Hello,
- Paid site services
I have been promising this for a very long time, but finally the implementation of the services for the paying subscribers.
If you subscribed to the site recently or you were not aware about the plan about the paid site services, do not worry. Accessing the current site services will continue to be free as before.
What happens is that the will be new services that will be provided exclusively to users that desire to benefit from those services by paying a small fee (say USD $5 a month).
This is an important initiative for the continuation of the site as a free resource from which many thousands of users benefit every day.
So far I have been doing everything, from developing the site features, providing support to users, managing contests that provide prizes to authors to contribute with innovating classes, etc..
The problem is that this limits what I can do to continue to improve the site. If I could hire additional staff, I could concentrate more time on the site development. So, the site really needs an additional source of revenue besides the advertising that appears in the site pages.
- Site without advertising
The first service that I plan to implement will allow paying subscribers to access all the site pages without any advertising. I am sure this please many users that do not want to be distracted by any advertising.
At the same time it will make the site pages load much faster. Most of the advertising are fetched from remote servers. This delays the loading of the pages making the site more sluggish.
I wish I could remove the site advertising for all users. Unfortunately, that is not viable. At least paying subscribers will have the possibility to get rid of the advertising.
- Better site search
Some time ago the site started using Google as means to search the site pages. This was an important change because it helped off-loading the site.
Google is an excellent search engine as we all know. However, it is not able to index a site in real time, as it is not aware of all the pages that are changed. So, searching in Google means searching in an outdated content index.
At the same time it is not possible to refine searches according to specific criteria. Google is also not able to distinguish what is content, and what are text labels that may be found in the site pages but are not relevant to the users.
To solve this problem, the internal site search will be enhanced to provide a more powerful search tool to paying subscribers. Non-paying subscribers will continue to be able to use Google to search this site.
- Other services
More services will be implement later that were planned, as time permits. As usual, I am open to other suggestions that you may have. Feel free to send your suggestions to info@phpclasses.org . Everybody will receive a reply.
- Your site revenue tips
Last month I have suggested all of you that have your own content sites or blogs a way to generate revenue using the Google AdSense initiative.
In case you did not read last month editor newsletter, AdSense is a Google initiative that has helped the PHP Classes site and many other content sites to generate significant revenue by showing targeted advertising.
This month I would like to complement that information with several tips that you may follow to increase your site AdSense revenue. I firmly believe that sharing these tips will encourage other site owners to share their own tips.
Whether you have already joined the Google AdSense program or you are still considering it, here you may find these tips:
http://www.phpclasses.org/tips.html?tip=site-revenue
- AdSense Publishers support discussion groups
If you would like to obtain further help or discuss matters about Google AdSense like joining requirements, revenue maximization tips, payment receiving difficulties, etc.. there are several discussion groups that you may join and talk about it with other publishers, like for instance this:
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-publishers
If you live in Brazil or you speak Portuguese, I have created this group where you can discuss about AdSense in Portuguese:
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-brasil
Good luck with your site earnings,
Manuel Lemos