Looks like the National League is almost set and my Mets at least know who they won’t be facing in the playoffs this week (too bad Pedro is done for!). After a week close to death – I had a really bad reaction to Demerol after a basic medical procedure and am still suffering – I figured it was get back online and share my hell with the world.

While roiling in my own personal Hades, I jumped online and found a really cool tool called HitTail.com, which helps you to discover your underused keywords (the long tail). It is really sweet and updates live! After a day and a half, I’ve already started to find some keywords I could optimize for a little better on my sites.

My other majorly cool find earlier today was a little inspirational read about the Internet’s biggest Google whores from SlyRay. The article talks about 8 internet entrepreneurs who have made serious cash with adsense; minimum to be in the club $10,000/month! Not bad.

This just keeps cracking me up!

While everyone is entitled to say what they want (as long as it is not slanderous, of course), it is really important that people use common sense before putting something on a blog or website. Once you put something online, it is there for the world to see — forever. We’ve all heard about the trouble employees and students have gotten into because of their MySpace profiles, right?

Tonight, I was Digging around and came upon a blog with a title that immediately caught my attention. Once I read the story, I noticed that this guy didn’t do an ounce of homework, and used a headline just to get traffic. The story and headline didn’t mesh — he claimed that one website will be the end of another because apparently they have a new technology that competes directly with the other — the only thing the two have in common is that they deal with the same, extremely broad, topic. The comparison was 100% wrong! I’d love to out him here, but at the same time, I don’t want to draw any additional attention to him (not worthy of traffic from us); he already has quite a few comments ripping him on his ridiculous comparison.

The point I’m looking to make here is to watch what you say and write. There is nothing wrong with being controversial. There is nothing wrong with being wrong — make a correction if you are. If you aren’t careful about what you write, you’re likely to alienate your readers and lose your audience (and get ridiculed).

Just make sure your article headlines have something to do with what you write about and if you’re going to compare apples with oranges, don’t pretend you’re comparing apples to apples.

While checking my YPN account, I noticed an announcement stating that ad units would be upgraded. Finally!

According to the Yahoo! Publisher Network Blog, “The changes you’re likely to see include the removal of ellipses (…) and truncated words, the inclusion of 40-character titles on certain ad units, and a change in the number of ads displayed on certain ad layouts.”

Apparently, the upgrade is currently live for a few publishers and will be effective for the entire network in the upcoming weeks. We’re excited to see the changes and we are grateful that Yahoo actually listens to the feedback of their advertising network’s members.

I have to admit it . . . I’m addicted; the subject of my addiction is blogging. Not only do I blog and operate websites for a living, but I’ve made it a practice to try and convince everyone and anyone I know to blog. Why, you ask? Because blogging can help you in whatever it is you do (for the most part).

On the blog, Real Estate Investing for Real, I wrote an article Using blogs to build your real estate business, where I outlined several ways professionals in the real estate world could impove business by blogging. I’ve gotten a few emails and comments from people who have actually seen their business grow because of their real estate blogs.

Real estate is just one field that blogging can help in. Do you think a store in a niche market could benefit from blogging? I do! I’d rather go to the travel agent who maintains a blog about resorts and destinations then the guy I pull out of the Yellow Pages. Sharing information about your market shows your readers and customers that you are an expert. It gives them confidence that you are someone who can be trusted, and as a result, it can build your business.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not only trying to convince people to blog about their business or specialty. I want people to blog about everything and anything they like. You see, as long as you can provide useful or entertaining information on a particular subject, people are likely to read about it. You can even blog about your life, provided you’re a half-decent writer, and people are likely to read it.

Why?

Because blogs are transforming the way people communicate. Average people now rely on blogs for news, commentary, and more. Politics is transforming because of bloggers, as is reporting of the news. Although we can’t see what is going on in Thailand tonight because there is a coup d’etat taking place, we can read about what is going on from average people sharing their experiences on their blogs. This is the power of the blog.

If bloggers have an audience, they can attract advertisers, or use ad networks like Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network to make money. Not everyone will get rich blogging, but they can certainly make some side money doing it.

So, whether you blog to build your business or blog to make some side money, give it a shot. You you never know, you too might become a blogging addict . . . (with a bit more money then before)

I’ve found some excellent keywords to market my various AdWords campaigns to, but now I’m somewhat confused. There are no other sites advertising using these keywords, yet the opening bid set by Google is a minimum of $1.00/click. Is there a reason this premium has been set?

I’ve found this to be the case with at least 10 keywords. (I’m sure there are tons more!) Its funny . . . I thought I was a bigshot finding keywords that no one had advertised with . . . now I know why.

The real question is why is Google doing this?

Blogotechnic.com today posted two very useful posts that I wanted to share with everyone.

- 18 AdSense Keyword & Preview Tools, and Optimization Tips
- 15 Tools for Tracking Adsense Income, Statistics and Clicks

All 33 links listed in these posts are quite useful, and are worthy of a bookmark.