We’re looking to make our blog as interactive and informative as possible with our readers. Along with the LinkWorth staff beginning to add posts, we want to offer our readers the ability to add their own information. If you want to have a voice on our blog, go here:

SUBMIT A BLOG POST TO LINKWORTH

You do not have to have an account to submit a post, just complete the form. All submissions will require approval before it is published.

Obviously we reserve the right to not publish any post we feel is not a fit for our blog, but if it is something our readers would be interested in, we’ll definitely post it.

If you have been part of the LinkWorth community for almost 2 years, you should remember a new product we rolled out called “Billboard Link Ads“, which will soon be called “LinkBB“. The idea behind LinkBB was the ability to push a product or service on “other” websites by having an entire content page hosted on these other sites. Not only did it create relative content around your embedded text ads, but advertisers could really pitch their product and/or service to butter up the potential lead and hopefully make a conversion once they made it to your site.

As time has past, a few places have popped up that basically take the original idea and make easy to understand blog terms. Payperpost.com was one of the first I know of (could have been others), then TLA jumped in with Reviewme.com. I think there is another one or two, but really nothing worth mentioning for free pub. I have not tested either of the places out, just read actual user feedback and there are some very obvious road blocks we can see that have not been addressed yet. The basic concept is extremely easy and very similar to something I read 2 years ago (wink wink). With that being said, I think these places are doing well and providing a decent product. Patrick is one of the nicest guys out there, so I definitely wish him the best and while I have not spoken with anyone from Payperpost.com, I’m sure they’re great people as well, and I believe everything is under control and they’re doing wonderful.

This is where I now announce that we, LinkWorth, of sound mind and body, we’ll soon have a nice fat list of new products and newly updated products already on the list. One of which will be referred to as “LinkPost“. It will be a glorified use of what we’ve had for a couple of years with a few additional bells and whistles on it. These added features are going to be so simple, but so “I can’t believe this hasn’t already been done” simple. We have no need for new website names or anything, we’re just going to add it to our product list. These will be launched completely after “Extreme Makeover: ‘Web’ Edition” has completed our amazing transformation. 😀 (Yes I have thought of a show like this already, but I just don’t think the stories are sad enough to have many interested in it, but it would be fun!)

We are extremely excited we’re nearing the time to unveil all of our hard work. We hope you are as well. Our goal is to begin stuffing our customer’s pockets with more money from better products and an easier flowing website to simplify the process.

GO MAVS!!

Since early in the week our staff was able to get LinkWords back to running smoothly. We should be good for a long while now as we have planned for plenty of growth. Requests are being processed faster than ever.

We appreciate everyone’s patience who were affected.

Do you think you are good at developing plugins for different blog and content management software? Then you might just be the person we’re looking for!

We are on the hunt for someone that can help us develop a LinkWorth plugin that makes publishing our different ad products easier for partners. We have the basic idea, we just need a specialist to make it all work.

If you are interested, please send an email to admin (@) linkworth.com. Reference “Developer Needed” in the subject line.

There has been updates to the Google AdSense TOS. This is important to LinkWorth publishers who use AdSense as a source of additional revenue. We posted before about how our ads do not violate their terms as long as you do not format them to mimic AdSense ads. It is still the same thing, just make sure your users can differentiate between AdSense ads and LinkWorth ads. If you have any question or doubt, don’t chance it, make them look different.

Here is a good article I read with more detail. You can move on to the JenSense blog to read further if you are interested.

Publishers have often complained about the rigidness of the AdSense policy that prevents publishers from running AdSense on the same page as another contextual ad program. So running AdSense & Yahoo Publisher Network on the same page during the same page view would be a no-no, but rotated 50/50 would be perfectly within the AdSense (& YPN) policies and terms. But not any more. Their competitive ad policy has gotten much, much tighter when they updated their AdSense policies today.

Their competitve ads & services policy was updated to this today:

Competitive Ads and Services In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

read more | digg story

I’m always hesitant to post something that might have been out for a while and I look like someone that is slow to keep up, but although others have posted about ChaCha, the human edited search engine, I think there are a lot of others who have not heard about it. So as the generic business guy would say, I’m going to do my due diligence and talk about it for those who are unaware. 🙂

Today a friend asked if I had ever heard of “ChaCha“. Obviously my first thought was the dance, but then when he said “a search engine”, I quickly pulled it up online. I noticed the normal search field and then two search buttons; 1. Normal Search 2. Search With Guide. Here is a snapshot:

So once you enter a search phrase, you can either use the “ChaCha Search” button and have typical search results returned, or you can click the “Search With Guide” button and you are taken to a page that has a left sidebar which is a chat window, then on the right there is a blank page, which is where the guides results will eventually appear. A guide, as they refer to them, is the human on the other end that is specialized in the particular category you are searching in. Looking at the ChaCha Underground, there appear to be thousands of guides over all the main categories. The guide then strikes up a chat with you and helps narrow down a few search results that they feel will meet your needs. I have saved my conversation so you could see my questioning and her answers:

Status: Looking for a guide …
Status: Connected to guide: KendraN
KendraN: Welcome to ChaCha!
KendraN: Hello
KendraN: How are you today?
You: hi kendra
You: i’m just checking out your site
KendraN: okay, what can I help you find?
You: so lets say i’m searching for “text advertising” … do you tell me sites? or give me results you think are bests?
KendraN: I would give you the link to the sites that has the best information
KendraN: Guides are supposed to give you at least three sites
You: Ok, so can you provide results for “text advertising” ?
KendraN: sure, just one moment
KendraN: These would be the type of sites I would give you and then ask if this was what you were looking for
KendraN: If yes, woot! We’re done, if no, I would clarify what you are looking for and search more.
You: How many live guides are available at any given time?
KendraN: I don’t really know, but probably hundreds
KendraN: There are alot of us
KendraN: We come online as we please
You: Do you volunteer to do this? or do you actually all work for the same company?
KendraN: We are considered private contractors
KendraN: We are not employed by them, but they pay us for the work that we do
KendraN: We are paid per time searching
You: Very cool. Now is the search database chacha uses actually their own or another engines?
KendraN: We have our own
KendraN: But the guides can use any resources we like
You: Where is chacha located? The home office I guess?
KendraN: I am not sure
You: I’m sure I could probably find it on the site

I asked how one becomes a guide but I was just referred to their website. From what I can tell, they are not accepting guides any more. It appears they have plenty and in order to pay all of these people, I would imagine they need to earn a good bit on advertising.

It’s a very interesting concept and it’s a little slower than just using a normal search engine, but it just comes down to preference. One good thing about normal search is it’s anonymous, so you can search for whatever you want and pick the sites you want. Using another human, although you’re not right in front of them, it’s not so anonymous. It also is slow and you are going on another person’s decision rather than you getting to select what you feel is best.

One of the more important aspects of any website to become an authority within their respective market is content.  Adding highly optimized content to your site, along with a strong, same themed linking campaign, is any advertiser’s road to owning their market in the search results.

LinkWorth now offers content development to Advertisers and Publishers who need the help.  If you are interested in well written, SEO friendly content for your site, contact support and we can discuss your needs and the costs involved.

Need traffic? Want permanent inbound links? LinkWorth’s Directory Submission service (a.k.a. LinkDir) is an easy way to drive relevant web traffic to your site and increase your link popularity for a nominal one-time fee. Whether you are looking for improved rankings or just need more visitors, LinkDir is a great add-on service that can help.

The LinkDir Directory Submission service will manually submit your website to up to 300 of the largest, most popular directories on the web using a variety of titles (keywords) and descriptions. We literally “hand submit” to each directory to ensure inclusion in the most relevant categories and we will even provide screenshots of the “registration complete” page at your request.

Perhaps most importantly, using the LinkDir Directory Submission service will save you a lot of valuable time. Considering it can take 10 minutes to submit to just one directory, it makes sense to outsource this tedious task to a team of dedicated professionals.

To add this service, inside your LinkWorth account look for the PRODUCTS menu option and the LinkDir option will be found. This is available for both Advertisers and Partners.

I happened across an article through a spam comment post, which led me to webmasterworld and their discussion on the subject. The owner of wikipedia, Mr. Whales, calls out Google results are SPAM! He goes on to explain how his software is the wave of the future to combat companies like Google and their automated algorithmic methods that were easily manipulated by interested parties of their respective markets. He explains how his software (wikiasari) will be edited by a human before it is allowed within an index.

So there are many angles I could go on this, so lets dive in and hit them one at a time:

1. Initially, I was like, he might be on to something. A way for humans to have the say so on if a document deems the right to be listed well. Then I quickly thought of how well wikipedia does and there is so much spam plugged into those documents all over, it’s not even funny. Then the idea of corruption for those who have the power. I’m a pretty honest guy, but I was on DMOZ editorial staff back in its inception. I was very fair to anyone that submitted, but when it came time that I had sites that made money, I was probably too fair to let them in as quick as I did.
2. I then visited the site and it initially looks just like wikipedia. So what exactly will be the difference? I was hoping for a sample of results, but either missed it or it didn’t exist yet. I also noticed that in the article, Mr. Whales took a few shots directly at Google, yet, when you visit their mock site, it’s laced with Google AdSense ads on the right panel.
3. Finally, this guy speaks as if his model is fool proof. It’s definitely what you want to see in a leader to the free world, but obvious holes in his story make me giggle a bit more than get excited about the project. Billions of legitimate documents and you’re telling me they will all be judged fairly and accordingly by a real human initially? And what happens after time passes and 50,000,000 documents need to be reviewed again to ensure all is well? You hiring a sweat shop to do this all for the statistical data that makes humans feel better knowing it is being done?

In summary, this debate is quite an interesting one. There are some smart people over at webmasterworld quizzing some great points on the subject. Hey, regardless of what my post here sounds like, I would like to see Mr. Whales get this into production. There is nothing better than a little competition when it comes to company giants like Yahoo & Google!

I think Mr. Whales needs to speak with LinkWorth on how we can provide his new Wikiasari with the proper advertising system to differentiate himself further from the search giants. 😉 John Whales, give me a call (Ron Wicker), and I can tell you about the perfect platform for you that would be pay per performance without the ads taking up side bars or head & foot locations.

LinkWorth would like to tell all of our customers that we have greatly appreciated your help, business, criticisms, suggestions and most of all, your friendships. While we have not grown close to everyone, it’s just a matter of time before we get to know more of you. Those who we have gotten the face time with, can all agree a lifetime of memorable stories came from the experience. Other than running a business that all of our employees love, we wanted to make it a place that our customers love as much and we get the chance of making the entire experience a bit more personalized compared to most online services. So Thank You from the bottom of our hearts for making LinkWorth 2006 a great year and we hope that has turned into great years for each customer individually.

The New Year 2007 is set to make record breaking numbers with our new products, improved website, upgrading of product usability and our growing sales staff. Our lofty goal for 2007 is to increase our average partner payout between 100% up to 300%. In addition, we have set our goals to increase overall sales from our current average of 4% per month to over 10% per month. With the sales come the increase in partner payout.

• Average Partner Payout 2006 – $256.00 per month ($3,072 /year)
• Projected Partner Payout 2007 – $512.00-$1,024.00 per month ($6,144 to $12,288 /year)

We realize LinkWorth is more known for a way webmasters can monetize their website(s). There is no secret that if you randomly select 100 web users and ask them if they had a website, would they rather earn money to pay for that website or would they want to put more of their own money into bettering the website, over 90% of these random users will respond with “earn money”. Due to this fact, focus on our partners have increased for the new year.

Of course our Advertisers will always be a focus as they bring the financials into our market. The new year will bring new and better functioning products, along with a much needed usability upgrade to our backend.

We are very excited about the new year and hope our excitement can pour over into your lives and accounts as time goes on.

Happy New Year 2007 to Everyone!