Conversion Rates Between PPC (Paid) and Organic (Free) Results
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Conversion Rates Between PPC (Paid) and Organic (Free) Results  In a thread over at Cre8asite Forums named Organic vs Paid traffic ROI?, there is a discussion going on about the different conversion rates and ROI seen between the pay per click traffic (paid traffic) and organic traffic (free traffic). I have ...
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Just been doing some heavy translation from German to English. Which lead to writing a simple command line tool for translating via Google - waste time to save time in other words. Getting a prototype up from scratch took about 15 minutes (which sheds a light on blog spam I guess). Have cleaned it up a bit and dropping it here in case anyone can use it.
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Found in the search marketing forums: SEMPO In-House Salary Survey; Starting the SEO Process; Have I Messed Up My Ranking? and more.
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Following up on yesterday's piece about Demo-like conferences. Eric Norlin proposes that the economics are still out of whack. The people providing the value, the people attending the show, should get in for free. The demoers should pay. He has a point. In my HyperCamp proposal, that is how it works. The premise is that in 2007 everyone who attends is as much press as anyone else (everyone's a blogger) so what's the justification for some people getting in as press (i.e. free of charge) and others paying $2500.
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Only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.
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The Story: What?s in a name? Back in the days of the Gingrich revolution, the nastiest label you could pin on a politician was ?liberal.? And now that open source has become an essential technology, the quickest way to get a rise out of an open source executive (and to get flamed on dozens of blogs) is to say his or her company is ?commercial.?[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    No matter what you call them, open source companies have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business. First it was support, and now it is software access. Say it ain?t so, Linus.MySQL, for example, will charge users of its enterprise edition to use the code, not just for support as has been the traditional open source business model. ?We are looking for ways to extend our offerings in a way that can be monetized,? bluntly says Kaj Arno, the company?s VP for community.Chander Kant, founder of the open source storage software company Zmanda, is likewise frank about the need to drive revenue. Speaking of the open source community as a whole, he says, ?We are not a charity. We need to monetize.?Recognizing that charging to use open source software flies in the face of the original open source premise of freely sharable code open to everyone, Arno is quick to note that the paid version of Workbench has code and features not found in the free version ? and that the free version ?is not crippled.? Arno calls the move an experiment, and acknowledges that MySQL needs to move carefully to avoid upsetting the often quick-tempered open source community.Is this a trend? Red Monk analyst Stephen O?Grady says it is: ?Ultimately when you look at a high-profile firm like MySQL embracing it, it?s difficult to conclude anything else.?InfoWorld blogger (and IBM employee) Savio Rodrigues notes another example. In a recent blog post, he looked at changes to JBoss since it was purchased by Red Hat Software and concluded: ?The Fedora/JBoss subscription is just like the software subscription business model that commercial software vendors have been using for decades.?Does that mean a company that adopts the usage-based pricing model isn?t really open-source? That?s an interesting point, since as Zmanda?s Kant acknowledges, ?the litmus test of open source is control of the code.? Open source software delivered through appliances keeps the access ? and thus control ? away from users, he notes. But code binaries distributed as software remain open to their users ? for now, at least.The Bottom Line: Have MySQL and Red Hat run away from the principles of open source? Who cares. The real point is that the open source business model is evolving away from the ?free? model and toward an alternative development approach for commercial software. If you adopted open source due to its cost, you may not save as much as you thought. If you adopted open source for the access to source code or the community-supported development approach that is supposed to result in better software, it?s not yet clear if the greater commercialization will enhance those aspects or drive away the true believers and make open source no different than the old-fashioned commercial offerings.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Local Search Marketing: A Huge Untapped Market - Research: Do Keywords In URL Influence Your Rank? - Make All Your Keywords Plural? - How Do PPC Campaigns And SEO Compliment Each Other - World Without Search Engines - Does Adwords Have a Limit On the Number of Ads? - New AdWords Classifications Coming
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After my blog post &#8220;A True 2nd Tier PPC Click Fraud Story&#8221; last week did I get contacted by Miva and had some email conversation and a phone call will them. I offered them to respond to the items stated in my post and also to the comments made by readers of Search Engine Journal. [...]
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Reposted in the queue as it's impossible or at least very complicated to move it as I asked (although the post where aphrael said such thing disappeared so perhaps this is not the case after all - another minor K5 mystery).  The original discussion can be found here (read it as there are some clarifications by rusty). All right, here is the (adapted) diary. Rusty posted a comment in the diary entitled "Would you pay 10USD for K5 Life Membership?" saying that K5 will become a pay site once new user registrations will be reactivated: "I was thinking $5.00 (none / 0) (#18) by rusty on Thu Sep 06, 2007 at 04:42:15 PM CET But it would actually be charged. That plus a hash of the identifying CC info so you only get one account ever, and I think we'd either shrivel up to nothing and die, or solve the spamming and crapflooding issues. Funny that someone else is thinking about this right now. It'll probably happen before I turn new signups back on." This of course begs the question: HIBT? If so I'll bite (see some considerations under the fold).
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Google Making Nearly $.10 on Every Search Query  John Battelle's Search Blog picked this up the other day from a blogger who dissected Google's public revenue records to come to the conclusion that Google earns about $.09 per every search query - a hefty return. With the average cost per click ...
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Benchmark just invested in a support vendor.  Another one.  Is there a lesson in this?
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SEM firm Fathom Online has been reporting flat (or declining) average keyword prices for the past several quarters. But that doesn&#8217;t entirely make sense. Paid search revenues keep going up, driven in part by an influx of new advertisers. If you have more advertisers and more revenues in search it would suggest more competition over keywords. [...]
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Payless ShoeSource beats analyst estimates, but is its stock too expensive?
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Search results are color coded to show good rates versus bad ones.
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If you&#8217;re a small company trying to compete against the big dogs in the PPC space in a competitive market, you&#8217;re probably either spending a huge chunk per month to reach the top positions or about to quit and choose other avenues.  We&#8217;ve all heard using other PPC search choices besides Google, Yahoo, and MSN [...]
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Site Offer Save a whopping 50% on definitive MySQL guides
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Comparing on-demand CRM products is a lot like comparing ice to steam. Both are technically water, but the form makes all the difference.