The News Room has introduced the reporting system to let the publishers know how much they have earned using the different media on their websites or blogs:

Currently there is minimum threshold of $50 before a check will be issued to the publisher. The News Room is planing to introduce Pay Pal payments in the near future. Currently all the payments are made bu check in US currency.

You can potentially increase your revenues if other webmasters “mash” the videos they find on your website. This revenue will be reflected in the “referred sites” in the reporting example shown above.

Below is yet another example of the video that you can use on your website and make some extra cash:

If you are trying to monetize your website with contextual advertising chances are that sooner or later you will come across Clicksor. If you do, my advise to STAY AWAY if you do not want to compromise your website!

I have been testing their system on several of my websites for the past few weeks and found some very disturbing things. In particular the strange behavior of certain ads.

Many visitors to one of my website, including myself, were greeted with the following pop-up (you may need to click on the image to see it full size):

Initially I thought that the website was hacked. But after closer examination and testing I have discovered that pop-ups were associated with Clicksor ads. In the process of testing I was able to take few screen shots which may help you do avoid installing unwelcomed software on your computer.

If you click “cancel” button to close the pop-up chances are that the web page that you are looking at will display following (unclickable) ad:

If you decide to close the pop-up with your are very likely to see following pop-ups (click on the image to view it full size):

At this point these pop-ups are just a set of fake cover-up and the Drive Cleaner is most likely installed on your computer. Make sure to run a software that can remove this program.

I have e-mailed Clicksor about the problem few days ago, but still am waiting for an answer. I am not a security expert, and this so called Drive Cleaner may not pose a big security risk to your computer, I am upheld at such a loophole at Clicksor. In my e-mail to Clicksor I have mentioned that these kind of ads compromise both Clicksor and their publishers. So after this post I am canceling account with Clicksor and would advise every one else to stay away from them. I will also forward the link to this post to Clicksor, maybe they will have an explanation about the issue.

If you are using Clicksor ads on your website and are experiencing similar probem, taking down the Clicksor code from you pages will eliminate the problem.

No argument can be made against Andy Beard’s review of Pay Per Post Direct.  Once more, Andy had proven how diligently, exhausting in details and valuable a review can be written. Even though Andy was not paid for his review, I am sure such a review deserves $130 if not more. If you have not read his review, I definitely recommend to read it now.

Unlike Andy, I am not so optimistic about the new product. After having learned about ReviewMe, SponosredReviews and Pay Per Post, I have listed some of my blogs with these services in hopes to make some money. So far using all these services I have earned $101, out of which only $7.50 was earned from Pay Per Post- which coincidently was earned by reviewing one of Andy’s posts at the time of my sign up with Pay Per Post.

The below button, seen on so many blogs, promised to be an opportunity for extremely viral sign ups:

While the quality of my posts did not trigger any sing ups, I am afraid that there was a link missing for this sign up to be smooth. After clicking the famous button, I was invited to create a new account with Pay Per Post- after that I was completely lost. It took me few days to find out my way within the account and to finally figure out how to proceed on reviewing the post that actually sent me to Pay Per Post. This was the only opportunity I have taken with Pay Per Post so far, in part due to the limited opportunities available in the past. Since that time we had PR undate by Google, and now that my blog ranks at a whooping (sarcasm) PR 4, I see more opportunities available so maybe I will also give Pay Per Post another look.

Going back to the sign up process at Pay Per Post. There seem to be at least one referral in my account resulting from “Get Paid To Review My Post” button. I am afraid that the blogger who was referred to Pay Per Post via my blog, may have given up trying to figure out his way on the website and never actually reviewed the post from my blog that referred him there. I think it would be very beneficial if Pay Per Post would take another look at the sign up process- an make sure that a blogger after signing up via these buttons, would be clearly reminded that in order to continue a blogger must first review the post that referred him to Pay Per Post. I am not sure how this can be accomplished. Maybe a flashing alert after signing into Pay Per Post account will do the trick?

One other downside with Pay Per Post that I see, is that a blogger is not allowed to list a second blog until he takes on and fulfills 10 opportunities. I found ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews to be more lenient when it comes to accepting more than one blog authored by the same person.

In conclusion I have to admit that I am excited about Pay Per Post Direct, mainly due to Andy’s excellent review. And if I were Andy, I would ask at least double the price of what he is willing to do reviews for now.

Never before was I welcomed to an affiliate network via a phone call. But there is always a first time. I have just recently joined Linkconnector Affiliate Network. I had no idea what to expect and the only reason I decided to join this network was because of particular merchant who’s services I use extensively and would not mind promoting them to other people- there was no intention on my part to even look for other merchants on Linkconnector, but this has change because of one simple call.

Shortly after submitting online apprication to join the network, I have received and e-mail but also a phone call from John Nardolilli- from Affiliate Relations at Linkconnector. The amazing part of it was that I received his phone call maybe 3 hours after applying to their Network. The purpose of his call was to find out what my interests are, whether or not I am working with other networks, how do I quire traffic to my affiliate websites and so on. The questions you answer when joining just about any network, but it sure makes a world of a difference and way more personal when it is done “Linkconnector” style. I told him straight from the start that I joined the network only because of one merchant, and am not sure if I would ever promote any other programs available at Linkconnector.

So three days later, I find myself logged into my Linkconnector account more then those of CJ or LinkShare. I am a big fan of websites that use merchants datafeeds and currently am using two products to create my datafeeded websites: WordPress Data Feed Import and Affilistore. Linkconnector has nice variety of merchants who offer datafeeds to affiliates. At this time affiliates need to download a “hard copy” of desired datafeeds as CSV file, but Linkconnetor is work on implemeting some solutions where affiliates can access datafeeds via FTP servers and APIs.

I am looking forward to work with Linkconnector and if you are interested you can Join LinkConnector.com Network today.

As of today, when creating or modifying you ads in Yahoo! Sponsored Search, the short description is required. Following e-mail was sent to advertisers today:

Dear Advertiser,

As of today, short descriptions are now required when you create or modify your ads.

To remind you of two important changes:

1. Short descriptions are now required when you create/modify an ad.
Short descriptions continue to have a 70-character limit. Long descriptions continue to have a 190-character limit and are now optional.

2. Yahoo! Search results will display 70-character descriptions in June 2007.
If you only have long descriptions for your ads, the description will be cut off to fit within the 70-character limit at the nearest complete word followed by an ellipsis, when it is displayed on Yahoo!. This may impact the performance of your ads.

It kind of took me by a surprise, since I have been using short description since I have started to advertise with Yahoo! Sponsored Search and had no idea short was optional. In fact I used the same 70 characters description for both. Long description did not really matter, I rarely use “content match” anyway. But I guess the impact can be huge if for example one used 190 characters description and if you have a “call to action” in that description, you may just end up with an ad that has no “call to action”.

On the other note, since complaining about Panama performance few days ago, I have noticed some dramatic improvement in one of my campaigns. When moving to the new platform back in December, one of my campaigns, which was meant to target only US market was receiving traffic from Canada. After adjusting the GEO targeting and completely turning off “content match” across all campaigns, things are slowly returning to were I am making money again.