Internet Marketing Online - Blog about SEO, PPC and Internet Marketing

Adsense test - blended ads go better than emphasized

I conducted these days a small Adsense test on a couple of my sites in order to find a better color scheme that would ensure me a better CTR. These schemes differs from site to site, but here is the main conclusion after the first stage of the test: blended ads are a lot better than emphasized ones.

On 3 sites i used to have the following color schemes:

Background: white
Title: blue
Url: blue

and i had the following CTR:

Site1: 4.15
Site2: 1.47
Site3: 4.34

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Best myspace blog layouts collection

Millions of people are using Myspace everyday. It seems that in US, everyone has a Myspace account, from politicians to lawn boys, from 80 years old grandpas to primary school kids. And even if Myspace’s traffic has gone a little bit down since last year according to this report from May, it still grabs over 70% of the social neighbourhood traffic in US and a big cut of this market on a global scale, too.

What bothers me is that, even if Myspace is so big, it’s kind of hard to get decent Myspace blog layouts these days. Most of them are just crap, full of sparkling and glittering pictures, moving images, popups, etc. Perhaps that’s what people demand, but come on, how hard can it be to find some good simple Myspace blog layouts?

With this question in mind, we started searching for the Holly grail.

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Online Store CMS - episode 2

After the previous post about an online CMS store, i took some time to search for the best existing software i could use. Here are the best 3 i’ve found, not necessarily in the posted order, with the pros and the cons. And you can read the conclusions at the end.

Joomla + Virtuemart (link)

Joomla has gone a lot better since the last time i wanted to use it, in 2006. This combination allows you to make something more than just a store, as with the help of the various components developed by 3rd parties, you can put together a site with almost everything you want: forum, news section, galleries, community, shop, etc. The code is a lot cleaner, there are fewer bugs, it is a little easier to customize (although you still need to get familiar with its specific coding) and you can find great premium themes for a fee from here or here.

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Online store CMS - help needed

Like the title says, i’m looking for a good online store CMS that has the following features:

• multiple stores : under one site, i need to have multiple stores. For each of them i have to be able to set an admin account that can only see and modify the products in his store. Above them, there will be a Superadmin account that can modify anything else in the site.  Example: On a site I’m selling laptops. I have Apple and Dell as vendors, so they come and introduce their products in their accounts, but all their products will appear combined in the laptops category and also separated in the store’s page.
• affiliates: users can become affiliates. They can select a couple of criteria and a code is generated to use on their sites. If products are sold via those codes, they get a piece of the price. The classic Affiliate module.
• users should be able to create an account where they can be able to see order history and some kind of order tracking (with the current situation of their order: waiting to be processed, processed, sent, etc)
• some of the basic stuff:
  • fast content entering form, with just a couple of important fields (title, description, pictures, price) + more advanced options for the vendors with more time at their disposal
  • multiple payment and delivery options
  • quick chekout form
  • newsletter module
  • easy to modify code
  • etc

Can anyone recommend me such a CMS? Free or paid, that doesn’t really matter, as long as it has the features listed above.

Oh, and one other thing. Can you point me to a good fast working web developper with decent fares? Or at least to some sites where i can find such a guy, except Rentacoder ? I’m looking for someone capable of making a site somewhat similar to this one , with a couple of changes. If you can, please provide the contact details via a comment.

Thanks in advance for your answers, i really hope you can help me with both my problems.

Diablo 3 - the end of my social life is here

From the moment I’ve heard Blizzard is preparing the new Diablo 3, one quote rested in my mind: "the end of my social life is here" . Cause after all, that’s what the sequel of one of the most appreciated and played game in the history of PC games will represent: hundreds and hundreds of hours in front of the PC, building up for the final encounter with Diablo.

And here’s the first trailer of Diablo 3:

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War against content slammers

Spamming and content stealing without any consideration for the author is what bothers me these days. And let’s say you can deal with spammers by banning them, using different Plugins, etc.

But what can you do when facing content stealers, and worse, content slammers. But first, what’s the difference between them? Content stealers simply scrap your RSS feed and display all your content on their sites, in most cases without giving any kind of link-backs. That is translated in duplicate content and worse positions for your articles in Search Engines.

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A CRM software to manage your sale leads

All Internet marketers dream to sell as many things as they can. But it comes a time when you can’t manage all the sale leads manually and you have to find a CRM software to help you. Unfortunately, such kind of software usually comes for a great price. And if you go for a budget solution, you get with a no good application, that still can’t manage your sales as you would want to.

There are exceptions though, and AIM Promote is one of them. You might be amazed to find out that someone offers a CRM cheaper than most of the other similar products on the market, but also packed with lots and lots of useful features. First, there are no setup fees (yey) and the periodically paid fee is more than affordable. Also, you get free support, both by email and phone. And we all know how helpful can a good support department be, don’t we?

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Good templates are not just a dream anymore

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago where could he get some decent templates, as he was trying to put together a couple of sites and he does not have the required skills to design them by himself. And also not the money to hire a paid designer either.

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GTA IV star, Niko Bellic, wants more money

Michael Hollick, known as the voice of GTA IV’s main character Niko Bellic wants more money? From who? From Rockstar of course. And why?

Well, it seems Hollick is unsatisfied with the money he received during the time the game was filmed, around $100000 for 15 months of work. Especially when the game made sells of over $600 millions in just a couple of weeks from its launch, millions from which Hollick won’t see a dime. Kind of frustrating, right?

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Two for the day

Surfing around my RSS reader today, i found a couple of interesting posts.

First, what do you think of this recommendation? He must be a hell of a business partner, ay?

Picture from here.

And something a little more useful: did you know this thing about Gmail?