Web Hosting Blog

Try typing `jobs’ on Google search, and you might be in for a surprise — on the sponsored links column, one of the ads is by competitor Yahoo!

That is probably why Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bharatmatrimony.com, comfortably maintains relations with both companies — Yahoo is an investor in his portal, while the other provides advertising space for the matchmaker.

However, it isn’t just the big players who are benefiting from Google AdWords and AdSense. A whole network has arisen, which includes advertisers from SMEs to MNCs, hosts from large publishing portals to individual bloggers, and, of course, the 50 million Internet users in the country. According to a comScore Media Matrix 2005 report, about 80 per cent of Internet users access Google.com.

K. Sundararaman, Acting Sales Head, Google India, sheds some light on how this network works. He says that apart from the ads that appear on www.google.com, there is Google AdSense, which allows individual Web sites to rent out the space on the page.

These Web sites, Sundararaman explains, are selected through `site targeting’ that “allows advertisers to choose individual Web sites within the Google content network where they would like their ads to appear … allowing advertisers to handpick the audience they want to reach.”

Managing ad campaigns

Apart from this, the advertiser can specify search-targeted keywords for categories such as broad matches, phrase matches, exact matches or negative matches. This keyword matching system is completely automated. “We suggest using a combination of two or more of these techniques to run an effective ad campaign,” he says.

Which in turn means that managing an effective ad campaign with Google AdWords is not quite such a simple project. For example, Bharatmatrimony.com has a three-member internal team that continually reviews the conversion rate of the number of people that click on their ads in other Web sites, the cost of advertising on Google and the relevance of the keywords that the company has submitted, says Janakiraman.

As large clients, they work in conjunction with a team from Google that has been assigned to work with them. The company has bought about 30,000 keywords.

Keywords matter

Similarly, eBay has an internal team that works full-time on the paid search programme with the Google account team, according to Rathin Lahiri, Head - Marketing, eBay India. This is possibly because “paid search is one of the better performing channels and the search customer is an evolved customer,” he says.

The revenue model for the Web site is that advertisers pay for the click or impression that they receive.

For ads priced at cost-per-thousand-clicks, an advertiser may pay as low as Rs 10 per thousand, and for cost-per-click priced ads, it may be as low as Re 0.44 per click, according to the company.

The rate of keywords varies, says Lahiri. For example, the keyword `Nokia’ would be more valuable than a keyword such as `pencil’ — at the end of the day, the rate that eBay pays is a function of the click-through-rate and the cost-per-click. The keyword `Nokia phone’ is more valuable than `Nokia blue tooth device’ and therefore has a better click-through-rate.

Users big and small

This has opened up a whole market through the AdSense route. And since the tool caters to publishers of all sizes, the company has both large publishers that have content on the Internet such as Sify.com, NDTV.com, and Moneycontrol.com, as well as individual Web site owners.

Deepesh Agarwal, who runs a Web site that provides freeware solutions, receives on an average 4,000-odd daily ad impressions and earns anywhere from $800 to $2,100 per month depending on the amount of traffic and its `quality.’

He has been using the service for three years. Though the first two years didn’t yield many results, but the last year has been a good one. In fact, though the Web site was never intended as a money-spinner, it now constitutes the biggest portion of Agarwal’s revenue.

Success story

“My traffic is primarily from the US and Canada — about 60 per cent — and the visitors are common computer users looking for free alternatives for paid shareware applications meant for day-to-day computer maintenance tasks,” he explains.

But it doesn’t even have to get that technical to be a success. Jamshed Velayuda Rajan, a Usability Consultant with Satyam Computers, maintains two Web sites — one in which he writes about himself and his family, and another blog on cricket.

The latter, he expects, will have traffic of about 2,500 to 3,500 people when cricket matches are going on.

Typically, 350 unique people per day, and about 450 to 500 clicks is the count for his two portals combined.

As for the remuneration, he explains, “High value keywords would earn more — if I had a finance blog, for example, I could make as much as $4 for one click.

Since cricket is not a money-spinner in that sense, perhaps between 10 and 30 cents per click.” All in all, he has made about Rs 30,000 in the last two years.

Not bad for a man who was looking to have a bit of fun by writing about his life and his family. - by Abhinav Ramnarayan

Paypal has launched a product aimed at helping small and medium businesses accept online payments securely and cost-effectively.

The Website Payments Pro product is the first non-hosted payment suite from Paypal, a subsidiary of online auction giant eBay. It includes Express Checkout, Direct Payment API and Virtual Terminal functions, so firms can let shoppers choose how to pay for their purchases.

The Direct Payment API lets businesses accept credit or debit card payments. Buyers enter card details directly on the website of the business and payments are processed through Paypal.

Customers can also pay for their goods using Paypal’s Express Checkout, removing the need to re-enter billing or delivery information with every purchase. Buyers can use any major credit or debit card, bank account or Paypal account balance.

The Virtual Terminal allows businesses to accept orders offline via phone, fax or mail and then enter the details online so the transaction is processed by Paypal.

Companies can include their own branding on the checkout process web pages and can direct buyers back to their websites to continue shopping after payments are completed.

Carl-Olav Scheible, general manager of merchant services at Paypal said the product was developed to meet the needs of businesses that wanted the benefits of Paypal, combined with those of a merchant account and gateway.

But Paypal users have been heavily targeted by criminal phishing scams. Last July, security firm Sophos revealed that 54 percent of the phishing emails received by its threat analysis centres were aimed at stealing log-in and other details from Paypal users.

Pricing for Website Payments Pro includes a monthly fee and a rate per transaction. - By Computerworld UK staff

We’ve heard that many publishers are having trouble viewing referral 2.0 ads on their pages, and we’d like to explain some of the most common reasons why this might be. First, keep in mind that not all referral ads are available in all sizes. For instance, most horizontal referral ad units smaller than 180×60, square referral ad units smaller than 125×125, and text links are only available at this time for Google products such as AdSense or AdWords. This means that if you generate code for referral ads in an unsupported size, you won’t see any referrals shown on your webpages. To avoid this issue, we recommend first selecting categories or products for your referrals before selecting a size at this time. Similarly, you may not see the referral ads you’ve selected on your pages if you’ve grouped a number of referral ads into your Ad Shopping Cart which are each available in different sizes. If this is the case, you may wish to try regenerating your referral code with a particular ad format in mind — this way, you can be sure to select products available in that format. Here are several other reasons your chosen referral ads may not show: The particular referral ad you’ve chosen is not available in your country. When generating your code, you can view the ads available for specific countries by clicking the ‘change’ link above the referrals wizard. You’ve unselected the ‘Pick best performing ads’ checkbox for a referral where the advertiser has run out of budget or ended the campaign. To take advantage of the available inventory of related products, we recommend leaving this box checked. You’ve added more than three referral units to your page. Our current policy allows a maximum of three referral ad units on any policy-compliant page. Our system has determined that your pages contain potentially mature or sensitive content. However, as your content changes, you may begin to see referral ads appearing. The referral ad code may have been modified. Be sure to copy the code exactly as it appears in your account and paste it directly onto your pages. Please know that we’re working as quickly as we can to fine-tune the process of generating referral code. Also, we appreciate all of your feedback on referrals 2.0 so far, and we encourage you to let us know how we can keep improving AdSense - Rajiv Sud - AdSense Publisher Support

PayPal is currently experiencing major failures with its payment clearance system.

Hundreds of PayPal merchants have reported they have not receive their regular ’subscription payments’.

The official statement from PayPal at this moment in time is:

“Paypal wants to notify merchants that subscriptions are experiencing some delays and that will be back to normal around September 5, 2007 (Wednesday) or September 6, 2007 (Thursday). Please be assured that no subscriptions will be missed, just that the payout will be delayed.

We apologize for any impact caused by this incident.

Sincerely,

PayPal Merchant Technical Support Team”

Whilst this is bad enough for merchants who rely on the income from subscription payments from PayPal, numerous merchants have also reported subscriptions have been incorrectly cancelled by PayPal. No official statement has been issued with regards to this problem. Merchants are very unhappy about this and it is causing serious damage to PayPal reputation.

The official PayPal developers forum has up to date news on this at:

Even after compromises from SoundExchange and the CRB, web radio broadcasters are not optimistic about the future

The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board’s new rates “would bankrupt us,” says Tim Westergren of Pandora, echoing a sentiment reflected widely by the webcaster community. Spurred by SoundExchange’s efforts to raise the cost of broadcasting music on the web to what is widely believed to be unreasonable levels, webcasters everywhere are vigorously fighting what may very well be their end.

In a pair of interviews with DailyTech, Proton Radio’s Jason Wohlstadter and Pandora’s Tim Westergren shared their thoughts on what SoundExchange’s revised royalties plan means to them and their stations. The CRB’s rates are “disruptive for everybody, rightsholders included: even if you increase your rates, and if it puts those rate-paying stations out of business, then you’re going to get nothing. These rates [don’t rely on the] economics of web radio,” says Westergren, “so, I think it’s a terrible ruling and one that needs to be fixed.”

“Kurt Hanson of RAIN estimates that the rate increase is around 400% … that’s pretty ridiculous no matter the reasoning is,” says Wohlstadter.

One of the biggest problems, argues Westergren, was that the original talks in 1998 and 2002 were hamstrung by politics and semantics, and as mentioned before, completely disconnected from reality. “The committee had to abide by language in the federal statute … and that language was monkeyed with.”

“The CRB just missed it,” says Westergren, “if you read the ruling and the rationale as it’s articulated by the royalty board and their subsequent followup to it, it demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the business that we’re in. I think that there were structural problems and I think that resulted in a really flawed decision handed down.”

Not everyone is affected equally by the CRB’s changes, however. In the case of some independent stations that deal primarily with underground music, deals have been worked out directly with the labels — many of which are run by fellow enthusiasts. Such is the case for Proton, and Wohlstadler argues that the direct approach is far more valuable to niche artists:
“I see Proton as one of the main avenues of promotion for these artists and labels. We generate revenue for them by linking show tracklists directly to store fronts where listeners can buy songs they just heard. I believe this makes the labels more money than any royalty would. In our niche over 5,000 songs are released a week, our station is one of the few promotional outlets available to labels to extend shelf life.”
Westergren also touches on the challenges from working with niche music from Pandora’s collection of over 40,000 artists:
“We have over half a million songs in our collection. On a daily basis, 94% of those songs play … Of those 40,000 plus artists, 39,000 are not being aired or have never been played on any form of broadcast radio, so it’s a real vital channel for artists.”
The important thing to remember, both stations stressed, is that they have no problems paying the royalties if so compelled provided SoundExchange asks reasonable rates and existing agreements are understood.

“My hope is that if SoundExchange comes to us requesting royalties for Artist A on Label Z, our contract in place with Label Z would take us out of any obligations,” says Wohlstadler. Web radio, according to Westergren, “needs to survive and it needs to be nurtured. Not to say it gets a free pass, but as we resolve this rate debate, we need to really keep in mind the value that it’s offering for musicians.”

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