Well I’m back online today – and not quite ready to kick things into high gear yet. I caught up on my email (yikes), and blog reading (oh boy). Catching up after being offline for a week + is really a big job. I will have to say a big thanks though to the blog and referrer spammers – they seemed to be kind to me this week and laid off. I do appreciate that. Who said spammers don’t have a heart?

Here are the news and spews that caught my eye for the past week or so:

Google insiders sell over a billion dollars of stock in one day
*:shock:

Writing For the Web #1 (free ebook offer)

Web Cam + Computer Nabs a Burglar
*Something to install for home maybe?

LostClicks.com

Having Integrity in your Business Online

Booster Bags Use Foil to Foil Any Store’s Anti-Shoplifting Machines
*Reason #99 why I am turned off of the brick & mortar business

Death of Affiliate Marketing?

As amazing as paid search has been — and just pull up the numbers that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) have been posting lately — you don’t really hear too much about the flip side of the equation. After all, if websites everywhere are taking to contextual ad blocks, doesn’t logic suggest that graphic banner ads and affiliate marketing are being pushed off the page?

*I read various comments about this article, but I too have been feeling for some time that adsense/contextual ads are *taking over*. Reasons are many, but mainly that they can seriously outperform affiliate earnings. Faulty commission tracking, cookie deletion, parasites, etc., do play a part in this. Add up your clicks for some creatives and see if you’re earning .10 to $1.00 or more *per* click once the commissions are tallied. The numbers don’t lie. If sales/commissions are dismal, try flipping your affiliate creatives to contextual ads and see if you can make more that way. I do see a time when affiliate networks and merchants are going to have to work a lot harder to be more appealing to website publishers.

Trump University
*The next online guru?

WebmasterWorld Names Google Update; Bourbon

Amazing Scoop… Passed Up
*Too bad WordPress and Syndic8te weren’t as lucky

More on TrustRank

Digital point ad coop: overview

Finding Torrents with Google

Google AdSense quietly updates their AdSense Policies

Publishers vs Google – Backlash Brewing
*Goog doesn’t own me – no leash around my neck, I can kick them to the curb without feeling a pinch. I guess that’s one positive to not being fed big google traffic or big adsense checks. Maybe that’s the only positive?

Personalized Search and Trustrank – Death to Link Based Algorithms
*Take a look at the past week or so on this blog – lots of great stuff has been posted.