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.

Well, not yet, but according to a hebrew press release, a leading Israeli site (Tapuz) will implement a beta AdSense for Content, in his hebrew pages.

This is great news for Israeli web publishers!

Google changed the payment history page in the AdSense page. We had to quickly release a patch for AdSenseLog that suppports this. We also fixed another small bug, and also finally got rid of the need to specify whether your account is ‘updated’ or not (Which many users simply do not know). Hence, AdSenseLog 4.5.1

I want to recommend a book, for anyone who is thinking about starting a software company.

The book is called Micro-ISV, from vision to reality.

Most of the information is very useful whether you are setting a web service company or a desktop software company. It has some technical bits (how should you design the page, how to approach sales or marketing, how to do bug tracking, etc.) but the best parts are interviews with people who already started their own company. The author talks to all sorts of people - co-founders of succesful companies, and people who have just started. There are also interviews with people from Google, Microsoft and other companies that can help you with your business and marketing ventures.
It gives a lot of motivation - which is something that is really required when you work these long hours alone at your product.

AdSenseLog 4.5.0 was released today. The major new feature in 4.5.0 is the helper module. The helper includes two features - messages and markers.

We have also upped the limit of the free version to 100$. That means that if you earn less than 100$ monthly, AdSenseLog is free!

The new version is a free upgrade to all the users who registered in the past year. Upgrading for other users is just 20$.

AdSenseLog 4.5.0 details

In addition, we have opened new private AdSense forums. It’s private because only registered AdSenseLog users may enter the discussion. We hope that these will provide a sort of ‘professional’ club of AdSense publishers.

Amazon has a new feature for their associates - building a mini store, called an aStore. It takes a few minutes to setup your store, add categories and products and design it (colors, mainly).

You can then embed it in your own web site, or have Amazon ‘host’ your store. They are trying to promote this new feature, so they give you extra bonus on sales generated through your store.

It’s an interesting concept. I have implemented an aStore in OLED-Info - check it out. It sells products with OLED displays (MP3 players, mobile phones, cameras, etc.) and books.

AdSenseLog 4.5.0 is now in beta with several clients. Hopefully it will be released soon.

It includes a couple of exciting new features, that I hope will be useful for AdSense publishers.

Stay tuned!