I have to admit I’ve been a little slack lately when it comes to updating this blog. I can’t believe it’s been three months since my last post.

In the last three months, I think I have spent about three quarters of that time in countless meetings and phone calls, negotiating with manufacturers and wholesalers to supply me inventory for a few new online stores I intend to open shortly.

In the end, I did have some success in the discussions and I got to play some great Australian golf courses, so I can’t say it was a total loss.

I should be back to posting regularly sometime next week.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Recently Google Adsense announced the end of the Adsense video unit feature. The planned ending of Adsense video units is the end of April 2009.

The Adsense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube videos and ads has not had the impact Google Adsense had hoped for.

As of the 27th of March, the option to sign up for YouTube Adsense video units will no longer be available to new publishers. If you are currently displaying Adsense video units, you are recommended to start removing the video code from your pages as soon as possible.

These changes in Adsense video units will not affect other video related ad options. Video ads may appear in your Adsense content if you use image ad units.

At the end of April 2009, any remaining Adsense Leaderboard or Skyscraper video units on your site, will direct users to YouTube.com. Other video unit sizes will automatically be changed to to standard embedded YouTube.com players.

If you have any earnings that you have received from Adsense video units so far, will still be credited to your Google Adsense account.

I wonder what will be the next idea that Adsense comes up with to help publishers earn money from their sites?

Are you sick and tired of websites that use copied content from your blog just so they can make money online using Adsense?

Well now you might be able do to something about it!

Recently Google Adsense gave us bloggers some great news concerning illegally copied content. Adsense has released some information about the procedures and tools we can use to protect our content.

This is quoted from the Google Adsense Blog

For example, let’s suppose you own a movie blog, where you recently posted an article about your favorite actor. After publishing it, you notice that another website has copied and published your article without your permission. The owner of the other website doesn’t respond to your requests to remove the content, and it is monetizing their pages with AdSense.

In a situation like this, where you believe that a site containing AdSense code is illegally copying your site’s content, you can let us know by following the process described in our Help Center. It’s our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other applicable intellectual property laws.

The notice should be sent directly from the owner of the copyrighted materials allegedly being infringed (in the example above, that’s you), as we are unable to accept third-party copyright complaints. Also keep in mind that we are unable to process copyright complaints received through the AdSense policy violation report form. Once we’ve received a notice of infringement, we will take appropriate action. If you’d like more information about our DMCA process, please visit http://www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html.

Additionally, if you find a site that is scraping (misappropriating and republishing) your content, you can report it for a potential violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. To do this, fill out the form at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport (you must be logged into your Google Account to access this form).

Could these new terms on using the Adsense code and copied content be the death of spam Adsense websites?

How will this affect all those Adsense users who use a RSS Feed grabbing plugin just to make money online with Adsense?