Goodbye Adsense, it’s been sweet’n’sour…

I’ve had an Adsense Account for a very long time, but it hasn’t really generated much in the way of additional revenue though the nearly annual check for $100 has been a nice supplement in some ways. Oddly, it had been performing better on InvestorBlogger than in a long time with the addition of the Shylock Plugin. But this week brought an opportunity disguised as a challenge; and a challenge disguised as an opportunity.

First, the opportunity was wrought by none other than the Google machine, which not content with reducing clickable areas on Google Ads, reducing PRs on many blogs, now acted to cut payout terms for referrals for those who were lucky enough to be in a primary country (currently, the US, Canada and Japan). For those of the rest of the world, referrals were cut to zero (and that’s backdated to July of 2007!)

The Eleventh Hour for Adsense

Too many changes for me, and just added an eleventh reason to my list of why Adsense is now bad for bloggers. Shoemoney has already weighed in on the debate, citing it as a slap in the face of foreign webmasters with the words: “They are terminating your referral program completely. That’s right! If you are not in the Americas, or Japan, your done.” The discussion on his blog has already gone to 123 comments.

Problogger who hails from the land downunder is also mightily chagrined, and in an update to his posts points out that the rule is retrospective: “So for “international” publishers – every person that you and I have sent to AdSense since the end of July last year that reaches a conversion point in the coming months will earn us nothing at all.” His discussion has already merited 95 responses at this point.

Goodbye, Adios, Ciao, Adsense…

So, with a heavy heart I cleared out the last of my Adsense on InvestorBlogger. But at the same point, I was boyed by a challenge. An advertiser had been contacting me looking for advertising space on my blog. I had just themed for Christmas, and didn’t see the point when I’d be doing a new theme in the New Year.

New Year: New Opportunities

Persistent, though, and I was finally able to match his requirements with spots for five advertisements or banners on the blog, with two long 728×90 slots and three traditional banners. This was timely as I didn’t want to load my site up with more than a few basic banners. I’ve also installed another plugin that will facilitate additional advertising opportunities. More later…. So, really a silver lining. And I’ll be retaining Adsense on my other websites as its far too difficult to remove them all at this point. But performance isn’t improving.

In the meantime do take a look at the banners on this site, and check out the investing products that are on offer. Since these aren’t Adsense ads, I can encourage clicks to them all. In the meantime, let’s see how Google’s stockprice fares… Mmm.

Hubris Revisited: Google’s Role Model – the Big 4 Music Companies!

I can’t help thinking though that I’m beginning to see a rerun of the problems that are afflicting the CD companies not just a few years ago, but still to this day. Raise prices, offer limited selections, cut your backlists of offerings, screw your artists royally, promote only those bland enough artists that can survive the global markets, and rail against the technology of the day as illegal.

Then worse, start suing your ‘former’ customers, watch your stocks stumble and sales drop by double digit percentages year after year… Could this be what happens to Google? But on Internet time?

Google is already cutting back on the websites payouts via Adsense, cropping rankings, dropping referrals, soon they will be deleting listings from their catalogue… all the time trying to promote the 20% of websites that make up the 80% of their traffic.

But what mostly they forget is that those 20% of websites are only part of a web-o-sphere that is vast. And many websites get truckloads of traffic from sites that aren’t even ranked properly … all those ones and twos begin to add up.

So, Google, I guess you won’t listen to me, but my readers will, and they will form their own opinions, regardless of what you do. Let’s hear it here!

(ed. added graphic and some additional comments.)

After doing a promotion this summer, I was having a chat with a friend about the value of doing promotional activities for your business or charity organization. While I don’t recall the exact content of the discussion, it was quite a while ago, it emerged that many organizations actually want to quantify the value of such activities in terms of cents and dollars or new customers or whatever criteria they choose.

Intangible Qualities vs. Tangible Benefits

While this is a natural response, I felt that it overlooks a number of non-tangible qualities that are quite essential to doing business because you are always going to be doing business with people. The list of non-tangible qualities was quite long, including relationship building, image building, branding, etc.. In fact, I was quite surprised that so many organizations would focus on the tangibles, but miss the more important intangibles.

A Bake Sale vs. A Donation Drive

My friend gave me an example: an organization for Women’s Aid (for example) would hold a bake sale in which members of the support group would bake stuff at home and bring the goodies to sell on a Saturday afternoon thereby raising funds for the activities of the groups.

A simple financial analysis would suggest that simply donating the money by the members that would have been originally been used to buy the ingredients for the bake-out would be more cost effective, time efficient, and environmentally better:

…there are costs that are attached to each individual in a group of 20 going out and buying the ingredients to make 20 different dishes. They then spend their time, energy costs and creativity to make these products. Then they wrap and transport them (both at additional cost) to the venue; where they then sell them for non-commercial prices and are themselves not paid for that additional time. It’s this resulting revenue that is donated to the charity.

As an (obviously more cost effective and efficient) alternative, members would simply take the money for the ingredients, transport, fuel, and their time; and donate the resulting amount to the charity. They’d then go home, a little richer in spirit (perhaps), but a little poorer as a group: they’d not stoked the group’s dynamics.

Group Dynamics: A Primary Non-Tangible Benefit

What it neglects to count are the bonds of friendship within the group that are enhanced by volunteers sharing a task from conception to execution. It ignores the fact that such relationships will help to strengthen the group as they pursue their mission to help those in need. In addition, the fact that such effort is expended creates a non-tangible value that is added to the items at the sale, when people who are purchasing them realize that people have donated not just their money, but their time and their life spirit, to create a handcrafted item, made with love and care.

This didn’t escape our own business organization either. As, in our promotion, we organized a lesson that involved teaching some popular fast food items (things we knew children already enjoyed) and showing them how to order and pay for these items in English. It was designed to be practical, enjoyable and educational. Though we were not a charity, we organized the activity to publicize our business. In fact, the original event was held in a local fast food restaurant.

[Click to watch the video of our presentation! Continue the story after the video]

[flashvideo filename=http://www.nozkidz.com/wp-content/movies/TommysBirthday.flv /]

ABCs of Promotional Events

Attracting: the overt purpose was, of course, to attract new customers to come and ask about our classes. So we prepared banners, flyers, a welcoming table and an entertaining presentation. In addition, we also video-taped the presentation;

  Building: but we were also conscious that inviting our own students would serve an additional but important aspect, even though the cost would increase the burden on our budget: we would be building ‘customer loyalty’ and developing customer relationships by including those students who were already our customers; and

  Collaborating: the teacher team also benefited extensively by working collaboratively on a project that required a lot of time and creativity to put together; relationships were enhanced, bonds were strengthened; and pleasure was taken in the fact that, even though the first was a ‘failure’, our own students had a great time, we raised a bit of publicity, and we had great fun.

Promotions: Always Keep the Long Term in View

One of the benefits that played out over a much longer period, though, came as a surprise to all of the team members at the business: we were able to re-run the presentation a few weeks’ later, and with the information we gained about holding the activity, we were MUCH more able to capitalize on the promotional abilities than the first time round. On the second round, we were able to get a few more ‘leads’ than the first time. But even then, the benefits weren’t realized.

A few months later, when the beginning of semester came around, we were inundated daily with queries for information about our courses, interviews with students, phone calls, etc.. at one point we thought we were going to go crazy there were so many calls. It was clear from the work we had done on the website, and the newsletter, that when combined with the actual face-to-face promotions, we sowed the seeds of our recovery. It just took a few months for the seeds to germinate, before we were able to cultivate the shoots, and harvest the crops.

And what about online? You may well ask…

Doesn’t the same set of rules apply online? There are many community-based websites where content is created by amateurs from scratch, despite the fact that professionals would do the job in much better order. Still, the amateurs go on to become experts in their community, new members join because of the attraction of these communities, building of relationships within the communities and possibilities for collaboration even for the weaker members.

Even on blogs, visitors sign up for memberships so they can comment, write extensive posts (or even guest posts), and join in activities, competitions and other events; on many occasions, they are competing for tangible returns; but aren’t the intangible benefits much greater, in the long term? Look at blogs whose comments run to 100 or 200 comments or where forums have fostered communities…

And so…?

So the next time you plan a promotional activity for your website, business or charity, when counting the cost of the event and setting the numerical (whether financial or not) goals, don’t forget that the intangible benefits of such promotional activities will always outweigh the tangible costs.