If you run your own blog or site and want to make money, more money than what Adsense clicks are currently bringing you, then Google’s new affiliate system may very well be the money-spinner you’ve been dreaming of. This new affiliate system is currently only available to US customers.

If you’re familiar with affiliate systems like Commission Junction, you’ll be up and running in no time, since the concept is very similar: Someone clicks on an ad on your site, goes on to buy the product or service and then you get paid commission on the sale.

As a publisher you must apply to join the Google Affiliate Network - this is separate to your existing Adsense account. You will get paid twice a month on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis.

Read the Google Affiliate Publisher Network agreement (pdf).

As an Advertiser, here’s how the Google Affiliate Network works for you: someone clicks your ad, buys your product and you pay for qualified conversions. Your ads won’t compete with ads on the Google Content Network i.e. Adsense, but will be displayed on the Google Content Referral Network.

Coinciding with this, Google is phasing out its Pay-Per-Action campaign (which allowed you to make money from sending Google new Adsense or Adwords users). Payments for this program will cease from the end of September 2008.

How does the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games English site hold up in terms of website stats when compared to the Euro 2008 football championship site? Using Quirk eMarketing’s SearchStatus tool, I was able to derive the following for each:

To date (20080819):

Alexa ranking:
Beijing: 764
Euro: 304

Google Page Rank:
Beijing: 8/10
Euro: 5/10

Compete rank:
Beijing: 4,231
Euro: 20,176

Backlinks according to Google:
Beijing: 3,830
Euro: 3,520

Beijing 2008 takes Gold in every category. Surprised? Perhaps it was the VGA fireworks that did it…

Do you think you know your YouTube icons? See how many you can spot in Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” music video.

Where the heck is Jeff Dunham?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI