Sidebar disaster

After a number of posts to my blog I suddenly saw that the sidebar dropped under the main body and stayed there. Surely I wanted the sidebar to be returned to its previous location: on the right side, at the level of the last post. I tried to turn to the tech support of the Blogger but was sent to register in the Blogger Help Group. After registering, I saw a lot of posts with the same problem. People blame the Beta Blogger and ask for help. So it was clear I had to do something myself. And I found a solution to this problem: the sidebar is now in its place (at least in IE). How did I do this? It is very simple:
1. I went to the Template tab of Blogger
2. Found
div id="sidebar"
text in the HTML code of my blog.
3. Replaced it by
div id="sidebar" style="POSITION: absolute; TOP: 350px"
(350px is not a magic number: play a bit with it – increase or decrease it).

And voila the disaster is gone!

Tecnorati Tags: Blogger HTML
Blogger template

Will Adsense Arbitrage die?

Arbitrage is a nice name for the well known principle: "buy low, sell high". And the “Adsense Arbitrage” (also known as “Google Arbitrage” or “click Arbitrage”) is a realization of this principle in the field of AdWords and Adsense programs. How does it work?

First, one builds a webpage (arbitrage page) that contains keywords that are competitive and highly paid for by Adsense, but usually does not include (or almost does not include) any information (at least, nothing valuable). So such a page consists of nothing but links to contextual ads from AdSense.

Second, the person places an ad in AdWords with a link to that page and sets bid prices for his keywords (that are usually irrelevant to the page content) at the lowest level: $0.01-0.05.

Thus the Advertiser drives cheap traffic to his page in hopes that a surfer, that sees only the links, will click on some. And because of the bid gap he expects to get substantial profit.
Indeed, this “click arbitrage” tactics brought its users tons of money. Not by chance, the authors of books teaching “the method secrets” promise: “Money in 15 Minutes”, “Gold-Filled 24-hour Online ATM”…

But something happened: recently Google has updated its "landing page quality" scoring algorithm. The algorithm itself is a “know-how” of Google, but because of it, the Cost Per Click (the minimum amount to be paid for an ad display) for ads that link to low–quality arbitrage pages leaped to $5-10. This makes it almost impossible to profit from this method. And a lot of “Adsense Arbitrage” players start to loose money. They do not welcome the changes. There is much talk going on about “Google craziness”, “Google shooting itself in the leg” etc.

So, is the method of “Adsense Arbitrage” going to die? Certainly not.
Essentially, Google wishes to see its ads on pages that “provide relevant and substantial content”. So there are ways to return to the previous level of CPC.
One option is to rewrite the existing pages according to Google’s guidelines, say, by adding relevant content.
Another option is to test other cheap traffic sources instead of AdWords, such pay per click engines as Yahoo and MSN.

Tecnorati Tags: Google AdWords AdSens
arbitrage Google arbitrage AdSense arbitrage
click arbitrage

Phishing Scam

A lot has been written about all known kinds of scams including “Phishing”. But criminals keep on throwing their nets and having quite a good take. Therefore we have to continue exposing the phishing attempts. And since “it is better to see once than hear 10 times” I want to share with you 2 emails that I have recently received.

These are really similar letters (in fact it is almost the same one with tiny differences). The letter(s) are as follows:

Subjects:
1. We were unable to authorize charges to the Credit Card Number you provided.
2. Your Amazon Account will be Closed!

“Dear AOL Client, (Dear Client)

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in our network.

We recently noticed the following issue on your account: A recent review of your transaction history determined that we require an update of your account in order to provide you with secure services.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

You must click the link below and fill in the form on the following page to complete the verification process.

http://webmail.aol.com/mail/
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html)

We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account.

Sincerely,
AOL (Amazon) Billing Department”
____________
As said, I clicked the link and saw a “secure” form asking for my name, address, credit card details and so on. ... Read more here

Tecnorati Tags: antiscam phishing