I also want to thank the other contestants and to let you know that a new contest will begin shortly, though I’ll probably have bigger prizes.

What do you think about it ?

Google Favicon

I will not install it yet, but wait for 2.7.1 or so, that should be more bugg-free.

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Fortunately everything went excellent and I passed them all and got admitted to the university. After that I though I deserve a vacation and went to Greece ( Thassos ) for a week. After that, I had another problem: to rent an apartment in Bucharest, it was really hard to find the one I liked.

When everything seemed alright, I figured out that my very low internet activity inflicted in my profits and I ws almost broke, so I had to work a lot to get the traffic back and take care of the websites.

Now I’m back in business and I have more free time, so fortunately I will be able to update this blog more often. If you want to get noticed of my future articles, don’t hesitate to subscribe via RSS or email.

Hopefully I will come back with new ideas and less tired, so I can achieve my goals.

You should soon see the difference

Of course not everyone is satisfied with Google’s measures and many continue to sell links, but the problem comes when Google excludes them from it’s index. If G isn’t an important source of traffic for you, then you shouldn’t have any reason to worry, except that once banned you lose the PR and probably no one will buy links anymore.

But what if Google is your main source of traffic and simply kicks your ass ? Then you definitely have a problem. I took KnowMoreMedia’s case, a blog network with a lot of paid bloggers and that had a decent traffic and revenue. Unfortunately for them, Google was bringing the most of the traffic, until they found out KMM is selling text links. Now their traffic has decreased significantly and they aren’t probably even earning enough to pay their bloggers.

In this case is both parties fault, because on one side Google shouldn’t impose this rule, but can do it. On the other side KMM was making profit of G’s traffic and should have followed the rules. Now probably they are going bankrupt because they weren’t responsible enough and didn’t took good actions.

It’s true sometimes we have to risk, but this definitely wasn’t the case, because they were doing much better if not selling the links and getting the traffic from Google, than selling links and getting no traffic or PR. Now they are earning neither from the CPM/CPC ads and aren’t going to sell links anymore, because of the PR0 Google left them with.

The conclusion is you have to take care what measures you take when running your business and never put all your eggs in one basket.

Search engines from the view of a searcher 

As i’ve said above, when you need something you just search for it using one of the many online search engines. If you choose the right search engine, you might find what you’re looking for and be a happy man, if not, consider changing the search engine or the keyword.

Until now that was the only reason to search, but what if you were paid to do it ? Then you won’t probably interested in the keyword you search and just do it to be done.

What search engines mean for a webmaster and advertiser

For a webmaster or advertiser, search engines are a wonderful source of targeted traffic, that convert very well, probably the best. But that is if the user is doing a search because is interested in the product and not paid for it. In the second case, he just does it to get paid and then probably closes the page.

And why do i say that Ask is going to change the definition of the search engine is that a new website released that pays users to search using the specified search engine. MySearchFunds pays you every time you search using Ask.com search engine and this definitely screws the relevancy.

But that’s not so bad for the webmaster, because he is not paying anything to get ranked there, but for the advertiser. I don’t think you’d be a happy advertiser to pay for your PPC ads at Ask.com and then Ask.com to pay somebody to click them, will you ?

The effect in search engine industry

From my point of view, i think the few advertiser Ask.com has will move to Google, Yahoo or Live so only them will have something to win from this. Ask.com will probably just remain a garbage search engine, with cheap, low converting ads, like it wasn’t enough already.

What do you think about this ?

Here’s what I have accomplished in 2007:

- Managed to get my websites decent traffic and revenue, but not as much as I wanted to.

- Bought a car.

- Got a job I Like.

And my goals for 2008:

- Reach a constant monthly revenue from my websites that will fit my needs.

- Earn more experience in Affiliate Marketing.

- I want to move in an apartment and live alone, without my parents.

- Pass the exams.

- Have success with the business I have been planning since november.

Now tell me your goals, what have you accomplished in 2007 and what are you expecting from 2008 ?

And a Happy New Year !

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