Freelance Writing – ArcticLlama

The hits just keep on coming.

Google’s AdSense program is introducing something called Interest Based Advertising.  I haven’t looked into it in any way, and I have not idea whether it is a good thing or bad thing for webmasters who run websites and blogs, or for writers in general.

However, a Google post details the updates needed for the privacy policy of sites using Google AdSense.  Frankly, I would just cut and paste those three lines and change the word "your” to “the” or “our”, and call it a day.

If you want to copy mine, it’s here:  ArcticLlama Privacy Policy

I’m not a lawyer though, so use it at your own risk.

Have a nice weekend.

Got an email question today that took me a second to figure out.  Seems that a new webmaster looking to make money with a website with ads from Google AdSense was wondering how in the world he would ever make any money based on the numbers he was seeing.  In the end, he wondered how much money can I make with ads on my website.

At first I thought that maybe he did not have realistic expectations about how much money he could make by being in a program like AdSense and having them post ads on his site.  But, as it turns out, there was a tiny terminology issue instead.

M Is 1,000 In Roman Numerals

After some experience as a financial planner, I am used to finding out just what “M” means in any given circumstance.  Partly because it can change depending upon the context, and even more commonly, because people have a tendency to misuse ‘m’ regardless of the context.

For example, in some contexts, m = thousand, and M = million.  You can be sure that plenty of people don’t know that the capitalization matters.

When it comes to advertising programs or being paid for writing, m only means one thing no matter whether it is capitalized or not.

Write and publish an article to any of the revenue sharing article directories out there and you’ll find that you earn money at a certain rate.  That rate may be quoted in PPM.

If you are a webmaster trying to make money running a website with ads, you may find that the various ad programs offer you a certain amount of money per click, and maybe a certain amount of money for a certain number of page views.

The Google AdSense Reports website shows a column labeled eCPM. 

If you are thinking “million” for the above M’s then you should be very discouraged.  Fortunately, it isn’t million at all.

In Roman Numerals, M is 1000.  In all of the above acronyms, that is what the M stands for, 1,000, not 1,000,000.  If you are wondering why not T, the answer is that T could stand for tens.

So, when Associated Content offers your $1.50 PPM, they mean Payment Per Thousand page views, not million.  That still isn’t big money unless the article is very popular, but it’s still way better than earning a $1.50 per million page views.

Likewise, in Google’s AdSense program, eCPM stands for Effective Cost Per Thousand impressions.  For the advertiser, that is a measurement of the cost of their ad campaign.  For the web developer, that is an estimate of what a website could theoretically earn for every 1,000 impressions of an ad.  Keep in mind that this is above and beyond any payment per click.

Now, I hope everyone feels a little bit better.

By the way, the Google AdSense Crash Course for Writers is nearly complete, so grab the ArcticLlama RSS Feed and be the first to know when it comes out. 

As a freelance writer who works out of my own home, I also frequently end up working out of businesses or locations with free Wi-Fi, most often coffee shops.  It’s a great way to get out of the same old home office room and also a good way to ensure uninterrupted work time if things are a little bit crazy at home.

The one major difficulty is that most establishments were not designed with the concept that the customer would need electrical power in mind.  After all, until the advent of laptops and subsequently wireless internet access, no one really used any sort of electronics inside of restaurants, coffee shops, or bookstores, except for maybe a short amount of time on a battery powered device.

That means that no one bothered to design and install very many customer accessible electrical outlets.  The ones that are there are probably intended more to run a vacuum cleaner than your laptop.

This all adds up to a limited number of electrical plugins.  If you are like me and lunchtime and other busy times are also the times you are most likely to be needing Wi-Fi and some electricity, then you know that many times, there are just not enough plugins for the number of people who want to be able to plug in their laptops.

Enter the Belkin Mini USB Surge Protector.  While there is surge protection, that isn’t what you want this little guy for.  What you care about is that it turns one electrical outlet into 3 electrical outlets.

It is way easier to ask someone if you can unplug them for two seconds while you plug in your 3-way power device than it is to see if you can “borrow” their power for long enough to get a charge into your battery.  As an added plus, it has a USB plugin so you can charge your iPod or digital camera or phone or whatever via the usual USB cable without having to connect it through your PC or carry around a special adapter for each device you have.  This one little guy charges them all.

I don’t really plug products or services, but this little gem has saved my bacon so many times that I have finally decided that it deserves a little mention.  Click through my Amazon Affiliates link or go find it somewhere else for cheaper, but either way, I’ll bet money that someday soon, you’ll be really glad you did.