After Google’s DoubleClick acquisition and the recent announcement of the Google Affiliate Network program, it was generally expected that there would be some major shakeup in search giant’s cashcow AdWords/AdSense duet.

Well, the first (with possible more to come) is here already. Today AdSense publishers received a “mandatory” mail from Google, announcing the retirement of their AdSense Referrals program.

For those not familiar with Google’s advertising programs for publishers, the AdSense Referrals Program allows website publishers to earn money by referring users to advertisers’ products and services.

But unlike the traditional AdSense Pay Per Click program which pays for each single (valid) click, with Referrals publishers earn only when visitors they refer perform some specific action pre-determined by the advertiser… such as making a purchase, completing a form to receive more information, entering a sweepstakes, etc.

Below is a copy of the mail. Time to hunt and remove all those adds

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program. We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

• Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.
• AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your
  ad space.
• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information

Why is this happening?
We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional questions, please visit our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14882

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

Can a new wine skin save an old wine that’s going bad? San Jose, Silicon Vally, based Mercury News seem to think so, with the launch of their new Mercury News e-Edition.

This morning I woke up to find a mail from Mercury News with a “special announcement” about this great new service — a complete re-production of the print paper online.

The mail itself seem to have been sent by a toddler who spent so much time playing with his toys and didn’t have enough time to finish editing the template. [Seen those newsletter / website templates with text like "Your Company Name Here" sort of thing?]. But I digress. Here’s the gist of the mail:

Special Announcement:

Today, we are announcing the launch of the Mercury News e-Edition. The e-Edition is not just a website. It’s every story, picture, and ad exactly as it appears on every page. And, you’ll be able to do things you can’t do with the print edition, such as:

• Get Silicon Valley news by viewing our four daily editions
• View our free 30-day archive to view news you’ve missed
• Get print content NOT available on MercuryNews.com
• Search the Mercury News with advanced search tools
• Enlarge the type for easier reading

Here’s a screen shot (click image for for bigger one), and you can try the demo of this new service here.

This service costs US$15 for a “7-day, 5-week e-Edition subscription” and if you ask me, that’s pretty steep. Granted, I don’t live in San Jose or even in the United States to know how these people love their newspaper ads to want to pay for it, and this was obviously not built for me.

But I checked out the demo all the same and I wasn’t impressed at all.

The main problem here is that of navigation. First it’s no fun reading those tiny columns on screen. After figuring out the fairly complicated navigation system, folks like me with tiny screens will have to continually be scrolling left and right to read the content of a page.

Oh, and where is page 65 that this article continues from? Hello?

The scanned text was also really painful on my eyes. Unfortunately, increasing the text size completely breaks the columnar layout, turning it into a regular linear web page. So why the hassle?

Will advertisers have to pay more because their ads are getting online? In any case, what’s the value to be gained from online ads that are not linked to any landing page?

As I’ve said, I don’t live in the United States, so I may be missing the point of this new service entirely. That probably explains why I don’t get this either:

Missed some news during the week? Catch up during your free time when you can relax. With the e-Edition, you have access to our 30-day archive. You can quickly and easily review the news & ads you otherwise would have missed. Take a test drive and view a demo here

Wow. So people really miss ads? Not me.

Now I was convinced this was not for me, so I just had to unsubscribe. So I scroll down to the bottom of the mail, and hit the link that says “Manage Your Subscriptions (to unsubscribe from this mailing)”. And what do I get?

What? But I only wanted to unsubscribe? Naturally, I went the far easier route: which was to hit the Spam button.

But seriously I’m interested in knowing what value proposition (beyond going back to missed ads ) that such a content format would offer. Who are the likely audiences for something like this? Share your thoughts below.

Here’s one odd-old-new news: I was one of the lucky folks who won MarketingSherpa’s weekly book contest way back in December, 2007. The book I won: What’s Your BQ: Learn How High Brand Quotients Helped 35 Companies Succeed, written by branding expert extraordinaire, Sandra Sellani.

And here’s the interesting part: the book arrived in my Post Office letter box here in Accra, Ghana, on the 28th of December 2007 — but I only got hold of it today, 12th of April!

What happened? Confession: I hardly pay a visit to the local Post Office these days. In fact, yesterday was the first time I paid a visit to my local Post Office this year. My life is now run almost entirely online.

Thank you MarketingSherpa and Sandra Sellani for this book.

[Yes, I wear pink stuff. I adore pink.]

When I tell people I don’t listen to the radio or watch TV, they often stare at me in utter disbelieve — wondering what kind of beast I am to live without “news”. The thing is, I’m very selective on what I consume, whether it be food or information. And when it comes to information, I prefer to be selectively ignorant on issues that I consider not essential to my personal growth.

So yeah, I don’t own a TV or radio, and it’s been long time since I even held a daily newspaper. But I do consume a huge amount of information on selected topics and from carefully chosen sources. Today I’m sharing with you 6 of my favorite blogs on personal development. Trust me, I’ve read every single article on these blogs, and I’m subscribed to their mailing list and/or RSS as well. Here we go:

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich: A blog on personal finance (banking, saving, budgeting and investing) and personal entrepreneurship, authored by Ramit Sethi, recent graduate of Stanford and co-founder of PBWiki, a Silicon Valley (USA) startup.
• Escape From Cubicle Nation: How To Go From Corporate Prisoner To Thriving Entrepreneur, authored by Pamela Slim
• StevePavlina.com: Personal Development For Smart People, by Steve Pavlina.
• Get Rich Slowly: Personal Finance For Real People
• LifeHack: A frequently updated blog providing news and articles to hellp you to get things done in a faster pace.
• SiteSell Blog: The SiteSell Blog is, IMHO, the single most important Internet marketing resource for small businesses. Dr. Ken Evoy and his SBI! team dig through the mess out there and give you only those gems that matter, so you’ll stay focused on building your business instead of chasing every single SEO trick that comes around.

Got your own list to share? Drop them in the comments below. Other than that, have a good day, and look out fore more great stuff.

If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been silent for quite some time, it’s because of this (Plenty of Fish) and that (Hot or Not). Just kidding. Ok, I was only taking one quick look, and this “SOSEXXII” girl’s profile caught my attention, and I ended up spending the rest of the night wandering about looking for plenty of fish that may be hot or not :-).

So who’s this SOSEXXII girl? Here we go:

It’s no surprise SOSEXXII appears on 95 members’ favorites lists (at time of writing), when most folks have less than 10… although I must admit the door is pretty widely open here: she’s looking for men between 23 - 83!

Bottom line, whatever you’re doing… do whatever it takes to stand out from the cloud. Find that unique selling proposition (USP) that sets you or your business apart from the competition, and you’re sure to attract a loyal following.

Have you got any interesting “differentiating” story to share? Don’t be shy… say something.

Something magical happened in the Tanzanian city of Arusha earlier this year: TED held its first conference in Africa, titled “Africa: The Next Chapter.” Thought leaders from across the continent gathered with counterparts from around the globe to build new and lasting collaborations.

While I couldn’t be at this conference, thanks to the magic that is the Internet, I’ve watched every single one of the talks published so far.

My personal favorites from the Arusha event are: Ashesi University College President Patrick Awuah’s talk on “Educating a new generation of African leaders“ and Economist George Ayittey’s talk on “Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa’s future“ … both Ghanaians (yeah, I’m THIS biased.. and I’m not afraid to tout it )

And building upon the phenomenal success of this conference, TED is now making this an annual event. From a post on the TEDBlog:

We’re delighted to tell you that there will be another TED conference in Africa next year, and that we hope to make it an annual event on the continent! TEDAfrica will be held in Cape Town, South Africa, September 29-October 1, 2008 (save the date!), and will follow the format of this year’s TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

In addition, a new South Africa-based nonprofit organization, TEDAfrica Foundation, has been founded. TEDAfrica Foundation will devote its existence to promoting a better future for the continent of Africa.

Here is Patrick Awuah’s talk from this year’s event in Tanzania:

… and here’s George Ayittey’s talk:

How seriously should we take CommonRoom? A startup who’s founder recently claimed Facebook was his idea, boldly display a logo with the message “Created by an unlicensed version of BB FlashBack” in their public demo!

No, they’re not being cheap, for there are many open source tools out there. And I’ll bet my head on this, that they can afford to buy one if they feel too lazy to dig around. That leads me to conclude: they just don’t care.

But I do. So for once, saying NO was so easy.

Quiting your stable day job that pays the bills and stepping into the uncertain business startup terrain is not a light decision, and must this must be handled with utmost caution. The issue at stake are increased by a factor of 10 you’re living in a developing nation like ours, where too often a whole entourage of relations might be dependent on that single salary.

But this needn’t be a job or business decision. You can indeed, with careful planning, naturally transition from your job into working in your own business full time. This is not easy though, and there’s likely to be sacrifices from either. You should therefore be prepared to put in the extra time and effort to make up for this.

So how do you know its the perfect time to quit? Tatsuya Nakagawa of Atomic Creative Group talks of ten things to work on to determine a good “crossover point”, the point at which you can make a smooth transition from day job to concentrate your own business. Tatsuya suggests you ensure:

1. There is a good product or service offering in place.
2. There are real customers.
3. There is enough money in the bank to sustain a prolonged dry spell.
4. There is enough money in the bank to sustain a prolonged dry spell.
5. The product or service offering is not being trampled by a major competitor.
6. The business will not likely go broke within three to five years.
7. You develop the self discipline it takes to tough it out in your own business.
8. You have become an expert in your chosen area.
9. You have enough of the right “friends” in the area.
10. You have key mentors and advisors in place.

While these are fine points of advice, you should also be careful not to fall into a ready-aim-ready-aim-ready— syndrome. No amount of planning can compare with the feedback you get from real users of your product or service, and there’s no other way to get that than to take your product or service to the market.

Have you been considering quiting your day job and launching your business? Whats been holding you back?

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Everyone is so busy these days. The 24hrs don’t seem to be just enough anymore. And for those of us who don’t do the 8-5 thingy, folks just assume we’re always free and make all kinds of demands on our time.

And with so much to do, the default route for most people is to start the day with those simple tasks that seem to be so important. (Some even claim to be “last-minute” people who become more productive when there’s a looming deadline, but I think that’s procrastination seen through another window).

But here’s an alternative approach to starting your day: swallow the frog first! The idea is, if you swallow the frog (ie, if you do the most challenging task) first thing in the morning, the rest of the day will look pretty good by comparison. After all, what could be worse than swallowing a frog?

Start by putting each of your tasks into one of four categories:

1. Things you don’t want to do, and actually don’t need to do.
2. Things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do.
3. Things you want to do and actually need to do.
4. Things you want to do, but actually don’t need to do.

Then, first thing each day, do the most difficult task — the thing you need to do but don’t want to do. Set a time limit. I like to swallow my frog for 30 minutes. I believe I can do nearly anything within 30 minutes. Set whatever time limit that’s OK for you.

Frequently I’m not done with my frog in 30mins … but that’s OK. I simply continue and finish the task. Sometimes, I hit a dead end with my frog and I give myself permission to set it aside knowing I have moved it 30 minutes further ahead.

Whether it’s planning my daily tasks or taking some major life decisions, I’ve found the approach of swallowing the frog first to work like magic. But don’t forget, like any cool hack, this is one way of approaching the issue of task management … but it’s sure worth a try.

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A major renaissance is taking root in Africa. You need to be living on the continent to appreciate the gradual — sometimes even painful — but sure drive of our respective countries towards stable democracies and economic prosperity. But who are the drivers of this renaissance?

In this thought-provoking talk from the 2007 TEDGlogal Conference held in Arusha, Tanzania, Ghanaian economist George Ayittey describes these people as the agile “Cheetah Generation”, a new breed of Africans who are taking their futures into their own hands and moving the continent forward.

This, he contrasts with what he calls “Hippos” — the lazy, slow, ornery (and thankfully, dying!) generation who have ruled and ruined post-colonial Africa over the decades.

Click on the image below to play the video. Total video length: 18mins

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