Google-owned sites generated $3.81B while partner sites generated $1.69B.
I think the act of comparing the amount Google makes from AdWords to AdSense is moot -- Both of these channels are very successful. Both of these numbers end with a capital "B".
So question: Do I become an ad broker and take on Google or simply utilize Google to display ads on my property and make some coin?
At this point, I don't care how much Google is making off of me as a percentage, but I do care how much money I actually do put in my own pocket.
"take some simple steps to ensure that you don't bork your site"
unborked[.com] is currently available.
A site dedicated to stopping all of the borking going on out there.
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I think some cheap, simple sql dumps from the db, burned to an external HD and taken home would've been a good first step -- your data would be dated but somehow restorable nonetheless without the need for off-site, replicated, heart-beat monitored databases.
IMHO you really need an expert database admin (of which I am not) to get all of this up and keep all of it going; a caretaker who's only job in life is the maintenance of any and all persisted data.
On another note, backups are really useless unless you have actually tested the restores.
We just dealt with one guy that just voted 2800 times from the same IP. Deleted the rows, and made it one vote per IP.
It works because to see a Yes/No it depends on if you have the cookie set, but to actually vote it checks the IP.
So if someone legitimately votes from a multi-user IP that already was used to vote, it'll show a Yes/No, get sent to the vote page, but won't go in–but it'll seem like it did :)
What's the solution to this? No matter what you do, without a validation system (eg: verify email, credit card, etc), there's no way to differentiate between people.
Ha, someone just did that. We took care of it. It's fun to break apps, but 1000 no votes was a tiny bit much :-). She's not THAT bad looking. Regardless, were getting like 20 votes a minute legitimately.
I think RTS games are less addictive because they are broken up into discrete games and are much more intense in terms of mental energy and frantic clicking. Whenever I play a good game of StarCraft or WarCraft III, I usually feel really drained and don't feel at all like playing another game.
I agree. It seems like you never get enough oomph from an engrossing session of WoW - never really satisified, always feeling empty after the latest chapter/quest.
It's kind of like reading a Robert Kiyosaki book - getting to the end and needing to buy the next book right away. The content makes you feel good but it always leaves you feeling a bit undernourished, hoping the next fix will finally complete you - leaving you whole.
The preceding was a bit of self-reflection, perhaps. :)
