The new Google AdSense API
RateItAll.com just sent out a press release titled Online Social Network RateItAll.com Integrates Google AdSense via an API to Deliver Revenue Sharing to its Members. This press release is interesting for three reasons:
- It's dated May 18 but was sent on May 30
- It keeps referring to AdSense as “Adsense” (I hate that)
- There is no word yet from Google on the existence of an AdSense API, though we've had clues about its existence
I don't normally do this, but I've included the full text of the press release at the bottom of this message in case it gets pulled because it was sent out prematurely. The press release does not yet appear on RateItAll's own site, I've only found it on the PRWeb site.
Here's the key phrase from this release:
By leveraging the Google Adsense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google Adsense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site.
That sentence succinctly describes what the AdSense API is all about: it's a way for content-driven membership sites, especially social networks, to allow individual members to drive revenue from their efforts. Unlike Squidoo, which is the AdSense publisher and splits some of its earnings with its members, it appears that the AdSense API allows the individual members to become AdSense publishers in their own right.
RateItAll already lets members insert their AdSense publisher ID into the system and earn money. But they had to leave the RateItAll site to apply for AdSense. Now they don't. I imagine that RateItAll would get a referral bonus at a minimum for this, but I wonder if they also get a kickback based on the new publisher's earnings?
I also wonder if AdSense approval will be automatic for RateItAll members, and members of other sites using the API? Will Google Base offer this as well? And Google Pages?
The entry bar for becoming an AdSense publisher is getting lower and lower. When I joined, you had to have a functioning site with many pages. Then you just had to have a blog on Blogger. Now it looks like you just need an account and maybe one entry (or maybe not!) on a site that exploits the AdSense API.
I'll talk some more about this when I know more. We may get an official announcement shortly. I'm sure JenSense will have the full scoop for us, too.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Original Press Release
Online Social Network RateItAll.com Integrates Google Adsense via an API to Deliver Revenue Sharing to its Members
RateItAll.com, a leading social network and review community, announces that it has leveraged the just released Google Adsense API to enable revenue sharing for its contributing members.
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 18, 2006 — Pioneering online community and social network RateItAll.com today announced that it had integrated Google Adsense into its service via an API in order to share advertising inventory with RateItAll members.
By leveraging the Google Adsense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google Adsense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site.
“Several months ago I approached Google about our vision of transforming RateItAll into a marketplace for content in which ad inventory was shared by all contributors,” said RateItAll President Lawrence Coburn. “Not only did Google thoroughly grasp what we were trying to, they had already begun development on the API that would help make this vision a reality.”
The program, called The RateItAll Economy, allows RateItAll members to earn cash for a variety of activities including using RateItAll’s Weblister tool to create and manage their own ratings list, adding a new listing to an existing ratings list, creating a profile with a photo, and referring new, contributing members to the community. Soon, the program will be expanded to allow participants to earn cash for writing reviews.
“I firmly believe that if you are going to build a business based on community contributions, you need to be prepared to share revenue with your contributors,” said Coburn. “The introduction of the RateItAll Economy continues our tradition of leadership by innovation in the peer production space.”
About RateItAll:
RateItAll is a vast ratings community and social network built upon one of the world's largest and most diverse collections of consumer-driven opinions, ratings, and reviews. Visitors to RateItAll can earn cash for their contributions, and using free RateItAll Widgets, can choose from more than 20,000 interactive ratings lists to embed on their personal Web sites. Founded in 1999, RateItAll's mission is to enable the structured exchange of the world's opinions.
E-book creation made easy (plus hidden bonus)
Those of you who've read my AdSense newsletter will recall that I reviewed the book The E-Code: 33 Internet Superstars Reveal 43 Ways to Make Money Online Almost Instantly — Using Only Email (you think they could have rounded it up to 50 ways). The most popular technique by far was to build a list by offering a free e-book (or an audio product) in exchange for a person's mailing address. You make money via affiliate links in the e-book and via mailings to the mailing list you build up with the e-book. Simple enough to understand. The hard part, of course, is writing the e-book in the first place. The E-Code provides you with techniques for quickly and easily building such a book. One of the ways is to ask a bunch of people to contribute content for the book in exchange for some free publicity. (In fact, The E-Code is itself written this way…)
If you want to see such a book in action, take a look at The Big Book of Proof. Ewen Chia sent a message out to his list a couple of weeks ago asking for testimonials (no, I didn't participate…) and here's the result. Amazing what you can do just by asking people. He even includes a “hidden bonus” buried in the book, which turns out to be a (very confusing) ClickBank Affiliate Calculator from the guy who sells Instant Niche Content.
The reason I'm mentioning all this here is that I'm about to unveil a new blog dedicated to affiliate marketing, geared specifically for geeks. It's going to answer the age-old question, Can a geek make money online without succumbing to the Dark Side? It'll talk about things like e-book creation, writing mini-courses and related topics, all from the geek angle. (Sorry, that's what I know best…) I've snapped up the domain and am setting up my blog as we speak (suggestions for good themes appreciated!). I want to keep this blog focused on AdSense and contextual advertising.
So don't worry, this blog won't be changing. I'll post a formal announcement about the new blog later this week.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Understanding "tag and ping"
My last posting talked about blog and ping. At the end of this week, many mailing lists and blogs are going to talk about a “revolutionary” adaption of blog and ping called “tag and ping“. As always, it's good to take pronouncements like “the next generation of tag and ping” with a grain of salt.
Tag and ping is nothing more than blog and ping with tagged posts. Tagging, of course, is one of the more recent (but not that recent anymore) “Web 2.0″ crazes. The idea is simple: content (typically blog postings) are categorized using “tags”. A tag is a link that follows a recognized format. For example, Technorati's tagging system encourages you to add links like this to your postings:
<a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/AdSense" rel="tag">AdSense</a>
When Technorati reads you blog, it looks for these tags and automatically adds the posting containing the tag into the given category. This is an example of self-categorization, because the creator of the content does the tagging. (Many blogging systems support tagging implicitly via their own categories, by the way.) Other services like del.icio.us allow for third-party categorization of content.
The good thing about tagging is that it lets you easily find content related to a general topic area. (Kind of like what AdSense does — wouldn't it be neat if Google harnessed the power of its AdSense patent and created an automatic tagging system for content? You know, I can see this showing up in the search engine results for pages, like an automated Google Co-op system. But I digress.) Tagging is not perfect by any means, though. You still have the problem of deciding which tags to use. And you have to decide if you trust the tagger to tag legitimate, on-topic content.
Serious bloggers are already tagging. There's nothing new about tagging. I'm sure people who've done the blog and ping thing before have also done some tagging. But apparently someone saw a hole in the blog and ping system and decided to exploit it, hence the new product.
If you're really interested in the Tag and Ping product, which is apparently going to retail for $147, here's the secret affiliate signup page for it. (Well, it's not so secret if you understand how 1ShoppingCart works and you do a little sleuthing with someone else's affiliate ID…) Buy it yourself using your own affiliate link (be sure to clear your cookies!) and get it for half-off, although you'll have to sell at least one copy of it to someone else in order to see any money because of the minimum $100 payout level…
Or you could just start using tags in your postings if you aren't already doing so! And you can bet that if enough people start “tagging and pinging” that Techorati, del.icio.us and other will be taking steps to weed out the cruft.
P.S.: People who join their affiliate program get access to a free report called How to Quickly and Easily Protect Your AdSense Account From Accidental Clicks, which you may have seen floating around in various mailing lists (I got three separate copies of it sent to me today already). The advice in the report is pretty basic: either turn off JavaScript or else edit your hosts file to stop ads from showing when viewed from your own browser. If you don't know how to do either, the report lists the steps to do them. The end of the report is a big ad for Tag and Ping, of course. You can just download the report from the link above (I can redistribute it as an affiliate, of course) and read it without having to join their program, but it's not exactly earth-shattering… It was odd to receive this report so shortly after yesterday's post on how AdSense publishers can keep their noses clean.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.