Pay Per Action: Pay to Google When Your Product Sold

In an attempt to avoid rising cases of click fraud, Google has started accepting sign ups for Pay Per Action (PPA), which is currently in beta stage. This program, as of now, is only for US AdWords advertisers. At time, when the population of cyberworld is increasing very fast, many advertisers seem to have been lured by online media to display their products and services.

With PPA, now advertisers have more funds to allocate for their advt to display among Google custom networks Google custom network reaches a remarkable 64% of unique Internet users around the world।

Unique Reach
Germany 87%
Japan 85%

France 78%

UK 71%

US 67%

Global 64%

What is PPA? How is it different from PPC?

Google’s PPA advertising is a new pricing model that allows advertisers to pay only when specific actions, as defined by advertisers, are performed.

It’s different from PPC (Pay per click)। Under PPC program, a publisher has to pay to Google for every click regardless of any lead generation (conversion rate)। Google simply calculates the amount you bid for any specific keyword/keyphrase on the basis of number of clicks. Even though conversion rate is zero, a publisher has to pay the amount to Google measured on the basis of number of clicks.

Now, Google has come up with a very good option by offering pay per action (PPA), which might provide a sense of relief to many publishers who are incurring loss due to no/less conversion rate.

With PPA (Beta), as an advertiser you define the action, and once your action is performed, you pay for it to Google। Suppose, you define that you’ll pay only when you get leads, you can do the same with PPA. With no leads generated from your advertisement, you are not required to pay anything to Google. Similarly you can define any action, such as, sign up news letter, or anything you like. However, for multiple actions, you have to pay different amounts for each one.

Like PPC, Google has already its own minimum bidding price to begin with for specific keyword/keyphrase. So, determine your amount how much you are willing to pay if your defined action is performed.

In order to know the performance of your defined action, you need to have conversion tracking code, offered by Google once you sign up Google AdWords account. Embed the code into your action confirmation page of your website to track statistics about your defined actions.

Eligibility

PPA is available only for AdWord customers. If you have a valid customer ID (AdWord Account), you can log in here to apply for PPA program. If you don’t have, please sign up first for Google AdWord account.

Google, however, doesn’t take guarantee to approve the invitation of all existing AdWord customers. The right to grant approval for PPA lies only with Google. Since PPA is still in beta stage, you can apply for the same with a ray of hope that your invitation will be accepted if not in a week or two, but surely in near future, as Google says, ‘we will be working hard to make pay-per-action advertising generally available to all AdWords customers in the near future.”

Tips to Create Blog & Podacast for Amateur: Long Live Web 2.0!

Web 2.0 –what is it?

Stephen Abram said in his article published in the ‘Outlook’ that Web 2।0 is about the more human aspects of interactivity on the Web। He says, “It is about conversations, interpersonal networking, personalization and individualism”

The technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 characterizes the social phenomenon of users’ experience of the Web featuring open communication, decentralization of authority, democratization, and freedom to share and re-use Web content.

The emerging technologies, such as, AJAX, RSS, ocial networking software, and API programming (Google maps), wikis, Vblogs, comments functionality, poll creation, P2P communication, slide share, photo sharing (Flickr, Zooomr), streaming media, podcasting and MP3 files, social bookmarking, open source software (OPS), user driven ratings, are some of the finest example of web 2.0.

I’m really impressed with some of the sites, such as, scribd, My Yahoo, web 2.0 search engines, which have all gone a far ahead beyond appreciation. The popularity of these sites is mainly through word of mouth (WoM). In fact, WoM creates wonderful results to subscribe membership.

My intent is to discuss some of these web 2.0 technologies and to see how an amateur can integrate them into his/her daily practice.

Create Blogs in One Minute:

There was no concept of blog until 1997. The term ‘blog’ is a combination of two words –‘web’ and ‘log’. Now, it’s called blog. There were only a few hundred weblogs by 1999. It was almost impossible to track the exact number of blogs earlier. But now, thanks to Technorati.com, it’s possible to track blogs. According to a source, Technorati.com tracks almost 29 million today. You can search any blog in technorati.com. For example, you want to search a blog on web 2.0, just type http://www.technorati.com/blogs/web2.0, you’ll get a list of blogs on the same.

At time when blogging is getting popular, Google offers you a chance to earn money through blog by publishing AdSense. It is believed that Amit Aggrawal earns lakhs of rupees through his blog. You too can become professional blogger if you are a well content planner, and know your targeted community. The content you track should be distinctive, the sort of material that no one else could present more effectively than you. You can also use Google blog search. So study first different blogs and then customize the one for you, and for your targeted blogger groups.

Log on to blogger.com, select a template, and post your articles.

Try by yourself. It’s very easy.

Create MP3 in One Minute (Be a Podcaster):

Podcasts are nothing but digital files you can download from the Web and listen to whenever and wherever you want. Free (or very inexpensive) software makes it easy for computer users to subscribe to regular podcast feeds, download them automatically, and transfer them to a portable device like an iPod for later playback.

Created by very ordinary people, podcasts use RSS technology and can also be described as audio RSS feeds. Because they are feeds, users can subscribe to podcasts and have them downloaded automatically to their computers, just as news aggregators automatically capture RSS feeds. Surely, to receive or download podcasts you do not need an iPod; you can use any MP3 player.

It’s good to be a good listener. But it’s not always good to be a listener all the time. I’ll provide you practical tips on how you can create a podcast in just one minute.

Tips:

1. Have your text contents ready, and upload them to scribd.com
2. Once uploaded, you’ll get options to download in txt, mp3, pdf, and doc.
3. Select MP3, and download your uploaded file.

Your podcast is ready. Try your self. It’s Simple & Easy

If you are interested in searching for podcasting content, take a look at the following specialized search engine. The one I know is Yahoo podcast search. This is an excellent and powerful search engine (still in beta) that will allow you to listen to, search for, and subscribe to the audio content distributed on the Web.

Thoughts Aside

Term web development is broad and is associated with developing a web. Check reviews about web hosting and web design for cheap and quality services. You can improve traffic to your site by search engine optimization technique.

Web 2.0: Myth or Reality!

There are billions of websites competing with each other. If anyone wants to survive ahead of their competitors, they have to keep a good pace with the technological changes. Any website with old rules of web 1.0 business model can’t struggle to survive under new rules of web 2.0.

So, all of us offering online services to various targeted audiences, have to accept the realm of fast changing IT world to capitalize the returns. Relying solely on the old model of online business may nullify our hardcore approach to make our site successful.

There are many sites leveraging web 2.0 to thrive up. You can visit some of them to analyze the growth in Alexa Traffic tool. They are: putvote.com, indiagram, indianbytes humdigg, newscola, rambhai, indiamarks, uhuroo, and list adding on.

Web 2।0 is a realm of today’s Cyber world। Nielson/NetRatings has issued a study showing that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, with MySpace seeing the biggest growth (367% increase) and MSN Spaces (286%) seeing the biggest growth। Furthere data gathered by Hitwise demonstrate the radical growth of a decidedly Web 2।0 socially integrated photo service such as Photobucket diverging from the stagnant market share of a “traditional” online photo site like Kodakgallery.

The Wikipedia’s entry on Web 2।0 is, of course, one of the richest sources of information on the term. MSN’s free online version of the Encarta Encyclopedia, in comparison, doesn’t yet have a Web 2.0 entry. The Geocities vs. MySpace comparison not only demonstrates the commonalities between the Internet of 1996 and 2006, but it also provides a point of departure for understanding the concepts of online presence in the Web 2.0 era. Geocities encouraged us to create our own cities and neighborhoods as points of entry to our personal worlds; MySpace cuts to the chase and enables direct access to the person, as well as access to his or her social world.

Further, there seem to be phenomenal growth of social bookmarking sites, scuh as, digg, reditt, del।icio।us, furl, and list adding on.

A survey was designed by the JISC in October – November 06 and opened on the 1st of December। The survey was closed on the 16th of February 2007. Briefly, we can enumerate the findings of this web 2.0 survey in graph.

The graph (right) shows Overall percentage usage of tools / services across age. View the full report here!

Whether we call the current world 2।0 or world 3.0, there’s no question that the Internet of today will look positively beta to future generations.

Analyzing the current trends, it seems that web 2.0 is coming with lots of promises and expectations. Let’s see how long web 2.0 continues to thrive up!

Going smart with LSI –Hats off to Google

There is a buzz all around the corner about the usage of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) by Google.

Why LSI?

Despite its success, the vector model suffers some serious problems. Unrelated documents may be retrieved simply because terms occur accidentally in it, and on the other hand related documents may be missed because no term in the document occurs in the query (consider synonyms, there exists a study that different people use the same keywords for expressing the same concepts only 20% of the time).

Thus it would be an interesting idea to see whether the retrieval could be based on concepts rather than on terms, by mapping first terms to a "concept space" (and queries as well) and then establish the ranking with respect to similarity within the concept space.

In amateur’s language, the search engines through their vast databases are able to use LSI to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages. LSI tool endeavors to read the semantic map of searchers to display results. Google realized that it needed a better way for its bots to ascertain the true theme of a webpage and that’s what Latent Semantic Indexing is all about.

The above screenshot confirms that Google has started using LSI, although in some areas.

See the red marked circle, which confirms the usage of related words.

Clear Message: Instead of relying heavily on the number of occurrences of a particular keyword on a page to determine what that page is about, write exceptionally a good copy without any follow up of touted piece of prose.

Good news is for those, who always believe in ‘quality writing’. You are soon likely to get advantage to pull traffic with DIY SEO technique. Hats off to Google!
So, take off black hats now! :)

Incorporate Social Media Optimization Tools in Your Marketing Plan

In the face of rising social network sites, and specialty search engines, global search engines seem to be loosing their grounds. Today, users or researchers have more options to search information. I hardly deny the fact that organic SEO still matters for many firms to drive traffic through global search engines, such as, Google, MSN, Yahoo, and many more. However, restricting our efforts to drive traffic mainly through these search engines indicate that we undermine the viability of social sites. In fact, opportunity to get immediate HITS through social sites abounds.

A recent survey by marketing professionals in MarketTools’ Zoomerang division carried out in early November reveals that the early adopters of web 2.0 applications are getting positive results from their marketing effort.

It’s left to time to verify whether web 2.0 will continue to bubble or bust, but as of now it’s the reality, which is gaining momentum. Any trendy business brings windfall profit for those who catch up with the wind. The late adopter simply becomes loser. Before, web 2.0 becomes common for everyone; it’s high time to incorporate social tools in our marketing strategies to drive high traffic immediately.

My belief

Chase your customers wherever they go, and draw their attentions towards your products and services. Today, a big chunk of population spend their time on social network sites, such as, bolt, bebo, gaia online, orkut, facebook, flickr, esnips, myspace, tagged.com, xanga, and the list adding on. Unlike traditional traffic from search engines or Link exchanges, Traffic from social networks tend to be more viral and more targeted since it allows mobility of data and information.

Practical Tips

A few tips which I think may help get immediate hits.

1. Create a blog with exceptionally updated blog including all tools such as RSS feed, feedburner, good images, video files, etc.

2. Research hundreds of social sites, such as, orkut, dodgeball, Friendster, Squidoo, etc., and size up their market to post a link of your website, which brings immediate HITS. Create a community and make your information travel across. For example, esnips.com offers immediate promotion of contents of committed and loyal users. Log on to the site and register to become member. Add valuable contents with a link to promote the site.

Please, click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_sites to view the popular social sites listings in wikipedia. Also, click http://noahfleming.com/private/?p=37 to get some more listings of social sites.

3. People love watching and listening instead of reading lengthy texts. In fact, video is a big hit. So, submit the video clippings to the sites like bliptv, esnips, metacafe, vimeo, imeem, clipshake, vsocial, jumpcut, videobomb, revver, and many more. For me, bliptv is better than youtube in terms of quality and takes less time for buffering in a low speed bandwidth.

Further, do podcasting about the products and services you offer in various user generated sites, such as, switchpod. Simply register yourself and start submitting your audio contents. Click http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcast_Directory.html to see some top podcast directories.

4. Be a good social bookmarker. Submission of web site link to various sites such as, yahoo Myweb, digg, delicious, reditt, furl, blinklist, tecgnocruch, spurl, trailfire, co.mment, newsvine, etc. may help you drive traffic. But make sure to register yourself with different user names and give drooling and existing titles, descriptions, and unique tags while submitting the links to these bookmarking sites.

5. Write exceptionally good articles and submit them in the wikis –wikipedia, wetpaint, jotspot, and PBWiki. If the article gets approved, and published in the sites, you have won a half battle without SEOing because search engines display wiki results on their first page for many key phrases you type on search box. Just like optimizing for the regular search engines, the keywords you choose to tag can make a dramatic difference in the amount of traffic you receive. Technorati is one of the best places to do tag (keyword) research to determine what tags you should use with your own content.

6. Provide ‘submit buttons’ of major social bookmarking sites below your web page. This may help users post the site without any hassle.
7. Try to travel your contents through cross links, embedded codes, RSS feed, and feed burners. Connect your site with each other. Please, click http://www.comagz.com/ and http://www.zimbio.com for your overview.
8. Involve yourself in Q&A sites, such as, http://answers.yahoo.com/,
http://www.answerbag.com, http://www.wondir.com and be active members of discussion forums.

At this point it’s hard to tell which social search engines will emerge as being the top performers. That’s why it is important to get your content in as many web 2.0 locations as possible. The ideal way to increase traffic would be to combine SEO and SMO.

What Is Web 2.0?

What is web 2.0? Why so much hype?
Want to watch practical tutorial on web 2.0? See this video clipping, which will educate you about the second generation technology.

Web 2.0 Enterprise –Trap ‘Long Tail’ Market

Ever since O’Reilly has termed the 2nd generation web as web 2.0, it has got phenomenal publicity for fair reasons. The bourgeoning bookmarking sites and social media networks have been an impetus behind the popularity of web 2.0.

Convergence is a key factor enabling many enterprises to incorporate social tool to find large segment of niche customers, which verifies the ‘Long Tail’ theory of Chris Anderson, the chief editor of ‘The Wired’.

Until web 1.0, search engines played a vital role in helping enterprises find customers, who were looking for their products, but not the mass market. The much potentiality of Internet remained underutilized in so far as the matter of ‘niche audience acquisition’ was concerned. Web 2.0 has come up with a solution for all enterprises –smaller or bigger -to zero in on the large segment of customers.

The belief that there always exists a demand for a product in the mass market finds verification if one looks at the successful business models of the companies like Amazon, and eBay. These companies can hardly deny the fact that the sale of unpopular products is greater than the sale of popular products. Their whopping profit mainly emanating from the mass servicing of the unpopular products corroborates the practical implications of Long Tail.

So how many us are prepared to put venture capital (VC) to build a successful model like Amazon and eBay? Perhaps, many small enterprises, or even bigger one can’t even think of competing with these giants on various reasons - the greatest being the risk factor. Well, if your risk gets insured, you’d like to put your legs ahead, right?

Here is the underlying merit of web 2.0, which provides an equal opportunity to all. The cliché ‘what is shown is sold’ is true especially in an era where you can sell the products through online social networks. And, the Smithian theory of ‘invisible hand’ ensures immediate promotion of the products in-depth of the large segmented

markets.

The ‘Swarm Effect’ created through users’ interaction automatically leads to the promotion of the products with no additional cost involved to drive traffic through search engines.

In order to exploit the mass market, there requires a migration from enterprise 1.0 to enterprise 2.0. Many online businesses are soon realizing the urgency of incorporating web 2.0 tools –user generated contents, blogs, wiki, social computing, etc. -in their business plans so as to reach out to the large masses.

The objective of enterprise 2.0 is crystal clear -serve the masses Free and they’ll serve you better in the long run.

It’s high time to take action towards the migration from web 1.0 to web 2.0 enterprises to tap the mass market for making successful online business models.

Web 2.0 Search: Mind Meets Maths

Move over SEO, SMO has arrived. With Internet users contributing, tagging and ranking content in Web 2.0, search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Altavista have been compelled to re-engineer their algorithms to incorporate social media search. As a result, search engine optimization (SEO) is giving way to social media optimization (SMO).

Before the advent of Web 2.0, Internet users depended heavily on search engines that crawled the web, looked for ‘meta tags’ and threw up results on the basis of ‘key words’ ‘key phrases’ and in-bound and out-bound ‘links’.

This logic gave rise to the burgeoning business of stuffing websites with ‘key words’ and ‘incestuous link-exchange’ alliances with a view to ensuring a good search engine result page. Web 2.0 has changed all this.

With Internet users starting to play key role in generating and ranking content, websites that drew power from stuffed keywords became ‘untouchable’. Search engines were quick to detect this fraudulent way of websites to gain top page rankings and started treating them as ‘spam’. After all, the prime role of search engines is to meet the information needs of Internet users. Realizing that ‘spamming’ was becoming a scourge of the Internet, search engines were compelled to study the behaviour patterns of users.

A close study of user behaviour prompted leading search engines to reformulate their algorithms to incorporate what is known as ‘semantic’ search. The search behaviour of users has become the determining factor for deciding the algorithms of most of the popular search engines. Many global players are trying to incorporate social search in their search tools to drive high traffic. For instance, Yahoo's My Web 2.0 social search service looks at search through an entirely new lens.

Common to all Web search today is emphasis on ‘link analysis’: the more incoming links to a given site, the greater its weight in search results. However, Yahoo's social search has shifted the emphasis to the opinions of a searcher's friends and colleagues from the links of other Web publishers. Similarly, MSN too plans to unveil its social search tool in near future. The popular Wikipedia, which has almost caused the death for Encyclopedia, too is planning to come up with a search engine, ‘wikia search’, that follows the semantic map of user’s behaviour. In the face of rising social searches, what then brings traffic to a website is the focus on long tail keywords, popular tags, and an in-depth research of the behavior of social sites.

It is precisely for this reason that Web 2.0 portals like Digg, Furl, Reditt, and other book-marking sites, which evolve around the concept of ‘semantic search’, are fast gaining popularity.

A social search engine throws up more semantic results because it follows the collective wisdom of Internet users – human intelligence rather than cold mathematical logic.

This has made the task of SEO firms more challenging, as these now need to put in extra efforts to optimize the websites for social search engines as well. The new challenge before SEOs in the Web 2.0 era is how to make the content of websites popular among online communities through social media.

This would entil convergence of the algorithmic search and semantic search.