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Yes, it's that time of the week again and I am sure looking forward to winding down this afternoon. Unfortunately before then there's a heck of a lot of work to get through and this column is the most important thing on my list so let's jump into it.

The world's richest man
I wonder how Bill Gates is feeling right now. Earlier in the week Forbes released its current list of the world's richest people and poor Bill isn't as rich as he once was. He's dropped to number three on the list and Warren Buffet is now seen as the world's richest man.

I was only reading Warren Buffet's 2007 annual report to the shareholders in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, earlier this week and it certainly did make for some interesting reading. The figures were very impressive but that wasn't the part that really interested me.

What did interest me was the behind-the-scenes look that Buffet gave his shareholders in part of the report. It was there that he talked about the way the company looks for new investments and in today's environment of fast-build and quick-sell Buffet's approach to buying quality investments is quite different. Berkshire Hathaway only invests their money in companies that are not prone to rapid and continuous change and don't need huge injections of capital to grow.

It seems that Mr Buffet won't be investing in IT any time soon.

Banner ads - even more useless than we thought?
In lots of ways it's sad that affiliate marketers get so little real help from their sponsors when it comes to knowing how to market their sponsors' products. That's not a complaint that's leveled just at the adult online market, it's pretty much the same over in mainstream too.

So many affiliates think that the only way to market a product is via a banner ad and many of their sponsors bother to tell them the truth. And the truth is that banner ads did work quite well long ago but these days banner ads just don't attract lots of clicks anymore.

But just how poorly banner ads perform may have been a bit of a mystery to you until now. Comscore have just released a report that shows that just six percent of surfers make up 50 percent of all banner clicks and the make-up of those six percent is not encouraging for people who rely on banners to market their products.

According to Comscore most of those who click on banners are between 25 and 44, earn less than $40k per year and spend more time and less money online than other Internet users. So why do sponsors in both mainstream and adult still bother to provide banners as part of their marketing toolkit?

Well that may have more to do with branding than making a sale. People may not click on banners but they still see enough information on most banners to have some branding effect and every time an affiliate displays a banner to a surfer the sponsor is getting that branding for free.

The $10 minimum bid
I see that Google is continuing to get tough with Adwords advertisers and has just done another round of increasing the minimum bid for ad groups again. There's nothing quite like getting hit with a $10 minimum bid to help you wake up to the fact that Google does not like your landing page.

I guess you can wail and scream and vent your anger on a message board but let's face it ... that's just a waste of time because Google doesn't care about what you think. It's their game, their rules and if you don't like it then you just don't play. Obviously if you want to play then you abide by their rules ... no matter how vague they might be ... and you produce a quality landing page.

Perhaps if you're one of those Adwords players who did get hit with a $10 minimum bid you might think that what I've said is a bit harsh but it's the reality of the situation. You either live in the real world and get back in step with Google or you don't. I don't like Google one little bit but I like playing their game.

And that's about it for this week. I hope you guys take the time to have a break and get right away from the computer for at least some time this weekend. Everyone needs time out no matter how macho it might be to work 24/7/365.