Hot on the heals of the Snuggie, here comes another must buy product direct from the US, the "Comfort Wipe". They screened this infomercial on Rove last night, but in case you aren't familiar with this revolutionary product that allows you to wipe your ass while maintaining your dignity, here it is...
I'm wondering when and why a person would need 18 inches of extension? To get into those hard to reach places? WTF??
Today I have some late night TV infomercial gold to share with you. If you've already seen this, please feel free to skip straight to the parody version.
For those unfamiliar with the Snuggie, it is an innovative powerhouse of a product, it's a blanket... with sleeves! Glorious. The Snuggie is designed to keep your entire body covered and "cozy" while you still retain the use of your hands. (more...)
Here are some pretty cool, for sci-fi geeks anyway, print ads produced by New Zealand advertising agency DDB New Zealand, to promote the screening of Aliens vs. Predator when it was on SKY TV. As a massive Predator, and Alien, fan boy, I love this stuff. My personal favorite is Alien vs. Predator totem tennis. I've always thought that totem tennis is a brutal sport, and this just goes to prove it.
Source: DDB New Zealand
Go check out my Alien vs. Predator: Requiem review.
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New AVP Alien VS Predator UMD Movie for PSP Sealed |  |
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US $9.75 | 21m |
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ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR 2 PC GAME vs BRAND NEW SEALED | |
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US $19.95 | 25m |
Here's some good news for anyone that's looking to make a little extra cash online. WidgetBucks have increased their referral payouts to 15 per cent. In other words you earn a 15 per cent referral fee based on commissions earned by the publishers that you refer. This 15 per cent referral offer runs for the first 12 months after your referred member joins.
Now's a good time to get on board WidgetBucks as the company has just launched what they are calling "YieldSense". YieldSense works behind the scenes to optimize your WidgetBucks widgets to maximizes the rate of return.
So, go join WidgetBucks now, create some groovy widgets, and start making some money.
I'll be honest, when I first read about Infolinks in various forums, I was more than a little sceptical. Whenever a new advertising program kicks off, it's not unusual for discussion boards to become flooded with people spouting off about the overwhelming success they are having with the next big thing, no doubt in the hope of building a few solid referrals to their affiliate link. Never the less, I took the bait, and signed up to Infolinks, because a) these things interest me, and b) if it pays off I can use the money.
In the interests of disclosure, yes, I would love for you to join up to Infolinks using my affiliate link, but that's not the only reason I'm writing this. I'm happy to report that Infolinks has actually worked for me. It's making me money, and if it's working for me, then it can work for you too!
If you're not familiar with Infolinks, they provide 'next generation' in-text advertising. From a layman's point of view they appear similar to Kontera, however, from what I can tell, and the this is the most important point from a publishers point of view, they pay more! By way of comparison, from the 1 July 2008 - 30 November 2008 I was averaging $0.72 eCPM with Kontera. My average eCPM with Infolinks so far is $3.01.
I've implemented Infolinks here and on another site and they providing a return that puts them on a par with Google Adsense. Here's a screen shot of the last seven days.
Here's the sales pitch from InfoLinks:
Infolinks presents the next generation of In-Text Advertising, leading the industry with the most relevant in-text advertising links and the highest revenue share - guaranteed.
Quick and easy setup with no changes to your website
Ads are tightly integrated with your content - no additional space required
Free sign up with no commitments or risk
User triggered, less intrusive advertising that won’t distract from your site’s content
Highly relevant In-Text ads for your site visitors with record high conversion ratesAre you an Online Publisher? Join us now and start linking text to revenue today.
The Infolinks platform is open to any online publisher, big or small, with no sign up fees, hidden commitments or minimum requirements for page views or visitors. So it's definitely worth a look for anyone with their own blog or site, large or small. Infolinks have definitely thrown down the gauntlet, and Kontera are really going to have to step up if they want to maintain their publisher base.
Would I recommend Infolinks? At this point in time, heck yes.
As I covered yesterday, Infolinks appear to be a decent alternative to Kontera. The only problem is, their dashboard is a little light on for information, and makes it easy for people to miss some of the more useful information that they have on customizing Infolinks to get the most out of them on your site.
To find the code you need to include in the footer of your site, you need to click on 'Implementation Guide'. Once there, you have the option of copying the 'Express Installation' code, or an example of an 'Advanced Installation' code. Express is fine if you want to get things up and running and don't mind using the default parameters, but if you want to specify the number of Infolinks that will appear on a page, or help Infolinks better target ads to your content, then the 'Advanced Code' is the way to go. If you're worried about the term 'Advanced', don't be. There's nothing all that scary about it.
Here's an example of the advanced code:
As you can probably tell, this allows you to modify the link color and text color. But there are also other parameters you can modify using the same principles. Here are two of the most useful.
So you want to limit the number of Infolinks that appear on your site?
To do this you'll need to add the variable called infolink_anow. For example, if you only want a maximum of 5 infolinks to appear on a page at once you would add the following line to the advanced code just before the first closing script tag.
var infolink_anow = 5;
So that will limit the maximum number of phrases that Infolinks will underline.
So you want to specify the phrases/keywords that Infolinks will target for linking?
Same principle as above, except you'll need to add the infolink_cat variable. The infolink_cat variable can only be used/populated with the twelve categories listed below:
Adults
Arts
Automotive
Business
Computers
Games
Health
Home
Kids & Teens
News
Recreation
Reference
Science
Shopping
Society
Sports
Say, for example, you wanted to target the keywords belonging to the arts category you would use the following:
var infolink_cat = 'arts';
To summarise
If you wanted to add both the above variables, your final code would look something like this.
So that's it. Hopefully someone finds it useful. If you haven't already, go join Infolinks here.
Battle of the content links
I've been using Kontera content links on a few sites for some time now, and whilst they haven't exactly set my little money making world on fire, they have proven to be a slow and steady little earner. Up until recently I'd been under the apparent misapprehension that Kontera were the only player in the content links market, but apparently I was wrong. After some research in forums I found that there was quite a bit of buzz surrounding Infolinks, with people suggesting they paid better than Kontera. Being a natural born sceptic, I decided to take a look myself.
So here's what I did. I ran Kontera on this site for five days, then switched to Infolinks for five days. Here's what I found.
Kontera (18-23 November 2008)
Total revenue: $1.83
CTR: 1.70%
CPM: $0.35
Infolinks (25-30 November 2008)
Total revenue: $3.16
CTR: 1.45%
CPM: $0.54
Kontera links seem to load up slightly quicker than Infolinks, but based on the figures above, Infolinks have the edge in terms of CPM. Kontera seem to have the edge when it comes to reporting, and I have multiple sites setup with Kontera, whereas I'm not sure how to add sites to my Infolinks account (I haven't discovered if that option exists). Both companies have a $100 minimum payout threshold, so there's no difference there.
I may try the same experiment on one of my other sites to see if the results are the same... if I can figure out how to track individual sites with Infolinks that is.