"M"-portant! AdSense It! Launches

Ken's Blog

When we first launched the content-and-traffic generating Content 2.0 module, it turned SBI! into SBI! 2.0. We knew that SBIers would have a tiger by the tail. And that's exactly what happened...

Content 2.0 flourished, as did the SBIers who used it. It became clear that Content 2.0 was such an integral part of C T P M that we could not continue to sell it as an add-on to SBI!.

Content 2.0 (C2) pushes way beyond blogging. While blogging is still 1-to-many content creation, C2 pushes to many-to-many. C2 content builds long-tail traffic, which builds a massive foundation. Everything grows from there.

So we integrated Content 2.0 completely into SBI! and included it for free.

The other major change is happening now...

It is "AdSense It!."

When we designed C2, the goal was to massively increase Content and visitor involvement, which would then multiply each step of C T P M across the board, the same way a tide raises a boat.

We did not want to turn that tiger-by-the-tail into a pussycat by alienating visitor contributors who would see Google AdSense ads all over the content that they created for individual SBIers.

So in the original design we only allowed link units, very small, so as not to "offend" those who created content. We did not want them to think, "Hey, you're making money off me???"

This policy made sense -- with tens of thousands of SBIers, we must err on the side of caution when there is risk. As SBIers move from tens to hundreds to thousands of submitted C2 pages, the indirect traffic-and-income benefit to the entire site is huge (i.e., they visit other pages of the site, not just the C2 pages, and rankings go up slowly but surely). But...

The number of pages, growing beyond our wildest imagination, kept presenting the increasingly tempting question...

"How do we enable SBIers to turn all those pages into AdSense-income generators without risking the goose that is laying the golden content?"

With 40,000+ SBIers who have an incredible range of circumstances, the answer to the question seemed impossible, given the degree of flexibility needed to automate this functionality for everyone.

Setting your own "Aggressivity" level was the answer. By enabling SBIers to choose how aggressive they want to be with their AdSense ads, from 0 (no ads) to 10 (super-in-your-face), they set their own risk, according to their subject matter, audience, etc.). The software does the rest, placing ads according to their comfort level.

I make this sound easy, but the complexity underneath is pretty intense, with a massive algorithm that has to anticipate countless situations. Meanwhile, all an SBIer has to do is tell SBI! what she or he wants.

SBIers can now place full AdSense ads on some or all of their C2 pages and comments pages, according to their own level of aggressiveness, and they can do it at three levels -- global, invitation, and submission...

1) globally across all invitations

2) change that global setting for any invitation

3) change the global or invitation setting for each submission when they edit/accept it.

AdSense It! is the best of all worlds. You have total control. Adjust as needed and where needed (globally, invitation, or submission).

I love it when software works so easily like this...

It makes the computers do the "grunt work" while you do the thinking.

All the best,