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After a long time of waiting for my Google Adsense publisher earnings to accumulate, I’ve finally received my first payment from Google via Western Union Quick Cash method. The feeling of getting paid a three-figure for publishing online ads is satisfying and honorable. It’s not often that I get noticed by a billion-dollar company once in a while. :)

For most of us publishers residing in Asia where Western Union remittance is common, I’d recommend using Western Union Quick Cash to get paid easily. In your Google Adsense account, go to “My Account” -> “Account Settings” -> “Payment Details“, select “Setup Western Union Quick Cash” and follow the wizard.

If you have set for payment to be released (under “My Account” -> “Payment History“), your earnings will be sent to you by the end of the month after your account balance reaches your payment threshold (usually US$50). I saw that mine was issued on 24 December 2007, but I didn’t realize until I checked the page a week later. Somehow, Google Adsense did not notify me by e-mail, which I expected.

You will be able to see the payment details in this page, such as the payment date, money transfer control number (MTCN), and payment amount. Print out a statement of these details by clicking on the link at the bottom “Statement of Earnings”. Go to your nearest Western Union branch with these details and a government/state issued identity document. Fill up the Western Union Money Transfer “To receive money” form, where you will need to use the printed statement for the sender (Google) details such as its address and MTCN.

Here is the form from CIMB Bank Malaysia which has Western Union services in most, if not all, branches. CIMB is, like most other banks in Malaysia, horrendously slow. I had to wait more than an hour with four customers ahead of me.

Western Union and the bank takes a cut of about 0.9%, according to the prevailing US currency exchange rate. They pay cash in local currency.

Some of you may ask, what are my tips for making money using Google Adsense. I’ll share three tips here.

1. Build a good source of content that is fresh, relevant, and pleasantly-presented. Remember that ads are meant to help lead visitors to useful products and services which will make the experience of going to your site more valuable.
2. Optimize the context and placement of the ads (e.g. using “google_ad_section” tags), check out Google Adsense Help for more information on how. Large rectangles, vertical banners and link units are the best, YMMV.
3. Make use of channels to help monitor the performance of different types of ads (according to site, format, placement, etc.) so that you can take action as per tip #2.

I’ve yet to see my earnings payment from Nuffnang Malaysia, but meanwhile if you have a good experience with Google Adsense or more tips on using Google Adsense, share them here by adding a comment.

Technorati Tags: google, google adsense, make money, earnings payment, western union, quick cash, money transfer control number, cimb bank, ad earnings

Google Adsense has started putting rotating text ads for the 728×90 leaderboard format. For visitors, they will see two small arrow buttons on the bottom left of the ad space, as shown below. This was captured from my Malaysia Crime Watch Forum site.

Clicking on the right arrow button causes the current ads to slide and fade off to the right, and a new set of ads appear in their place. Note the mouse icon on the next screenshot.

The feature allows visitors to browse five sets of ads, so on the fifth click, only the right arrow button can be clicked, as shown below.

The loading of the next set of ads is quite fast and unobtrusive. When a set has been loaded before, it is cached and loads faster subsequently. It is very convenient to use, but perhaps more can be done to attract visitors to the buttons. Maybe Google Adsense should allow us publishers to specify the onbutton and offbutton colors.

This new feature gives publishers’ sites more ad value as visitors get to see more ads without the site being cluttered up by numerous ad spaces. Perhaps the click value is less for the sets of ads other than the initially displayed one. Another suggestion for the Google Adsense team is to give publishers the option to automatically rotate the ads so that visitors can be easily attracted to the ad space.

I have also initiated my first payout instructions for Google Adsense and Nuffnang Malaysia yesterday. I’ll be sharing the exciting news on my revenue gained from these advertising platforms when I receive the money over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: google, google adsense, leaderboard ad, rotating ad, arrow button, nuffnang, make money

Over ten years ago when Netscape was the de facto standard and finger was not a rude thing to do, I got started in the news and discussion addiction using nntp, or Network News Transfer Protocol.

Think of nntp as the ancestor of rss, or Really Simple Syndication (really). A network of nntp servers would be available for you to access and browse the discussion channels available. The number of channels during those days were in tens of thousands, from Apple to camping, Star Trek to Microsoft. Each channel has a thread of replies to one another with each message looking very much like an e-mail. The messages are just text-based, with the occasional text-encoding of binaries such as warez and pictures.

Those were the humble and sometimes underground days when news and data were quietly exchanged between people all over the world. Browsers were not favoured yet, and ftp was like the Internet jet engine of file sharing. I remember this was the way we used to get antivirus and browser updates from McAfee and Netscape respectively.

The program which I used to talk nntp was from Forte, called Free Agent for Windows 95. It was a simple three-frame Windows interface that worked well to deliver news. However, just like the news of today, I easily got flooded with news. Now, Forte seems to only have Agent commercially and it supports e-mail as well.

In 2007, we have Google Reader, which combines fancy http push (AJAX) and good ‘ol frames. It can automatically update the news as they are published from blogs, newspapers and corporations. You can tag and categorize news. Best of all, it uses the familiar vi command set (e.g. j for down, k for up). Just like other Google apps, it is very accessible since it is web-based.

Just like a decade ago, look at the volume of news I go through… it’s crazy in this information age.

Links:

Wikipedia – Network News Transfer Protocol
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nntp>

Forte
<URL:http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php>

Google Reader
<URL:http://www.google.com/reader/>

Technorati Tags: review, software, nntp, news, forte, free agent, rss, google reader