Two blogs, created on the same day, on two brand new domain names with no history or prior traffic.

No incoming links other than Technorati thus far.

One has Adsense on it, the other doesnt

15 posts on each three days later, and I checked Google.

The blog without Adsense was completely spidered and in the results. Every single post was there. The blog with Adsense had only the index page in the results.

Granted, it’s too small a sample to be significant, and it might just be a fluke, but I find it interesting nonetheless.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Google would penalize sites that, when they are spidered for the very first time, show Adsense. That would be a great way to catch made for Adsense (MFA) sites, since they have Adsense from the get-go, while “real” sites will focus on content first and monetization later.

One of the hottest sites to come out of the Web 2.0 phenomenon is Squidoo. If you are not building sites to Squidoo, you are missing one of the quickest and easiest ways to build free traffic for your website or blog.

Squidoo is a cross between a blog, a mini site, and a My Space page. Squidoo calls the sites “lenses” and the people who produce the sites are called “lensmasters.”

Squidoo lenses are very easy to make, even if you have not ever built a website or blog before. You can have a lens up and running in as little as 15 minutes.

Squidoo lenses are made up of “modules”. Squidoo has dozens of modules to choose from. There are modules for making lists. There are modules for You Tube videos. There are modules for Amazon and Ebay auctions. With a little knowledge of the module system, you can have your lens built in no time.

Squidoo also offers you a chance to make money from your lens. Squidoo makes its money from affiliate advertising with Google AdSense, Amazon, Ebay and several other sites. They keep track of the earnings of each module and split the profits with you 50-50. You can also donate your profits of your module to charity if you wish.

Squidoo is very lenient about allowing you to use third party advertising on your lens. You can promote your own website if you wish or promote your favorite affiliate product. Savvy network marketers often use Squidoo lenses to promote their products and recruit new reps.

Squidoo lenses often rank very high on Google, so it’s a great chance to build some backlinks to your primary site, or promote a variety of Clickbank links on a given topic.

Check out Tiffany Dow’s “Social Networking on Squidoo” for the best information on using Squidoo to capture leads and make sales in any niche with Squidoo.

Click here!

I admit I was slow to jump on the XSitePro bandwagon. I already know HTML, CSS, PHP, and a variety of other acronyms, so how could a website creation tool like XSitePro help?

The simple answer was that, although I can easily make sites that way, I can make the same sites FASTER with XSitePro, leaving me more time for other things.

I didn’t buy XSitePro for that reason initially. I bought it because people kept emailing me asking me whether my software, Conversionary, worked with XSitePro. Until I tried, I couldn’t give a proper answer. (The answer, incidentally, is YES! it works great with XSitePro.)

But once I started fiddling with XSitePro, I found that it’s a powerful tool for creating websites quickly, and adding to them effortlessly. All I needed was to find the content.

I’ve had an InfoGoRound subscription since the service launched, and I’m quite happy with the content, so I began there. I started by copying and pasting from the site into XSitePro… but it was very time consuming, especially when special characters and extra line breaks and other oddies crept in.

Then I discovered the Import Pages feature of XSitePro, and I realized that my own free software, InfoGoGetter, would be perfect for quickly gathering and formating articles for batch import into XSitePro. This tutorial will show you how it works.

First, you’ll need a copy of InfoGoGetter, a freeware application you can download from infogogetter.com.

Unzip the executable to your desktop for easy access.

You should also download this zip file [InfoGoGetter_and_XSitePro.zip] which includes a PDF version of this information along with a template to use for creating pages for XSitePro to import. The page should look something like this:

Once you’ve got InfoGoGetter unzipped and your template in a place you can easily find it back again, start up InfoGoGetter and sign in with your InfoGoRound username and password. Once you’ve successfully logged in, you’ll be able to enter keywords as well as the number of articles you want to retrieve that match those keywords. For this example, I’m going to build a site about Ebay selling. Hitting the Go button will generate a list of results.

Double clicking on any title will allow you to read the article, make quick changes, and save it into a template.

Click on the “Browse” button beside the Template Path field, and you’ll open a file browser window. Find the template that came with this package, and click on it. Choose your preferred file extension (I usually pick .html), and then Generate when you’re ready to save the file.

You can repeat this process for as many articles as you wish. All your articles will be saved in a folder on your desktop (or wherever you ran the InfoGoGetter executable from) that’s named with today’s date.

Once you’ve generated pages from all of the articles you want to use, open up your project and website in XSitePro. Choosing the Other tab will bring up a screen with a variety of small boxes with different options and features. The box you need is called Import Pages (Power Pack). This allows you to import your pages directly into your XSitePro website.

In the form that appears once you click, choose the folder with your InfoGoGetter generated articles, and choose whether you’d like the pages to appear under a parent page, or on a particular menu.

Once you’ve chosen your options, go ahead and import the pages. You can then see all your new pages in the “Web Pages” tab of XSitePro, where you can decide whether or not to add keywords, change the description, and add Adsense.

Your title, headline, and article will have imported flawlessly, so all that’s left after any small tweaks is to publish your new pages!

So, I suppose I’m behind the curve again…. I never figured it was as easy as it is to add a video to Google.

But tonight as midget was watching Little Einsteins on my main computer, I sat fiddling with the laptop that recently came with us on a visit to Edmonton, and as a result had some video clips on it from my camera.

Since I’m not quite ready to put video of my kidlet on a public video sharing service, I decided to upload this one: a clip from the Sea Lion show at West Edmonton Mall

I got an email a week ago from Google Adsense asking me to place more 300X250 size ads, text and image enabled, on one of my sites.

Apparently, this is the size most preferred by large advertisers, and they’ll pay a higher price for above-the-fold ads in this size format on quality sites.

So, I’m changing large rectangles that are text only to medium text and image ad units to see how things work out.

The email also recommended using the “ad placements feature” to define the new slots, so I made new channels for each, even though I’ve got no idea how this is supposed to work.

Has anyone else tried this? Am I shooting myself in the foot by changing ad unit sizes from one that has been a cash cow till this point?
Below is an excerpt from the email I received…

After a recent review of your site, we would like to include xxxxxxx.com in our custom placement packs program.  Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers.   

 We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300×250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit.

 The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites.  They require that the units be placed “above the fold” on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site’s visitors without scrolling down.

 If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages.