Money

Philipp Lenssen's excellent AdSense tips

Merlin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:06:52 -0500

Having noticed Google’s new “Newbie Central” site, Google Blogoscoped’s Philipp Lenssen posted a swell pile of his own best tips for improving AdSense performance on your site. Linked here because (at least IMHO) it’s depressingly rare to ﬁnd useful, non-douchey advice about making money with a website.

Typical of the sage stuff from PL:

Even if you get huge trafﬁc, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog.

Totally true.

I haven’t tried every one of these, but I will say “hats off to Philipp” for sharing such sound and cheese-free insight on a noisy, hard-to-research topic. Figuring out how to make dough with your site can be a slow and painful journey, so if you’re trying to make a go of it with AdSense, I’d deﬁnitely give this one a read.

”Philipp Lenssen's excellent AdSense tips” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 02, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Toward a hygienic credit card

Merlin — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:06:06 -0400

You’ve probably heard the advice to photocopy your wallet’s contents; in the event that you lose your wallet, this makes it easy to know what you need to cancel and replace. Smart.

I recently received a new credit card and had forgotten what a hassle it is to change the info across all my various online accounts. Here’s a few suggestions based on things I did this time around that should make it easier (or at least more interesting) the next time this happens.

Write it down now

Create an OmniOutliner (or text or Excel or Google Docs) document, and capture the name of every account, site, or other location where you needed to update your credit card information. Also, create a second column where you paste the exact URL for the page you had to visit to make your change. (I’m already up to about 15 of these).

I really wish I’d already done this one of the other times I’ve gone through this; feels like it’ll really be handy for the next time.

Related: consider also creating columns where you paste in URLs, email addresses, or phone numbers for each company’s customer service department – particularly in case you need to escalate your updating to a live human.

Get cheap

Feeling like trimming back your lifestyle? Try hanging back a day or two or ten, and just wait for vendors to contact you about your “invalid card.” It can be astounding how many accounts you have set to run or renew automatically, and, believe me, merchants will let you know when they can’t run your card for some reason. This gives you a nice opportunity to verify for yourself that you really want all that stuff people are running your card to buy. Hell, I’m feeling tempted to “lose” my card every six months, just for the personal audit it provides.

Obviously, you don’t want to get critical services accidentally cancelled, but, at least in my experience, merchants are accustomed to users with multiple cards that sometimes just stop working for non-nefarious (if sometimes seemingly incompetent) reasons. Still, use this one with care.

One card for online

I’m tempted by the idea of using one credit card just for online purchases. I’m not sure this buys me any particular protection over mixing usage, but I’m attracted to the idea of making it a little easier to track down where abuse might have occurred, and “life” versus “the internet” seems like a satisfying taxonomy to start with.

I suppose if you’re some kind of mogul, you could get really granular, although I’d stop at the point where you have, say, a dedicated “Thai food card,” or the like.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of “Be Prepared” ideas like The Sick Box and The Blackout Box, but what do you think?

The Question to You

What’s your best practice for safe and convenient credit card hygiene? If you’ve had to go through updating your accounts tomorrow, what would you do differently from the last time?

”Toward a hygienic credit card” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Real Simple: Plugging money leaks

Merlin — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 06:10:06 -0500

Money-Saving Secrets: RealSimple.com

This article from the March, 2006 Real Simple has some handy tips on plugging the “money leaks” in your life. Leaks to plug include:

Paying bills by snail mail
Paying the minimum on credit cards
A cell-phone plan that doesn’t match your needs
Eating out on vacations
Frequent trips to the ATM to withdraw moderate amounts of cash

Nothing earth-shattering, but it’s sound advice if you’re looking for a modest change to get a bit smarter about money.

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”Real Simple: Plugging money leaks” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 02, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"