Here’s a quick update on my graphic-design project in eLance.

I have got 12 project bids. Ranging from around 70$ to over 500$. The nice bit is that you can have companies from India, Pakistan, US, UK and Belgium. And they all bid on price and quality.

I have chosen a designer (which I liked the work, and the price was good). The work was completed quickly, and I already paid, got the graphic files, and the ExpressCard-Info site is updated with the new graphics.
So the eLance service is given the thumbs-up!

According to this post, Google made a major policy change -

I spoke with Brian Axe, senior product manager on the Google AdSense Team on the issue. “As you and others have noticed, the AdSense Terms and Conditions haven’t been updated since 2005, and we’re working on an update to the Terms to bring everything into line. Traditionally, we don’t update the Terms as frequently, since all publishers must re-agree to the Terms whenever they change.”

“When it comes to enforcing policies on third-party contextual ads, we’ll be following the updated program policies instead of the T&Cs on this point. That is to say, publishers may now display other contextual ads on the same site or page as Google ads as long as they don’t have the same look and feel as our ads,” Brian Axe tells Jennifer Slegg of JenSense.

I would wait for the official change, but it seems like great news.

In a recent blog post, Google has made it clear that you can endorse referral products (these products include AdSense, AdWord, FireFox, and more). It means that I can write that I think FireFox is a great browser, and then put a referral button for Firefox.

That’s very interesting, and I think it might help publishers succeed with Referrals - obviously this will result in higher CTRs, and hopefully higher conversions for Google as well.

I decided to upgrade the graphic design of the “smaller” sites in the Metalgrass network. It’s pretty simple work, and I decided it was a good time to try to find a freelance graphic designer through the web.

I chose eLance as the freelance search platform. I have heard good things about them. I posted my project requirements, and started to get bids. Interestingly almost all of the the companies come from India. I guess it makes sense - they can offer much lower prices than companies in the US (or Israel for that matter). Kinda sad how this world works. We (my wife and I) have been to India on a 2-month trip in 2005, and indeed it’s a different world. I hope the internet will help some individuals there - for example by offering freelance work at high prices compared to their local market. AdSense is also a tool that can bridge across nations - you earn the same from your web site if you target a worldwide audience - and it doesn’t matter if you write it in New York or New Delhi.

I’ll give more updates when I have chosen the company.