Last Thursday, Yahoo announced the halt of discussions of a possible strategic partnership with Microsoft. The fallout of a Yahoo/Microsoft deal might be a piece of good news for Google. Right after ending talks with Microsoft, Yahoo announced a strategic advertisement pact with Google.

What makes me worry is that this new partnership may signify a possible monopoly of these two giants in online advertising, with Google controlling almost 70% of US search market and Yahoo, who comes in second place, controlling 17.4%¹. I fear that online advertisers may suffer from higher prices because of this near monopolistic partnership.

As I have said in the other posts, the average online ad rate of Google AdWords has increased significantly in the past few years. Take my experience as an example: my AdWords budget to achieve the same number of impressions for my advertisement has risen more than 400% in the past three years. The reason I keep using Google AdWords is there is no better alternative, unless you negotiate ad placements with other webmasters individually. However, this would require a lot of time and effort, and I’m quite sure the results would not be as satisfactory as what you can do with AdWords.

But it seems that in the short run, we have no alternative to this problem.

Microsoft will certainly oppose to the deal by escalating their objection to governing bodies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Directorate General for Competition of European Commission, asking them to deal with it on an anti-competitive behavior basis. But that process takes time and the results are uncertain.

The only one solution I can think of is buying Google stock (NASDAQ:GOOG) to “hedge” my financial pain of using Google AdWords.

¹http://searchengineland.com/071228-164103.php

Tags: Yahoo!, anti-competitive behavior of Google

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Google AdWords, Federal Trade Commission, Directorate General for Competition of European Commission, GOOG, Yahoo!, anti-competitive behavior of Google

Aside from my previous posts about two indispensable toolbars:
http://www.imarketings.net/internetmarketing/56/
http://www.imarketings.net/internetmarketing/20/

I have just installed a new toolbar that provides a lot of turbo-charged features to aid in my website analysis work.

This toolbar can return the following useful information for any particular website you browse: Google page rank, Alexa ranking, inbound links, instant keywords analysis, domain registration information . . . all at your fingertips. It’s really impressive!

The only drawback is that you need to register before you can gain access to these advanced features. This is a typical opt-in tactic to attract subscribers, but you can unsubscribe anytime you want. They use aweber.com for the newsletter subscription so you can easily remove yourself from the list.

Ready? Get the toolbar here: http://tinyurl.com/5cnywr

Note: Currently, only an IE version is available, but a Firefox version is coming soon.

Tags: Google Toolbar Keyword Analysis

Technorati Tags: Google page rank, Alexa ranking, domain registration information, Google Toolbar, Keyword Analysis

I run quite a number of blogs of different topics. One of my headaches was that I used to spend a lot of time researching to come up with an article with adequately interesting information.

But recently I found a cool tool that helps me do research instantly. It works by crawling different websites (using information from search engines) with the targeted keywords you have chosen, and returning a series of collected sentences for the keywords. It even organizes the sentences into different sub-topics for you.

You can then choose pieces from the information presented that you would like to retain for your article writing. The tool then works according to your instructions to combine your chosen information into a raw text file.

Then you can use this file to build your article. It is as simple as that!
In my experience using the tool, it sometimes shortens my research time from one hour to less than five minutes. This is a huge savings.

Get this tool now before it goes up in price.

Note: You should never directly copy others’ information without the original authors’ authorization. This tool is intended to help you do the research only, and you have to write the article yourself. Under no circumstances should you plagiarize. Write your own opinions and observations into your articles. This is, after all, the reason we write! There is a great way to determine whether or not you’ve made your articles uniquely your own: run them through CopyScape.com before posting them on your site or submitting them to free article sites.

Tags: article writing skills, article writing research skills, article writing with targeted keywords, copyscape.com

Technorati Tags: article writing skills, article writing research skills, article writing with targeted keywords, copyscape.com

A few months ago eBay banned the auction of digital products, affecting the livelihood of many sellers who relied on selling digital product on its platform. Numerous forums and news articles explained the reasons behind eBay’s decision to enact this policy. The main idea is that digital products allow the sellers to repeatedly list the same product over and over, and that affects the effectiveness of other listings for non-digital product sellers. The ban also helps to avoid the potential problem of manipulating the feedback system by buyers and sellers involved in digital product transactions.Check out this link for the official eBay message about this policy:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803271717582.html

In my view, perhaps this is good for those who resell other people’s digital products. In the past, you can easily find a lot of eBayers selling the same products you have gotten from the marketplace at incredibly cheap prices. You can now resell your products with less competition as this big marketplace no longer supports the selling of digital products.

So how about those who were selling digital products before in eBay? I’ve compiled several solutions here:

• Use the Classified Ads as the alternative marketplace. However, you are no longer able to host auctions for your digital products there. Check out the information here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/f-ad.html

• Instead of selling the digital products in eBay, use the “About Me” page to refer customers to your website selling your digital products there. However, you have to be very careful not to violate the eBay policy regarding the “About Me” page. For this tactic, you should refer to a very good book on the topic: http://tinyurl.com/3kv7ta

• Search for a fulfillment house that can help you ship a physical CD/DVD containing your software to your designated customers. There is one called Kunaki.com. Search on the marketplace for the “CD/DVD Automator” script created by Dave Vallieres for the automatic hop-up XML service with this fulfillment house. Dave’s product is now being marketed by a number of resellers. Check and find a good one on the net.

Tags: Digital Product Selling in eBay, About Me Policy of eBay, eBay Ban of Digital Products

Technorati Tags: Kunaki.com, Digital Product Selling in eBay, About Me Policy of eBay, eBay Ban of Digital Products

I have noticed that Google has just released its Toolbar 5 BETA . In case you don’t know what a Google Toolbar is, it’s a function bar added to your browser (IE or Firefox) to make browsing the web more efficient and easier. In particular, I appreciate the Page Rank feature that helps me to determine a particular web page’s ranking in Google Search Engine.

You can get Toolbar 5 BETA here:

http://toolbar.google.com/T5/intl/en/

Read my post here about the two indispensable toolbars available to incorporate in your web browsing.

Currently, the Google Toolbar 5 BETA can only be installed with Internet Explorer. It offers the following additional features that may help you browse even smarter:

• A login feature allows you to use your customized toolbar setup at other computers.
• The new Google Notebook allows you to clip contents as you browse, working much like a scrapbook.
• A more customizable toolbar button feature allows you to add your favorite services like Google Map, Wikipedia, Google Finance, etc., so they are always at your fingertips for easier access.

So download the beta version now and enjoy web browsing!

Technorati Tags: Google Toolbar, Page Rank, Google Toolbar 5 BETA, Google Notebook