in the resignation of non-executive director Angus Hanton.
Interestingly enough, while Angus accuses Nominet - among other things - of not properly looking after uses, Angus, just happens to be a domainer.
If you don’t know, domaining is the process of buying nice sounding domain names, slapping […]



November 13, 2008

Steal my content? I’ll kill your Adsense!

by Brian Turner

Content theft is an annoyance at best, but it’s especially frustrating when people still your content and then place Adsense all over it.
Often it’s automated, but sometimes it looks stolen by human users.
Either way, it’s not invited, it’s unwelcome, it’s illegal, and I’ll get you back for it.
Dealing with stolen content
Sure, I can run […]



6 Big Marketing Mistakes

by Brian Turner

Adam Broitman at iMedia Connection posts a list of 6 Stupid Marketing Mistakes, and I’ll expand on these here - with an adjective swap of “Big” because these can be pretty fundamental.
(As an aside, iMedia Connection is a site covering a range of wider marketing topics, and whether you’ve come to IB as a SEO […]



Google stock sees sharp decline

by Brian Turner

Shares in Google continue to lose ground - GOOG is currently trading at $285/share, which down 35% since October, and almost 60% since the start of the year.
While analysts remain downbeat about Google’s earnings due to the financial crisis and world recession, the US technology sector is taking a beating as leading companies lower revenue […]



Improve code, reduce bandwidth

by Brian Turner

I was struggling with a problem last month - one of my sites was pulling in excessive bandwidth compared to its user base, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I combed the site stats for signs of a bot, and was surprised to find my own server was using up the most bandwidth.
It took a little […]



Pound continues to fall

by Brian Turner

According to the BBC, the value of the pound continues to fall against the dollar.
Which is good news for those earning in USD, but not so good when outsourcing in USD:
Pound’s fall continues to $1.48

The pound has continued to fall against the dollar, hitting its lowest rate in six years against the US currency on […]



November 11, 2008

There are no free permanent links

by Brian Turner

We know that Google is a links driven search engine, therefore some form of link building as part of a wider marketing strategy can reap literal dividends.
So why is it so many people approach link building as something to be suspicious of, and aim to put the least budget into it?
It’s pretty mad really - […]



The Simplest SEO Mistake

by Brian Turner

SEO is a specialist field of internet market that covers a range of issues from relatively basic, to complex.
However, the most common SEO error I see if that of canonical issues.
Remarkably, I’ve seen this happened under a lot of quite experienced SEO.
Which suggests that sometimes its the basics that trip us up more than the […]



The Economies of Email Spam

by Brian Turner

An interesting investigation into the economies of email spam has found that the response rate can be less than 0.00001% - that’s only 1 in 14 million emails resulting in a sale.
However, scalability means that running a large enough network can still result in multi-million pound incomes.
The research was carried out between the University of […]



Tories confused over business tax breaks

by Brian Turner

The Tories have announced their planned tax breaks for business - which essentially boil down to National Insurance incentives for companies taking on people unemployed for over three months.
Political arguments about the suitability of the Tories to govern aside, David Cameron seems to have just sounded confused about what business needs.
In times of stress, business […]



November 10, 2008

Google tanks on low expectations

by Brian Turner

Analysts are losing their optimism for Google, with the GOOG share price now at it’s lowest for three years.
Google has seen its share price tank by 52% over this year - significantly higher than the 41% loss the S&P index has seen over the same period.
While tech stocks have been taking a hit in general, […]



Gordon Brown mulls VAT slash

by Brian Turner

There are few taxes as hated by small businesses as VAT.
Sure, as a limited company we pay corporation tax - but once over the VAT threshold the biggest tax outlay can commonly feel like VAT.
So despite being small, we end up being taxed twice, with the result that our yearly tax bill can end […]



November 9, 2008

Yahoo: we’ve failed, buy us

by Brian Turner

In what is tantamount to an admission of failure, Yahoo is now inviting Microsoft to buy company and its assets:

“To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo,” said [Jerry] Yang.
“I don’t think that is a bad idea at all, at the right price whatever that price is. We’re willing to […]



Silicon Valley employees hold worthless stock

by Brian Turner

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, 80% of Silicon Valley’s top 150 companies have employees whose stock options are now worthless.
Stock options are a way to retain key staff, by the right to buy shares at a preset price, as part of a benefits package.
When the stock market runs well, the […]



November 2, 2008

Microsoft madness: kill MSN Groups

by Brian Turner

Microsoft, in their wisdom, have decided to shut down their long-standing MSN Groups feature, and are asking users to move their groups to Multiply.com before February 9th, when MSN Groups will be shut down.
This was announced just a couple of weeks ago, but it seems that quite a number of MSN users just aren’t aware […]



November 1, 2008

Sinowal super trojan empties half million bank accounts

by Brian Turner

It’s being referred to as a “super trojan”, described by RSA security as “one of the most advanced pieces of crimeware ever created“.
Already nearly three years old, the Sinowal trojan - aka Torpig or Mebroot - is typical in its behaviour of trying open up user computers - but with the added twist of phishing […]



Google’s Halloween Update

by Brian Turner

Yesterday a number of webmasters and business owners got an especially bad Halloween fright from Google - their homepages tanked in the search results.
However, this morning the changes were rolled back, and the sites in question are back in position - for now.
Discussions began on Webmasterworld, and suggestions have been variously made that Google has […]



September 16, 2008

Financial sites only like IE?

by Brian Turner

Bloomberg has become the latest site in the financial sector which doesn’t like browsers outside of IE.
At present, any attempt to access Bloomberg.com in Mozilla Firefox 2 results in a blank white page.
It looks like this is probably due to the redirects for its advertising section not being compatible for Firefox.
It’s not the first […]



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