My Newest Web Proxy – Rasta Proxy dot Com
Feb 2nd
I recently added a second web proxy to my network, Rasta Proxy. The other proxy in my network is Unblock YouTube dot Com.
I am growing my network more slowly than most and try to build up traffic and SEO before moving onto the next one. So far, Unblock YouTube is doing well as it is ranking #2 on Google for many YouTube proxy related searches and generating several hundred uniques from organic search results daily. The nice thing about that site is that it naturally ranks high because it is such an excellent domain name and I don’t have to do much promotion with it at all, however I am always adding my proxies to popular top lists.
Rasta Proxy is currently a bolded listing at Proxy.org for $20/month in order to get some traffic to it and name recognition going. Proxy.org is sending a couple hundred hits a day to the page, so for less than a dollar a day I think it’s worth it.
My monetization strategy right now is Adsense on the front pages and adbrite and adversal on the proxified pages. They aren’t earning a whole lot right now… about a couple dollars a day. But it covers the hosting and advertising I have so anything more is pure profit at this point.
Technorati Tags: proxy, web proxy, unblock youtube, rasta proxy, shaun carter, adsense, google, adversal, adbrite, youtube
Microsoft Makes Takeover Bid For Yahoo
Feb 1st
In a surprise announcement today, Microsoft has offered to purchase Yahoo for $44.6 Billion. If Yahoo’s board approves it will be the largest acquisition in Microsoft history.
The $31 per share offer marked a 62% premium for the stock. Yahoo has been struggling of late to compete with online search giant Google, which is suffering from slower profit growth itself. The blending of Yahoo and Microsoft could be just what the company needs to mount an offensive attack against Google. Especially considering the cash horde that Microsoft has and could use to revitalize the Yahoo brand.
Technorati Tags: microsoft, yahoo, google, shaun carter, takeover, buyout, technology, search, earnings
Google Misses Quarterly Earnings Estimate
Feb 1st
For the first time in Google’s three and a half year history, quarterly earnings missed analysts estimates. I saw the potential for this scenario during a post I made in January because of the program changes Google made that I feel would adversely affect profitability.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Google shares drop under $500 in trading Friday. The reputation of invincibility that Google has maintained on The Street has been dinged and I’m sure the shorts will be all over the stock when trading opens in the morning.
The price action to occur today could provide a very attractive entry point for long term investors. Despite the slowing revenue growth… the company is still cheap and trades at a P/E of only 44 and is the leading search company on the Internet by a long shot. They still generate huge sums of money each quarter and will continue expanding their revenue streams.
It’s also possible the company could contemplate a stock split to generate more retail interest in the stock, and prop up the price, among investors that balk at a triple digit share price… even though experienced investors know that price has nothing to do with value.
Technorati Tags: google, search engine, stock market, shaun carter, investing, search, earnings, quarter
Google Stock Takes a Beating
Jan 23rd
Google stock is down significantly in the last couple days of trading, along with the market as a whole. Google is reporting earnings soon and has been growing at an impressive pace each quarter but there is now some doubt about the company’s earnings going forward.
Specifically there has been a lot of talk that Adsense revenue for web publishers is down considerably since Google shrunk the “clickable area” of their ad units. This change has caused some major websites to see 50+% declines in clicks and thus a decrease in revenue as well. Google is surely taking a hit from this new policy as earnings per click are not increasing to offset the decline in the quantity of clicks.
Since web publishers generate 40% of Google’s earnings, unless the company begins to take a bigger percentage of click revenue away from these web publishers or make it up with increased revenue from Google.com, the coming quarterly earnings could be a disappointment and send the stock down even further.
Technorati Tags: google, adsense, adwords, publisher, ctr, epc, shaun carter, clicks, pay per click, earnings per share
December Earnings Terrible?
Dec 31st
I’m not sure if it is just effecting this blog or if earnings are down across the Internet during the month of December. I haven’t been noticing slow traffic, but CTR is down considerably and thus total earnings.
I am in the process of expanding my online earnings out of just this blog and my Credit Card comparison site. I will be launching a proxy network as well as a second blog that will be dedicated to the stock market and world economic topics.
I’ve learned a great deal about proxies on the Digital Point forums and was able to acquire a complimentary copy of a good Proxy eBook put together by a DP member. The earnings potential of proxies appears to be very high and does not necessarily depend solely on Adsense.
Good luck to everyone in 2008, I’m sure there will be many good things to come!
Technorati Tags: december, earnings, blogging, shaun carter, credit cards, 2008, new year, digital point, proxy, stock market, economics, ctr, google, adsense
Increase Your Adsense Earnings With AdsBlackList.com
Dec 21st
I have just begun utilizing AdsBlackList.com to help optimize Google Adsense by eliminating low paying ads from the ones that get displayed on my pages. ABL is a free and paid service that will list all of the Made For Adsense and Low Cost Per Click pages for your particular niche and allow you to input those address into the Competitive Ad Filter feature in your Adsense account.
Some sites struggle with generating more than a few cents per click from their Adsense ads and it may be because you are not properly blocking the junk ads from showing up. While I don’t have too much of a problem with low paying ads on this blog, it has caused me problems before on other websites I manage and using the competitive ad filter that Google provides can be very beneficial in not only increasing your earnings per click, but also your click through rate as better, more legitimate ads will begin displaying on your pages.
Technorati Tags: adsense, google, black list, filter, shaun carter, cpc, epc, ctr, blogging, make money online, optimize
Google Wants to Make Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal
Dec 19th
In Google’s attempt to diversify its business outside of search they recently announced an ambitious effort to develop cheap renewable energy in part to offset their own massive electricity needs to power one of the world’s largest computer systems.
Google wants to build a 1.6 Megawatt solar panel array to help power its Mountain View California headquarters. This is a great endeavor because it will not emphasize ethanol, which is causing inflationary pressure on crop prices as I wrote about in a related post. Solar energy is clean and doesn’t adversely effect any essential commodities or other industries.
Google is really stepping up and taking the brunt of the financial burden of developing cheap renewable energy, something other companies are unwilling to do. This is most likely because these other companies, many are startups, lack the immense financial resources and ongoing positive cashflow that Google is able to generate from its insanely high margin search business.
“Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind,” added Sergey Brin, Google Co-founder and President of Technology.
Now if only the government would repeal those subsidies it pays to big oil and send it the way of companies like Google that are trying to make a difference in the economics of clean power generation. The day that clean, renewable energy is cheaper to produce than coal and oil power is the day we can begin to reduce fossil fuel emission and lower dependence on foreign oil supplies which will only continue to diminish in supply and increase in cost.
Technorati Tags: google, renewable energy, coal, ethanol, power plant, sergey brin, larry page, shaun carter, solar
Smart PageRank Checker
Dec 18th
Following up on my previous post about commenting your way to a higher PageRank, I would like to share an amusing and informative tool I came across today.
SmartPageRank offers a free online tool to analyze several statistics about your website. Some of the metrics you can analyze include PageRank from up to 67 Google datacenters, age of your domain, Alexa rank, major directory inclusion, backlink count, number of indexed pages in the leading search engines, and the “estimated value” of your website.
The value of Shaun Carter dot Com at the time of this entry is $1,241:
PageRank
Values this site at
$1,241
How the value is calculated is unknown to me and is more useful as a bragging rights tool or something similar and not to be taken seriously. Although they do a good job of putting PageRank into layman’s terms. SmartPageRank has another great tool to track the PR of all your backlinks too.The SmartPageRank blog is full of good SEO advice for novice bloggers and webmasters alike. From the blog you can find out that SmartPageRank was created by Mike Call who works as a Software Engineer for Novell. It’s really great to see that Mike created his site as a hobby because the topic of SEO is of great interest to him.That sentiment follows a recent post by John Chow about doing something because you enjoy it and the money will follow. While SmartPageRank.com has a small monetization strategy in place in the form of a banner on the right side of the page, the future income potential of the site could be quite dramatic as its popularity increases. Right now Mike’s site ranks #3 in Google for “PR Checker” – not bad for a hobby.
Technorati Tags: smartpagerank, pagerank, pr, google, backlinks, shaun carter, datacenter, traffic, tools, alexa, yahoo, msn, altavista, dmoz, blogging, blog, mike call
Commenting to Increase PageRank
Dec 17th
JohnCow.com, that parody blog of a popular Internet entrepreneur had a post recently about a free product called Comment Kahuna. This software helps you uncover blogs with high PageRank and do-follow enabled comments.
Leaving do-follow comments has long been used as a means of increasing your own site’s PR. The only problem has been in finding these blogs that will pass on their link-juice to you. There are some directories listing sites who are a part of the so-called “do-follow movement”, but they don’t typically disclose the PR of the site or internal pages. DoFollowBlogs.com is one site that does a good job of sharing PR data.
I have not used this technique to try to build PR on this blog. For some reason I still have a PR of zero despite two updates during the time I have been actively blogging. Perhaps some experimentation on my part is in order. I have not had problems ranking well for certain Google keywords, so my low PR is definitely not effecting my SERPs. Google is always my best, or second best, monthly referrer of traffic.
Apparently, Comment Kahuna is only going to be available for download for a short time… perhaps a marketing gimmick but you might as well download a copy to check out. I have just downloaded mine and will take it for a spin and report back here soon.
Technorati Tags: blogging, comments, pagerank, google, pr, do follow, blogs, shaun carter, comment kahuna, john cow, john chow, internet marketing, promotion, advertising
Google Adsense Makes Life Easier For Publishers
Dec 17th
During the process of updating the blog I have redone the Google Adsense code and noticed a new feature that will make the lives of web publishers a whole lot easier. That feature is called “Manage Ads‘ and enables publishers to change the ad parameters on their website without altering a single line of code!
Once the Adsense code is placed, you can then manage the look of the ad from your Adsense setup page. This will make optimizing your ad units so much faster and easier. From the Manage Ads section of your Adsense control panel you can change the channel assignment, color palette, and ad format and have it updated on your website within 10 minutes.
I look forward to utilizing this new Adsense feature and further optimizing the ad units on my websites and I think this update will make it much easier for publishers to enhance their earnings through experimentation.
Technorati Tags: google, adsense, advertising, blogging, weblog, blog, shaun carter, optimization, manage ads
