The last few weeks I’ve been coming across this “Smart Pricing” term quite a lot – people tend to casually toss it into conversations without seeming to feel the need for any further explanation, other than that it’s a Very Bad Thing. I’m not sure if this is:
- to give the impression they know more than they actually do, or
- because it’s so obvious that everyone knows exactly what it’s all about!
Well, I don’t mind admitting that I don’t (or didn’t) have a clue what they were talking about, so I decided to find out.
Is Smart Pricing still relevent?
The first thing that struck me when I did a search for adsense smart pricing is that a lot of the top results seem to date back to 2005, which led me to wonder if this is even relevent anymore! After all, three to four years is a long time in cyberspace.
However, there are plenty of references to it in Google’s AdWords documentation, so one must assume it’s alive and well.
Continue reading ‘Adsense Smart Pricing’
What’s your blog or website worth? The short answer is: it depends who you ask. And of course, no matter what anyone says, it’s only really worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting question in these days of the Credit Crunch.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of blog value calculators out there, offering to give you the crucial figure. So, just for fun, I plugged in my url to see what they have to say about the old hippo:
Continue reading ‘How much is your blog worth?’
Just time for a quick tip today. If you’re using PerformancingAds, it’s essential that you remember to tick the No Follow checkbox in your region settings:
It’s not ticked by default, so it’s up to you to do it for each of your regions. Why?
Continue reading ‘Don’t forget to Nofollow your PerformancingAds’
There’s recently been a small debate about Google’s stance on paid links in the comments section of one of my posts, and whether or not you run the risk of being penalized if you buy or sell links. Mitch helpfully pointed us to an article by Matt Cutts on the subject. In case you don’t know, Matt is a Google policy maker who had a big hand in drafting the original quality guidelines.
I spent an enjoyable afternoon reading that and a few other related articles (and their comments) on Matt’s site and the official Google guidelines to try and clarify exactly what Google’s position is. Needless to say some of the comment exchanges are fairly heated, with a lot of emotion on both sides. This is my understanding of the issues:
Continue reading ‘Does Google penalize paid links?’
Have you ever wondered how to take online payments via your website for your own products and services? Well, there’s an easy way: PayPal. Yes, you can accept donations, payments for products and services, even set up recurring payments and subscriptions. And the good thing is you’re not restricted to buyers who have a PayPal account, because this mechanism allows your customers to pay via debit or credit card if they choose.
There are a number of benefits to using this service:
- Simplicity – PayPal handles all the technical details for you.
- Security – no secure connection required by you – PayPal handles this too.
- Trusted brand – because PayPal is one of the most popular payment methods on eBay, it is a very well-known and trusted service – and trust is vital when payment details are being exchanged online.
- Cost-effective – setting up your own merchant account is expensive and simply not worthwhile unless you have significant turnover. PayPal doesn’t cost you anything until someone buys something, and even then you won’t be paying much more than 3.4%.
So, before this starts to sound any more like an advertorial, I want to show you how easy it is to set up a Donation button to allow your adoring public to shower you with gratuities.
Continue reading ‘Easily take Online Payments with PayPal’
