The Click Fraud Problem

The Click Fraud Problem

By Christos Varsamis

Click fraudhas become a major problem for online marketers. If you participate onGoogle Adwords campaigns or Overture, you must already pay a lot foryour campaigns.

What is click fraud?

Click fraud is thedeliberate clicks to PPC search engine ads for completely other reasonsthan expressing interest for buying the related products or services.

Overturedefines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than thegood-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site topurchase goods or services or to obtain information.

Googledefines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used toartificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.

In simple words, Click fraud means that someone is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.

Who is doing that?

Three main groups click on pay per click ads, without real interest in the offered goods:

Peoplewho join Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs click onthe ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often, thesepeople cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other’s ads.

Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.

Companies(often in India, Russia and China) hire people who are paid to click onads. Google and other search networks provide refunds to advertiserswhen click fraud has been discovered.

Google and Overture employ"fraud squads,"or teams of people dedicated to fighting click schemes.But at least two marketing executives say such countermeasures aremissing fraudulent clicks that are responsible for between 5 percentand 20 percent of the advertising fees paid to all search networks.

Thisis a huge problem. There is no"pay per click"Company denying thatclick fraud exists. Web analytics companies estimate that the 50% ofall click activity is fraudulent.

This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half effective as they could be because of click fraud.

Overturespokeswoman Jennifer Stephens refutes that in estimate, the numberslikely represent acts of fraud that are ultimately caught. She addedthat Overture filters most fraudulent clicks with the best antifraudsystem in the industry, which combines technology and human analysis.

Mostadvertisers are aware of the click-fraud issue but have not delved intoit because of the technical complexities involved. Others are concernedthat they could jeopardize their relationships with the powerful searchnetworks if they complain too loudly.

One of the best ways toeliminate click fraud is using anti click fraud services such asppctrax. They provide services like the below:

IP address capture.
IP address geographic Location.
User Agent (browser, bot etc.)
See exactly what keywords are generating your clicks
Date and Time stamp
System detects sudden click spikes from one or more IP addresses
Real-time email alerts at 80% and 100% of your account’s transaction utilization
IP address history - alert you to prior offenders

Another similar service is"who is clicking who".
Other way is the click fraud capture software like Click Auditor.

About the Author: Christos Varsamis is an internet marketing consultant and the creator and publisher ofhttp://www.settinglifegoals.com

Source:www.isnare.com

Speedlinking 24 January 2007
Akismet have launched a new plugin - version 2.0. It has some great new features which should enhance it’s performance including a search feature (something I’ve been testing the last few days - it’s great), the ability to to discard spam on old posts, a spam counter widget (so you can brag about how much […]

Blogging for Money - A Passive Income?
Last week two posts popped up in my RSS feeds with the words ‘passive income’ in their headings.BJ asked - So Where’s the Passive Income? and Dave writes about Growing a blog or blogs as a source of passive income.The idea of passive income is obviously one that many people strive for - and it’s […]

Guy Kawasaki to Speak at Elite Retreat
I’m excited - this afternoon I was informed that Guy Kawasaki is going to be speaking at Elite Retreat.It’s not up yet on the main site (very recent news) but it’s official.Guy’s a great speaker (I’ve seen him on numerous videos) - but from what I’ve seen he usually speaks at some pretty big conferences […]

A Blog Isn’t Just For Christmas

A Blog Isn’t Just For Christmas.

By John Taylor

I waswatching the news on TV last night and there was a warningabout buyingpuppies as Christmas presents. There’s nothingworse than visiting thekennels in the new year and seeing allthose unwanted dogs that werechosen as presents because theywere so cute at the time. It reminded meof people who start ablog in the hope of making some money online onlyto give upafter a few days or weeks when things don’t work out.

Theaverage blogger makes around $20 to $50 per month. So, ifthat is theaverage, it stands to reason that some people makeless than that andsome people make more. The amount ofpotential income that can begenerated by blogging dependsentirely upon your ability to build aloyal audience of peoplewho have money to spend.

There is nopoint in creating a blog and then looking for anaudience. Your firsttask is to identify a hungry market andprovide it with high qualityinformation. Once you haveestablished your blog and created someinteresting content, yournext task is to attract your hungry audienceto your blog. Thereare many ways of attracting traffic to a blog siteincludingbanner adverts, ezine advertising, pay per click traffic,linksfro other web sites and submitting your site to the specialistblogsearch engines.

There are literally hundreds of blog sites thatlay desolate andabandoned like an old frontier town with tumbleweedsblowingthrough on the breeze. Their owners failed to identify ahungrymarket, they failed to attract visitors or they simply gaveupposting fresh new content to their blogs.

Blogs are dynamicweb sites, they require time and attention.Search engines love thembecause they are frequently updatedwith fresh new content. People lovethem because they regularlyprovide new and interesting information. Butyou have topersist, just like any other business, online or offline,youhave to work at building up your content, building up anaudience ofloyal readers and creating a portfolio of productsand services thatwill appeal to your readers and generate someincome.

There aremany ways of generating income from your blog. Severalpeople havecreated successful niche sites that offer productreviews includingbooks, software, videos, DVDs and otherpopular products. Other bloggersearn their income from the saleof advertising space and yet othersgenerate income through payper click systems such as Google’s Adsenseprogramme.

There is now another way of building a profitable blog. A brandnew hosted blog service -http://www.Blog4Cash.comhas married afully featured blogging service with a two tieraffiliateprogramme thus allowing you to build up a residual incomefromeveryone who signs up through your referral. This provides agreatopportunity to build up a regular income to supplementyour regular blogprofit.

So remember, to become a truly successful blogger youmust takea long term view and seek to provide interesting content forahungry market with money to spend. Don’t expect to achieveprofitovernight and plan to build a portfolio of income streamssome of whichhave a residual element that will provide you willa recurring income.

Aboutthe Author: John Taylor is a prolific writer, he is the author ofseveralInternet Marketing related eBooks, for example…http://Test-and-Track.com&http://Blog-Traffic-Secrets.comJohnis also runs a very successful"Virtual InternetPortfolio"Learn howyou too can become a VIP owner withJohn’s latest free report:http://ClickForContent.com/vip

Source:www.isnare.com

Making The Most Of Public Domain And Private Label Content

Making The Most Of Public Domain And Private Label Content

By Sandra Stammberger

There’sso much public domain content available all over the internet, withMaster Resale Rights available and sites springing up left and rightwith Private Label articles you can use to create your own products,but what do you need to bear in mind, what is the best way to use allthis content and what can you create with it?

What to Look Out For:

Copyright- you absolutely must check on this - violating someone’s copyright isnot clever and can be a really expensive mistake not to mentionseriously damaging your reputation. Is it really public domain? Allthose lawyers fees can really mount up when checking into all this butbelieve me, you really don’t want to end up in court over it.

PublicDomain Content - If you have the money to have a lawyer look atcopyright for you then fine, go ahead and get started. Where can youfind this type of content? It can be difficult to find content that isfree to use but here are a few links to get you started:

http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.wikimedia.org/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html

MasterResale Rights - If you can’t afford expensive lawyers what else can youdo? One rather less pricey way is to buy Master Resale Rights to aproduct - this gives you the opportunity to name yourself as theauthor, use the content in another product, rewrite the whole thing -the possibilities are endless. Just be aware with this that you willneed to look at the terms and conditions of what you are allowed to dowith the product before you buy.

On a budget? - not to worry,there are still many ways you can find great content without spending afortune or worrying about whether you can legally use it. Sites such ashttp://www.infogoround.com, and http://www.thelostfiles.com provideguaranteed public domain or private label content for a monthly fee.You could also sign up to some of the well known internet marketer’snewsletters. Why? Well if you’re serious about internet marketing youshould be checking out all the latest happenings anyway, but a lot ofnewsletter owners will have free ebooks, giveaways and articles todownload - some of which you will be able to use as your own.

Soyou’ve got your content ready to go and you’ve checked your rights andpermissions but there is one more thing to think about - sites such ashttp://www.copyscape.com can check for duplicate content on theinternet and of course so can the search engines. This could meananything from the search engines deciding they won’t rate your site ashighly because the exact same content is available elsewhere to somesmarty pants asking you if you really did write that incredibly goodarticle because they’ve seen someone else claiming that they wrote ittoo, so you do need to be aware of this when looking to use content youhaven’t personally created, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t goahead and make the most of all that wonderful information.

What Can You Do?

Youcould just read the information to learn from it yourself; you couldread it to get ideas for businesses, more articles, content, the listis limited only by your imagination.

How about:

Ebooks
Print Books
Presentations
Membership Sites
Face to face courses
Mini courses
Teleclass content
Webcast content
Podcast content
Blog content
Content for your Autoresponder
Ezine content
Articles for your site to build AdSense income pages
Viral Reports
Tips Lists

Whenit comes to using all the content you have gathered, you need to lookthrough it all and decide what you want to produce. If you plan to usecontent from more than one source, such as 2 or 3 articles by differentauthors to be combined into a report, you will need to go through andchange the content into a similar style, check that it is all writtenin the same tense, make sure the formatting is the same throughout,check for spelling and grammar (for example - spelling for some wordsis different in the US than the UK) and look through all the articlesto see if any of the points made are duplicated.

Once you’vedone this, make a list of points you want to make in your report, readthe articles through again and start combining them together to fitwhat you want to say - cut and paste to copy sections into the rightplace.

Next, look at the way your draft reads now and see if itfits your style of writing, your personality and your business. Rewordit to fit with this - there’s no point in producing a very formallywritten, stiff sounding report for a hobby site.

At this pointyou could just tweak it, proof read it, and then go ahead and publishit but to take it a step further and make it really unique, why notlook at how you might rewrite it so that all of the content is yours -now you’ve got the basic idea down and laid out, it shouldn’t take youlong to reword things, add in some of your own ideas and keywords thatfit your site, and maybe a few quotes and suddenly you’re looking atsomething that no-one else has got, that the search engines will loveand that no-one can claim you copied.

Time to start creating!

Aboutthe Author: Sandra Stammberger is the owner of Insider Scripts. AtInsider Script’s programmers are working around the clock to developaffordable, powerful money making scripts that will help you drivetraffic to your business.http://www.insider-scripts.com

Source:www.isnare.com

The Click Fraud Problem

The Click Fraud Problem

By Christos Varsamis

Click fraudhas become a major problem for online marketers. If you participate onGoogle Adwords campaigns or Overture, you must already pay a lot foryour campaigns.

What is click fraud?

Click fraud is thedeliberate clicks to PPC search engine ads for completely other reasonsthan expressing interest for buying the related products or services.

Overturedefines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than thegood-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site topurchase goods or services or to obtain information.

Googledefines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used toartificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.

In simple words, Click fraud means that someone is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.

Who is doing that?

Three main groups click on pay per click ads, without real interest in the offered goods:

Peoplewho join Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs click onthe ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often, thesepeople cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other’s ads.

Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.

Companies(often in India, Russia and China) hire people who are paid to click onads. Google and other search networks provide refunds to advertiserswhen click fraud has been discovered.

Google and Overture employ"fraud squads,"or teams of people dedicated to fighting click schemes.But at least two marketing executives say such countermeasures aremissing fraudulent clicks that are responsible for between 5 percentand 20 percent of the advertising fees paid to all search networks.

Thisis a huge problem. There is no"pay per click"Company denying thatclick fraud exists. Web analytics companies estimate that the 50% ofall click activity is fraudulent.

This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half effective as they could be because of click fraud.

Overturespokeswoman Jennifer Stephens refutes that in estimate, the numberslikely represent acts of fraud that are ultimately caught. She addedthat Overture filters most fraudulent clicks with the best antifraudsystem in the industry, which combines technology and human analysis.

Mostadvertisers are aware of the click-fraud issue but have not delved intoit because of the technical complexities involved. Others are concernedthat they could jeopardize their relationships with the powerful searchnetworks if they complain too loudly.

One of the best ways toeliminate click fraud is using anti click fraud services such asppctrax. They provide services like the below:

IP address capture.
IP address geographic Location.
User Agent (browser, bot etc.)
See exactly what keywords are generating your clicks
Date and Time stamp
System detects sudden click spikes from one or more IP addresses
Real-time email alerts at 80% and 100% of your account’s transaction utilization
IP address history - alert you to prior offenders

Another similar service is"who is clicking who".
Other way is the click fraud capture software like Click Auditor.

About the Author: Christos Varsamis is an internet marketing consultant and the creator and publisher ofhttp://www.settinglifegoals.com

Source:www.isnare.com

Do Full Feeds Increase Your RSS Subscriber Count?
Bouncing off Leon Ho’s post 0 to 12,000 RSS Subscribers: Ways to Attract More Subscriptions (a good read about how LifeHack.org grew it’s subscriber list)) Steve Rubel wonders out loud if someone should do some study into full feeds and if they are what makes a blog’s feed successful?He wants someone to do the research […]

How Steven Bradbury Can Make You a Better Blogger
Warning - Tangent AheadToday is Australia Day here in Australia (a public holiday). As part of this annual celebration - when we eat a lot of BBQ lamb (BBQ), play backyard cricket and watch the Tennis and Cricket (could the Aussies have demoralized the English any more?) - a hundred or so Aussies are […]

Speedlinking - 27 January 2007
Lorelle’s post Fear Not WordPress 2.1 and WordPress Plugins is an essential read for those WP bloggers scared of upgrading for fear os losing plugin functionality.David from Blogging Pro writes a post - Making it Easy to Subscribe to RSS feeds on your blog.Lorelle from Lorelle on WordPress covers a similar topic in Understanding, Using […]