Google brings in some money, plans on getting more

Quick and techy for your Thursday: Google breathes easier: Cisco's Tandberg deal hits opposition; better news for Sidekick users; taking stock of economic recovery efforts.

Googling along: Google reported a 7 percent jump in revenue for its third quarter, bouncing back from a virtually flat second quarter, and chief executive Eric Schmidt said the Mountain View search giant will start hiring again.

And, in its first effort to make money off its book-scanning project, Google announced a service to sell electronic versions of books for download to computers, phones and possibly e-readers. Google Editions will start with 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of next year, said Google's Tom Turvey, making the announcement at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

More, please: A poll of Tandberg shareholders found that 21 of them — owning more than 24 percent of the stock — won't sell at the terms currently offered by Cisco. The San Jose networking giant early this month offered $3.1 billion for the Norwegian maker of videoconferencing equipment.

Cisco called its price "fair" and said it wouldn't comment further during the tender process, which ends Nov. 9. The deal requires acceptance from more than 90 percent of shareholders.


Sidekick, Part 3: The news is getting better for users of the ill-fated phone. Microsoft Corp., whose subsidiary Danger makes the phones, said it has recovered "most, if not all" of the personal data lost during a server failure over the weekend and will restore it soon.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is distancing itself from the culprit, reports the Good Morning Silicon Valley blog. Said a spokesman: "The Danger Service platform, which experienced the outage, is a standalone service operating on non-Microsoft technologies, and is not related to Microsoft's cloud services platform or Windows Live."

And more GMSV on phones: a round-up of early reviews of the BlackBerry Storm 2 and Motorola's Android-powered Cliq.

The slow road back: A clutch of news stories hit today on the theme of economic recovery:

-- The House Financial Services Committee, split on party lines, voted for regulation of privately traded derivatives. It was a first major step for President Barack Obama's plans to overhaul federal regulations governing the nation's financial institutions.

-- The Senate is considering a plan to extend and broaden the home-buyers' credit, which allows income tax reduction of up to $8,000. The proposal would remove the first-time requirement, raise the eligibility income and extend the plan until June 30. It is now set to expire Dec. 1.

-- For the first time since the automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975, there will be no cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients next year.

And finally: Anheuser-Busch is buying all the national ads on this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" to promote Bud Light Golden Wheat. The sponsorship — a first for the 35-year-old show — will mean 6 to 7 minutes of extra show time, NBC said.

Which doesn't sound near as intriguing as the full-show product placement of Windows 7 in the upcoming variety show by "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane,

Make Money Online Using Google - Free Kit Introduced to Help Start Home Business

A new kit has been introduced to help people who want to start earning money online. The basis to the system teaches anyone how to make money using Google. Its offered on a free trial basis which gives anyone who want to try it a great opportunity.

There are many ways in which you can make money online today, in fact tens of thousands of people are working from their PC's at home making more than just a living. Getting rich online will probably take some time but anyone can make extra money relatively easy.

For 99 percent of people the Internet is just a place of leisure or way to contact people. What many people do not know is that with the correct knowledge you can implement a great money making income stream with just a few hours of work a day.

The kit which you can get to make money with Google shows the average person how to develop the skills to use Google to make you money. The kit teaches how to use clever advertising with Google along with telling you which companies and websites you can use to promote everyday products. The outcome is an automatic income stream where by you will receive commission even while you sleep.

An online money making system is a great way to earn extra income. It's also a fun and exciting project (especially when you start earning your first dollars)

The Google Business Kit provides all the necessary tools kits and resources to get going. Many Internet marketers of said that this is an unbelievable offer as most kits/courses can cost anything up to one thousand dollars. This is basically because they experts don't like giving away their secrets for nothing.

Ads drive Google's profit way up

oogle Inc. reported third-quarter results that easily topped expectations on Thursday, the second straight period of gains for the online search titan and a clear sign that Internet advertising is bouncing back from the depths of the recession.


As the dominant Internet player, the Mountain View company's performance is widely viewed as a gauge of the online industry's overall strength.

"We believe the worst of the recession is behind us," said Eric Schmidt, the company's chief executive, during an investor conference call. "We're very optimistic now about the future. We now have the business confidence to invest heavily in the next phase of innovation, hoping to invent the future as we see it."

Specifically, he said, the company is stepping up hiring, eyeing acquisition opportunities, expanding its mobile offerings and improving its search engine technology.

Investors applauded the late-day announcement, bidding up shares more than 3 percent, or $17, in after-hours trading to about $547.

Google said revenue totaled $5.94 billion, a 7 percent increase from a year ago, thanks to rising ad spending on its sites and those of its affiliates. Net income reached $1.64 billion ($5.13 per share), a 27 percent leap. The Wall Street consensus called for earnings of $4.69 per share on sales of $4.2 billion, according to a survey by Bloomberg.

Aggregate paid clicks, the instances when consumers click on ads, rose 14 percent from a year ago during the third quarter. The average cost per click was down 6 percent from last year, but up 5 percent from the second quarter, when it fell a record 13 percent on an annual basis.

The results represent "improvement over the depths of the recession" and demonstrate the online ad sector is stabilizing, said Clayton Moran, analyst at Benchmark Co. Until the second quarter, Google's revenue had declined for more than a year.

Google boasts a commanding lead in online search, controlling 64.9 percent of the market in September, up 0.3 percent from the month before, research firm comScore Inc. reported Wednesday. Microsoft Corp. has increased its market share since releasing Bing in June, but still owns only 9.4 percent of searches. No. 2 Yahoo Inc. slid 0.5 percent last month to 18.8 percent.

Separately on Thursday, Google said it will introduce a service for booksellers next year that will take square aim at Amazon.com. Google Editions will allow readers to purchase books and read them over any device that connects to the Web.

The program will start with from 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of 2010, with prices set by publishers, said Tom Turvey, head of Google Book Search's publisher partnership program.

"The way the e-book market will evolve is by accessing the book from anywhere, from an access point of view and also from a geographical point of view," Turvey said Thursday at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair.

It's the first time the company will attempt to make money from its books program, which began in 2004. The ambitious plan to scan millions of books at research libraries and make them searchable online sparked a spate of lawsuits by authors and publishers.

A controversial settlement proposal that would have established a system for identifying and compensating the appropriate rights holders was recently scrapped, after the Department of Justice raised antitrust and other concerns.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/15/BULU1A6446.DTL#ixzz0UJNQG4TL

Affiliate marketing: everything you always wanted to know

It has been a decade since the first affiliate network began in the UK and the market is still growing. The total value of online sales generated by this channel is over £3 billion per year. But what is affiliate marketing, how does it work, why is it so effective and what’s next?

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is where affiliates (some people call them publishers) advertise your product or service on the Internet, either on their own website via pay per click advertising on Google Adwords, for example, or by email marketing, and thus drive visitors to your website.

When those visitors make a purchase, or complete a measurable action such as completing a lead form, you reward the affiliate by paying them a commission, either a fixed amount of money or a percentage of the sale value.

So the main advantage of affiliate marketing is accountability; you pay only on the completion of a defined action, be it a sale via your checkout or the completion of a lead form. So, it’s 100 per cent measurable, and provides the highest return on investment of any form of online marketing – particularly valuable in this recession when driving revenue forward is a challenge.

A recent report by Econsultancy found that UK merchants involved in affiliate marketing drive 16 per cent of their online sales via this channel and that 78 per cent of them expected to be "more reliant" on affiliate marketing in 2009. Other UK merchants argue the percentage of online sales via affiliate marketing is higher at 30 per cent but there’s no doubt that these statistics underline the fact that affiliate marketing should form part of an integrated and successful digital marketing strategy.

As a sales force, affiliates can deliver a significant volume compared to other sales channels.

However, this can’t be done without a competitive commission rate. The highest sales levels come from setting competitive commissions, although excessive commissions are not necessary to achieve great results. Good affiliates stay in business because they’re good at connecting with consumers, delivering offers consumers want and managing their business so it’s profitable. Low commissions won’t deliver volume as they don’t incentivise successful affiliates to work with you.

Affiliates need to be at the heart of your business rather than peripheral to it. They need to become ambassadors for your brand. Like any other member of your team they need the tools to do the job. This includes a good company website, optimised to convert customers online or complemented by an offline reward mechanism, good stock levels if appropriate and good quality creative. Your internal processes also need to be geared up so that when high volumes of profitable business are delivered you can provide support efficiently and promptly.

It can be tough to identify the right affiliates for your brand. This is vital, however. To get affiliate marketing right, it's worthwhile finding an agency with experience in the sector. New affiliate schemes are emerging where some of the traditional costs are stripped out and agencies are leading with results driven campaigns. So, if your business could benefit by affiliate marketing don’t settle for an agency that’s not prepared to share the risk and put its money where its mouth is!

Report: Affiliate Strategies and affiliated companies that touted free government grant money are insolvent

A group of local companies that allegedly bilked consumers by purporting to help them obtain non-existent government grants was insolvent when authorities moved to shut them down.

A preliminary report by the receiver appointed to take charge of the companies’ operations says the businesses “operated only by signing up new victims faster than the old victims could obtain refunds.”

A federal judge last month halted the companies’ activities and froze their assets after the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney generals of Kansas, Minnesota and North Carolina alleged they had engaged in deceptive business and telemarketing practices.

The companies — the receiver has uncovered almost two dozen so far — include Affiliate Strategies Inc., Apex Holdings International LLC, Grant Writers Institute LLC and Landmark Publishing Group LLC.

The receiver, Larry E. Cook, said his investigation of the companies’ books revealed “several thousand intercompany transfers,” making it difficult to sort out their profits and losses. But he said that his investigation indicated that when the companies’ bank accounts were frozen on July 24, there was less than one day’s operating cash requirements in the accounts.

“The companies were incurring very high expenses for postage, printing, marketing leads and labor,” Cook’s report states.

Of immediate concern, the report adds, were “the large distributions and salary paid” to Brett Blackman, president and chief executive of Affiliate Strategies and a principal owner of the other companies.

Cook said that Blackman got $841,545 from Apex Holdings in 2008 and in turn made net contributions of $491,559 to Affiliate Strategies. That left him with net distributions of $349,986 in addition to a salary of $118,049, or a total of $468,035 last year.

Anthony Rupp, an attorney for Blackman, declined to comment on Cook’s report.

Since taking charge of the companies nearly a month ago, Cook, his attorneys at Lathrop & Gage and Lathrop’s staff have fielded “hundreds of calls” from consumers seeking refunds, trade creditors and banks, Cook’s report states.

The report says that a preliminary review of 32 U.S. Postal Service crates received by Lathrop on August 19 indicates most of the mail consists of returned grant writing books from consumers seeking refunds, payments from consumers for grant writing materials and other demands for refunds dating back to March.

“Although it is difficult to summarize the mass volume of calls and letters, a majority of the communications are from elderly individuals, or their children, who have discovered automatic checking account deductions from their, or their parents’, checking accounts and are requesting refunds,” the report states.

In court documents, the affiliated companies maintain the allegations by the FTC and the attorneys general were “based completely on anecdotal claims which badly misconstrue” the defendants’ “legitimate businesses.” The companies say they will be able to prove that have offered their products to thousands of customers “who have never made any complaints.”

Cook has set up a Web site, www.asireceiver.com, that provides information about the case. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson has scheduled a Sept. 1 hearing in Topeka on whether to grant authorities’ request for a preliminary injunction against the companies, Blackman and other defendants.

Affiliate Fatblogging – By Shawn Collins

Affiliate marketing is all about people and relationships. Some critics say that is a problem when trying to scale.

But many affiliate marketers are crunching numbers on a different kind of scale these days. They’re getting into affiliate fatblogging, where they chronicle efforts about healthier living and weight loss on their blogs.

Here are some affiliate marketers that are trying to achieve a net loss.

Ayako Bingham
Where can people follow your progress? www.branding100.com

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? Don’t Cha / The Pussycat Dolls

Any regrets about posting your progress online? I love taking pictures, but I don’t like being in them. But, this way, I am pushed to accomplish my weight loss efforts

Any advice for affiliate marketers that want to get in shape? Find something that works for you. I am not a treadmill type and it took me a while to find something I actually enjoy doing.

Tyler Cruz
Where can people follow your progress? www.tylercruz.com In particular, my weight loss challenge vs. Jonathan Volk started at the post www.tylercruz.com/blogging-weight-loss-challenge-cruz-vs-volk

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? I’m currently listening to the best singles of No Doubt which have some nice fast paced songs. Before that, I was listening to the best singles of Michael Jackson such as Beat It and Billie Jean. Great running music.

Any regrets about posting your progress online? Absolutely not. It’s all about public accountability and pressure. Promising to reach a goal to yourself is one thing, but promising it to the world is something completely different.

Any advice for affiliate marketers that want to get in shape? Try announcing your weight loss or fitness goal publicly. It’s a lot harder to come up with excuses when everyone is watching you.

Scott Jangro
Where can people follow your progress? There’s no easy way to do this. For a while I was using the Nike+ website but the battery died on the sensor. I go through phases of talking about my progress in blog posts or podcasts to keep myself motivated. I’ve also got a page on my blog: www.jangro.com/feeds-n-fat/

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? Eminem “Lose Yourself”

Any regrets about posting your progress online? No, I’m pretty open about stuff that I do. I like the pressure of publicly declaring my goals. When I do that on my blog, I find that my readers are both supportive of me and even inspired to get in shape themselves. That’s a nice feeling.

Any advice for affiliate marketers that want to get in shape? Set goals for both work and exercise. For example, I might commit to a number of miles per week. To get yourself away from your work, schedule time to work out. I use exercise as both a break and a reward for getting stuff done. I also find that I can get some fresh thinking done while on an hour run without any distractions.

Tim Jones
Where can people follow your progress? www.therealtimjones.com

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? Fuel by Metallica

Any regrets about posting your progress online? Not necessarily a regret, but I’ve found that now I’m accountable to a whole group of people that want to know my progress. Keeps you more motivated and keeps you from eating that double cheeseburger, but can also be intimidating. Could have quietly worked on my fitness and weight loss — like I said, not a regret, per se, but a little unexpected.

Israel Lagares
Where can people follow your progress? www.FatManUnleashed.com or www.twitter.com/israellagares

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? Any song by Eminem gets me going. It’s like I transfer all of his hate into my workouts.

Any regrets about posting your progress online? I have no regrets at all about putting myself online. It has helped me tremendously. I’ve been able to identify negative patterns in my diet and exercise, plus have been held accountable.

Any advice for affiliate marketers that want to get in shape? If you are trying to get in shape start off slow. Cut the little things out and replace them with positive choices. Instead of soda, drink diet soda. Then instead of diet soda switch to water. Get in small workouts. Hop on the floor and do some pushups then go for a walk in the park. Do that for a month and then step your game up. You can also try my Blogger Proof Workout. It’s made for those folks that live behind the monitor. Check it out at www.fatmanunleashed.com/bloggerproofworkout.pdf

James Seligman
Where can people follow your progress? www.jamesseligman.net

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? Indestructible – Disturbed

Any regrets about posting your progress online? No regrets, with other affiliates also getting in shape, it’s like you have your own little support system.

Any advice for affiliate marketers that want to get in shape? Just take a quick 10-minute walk every day before logging on your computer. One of my biggest issues was sitting in front of the computer all day and eating snacks (junk food), so don’t snack!

Jonathan Volk
Where can people follow your progress? My affiliate marketing blog, www.jonathanvolk.com every Wednesday.

What’s your power song (song that gets you pumped when exercising)? Skillet, Comatose. ;)

Any regrets about posting your progress online? None! It’s been a great motivation for me. When I gain or lose weight and I post it online; it’s a huge accountability tool for me.

Any advice for affiliate marketers that want to get in shape? Even though much of affiliate marketing is done solo, do not apply this to your weight loss regimen. I had been trying to become healthier and get in shape for a while and it was not until I had a friend to work out with and push me that I was able to really have any progress.

Booby trap: children exposed to raunchy ads

As more and more young children become internet-savvy, the need for parents to protect them from harmful content grows.

A Sensis e-business report has revealed a big jump in the number of children under the age of five who use the internet.

While practices can be put in place to ensure children are protected against pornographic sites, harmful spam and email attachments, the realm of internet advertising poses a more difficult challenge to parents.

Internet adverts syndicated through Google's AdSense are literally all over the web - allowing website owners to display ads relevant to their site's content.

However, one particular advert has managed to spread across the web and catch the eye in a not-too-wholesome manner.

The banner-ad in question advertises 'Evony', a free online role-playing game where the player builds up a civilisation, trades commodities with other players and conducts war against competing civilisations.

But the way the game has been marketed online has caused controversy, with increasingly racy banner ads depicting busty women alongside the words 'Play Unnoticeably', 'Save the Princess' and 'Save your lover'.

The game itself has no distressed damsels in need of rescuing.

Added to their raunchy nature, the marketing campaign was criticised after its Google ads appeared frequently on websites with family content, with many site owners struggling to block the ads.

La Trobe University sociologist Dr Michael Flood has researched the potential social effects of pornography on young children.

He says advertising tactics like Evony's could become even more commonplace.

"It can go as far as advertisers, marketeers and amateur porn producers want it to go - I think it can go a whole lot further than it has and I think there will continue to be efforts in legal regulation and technical strategies like filtering and they will also continue to be circumvented," he said.

"One result of exposure to this kind of sexual material is just a liberalisation of attitudes, it means that children and young people are more accepting of sexual activity, assume that their peers are sexually active, and more approving of various forms of sex and sexual relations."

Children exposed

The danger for young users of the internet is that these sexually-suggestive adverts can appear potentially anywhere where a site has left allocated space for Adsense banners.

Dr Flood says, with an increase of younger children becoming net-savvy, the need for parental supervision is greater than ever.

"Parental sexuality-education is important - so is parental monitoring of children's internet use - however, as children become more independent, I think you wind back that monitoring because it's not appropriate to police a 15-year-old's computer use in the way you might police your 10-year-old's computer use," he said.

"One thing it's important to say is that children are sexual beings and do deserve information on sex and sexuality, however, much of what's available online and elsewhere isn't age-appropriate and doesn't teach very healthy messages about sex or women.

"Parents should be having conversation with kids about sex and sexuality as kids age anyway, and part of that is having conversations about the materials they may see online and elsewhere."

Sexuality education

Dr Flood says the effects on children of sexually-explicit content potentially shape the way young boys see women and girls, as well as young girls being influenced over their sexual value.

"It's actually very hard to say [what the effect is] on younger children, it may be that the youngest children cant make much sense of... sexually explicit material, they may ignore them or they may not make such sense," he said.

"There is evidence, though, of different effects of sexual content in media on children and young people.

"[One effect is] more support for what you might think of as sexist or sexually-objectifying views of women and of sex - so given that the Evony ads show women in various stages of undress, in fact progressively more and more undressed, they are teaching the attitude that girls and women are sexual objects and that their main value is in terms of their appearance and their bodies.

"Amongst girls, it can teach them that their primary value is as sexual objects, increasing their judgements about their bodies to agree with basically sexist and stereotypical attitudes about sex and gender and it can do the same amongst boys as well.

"I think that it's just as important that we teach and use social and education strategies - children and young people in schools should be taught about some of the negative and harmful ways in which sex and sexuality are represented in pornography and in advertising, so that they're more critical when they see problematic images of women or women's bodies or sex.

"They're then less likely to take on the sexist attitudes that those images can represent."