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What are video units and how do they work?

Video units are a new way to enrich your site content — and earn more — with relevant video from YouTube partners on an embedded, customizable video player. When you place a video unit on your site, you can choose the video content in several ways: by picking content categories, by select individual content providers, or by having video automatically targeted to your site content.

The videos you display will be monetized with relevant ads, too. The video unit displays companion and text overlay ads that are highly targeted and non-intrusive. Plus, to help integrate video units into your site further, you can also customize the color scheme and layout of the video unit.

How will my users interact with the video unit?

Each video player features standard YouTube video controls, allowing users to play and stop the video at any time. While the video plays, they can click on either overlay or companion ads, and the advertiser’s site will open in a new window or tab.

All video units are user-initiated, so they won’t be intrusive to your site’s visitors. Users also have the option to minimize the overlay ad if they’d prefer.

How are ads targeted in video units?

Just like AdSense for content, ads in video units can be either contextually targeted (both to the content of the site and the video) as well as site-targeted to individual websites.

What does the video unit look like?

There are several different formats to choose from, but each one displays a video screen and player controls that your visitors can use to navigate through the video. Each video will display two types of ads: companion ads, which appear in the player above the video content, or text overlay ads, which are displayed in bottom 20% of the video content as it plays. There are basically three sizes to choose from: 400 x 415, 500 x 510, and 780 x 560,which is pretty limited in my opinion. They definately won’t fit in normal sized blog sidebar. I have inserted the smallest version  directly under the most recent post here. I’m sure (and hoping) more sizes will become available as the program develops.
Where does the video content come from?

Video content comes from select YouTube partners who have chosen to make their videos available to publishers in the AdSense network along with targeted advertising.

What kinds of ads will appear in the video unit?

Video units may display two types of ads:

Text overlay ads, which are displayed in the bottom 20% of the video as it plays
Companion ads, which appear above the video content within the player
The ads displayed can be either contextually targeted or site-targeted, and may be paid on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impressions basis.

How many video units can I place on a page?

At this time, we allow publishers to display just one video unit on each page that complies with our program policies.

How do I get started with video units?

In order to place video units on your site, follow the steps below. You’ll first link your AdSense account with a YouTube account, then customize the video player to display on your pages.

Sign in to your AdSense account.
Visit the AdSense Setup tab and choose the video units link.
After reviewing the Terms and Conditions, check the box indicating you’ve done so.
Click the Visit AdSense Video units button. You’ll then be taken to the YouTube website.
Once you’re on the YouTube website, you’ll need to link your AdSense account with a YouTube account. (this could take up to 12 hours)
After your accounts are linked, revisit the AdSense Setup tab, choose video units as the product, and click the Visit AdSense Video units button.  You will be redirected to YouTube
You’ll now see the option to create a new AdSense player. Give your player a name and description that will help you remember it in future should you wish to make updates.
Pick a color theme. You can change the colors in the future within your account without needing to update your code. Color schemes are also limited to 9 color schemes currently.
Pick a layout. (size)Layouts can’t be updated; if you want to change the layout in the future, you will need to create a new video unit.
Choose the type of content you want to display: by content categories, by individual content providers, or by automatically targeting your site content. You can also provide keyword hints to assist automatic video content targeting.
Click the Generate code button, then copy and paste the code into the HTML source of your site where you want to display a video unit.
That’s it! Once you publish your site to the web, targeted videos should begin appearing right away.
What are video units and how do they work?

Video units are a new way to enrich your site content — and earn more — with relevant video from YouTube partners on an embedded, customizable video player. When you place a video unit on your site, you can choose the video content in several ways: by picking content categories, by select individual content providers, or by having video automatically targeted to your site content.

The videos you display will be monetized with relevant ads, too. The video unit displays companion and text overlay ads that are highly targeted and non-intrusive. Plus, to help integrate video units into your site further, you can also customize the color scheme and layout of the video unit.

How will my users interact with the video unit?

Each video player features standard YouTube video controls, allowing users to play and stop the video at any time. While the video plays, they can click on either overlay or companion ads, and the advertiser’s site will open in a new window or tab.

All video units are user-initiated, so they won’t be intrusive to your site’s visitors. Users also have the option to minimize the overlay ad if they’d prefer.

How are ads targeted in video units?

Just like AdSense for content, ads in video units can be either contextually targeted (both to the content of the site and the video) as well as site-targeted to individual websites.

Let me know your thoughts of Google Video Units or ways you have implemented them into you website or blog.

1. First and foremost if you don’t already have one, you need to Get a DealDotCom account.
2. Secondly you need to download the plugin , unzip, and upload the extracted folder and the php file to your wordpress plugins folder.
3. Go to your wordpress administration panel, go to plugins and click on activate for the DealDotCom Widget.
4. Go to options and then dealdotcom. Fill out the form. For the form you will need the following info: Your DealDotCom affiliate id (available after you create a DealDotCom account from the “YOUR ACCOUNT” tab at deal-dot-com), like http://www.dealdotcom.com/invite/9920/,the font color, the border color, and the width of the area you want to use. If you are not sure about the colors or widths you can leave this blank but it will blend into your site if you specify these to match your blog’s theme. Check whether you want graphical or text.
5. Lastly copy the following text

Woot has spawned a few other sites such as shirt.woot and wine.woot which of course sells one shirt a day until its sold out and bottles of wine until they are sold out respectively. I always thought it would be super sweet if woot offered an affiliate program because i just think its really great and i like to recommend great things especially if it can make me a few coins too.

Today released, unrelated to woot, but based on the same premise is, DealDotCom or http://www.dealdotcom.com/invite/9920/
Like woot, DealDotCom offers one deal a day. The difference is Dealdotcom offers deals on information products and offers an affiliate program so you can make money when you refer people to the site and sign up for an account. Its a two tiered program so whenever your friends you referred, refer other people you still make money. It’s definitely worth checking out and I would appreciate it if you helped me out so here’s my affiliate link http://www.dealdotcom.com/invite/9920/. I expect to add this to the list of websites I check daily and hope it proves as interesting and entertaining as the original WOOT!

I was looking into this because I was thinking of trying out Google Checkout and since I am a web publisher using Adsense, I was sure I’d have a link to sign up to Google Checkout on one of my sites and I could go through that link, sign up and actually get a little credit for doing so. But, I wanted to check and double check that I was not doing anything wrong by doing that and I am glad I did. Since these are pay per action, using the Google Checkout example, I would have had to click on the link, sign up, and then complete a transaction of ten dollars or more within 90 days in order to get paid one dollar, yes one dollar. Sure enough, I would have been violating Google’s Adsense TOS had I used my own referral link to sign up and that is definitely not worth 1 dollar. The amount is really irrelevant, but just explaining the referral program (pay per action vs. pay per click) by example of Google Checkout. I still plan on trying Google Checkout out, just not through my own link.

I think it is rather odd that you cannot click on your own referal links because advertisers are not billed when you click the link, only when you click and then take further action. For that advertiser I wouldn’t think it would matter if I am interested in the product and take the further action also by going through my referral link. Having tried their product, I could then decide on how I want to promote their product. If I download a program and it is the best thing since sliced bread then I’m going to promote it just like that and tell everyone how great I think it is, which I would think would ultimately lead to more sales of the product. For the most part these would generally be one time actions, as in sign up for something or download a product, for instance with the Google Checkout, I can only sign up once, it creates an account that would use my existing gmail (Google Mail) account, my Adsense account, my adwords account, etc. I would use that same account from here on out. Many other programs offer a free trial or download; again you can only download the trial program once and if you are promoting it in a positive way, then you will get more people to try the free trial which would again lead to more sales for the advertiser and I personally want to try anything I promote so that I can give an honest evaluation of that program or service.

I can understand Google’s Policy regarding Referral links a little more since Google released its Google Referral 2.0 to the public about a month ago. Now you can choose other companies for referrals (previously it was only Google Products) and some of those do pay more. See the previous post on this Google Referral 2.0, but I still think if its better to promote products you enjoy and work well for you and the only way to know which those are is to try them. So if you believe in that principle just make sure that you find some other way to try out the products without using your own referral link or you may just get banned from the Adsense program altogether.

Sign up to Paypal here

Secondly, Create your button. Log on to paypal and click on Merchant Services. On the right hand side you under Key features click on Donations. Enter the details for your button. Under Security Settings Click NO to not encrypt your button, this is neccessary for it to work within the wordpress post environment. Click Create Button.

Lastly paste the code into your wordpress post. Do this by going into your control panel and write post. Write your post, when ready to insert your button copy the code generated from step 2, make sure you are in html or code mode or have WYSIWYG turned off and then paste your code into your post. The results should like below. Please feel free to make a donation, it really works this time, try it out.

Ok, the first attempt to insert a paypal button into a wordpress post failed. You cannot simply copy the code from paypal and insert it into your wordpress post. You can accomplish embedding your paypal donate button into a wordpress post relatively simply though. The simplest and easiest solution to inserting a paypal button into your wordpress post - Use an Iframe tag. Here you have it, Please feel free to donate by using the button below:

How to insert Paypal into you WordPress blog

Can it really be this simple, copy the paypal code into your post, yes it is. If you do not have a paypal account you can Sign up to Paypal here

To create a donate button within Paypal

Once you have a Paypal account click on the Merchant Services Tab. Scroll down until you see “Donations” and click that. Enter the details and amount. If you would like the user to input their own amount to donate then leave the amount field blank. Then simply click on the “Create Button Now” button. The next window will have a box with code in it. Highlight the entire code in the box and copy it just as you would anything else.

Insert the Paypal Code into your WordPress Blog

Open your blog administration panel to write a post. The only thing that you may need to do different than your nomal post is before you actually paste the PayPal code is to switch to either “code” or “html” mode which should be a tab directly under the title. Once in html or code mode simply paste the code you copied from the PayPal window, The results will look similar to below.

If you have found this information helpful please feel free to Donate. Your Donation is Appreciated.

To submit your site to the Google directory, along with many other search engines, all you have to do is have it listed in the Open Directory in which most search engines, including Google, build their directories from.

To submit your site to the Open directory simply go to http://dmoz.org/.

Once there, find the best category for your site, either search or browse. It is important to find the best category for your site. It will be analyzed and if it is not the best category then the submission could fail or be rejected.

Once you have searched and found the best possible category for your site, next click on the text link on the top right that states “Suggest URL and then fill out the form, which consist of four components.

1. Site URL - is just the web address you wish to add.
2. Title - Probably what you use as the title of your homepage
3. Description - Just a short summary of what your site is about without using promotional language - just the facts and in complete sentences.
4. Your email address - just to ensure you are human.

That is it. Once your site is in the open directory it will be included in Google’s Directory and many other search engines within a few weeks.