The Amazon Associates program have just gotten a bit more interesting. There’s a contextual beta out now, which means that Amazon is prowling your content and does special links for keywords that they can sell relevant products for. Like this (screenshot from Thought Garage):

The Amazon Associates Blog describes it like this:

Context Links are a quick and convenient way to add links to your website and monetize your content. Context Links automatically identify and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products, unlocking new ad inventory and saving you the time from having to manually create links. You can add the links to your pages in minutes, and we provide a wealth of options to customize how they are displayed.

Personally I think this is a great move and something we will see more of. People seems to accept these special underlined ads in the content, and it’s a pretty nifty way to monetize your blog.

What do you think of contextual ads in the content?

Originally posted on March 28, 2007 @ 1:47 am

Congratulations to Darren Rowse, the great guy blogging at ProBlogger.net. He has finally been able to acquire problogger.com, a much more suitable domain name for his blog.

Since that time I’ve attempted to purchase ProBlogger.com. on a number of occasions – but in each instance the owner either was asking for an amount which was too much for my budget or had plans of their own to develop it.

I’m not the least surprised that Darren had trouble buying the domain, it’s a good one. Still, now he has it, so congratulations are in order. Good call.

Originally posted on March 27, 2007 @ 2:08 am

Well, not really online video per se, more like news networks putting archive videos online. The Onion News Network takes the approach of a network that’s been in the game for quite some time, and in true satirical Onion style they mock, well, whatever they can.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Onion will do three vids each week, but are aiming for daily updates in the future.

The premise is that the Onion News Network is a television station that has been around for decades and is now beginning to archive and present its clips online, complete with fake anchors and field correspondents. The first videos focus on current events, but future clips will showcase items from the “old Onion newsreels” of the ’40s and ’50s and even earlier radio reports.

One to watch I’m sure.

Originally posted on March 27, 2007 @ 11:19 am

I know, this is such a pimpage post, but I think SOBCon sounds like something I would want to attend to (sorry Liz, the flight is a bit much from Sweden), and since we all want to save money this just feels right. Even though it’s basically an unpaid ad. David will kick me for that perhaps…

Seriously, SOBCon07 will have room for 250 attendees on May 11-12 at Chicago O’Hare Sofitel. Read more here, and check out the schedule.

Originally posted on March 27, 2007 @ 3:00 am