Alex Schultz: APIs

Does mybloglog reduce adsense earnings?

I have grown to really appreciate mybloglog, I think it's a totally awesome tool. Also as an internet marketing professional I think that Yahoo! got mybloglog for a song. With the distribution this widget gets I am sure there are some quite incredible opportunities for mybloglog to earn millions a year in revenue. However 2wks ago I added mybloglog to my paper airplanes site to see if I could create a community around that site which would be totally awesome. With c. 150 000 unique visitors a month it seemed like a good idea.

The above graph shows my daily CPM for my left hand adsense skyscraper since the start of 2007 (although I have removed the absolute amounts from the left axis). On adding the my blog log widget (directly below the adsense ad) the CPM dropped dramatically and interestingly as the below graph shows the CTR % stayed the same through that period so effectively for some reason my average CPC dropped.

I don't know if it is google detecting there are images close to the adsense ad, I don't know if it's mybloglog changing Google's opinion of my page quality for the adsense crawl or what (it certainly isn't people clicking on mybloglog and joining my community :( - it didn't work for paper airplanes, that's why I took it off) but somehow there was a directly correlated change both when I added my blog log and when I removed it on my CPMs through adsense. I'd love to hear if anyone else has seen the same or if I am just a screw up :)

Give up completely on CPM ad networks... NOW

On my sites video advertising revenue is the big growth area. The following graph shows how my advertising revenue sources (% wise) have changed over the past two years (yellow - video, reddish purple - adsense, blue - cpm ads). I have made no changes to my use of "display" or CPM advertising (the blue area) but I have added adsense and video in completely new placements on my sites.

You can see an almost perfect inverted 'S' curve as the revenue driven by display advertising has fallen as a proportion of my site revenue to only 20% from 100% in under a year. Video is now showing similar growth to Adsense and the overall pie is continuing to grow very nicely (up ~300% since Jan '05). The question that comes to me now is... how worthwhile is it to show video ads, contextual ads AND banner ads?

Digging a little deeper the average click on a CPM banner effectively earns me 1/3 of the average click on a contextual ad and something like 1/30 of a video ad plus I get approx 50% of the clicks I get on contextual ads on my CPM ads (interestingly enough CPM ads have exactly 1/2 the CTR based on >10million impressions on both). So if these users were to click on adsense (at only the CPM click through rate) instead I could make 3x more revenue from those same impressions (or potentially 6x if they hit the adsense CTR). It isn't likely to be that great but even if they were 1/2 as likely to click on the adsense ads as the CPM ads the revenue would be 50% higher for those same visitors. So I think by replacing these last, lingering CPM ads with adsense I have a 50%-500% upside potential (10%-100% of my existing earnings) and my worst downside is 20% of earnings, that's worth a test.

A final point is this. Taxes are getting very important to my little business now that it's getting to be a large chunk of my income and having a multitude of advertising partners is becoming painful on my tax returns so I want to consolidate my revenue streams and hence minimize my accounting costs. Things are looking bad for the lifespan of CPM ads on my site (and I've already given up on pop unders this week). With a bit of luck they will be gone completely by April and I will let you know the results of banishing them.

Skype in Facebook contact details

Yes I am partizan but facebook has finally put more than just AIM into it's instant messenger list. As someone who had 12 skype windows open when I saw this information and who logs into facebook at least 10 times a day this is huge news... HAPPY DAY (oh yeah and sorry for the cheesey photo below, training camp, seville, 2005)!

Sometimes I feel unworthy to be on the web

Browsing YouTube and a few of my favorite blogs today I was quite simly blown away by what I was seeing and I wanted to share that experience here, 2 YouTube videos and a blog post. The first YouTube video really started it all off and it is called Web 2.0... The Machine is Us. For someone in the trade that's a pretty obvious statement but I have never seen it expressed this well before... see below:

The second really exciting video for me was a piece I saw in the comments of the previous video called black button. It reminded me a lot of the short plays the drama groups used to put on at school and really engaged me for the full 7minutes of the piece with just two actors talking. It also brought back memories of the play Copenhagen which I saw in london with my Physics class in my final year of school (and feel all scientists and engineers should be forced to see). Powerful moral content, strong acting and a simple set. Sheer brilliance:

The final piece I wanted to share is humourous but simply amazing and that is a post from the blog indexed. On Indexed Jessica Hagy draws little management consultant like graphs to explain everything. She does it with humour and her tongue firmly in cheek but she really often hits the nail BANG on the mark. This post is about the relationship between accessibility and desirability but read the whole blog, go back MONTHS, you will be glad you did.

So these three items... what do they have in common. Two things, 1. I loved them, really truly enjoyed watching them and thinking about them. 2. My web offerings don't equal the talent of these individuals and yet I am positive earn me more money. That's totally not fair and I hope that YouTube paying users a share of their revenue will rectify that, cos these guys deserve it!

eBay Search URL Structure Explained

One of the things I have found very hard as an eBay API developer (with two certified applications) is the eBay search results page URL structure. My latest project requires me to build more complex eBay search URL structures on the fly. Below I explain how to create eBay URLs on the fly based on my understanding. I am hoping this complements a few articles out there about adding eBay items to your wordpress blog and how to create an eBay niche store. eBay has given me NO HELP in producing this post so please don't consider this to be some kinda official eBay description of how to create an advanced search url... it isn't one!

The search will return BIN only items, items available to certain countries, search title and desc, select a category, include a price range and show the eBay "welcome new user banner". There are of course more variables possible but this is a good start:

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red__W0QQfnuZ1QQftsZ2QQsaatcZ3QQsacatZ293QQsaprchiZ150QQsaprcloZ200QQsascsZ2

The link above is a search for a "4gb ipod nano product red" the query section of the search should be simple enough to spot. You replace the " " with "-" and append the search string to the search.ebay.com as follows for a simple default search:

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red

If you wish to then start exploring more complex variables you append _W0 to tell eBay search they are coming and then each variable is preceeded by QQ. The order of the variables appears not to matter and the first variable on this list is QQfnuZ1 - this is the welcome new user banner as shown below:

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red_W0QQfnuZ1

The next variable is QQsacatZ293 which tells eBay to just search category 293 which in this case is consumer electronics in the US (siteid: 0)

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red_W0QQfnuZ1QQsacatZ293

The next variable is QQftsZ2 which tells eBay to search title AND desc expanding the search... if you don't want this to happen simply leave it out.

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red_W0QQfnuZ1QQsacatZ293QQftsZ2

Proceeding through my example URL we come across QQsaprchiZ150 and QQsaprcloZ200. These variables control min and max price (and don't have to appear together, you can have just one or the other). Here I set min price to $150 (QQsaprchiZ150) and max price to $200 (QQsaprcloZ200) as far as I can see the currency is controlled by the site you search on but I may be wrong.

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red_W0QQfnuZ1QQsacatZ293QQftsZ2QQsaprchiZ150QQsaprcloZ200

I now have two more variables left in my example url. The penultimate is QQsascsZ2. If this is present you only return BIN items (if you enter QQsascsZ1 you only get auction items and if you leave it off you get everything).

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red_W0QQfnuZ1QQsacatZ293QQftsZ2QQsaprchiZ150QQsaprcloZ200QQsascsZ2

Now the final variable in my list for understanding the eBay search URL is: QQsaatcZ3. This controls the ship to country, in this example it is "3" which is the united kingdom.

http://search.ebay.com/4gb-ipod-nano-product-red_W0QQfnuZ1QQsacatZ293QQftsZ2QQsaprchiZ150QQsaprcloZ200QQsascsZ2QQsaatcZ3

The full list of countries within the eBay advanced search form as of 4th February is at the end of this article.

So there you have an outline of some of the main variables in the eBay advanced search URLs, this definitely prooved really useful for me to create my little application, I hope it's useful for you.

1, United States
15, Australia
2, Canada
3, United Kingdom
4, Afghanistan
5, Albania
6, Algeria
7, American Samoa
8, Andorra
9, Angola
10, Anguilla
11, Antigua and Barbuda
225, APO/FPO
12, Argentina
13, Armenia
14, Aruba
15, Australia
16, Austria
17, Azerbaijan Republic
18, Bahamas
19, Bahrain
20, Bangladesh
21, Barbados
22, Belarus
23, Belgium
24, Belize
25, Benin
26, Bermuda
27, Bhutan
28, Bolivia
29, Bosnia and Herzegovina
30, Botswana
31, Brazil
32, British Virgin Islands
33, Brunei Darussalam
34, Bulgaria
35, Burkina Faso
36, Burma
37, Burundi
38, Cambodia
39, Cameroon
2, Canada
40, Cape Verde Islands
41, Cayman Islands
42, Central African Republic
43, Chad
44, Chile
45, China
46, Colombia
47, Comoros
48, Congo, Democratic Republic of the
49, Congo, Republic of the
50, Cook Islands
51, Costa Rica
52, Cote d Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
53, Croatia, Republic of
55, Cyprus
56, Czech Republic
57, Denmark
58, Djibouti
59, Dominica
60, Dominican Republic
61, Ecuador
62, Egypt
63, El Salvador
64, Equatorial Guinea
65, Eritrea
66, Estonia
67, Ethiopia
68, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)
69, Fiji
70, Finland
71, France
72, French Guiana
73, French Polynesia
74, Gabon Republic
75, Gambia
76, Georgia
77, Germany
78, Ghana
79, Gibraltar
80, Greece
81, Greenland
82, Grenada
83, Guadeloupe
84, Guam
85, Guatemala
86, Guernsey
87, Guinea
88, Guinea;Bissau
89, Guyana
90, Haiti
91, Honduras
92, Hong Kong
93, Hungary
94, Iceland
95, India
96, Indonesia
97, Iran
99, Ireland
100, Israel
101, Italy
102, Jamaica
103, Jan Mayen
104, Japan
105, Jersey
106, Jordan
107, Kazakhstan
108, Kenya
109, Kiribati
111, Korea, South
112, Kuwait
113, Kyrgyzstan
114, Laos
115, Latvia
116, Lebanon
120, Liechtenstein
121, Lithuania
122, Luxembourg
123, Macau
124, Macedonia
125, Madagascar
126, Malawi
127, Malaysia
128, Maldives
129, Mali
130, Malta
131, Marshall Islands
132, Martinique
133, Mauritania
134, Mauritius
135, Mayotte
136, Mexico
226, Micronesia
137, Moldova
138, Monaco
139, Mongolia
140, Montserrat
141, Morocco
142, Mozambique
143, Namibia
144, Nauru
145, Nepal
146, Netherlands
147, Netherlands Antilles
148, New Caledonia
149, New Zealand
150, Nicaragua
151, Niger
152, Nigeria
153, Niue
154, Norway
155, Oman
156, Pakistan
157, Palau
158, Panama
159, Papua New Guinea
160, Paraguay
161, Peru
162, Philippines
163, Poland
164, Portugal
165, Puerto Rico
166, Qatar
227, Reunion
167, Romania
168, Russian Federation
169, Rwanda
170, Saint Helena
171, Saint Kitts;Nevis
172, Saint Lucia
173, Saint Pierre and Miquelon
174, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
175, San Marino
176, Saudi Arabia
177, Senegal
178, Seychelles
179, Sierra Leone
180, Singapore
181, Slovakia
182, Slovenia
183, Solomon Islands
184, Somalia
185, South Africa
186, Spain
187, Sri Lanka
189, Suriname
190, Svalbard
191, Swaziland
192, Sweden
193, Switzerland
194, Syria
195, Tahiti
196, Taiwan
197, Tajikistan
198, Tanzania
199, Thailand
200, Togo
201, Tonga
202, Trinidad and Tobago
203, Tunisia
204, Turkey
205, Turkmenistan
206, Turks and Caicos Islands
207, Tuvalu
208, Uganda
209, Ukraine
210, United Arab Emirates
3, United Kingdom
1, United States
211, Uruguay
212, Uzbekistan
213, Vanuatu
214, Vatican City State
215, Venezuela
216, Vietnam
217, Virgin Islands (U.S.)
218, Wallis and Futuna
219, Western Sahara
220, Western Samoa
221, Yemen
222, Yugoslavia
223, Zambia
224, Zimbabwe