Make Money Online (part 8) - Entrecard Phenomenon

In my post How to use widgets for increasing traffic I described 4 basic social networking sites. BlogRush, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and BUMPzee. Main source of traffic from these sites was from Last visitors widget, except of BlogRush with Other blog posts widget. In this post I want to write about next social networking site Entrecard.

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You can see Entrecard widgets on many blogs now. It is phenomenon of last year in the blogger world. From my experience, Entrecard can very successfully increase traffic, especially for new blogs or sites. Entrecard has 3 basic ideas:

1. Earn credits from adding link on my site to another site.
2. Earn credits from dropping other widget cards.
3. Earned credits I can use to buy ads for my site.

It is very simple view on the system. Entrecard has much more possibilities how to earn or spend credits. More info how to work with it you can find bellow or in Entrecard Official E-Book .

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After pressing Sign up now! on Entrecard main page you have to fill registration form. Before filling data prepare your card, 125*125 image, that represents your blog. Make it as attractive, as it is possible, because it must attract visitors to click on it. After filling data and pressing button Signup it is time to add a widget on your blog.

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To add the widget on your blog you need code, that you can add on your blog. To do it, click on link Get code in header of page. Then choose type of widget and copy the code to clipboard. To add it on your blog, go to Blogger pages and add code to template just as you did it while adding AdSense code.

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After successful adding widget on your blog it is time to earn some credits. You can do it simply by dropping card on another blogs, or approving ads on your site. Ad will be shown in your widget for 1 day. Go to Dashboard page, where you will find all necessary links.

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When you want to advertise your blog to spend your credits, go to Campaign page. There you can choose blogs where your ad can be shown. There is important how much credits you can spend. Each blog has own price for advertising. This price is generated from blog popularity. You can advertise on more blogs, but your add will be shown only after approving by owner of site.

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Now I want to describe main advantages and disadvantages of Entrecard.

Advantages

• Excellent source of traffic
• New feature: Add more than one blog to an account
• It is register also new blogs or pages

Disadvantages

• You have to spend a lot of time by dropping cards
• Not very well targeted traffic. A lot of visitors visit your page only for dropping card.

If you try Entrecard is on your decision. And it is also your decision how much time do you spend by dropping cards. My opinion is, Entrecard is very good source of traffic, especially for new blogs.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Social Networking
Communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
Widget
is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box.

Make Money Online (part 7) - Monetize Blog with AdSense III

In the last post we generated ad code for your blog. Now, it is time to add this code on your pages. From Google AdSense Program Policies you know, that you can add up to 3 ads on each page.

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You can do it in 2 manners:

• Straight to blog post With this approach you will add ad, while you are writing new post. Advantage of this manner is, that ad is better inserted into existing text, and can be on the hottest place of blog, as you can see on the heat map from previous post. You can also change position of ads in various posts. Disadvantage of this approach is, that you must know basics of HTML, and your post will be worse editable in Blogger. Next disadvantage is that visitors don't like ads composed in text, and can reconsider, if they return back to your pages in the future. You also must check number of ads for each blog page.
• Update template of blog Second manner is to add your code to template, and it will be shown on each page of blog. Advantage is that you must do it only once. When you add code to header of your page, there are still on good place. In your posts will be only text and not ad code. Disadvantage is, that you will gain probable less clicks like with first approach. If you want to add more ads in template, you must find next places for them in template. It means, that you must know basics of Blogger template code and HTML.

I prefer second approach and in this post I will show you how to insert ad into header of page, what is one from the best places on page.

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To find right place in blog template is not easy. Various templates can have various template code, but there is possibility of Preview and it will help you a lot.
Go to Blogger.com pages and login there. Select your blog, and click on link Template. You will see simple editor with your template. There, you have to find right place for your ad code. Template is divided to more parts. On top is usually CSS styles code.
HTML code with body of your page starts with text <body>. You must add your code somewhere between this tag and </body> tag.
To find header of your blog in template, try find something like:

<div id="main">
...
<Blogger>

If you will you find it, then with high probability you have right place for your code. It will be placed between these 2 tags.
If not, find only:

<Blogger>

and try ad your code bellow above this tag.

Insert on this place code:

<div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 3px 3px 3px 3px;'>
Your ad code here
</div>

Then press button Preview. In new window you will see your blogger with changed template. On place where you can see text
Your ad code here
will be your ad. If you think there is not right place, try to change code above, until you are not satisfied, with place of your ad. When you will be satisfied replace text Your ad code here with your code from AdSense. Then press button Save Template Changes. Your changes will be saved. If you are noticed that you must republish your blog, do it by clicking on the link for republishing.

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I hope, that you found right place for your ad code with help of this post. If you want to add more ads on your pages, do it similar and carefully choose right place for them. Pages filled with many ads are not very interesting for visitors, and you can harm your blog. Less is sometimes more. After ads publishing you can check your AdSense reports in next days. Time shows you, if you choose right ad formats and places. If not, you know how to change them now.

Make Money Online (part 6) - Monetize Blog with AdSense II

On last post you learned how to register in Google AdSense, I hope that your registration was successful. If yes, you can read this post, and you will learn how to create your first ad for your blog. This it the simplest way, how to do it yourself.

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Login to your Google Account and click on AdSense service. Ther you choose tab AdSense Setup. On first page you can choose from more AdSense format. Choose AdSense for Content ads. you have more possibilities, but it is the most used format and you can earn more money from this format than from others.

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I recommend you to choose on this page option Ad Unit with Text ads only. Then press button Continue >>.

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On next page you have to choose size of your ad and their colors. Size of your ad is related on place when you want to add your ad in your blog. It exists some heat map where it is good to place your ad on page. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). As you can see the best place is above your primary content. That means to choose format with width equal or near to size of your main content area. Usually it is 486*80 Banner Format or some others horizontal formats. Choose one from them. Now you must do second important thing. Try to hide your ad on your page. This method is called blending. It means try to choose colors that are similar to colors of your primary content. There is also possibility to save chosen color to your own color palette. And also choose corner style like is used in your template. I read good advice, that people like to click on blue colored links. It is good to choose this color for links in your add and also for your template for blog. Press button Continue >>.

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Now it is time to create channel where you can see your stats for created ad. Press link Add new channel and choose name for you channel. Then press link add >> on right side of your created channel. It will move to right list. Press button Continue >>.

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Now only choose name for your ad. Later you can change features of your ad from menu Manage Ads. Press button Submit and Get Code.

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You are on last page now, and you can see your ad code. Select this code in clipboard.

How to place this code in your blog, I will show you in next post. You need to change your template, to show ad on your pages. This way is good, because you will see ad on all pages of your blog.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Blending
To synchronize ad format with other content on your page. Usually it means set the same color for ads like they are used in other content.

Make Money Online (part 5) - Monetize Blog with AdSense I

Before you start monetize your blog with Google AdSense, you must be sure that you have some content on blog. Simply spoken, you must have enough posts on your blog. There doesn't exist necessary number of posts, but I think that 10 posts is optimum count to start using Google AdSense on your blog (5 posts is minimum). Before you can add Google AdSense ads on your site, your page will be checked by AdSense team.
I am not sure, if to start monetize blog, before attract some visitors. When you don't have visitors, you can't earn money from blog. But on the other side, it is better to have AdSense ads on blog, and you can earn some money also with small amount of visitors. I will show you in next posts how to attract people to visit your blog. When you check your stats in Google Analytics you can have some visitors from Google or other search engines, some from blogger.com site, and some visits from your friends. How much, depends on your niche.

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Now I start with introduction of Google AdSense program. Google AdSense is system that shows adverts on your site. Big advantage of this system, that ads are relevant to content of your pages. You are paid, if somebody click on your ads. After clicking on ads, is visitor redirected page on clicked ad. Sometimes you can be also paid, when you show ad a lot of times. But main earnings are from clicks on ads on your site. This is why is this system called PPC (Paid Per Click). Google AdSense is the most used system on sites of the world. And usually it is the best system, how to earn some money from your site. Google AdWords other side of this system. There webmasters create ads, they want to show on other sites (This is paid system of course).

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From previous information, it is important to know that Google made this system fraud click safe. If you think, that you earn money by clicking on your own ads, or your friends will click on your ads and you will profit from it, don't use this system. Because you will never see money from Google. Big Brother, Google, has many possibilities to collect information about each of us. Google AdSense check various patterns to prevent invalid clicks on ads. Once is your AdSense account checked as suspicious, it is only question of time, when you will be banned. After banning from Google you will lost all money on your account, and it is almost impossible to register to system again. There are some alternatives, but usually are these alternatives worse that Google AdSense program. You can earn more or less money. Your earnings will increase, only when you will be patient and hard-working.

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Before start with AdSense, you have to register your blog to program. For registration you will use your Google account. But you must fill more informations. It is important to enter correct data, especially your address. These data will be used also for sending checks. Keep in mind, that when you will enter false information, your registration can be declined. At last you must check that you read their policies (Read them carefully!!!), that you will not click on your ads and that you don't have another account. Then press button Submit Information. It can take 24 hour to AdSense team accepts or refuse your site. In case, that your site will be refused, read carefully reason, correct mistakes and resubmit your application. Now, the most important information: You must earn minimum 100 USD, to be paid. You will be paid 30-th of next month, when your balance reach 100 USD. More info you can find in Payment Guide. I hope that it will be soon, you will receive your first payment.

In next post I will show you, how to create ads, and how to add them to blog.

Many webmaster forums are full of posts with titles I am banned from Google AdSense. Why? Because most of them didn't read Google AdSense Policies. Don't do the same mistake.

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Used terms and abbreviations
PPC
Pay Per Click is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.
Google AdSense
Ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.
Google AdWords
offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.

Make Money Online (part 4) - Check your traffic

At last part you have created your first post in blog. I hope that you write more posts to your blog. It is nothing worse than dead blog or dead forum. Before you gain some traffic to your blog, it is good to know how much traffic it is. And how to do it, I will show you in this post.

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You must use your Google Account, that you created while creating your blog. This account you will use for more tools available on Google. One form best free tools for checking traffic, is Google Analytics. At first click at link above.

After signing you will see screen like this. Here you press button Sign up.

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On next page you have to enter info about your blog. You must enter URL of your blog, country and time zone. Then press Continue button.

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On next page you have to fill some your personal information. When you do it, press button Continue. On next page you have read GOOGLE ANALYTICS TERMS OF SERVICE.After reading it (if you agree, of course) check checkbox Yes, I agree to the above terms and conditions. Then press button Create New Account.

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Now you will see code that it is necessary to add to your page. I recommend you to add New Tracking Code (ga.js). Otherwise you will not be to use some new features. I am using on my pages old one. But for my new blog I want to use new one. Copy code into clipboard.
Now open your Blogger.com in new window or tab. From Dashboard click on Template link for your blog.

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In text area with content of your template go to bottom area. There you find line with text </body> in it. Above this line insert your code from clipboard. Then press button Save Template Changes. After changing your template you must republish your blog. Now you will find on every source page of your blog your tracking code.

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Return back to Google Analytics page. There press button Check Status. Google Analytics check presence of tracking code, and if it is everything OK, Google Analytics will track your visitors. Next available data you will see tomorrow, because it take some time to collect enough data. You can now check data on daily basis. To have good data it is good to filter your own visits. You can do it in Filter Manager where you can exclude from result your IP address, city, or country.

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Google Analytics is complex traffic tools with many options. To Describe all features in this blog is impossible. How to use all its features, is best to study from context links on right side of screen. I am sure that you will find a lot of useful info there.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Web traffic
is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site.
Google Analytics
(abbreviated GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.

Make Money Online (part 3) - Write your first post

At last part you have created your own blog. Now I will show you how to write posts to your blog on Blogger.com. It is on you, what will be your first post about. In your first post on blog people usually introduce himself, and introduce niche of their blog. Now let me show you some parts of your blog page.

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After logging in to blogger you will see screen like this. This screen is called Dashboard. Here you can see list of your blogs. You can manage your blogs from there. Link New Post shows you screen for creating new posts, link Posts shows you screen with all posts in blog. After clicking on link Settings you can set options for your blog. Link Template is for advanced users, because here you can edit appearance of your blog. How to change template of your blog I will show you in next posts. Now click on link Posts.

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When you click on link Posts you will see all posts written in your blog. Our blog is empty and we must write new post to fill our posts list. Let click on blue link New Post.

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Here you can write simply your post.
  At first fill Title for your post. Think carefully about it. Title is most important thing. It must be short but it must simply describe content of your post. Title will attract people to read your post. Title is also important from SEO view. And title is also distributed with your RSS feed.
  In middle field you can write your post. You can simply paste it from Microsoft Word, or write it online in Blogger. Try to write your post as interesting as it is possible. If you want to earn some money from your blog,, it must attract visitors. It is good to add some photos or images to your post. And it is also important separate your posts to paragraphs. Try to use Preview link to look on your post how it will look.
  Blogger do autosave of your new post. If you want to be sure you will lost nothing, press button Save Now for saving your changes. When you will finish with your content, add one or more labels to your post. At last check your post and carefully read its content. When you think, that it is OK, press button Publish Post.

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You create your first post in blog. If you wanna see how it looks, click on link View Blog. You will be redirected to your blog. In next part I will learn you how to check traffic for your blog. I will show you how to insert stats code for your blog, and how to check your traffic. Now you can continue with writing next posts to your blog.

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Used terms and abbreviations
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it ranks, the more searchers will visit that site.
RSS Feed
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.

Make Money Online (part 2) - Create your own blog

In this part I will show you how to create your own first blog. In previous part you had to find your niche, topic of your blog. If you have found any, try to write list of words that best describe your topic. If you didn't find one, try to think about your topic now, or simply create your personal diary blog.

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As host for our blog we use the most used free host for blogs Blogger.com. Blogger is owned by Google company. We will use much more tools from Google and you will need to register on Google and create your Google account. If you have Google account log in it on Blogger on top right side of page. Otherwise you will create one on Blogger pages. Press button Create your blog now. If you don't have account, you will create one on first page.

Now it is time to use your list of words for your niche. If you want to create your personal diary blog try to use your name or your nickname for Blog Address (URL) field. Otherwise you try to find most simple word or words combination from your list, write it to field and click on Check Availability link to check if you can use this URL. Now you can fill Blog Title field. It is also good to use words from your list. Title of blog it is possible to change also in future. At last fill Word Verification field and press button Continue.

Now only choose some template for your blog. It is on you which one you choose. It is also possible to change it later. Press button Continue again. On next page press button Start Posting

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Now you have your own blog and you can create your posts to blog. But there is a long way before you. You can prepare some posts for your topic straight in your blog itself or you can only write it simply in Microsoft Word editor. In next post I will show you how to write your posts in blog.


I wrote you in this post how to create blog in easy and free way. There are also other choices. You can register your own domain and pay hosting company to host your domain. This is much more complicated process, and I will not write it here in this post. In that case you will spend to 10 USD/year to domain registration and about 100 USD/year on hosting. I can recommend you Namecheap.com for domain registration and Hostgator.com for hosting. I am using them and I am satisfied with them.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Niche
A niche market is a focused targetable portion (subset) of a market sector.
Domain
A machine or virtual host on the Internet; the name of a domain (the "domain name") can be confused with the domain itself.
Hosting
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity.

Make Money Online (part 1) - Write your own blog

In this part I want to describe you exactly, what you will learn in next parts of this serial. In introduction I described some methods for earning some money on internet. I next part I will better describe some of them. And I will also write you here something about blogs.

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At first I will learn you how to:

• How to create your own blog
• How to write posts
• How to add AdSense ads on blogs
• How to promote this blog
• How to check stats for this blog

And all that without spending a penny. I will show you of course also alternatives, or methods where you will need to pay some money, but these methods are not necessary and they will be good marked.

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Blog
What is blog, you can find in Used Terms section of this post. I am sure that most of you know meaning of this word. Why I prefer this method of earning money? Because it is the easiest method for amateurs. You don't need a lot of knowledge about internet and HTML or other "programming languages" to write some internet content. Before you start your own blog, think about topic, style and language of your blog.

Topic for blog
It can be personal diary blog, but I recommend you find topic, that is near for you. Good topic is your hobby, the best is your hobby, that is also hobby for many other people on internet. When you will find topic, that is interesting for others it is good start to attract possible visitors.
Style
When you want to write blog be as much personal as it is possible. Blog is personal thing and people like to know your point of view on topic. Sometimes is not bad to write in extravagant style, it can also attract visitors
Language
I recommend you English language. As you can see from my posts, my English is not good. Surprisingly, grammar is not much important. When other people understand what you are writing about it is OK. And blog is a good method for improving your skills

If you are afraid that you are not good writer, it is also OK. Me too, only some happy individuals know how to write in such style, that they write books. We others, can only try it. On internet you have big audience, and when you will find right topic, you will gain some visitors.

Before we will continue with next part of our serial, think about possible topic for your blog. In next part I will show you how to create your own blog and I will show you also some interesting places on internet. I want to learn you new things, and for better understanding I will also start my new blog, and I will show you all on real example.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Blog
Webmasters are practitioners of web communication.
A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Usually is written as some kind of internet diary.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages.
Required money icon
I will use this icon to show you, that this method need to invest some money with approximate amount.

Make Money Online - Introduction

I want to show you in this series how to make money online on internet. These articles will be written for normal people, not for professionals. I want to show you that it is possible to make some money online, without being professional webmaster. Not wealth presented on millions pages or spam e-mails, but stable month small sum of money. This is a way, where you need some effort, but it will be good invested time. Many people earning money from internet today, started similarly.

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First of all I want here to describe here some good methods how to make money online, and methods that doesn't function.
Good methods are:

• Google AdSense ads (or another PPC programs) on own pages
• Affiliate products on own pages
• Paid banners or links on own pages
• Internet e-shops
• Selling own programs
• Selling own services
• Paid advert posts on own pages
• Freelance writter
• Freelance programmers or graphic
• Paid posting to forums

These methods help you make some money, some of them in short time, some of them later.

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Here are some bad methods are:

• Fraud clicks on Google AdSense ads
• Buying e-books that promise you earn thousands bucks a day
• Spamming
• Using not checked affiliate systems
• Receiving e-mails with ads
• Browsing on internet pages for money
• Winning in internet lotteries
• Help finance minister of Kenya to defraud some money or etc.

Using this methods you with high probability don't make money or lost money. Especially last 2 methods are very dangerous and be sure that you lost a lot of money.

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In next articles I want to describe you some from good methods, especially I want to show you how to earn some money from you own pages on internet in step by step description. Description will contain all necessary inputs, how much money do you need to spend of this method and necessary knowledge and possible earnings. I will give you also some good tips on pages that can help you. That all with images and description in clear points.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Webmaster
Webmasters are practitioners of web communication.
PPC
Pay Per Click is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
Google AdSense
Ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.
Spam
Unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages.