Internet Marketing Strategies and Marketing Tips by Neil Shearing

In what could be a boon for many people sitting on undeveloped domains (ones that just have placeholder pages, also known as parked pages or parked domains), Google has announced that you can place Adsense on such pages.

“Many publishers have approached us looking for a way to monetize their domains, and today, we’re excited to announce the expansion of AdSense for domains. This product allows publishers to earn revenue through ads placed on undeveloped domains.”

At the moment, you’ll need to be an “English-language AdSense publisher located in North America”. Google says, “we’ll expand to additional regions and languages in the future”.

It’s not as easy to get Adsense on your parked domain pages as it is for regular pages. It seems that you have to tweak the domain DNS settings to effectively turn the placeholder page over to Google, who then display a page with “Sponsored Listings”, “Related Searches” and “Popular Categories” along with two search boxes.

This raises two points…

1: How can Google justify creating a page with just ads and search boxes, when they say you can’t create MFA (”Made for Adsense”) sites? The unique content on these “Domains for Adsense” pages is zero. What was that famous guideline… something like… if you remove the advertising, does the page still offer value?

2: How these “Domains for Adsense” pages have any relevance to the visitor? The only thing Google can base the targeting of the ads on is the domain name. As an Adwords advertiser, would you want your ad displayed on a page with very little relevance to what you’re offering?

update New Best Of The Web discount coupon code for January 2010 posted here.

People liked my earlier post with a Best Of The Web (BOTW) Discount Coupon Code, so here’s a brand new one…

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Ah, December. The last month of the year but the first of the winter season. For some, it is a time to bundle up and prepare for cooler temperatures. But for most, it is simply a month of “giving.” A time to spread good will and holiday cheer. And considering the current economic status a little “giving” could go a long way. So this month, Best of the Web is greeting the season with a blizzard of savings.

From now until December 31st, you can Save 25% on All NEW Submissions and Sponsorship Advertising in the original Best of the Web Directory, the BOTW Blog Directory, and Best of the Web’s newest offering, the BOTW UK Directory!

To instantly Save 25% on all directory submissions, simply enter the following Promo Code when prompted:

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Best of the Web
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BOTW is one of the oldest directories online, and seems to be “trusted” by Google. Also, whether or not a site has a BOTW listing is reported by the “SEO for Firefox” plugin, along with DMOZ and Yahoo.

Enjoy the new Best Of The Web (BOTW) Discount Coupon Code!

Pownce (”Create a network of friends and share stuff. It’s free and easy”) is shutting down.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem that lack of funds is an issue (”Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox”), but I can’t help wondering if more “social media” sites, whose numbers have exploded over recent years, will shut down as a result of the “credit crunch”.

I’m not sure that many of the social media sites have solid business plans or are profitable. In fact, there seem to be echoes of the early dot com boom where the mentality was simply a huge, expensive grab for traffic and signups without profitability being considered to any great extent.

There’s always consolidation in any new industry as the more profitable players squeeze out the less efficient guys, but to what extent will this happen with social media sites? Will we see consolidation, or a huge meltdown?