As of today I’ve officially changed the name of this blog from Make Easy Money With Google and AdSense to simply MEMWG, with the tagline The Unofficial AdSense Blog. Many companies do this kind of name change as they evolve, witness how the National Cash Register Company eventually changed its name to NCR Corporation.

We’ll see how this goes. MEMWG isn’t very pronounceable, but neither is my last name (to English speakers — think jee-gair) and it did have a spammy quality to it that probably turned off some potential readers. It was named that way because of my first AdSense book, of course, whose name was actually chosen by the publisher’s marketing department (and I couldn’t come up with anything better). This blog has gone way beyond that book and many people were already referring to it as “MEMWG” anyhow, so going forward this should be an improvement.

Most of the adjustments have been made, I’m sure there will be things to tweak over the days to come, let me know if you see anything really bad. No URL change is required, thankfully, since I’ve had to suffer the ill effects of that twice now.

Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.

As everyone surely knows by now, I’m an AdSense fan. In some ways this blog is the “unofficial AdSense blog”. Or at least, I’d like to think so…

I do get asked on occasion about alternatives to AdSense, either from people who are dissatisfied with the payouts (and the payouts definitely vary a lot) or people who’ve been banned or suspended from the program. I can’t say I’ve researched the topic much. I did list a few programs in Uncommon AdSense based on things I’d tried myself (Chitika in particular, which seems to work quite well for product-based sites and blogs) and things others had recommended to me (such as the Yahoo! Publisher Network, which I’d love to try but can’t because I’m not a US resident). But except for the occasional affiliate link here and there, the majority of my focus is on generating AdSense income.

If you are interested in AdSense alternatives, Ben Shaffer has a new ebook out called AdSense Alternatives that lists 25 AdSense alternatives, including:

• AdBrite
• BidClix
• Kanoodle
• Nixxie
• Revenue Pilot

I don’t think it would be fair for me to list all 25 here. Pros and cons of the various programs are listed, but you’ll have to look closely at each program to determine which ones are or aren’t for you.

The book is about 50 pages long, only about half of which is devoted to the list of AdSense alternatives. At $27 it’s a bit pricey for what you get unless you count the bonuses, which are:

• IM Safety: The Legal Side of Internet Marketing (ebook)
• Kontera ContentLink Secrets (ebook)
• Conversion Grabber (software)

The latter looks interesting, it’s a PHP script to put up “buy now because there are only XXX left” type offers on a page.

That’s my nutshell review. If AdSense isn’t your cup of tea, or you’re looking to diversify, AdSense Alternatives might be a good resource for you.

Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.

In the US, the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the start of the Christmas shopping season and one of the biggest shopping days of the year — “Black Friday” is what they call it. I thought we could do some keyword analysis in the month before Christmas and see what’s happening from an advertiser’s viewpoint.

As it happens, I need to buy a new notebook computer, so I’ve been looking at various prices and such online. So let’s start with notebooks. I generated a fairly long list of keywords using the AdWords keyword tool and then ran those keywords through AdSenseAccelerator to get a list of keyword bid values. This is what I came up with:

I’ll regenerate this list in a few days and we’ll see if there are any changes as Christmas approaches.

Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.