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Have you got your ear to the ground?

Oh wow this has been one very tiring day and you know what? It's a day in which I've done hardly anything. That's right, it's been a day where both Steve and I have actually relaxed and instead of feeling refreshed, we feel worn out.

It wasn't going to be a day when we stopped working like crazy and relaxed but Steve has just finished a project for one of our clients that required him to write around 80 thousand words … and he was beginning to look a little frayed around the edges so I thought I should take him out for a few hours.

We drove over to the next town and did the tourist thing for an hour or so, then we did a bit of shopping and came home to work but were so worn out we needed a siesta. Now we're both beginning to wish we had kept working because doing anything this afternoon is turning into a major challenge.

By the way, I really was not exaggerating that word count. It seems incredible but that's what the client paid for and that's what the client got and there are two more clients in the queue who have similar orders in place. As Steve wrote to his kids in an email: "Oh that the myth of a dollar a word was a reality."

Adsense - still alive and kicking
Just lately there seems to be heaps of talk around the Net that Adsense is dead. According to many people making money from Adsense is now almost a thing of the past. Even some of the real experts in the Adsense field are suggesting that, while Adsense may not be dead, income levels are dropping.

I don't doubt that income levels are dropping; there has to be a saturation point for everything somewhere - even on the Internet. Maybe we've reached that point with Adsense and people are no longer clicking on those ads like they once did.

But don't plan on attending the Adsense funeral just yet because there are suggestions around the place that Google's purchase of You Tube may just be the start of a new era in making money from Adsense. It seems that Google may be adding Adsense to the video pages in You Tube and if it's your video people have been looking at when they click on an Adsense ad then you will make some money.

Don't get killed in the rush folks as people all over the planet start flooding You Tube with MFA (made for Adsense) videos. Heck some people might even get so serious about it that they outsource the acting, scripting and camera work to India.

I did wonder why Steve packed his video camera in the car this morning; it's not the normal thing one would take shopping with them. However I began to understand when he took a detour down by the railway station.

Another big Internet company up for sale?
If you're involved in mainstream affiliate marketing you will have undoubtedly heard of Commission Junction. That's one of the biggest affiliate marketing networks out there and it is just possible that it's for sale.

It doesn't really surprise me if it is for sale because CJ has been doing some strange things lately that make you wonder if the current owners of the company really understand the affiliate marketing model at all. At one stage recently they wanted everyone to change every one of their affiliate links to some strange javascript style of link and that caused quite a stir.

The style of link they wanted everyone to use was a little strange and some suggested that it would cause problems with search engine spiders but the worst part of the whole deal was that they seemed to expect everyone to change every old link they had to the new type of link.

If you're only new to the affiliate game then changing links might have only been a nuisance but if you've been around for a few years you will have accumulated a lot of pages with a lot of links and changing all those was going to be a nightmare.

Now it seems that CJ's biggest client - eBay - is about to leave them and maybe even go into competition with them so selling certainly looks good. But who will buy them is not clear although someone suggested that Google would be interested.

Whether Google is interested or not remains to be seen but the thought that eBay might move into the affiliate marketing network scene is definitely worth watching.

And of course, yesterday I talked about the possibility of the US dollar being devalued so what happens today? The US dollar was actually a little stronger today on international money markets.

And on that note I'm off to try and get the work ethic going again. Due to the monthly cycle of columns I won't be back till Monday; perhaps by then I will have been able to regain the urge to work.