New and improved sidebar help widget

Last week, we made some updates to give users quick access to comprehensive and interactive help within the Google Affiliate Network interface.



In the lower left of each page in your account, you’ll see a new and improved help widget that displays relevant help information based on the page you’re on.







Benefits include:

• Advertisers can quickly access the Getting Started Guide and learn about creating links, supplying merchandising information and advertiser-specific terms, and more

• Publishers can get quick access to the Publisher Beginner's Guide, learn about setting up product feed subscriptions, and watch a step-by-step video on setting up link subscriptions

Need an answer fast? Use the search box to get information from Help Center articles, forum posts, and even this blog -- right within the widget. You can click the search results to find more detailed information in a new browser window without interrupting the work you were doing in the interface.



Take a minute to check out the new sidebar help widget. You may discover features you’re not yet taking advantage of, and learn some affiliate marketing best practices, too.



If you have feedback, we’d love to hear from you in our forum.



Posted by:

Josh Pyle, Affiliate Network Strategist

Jessie Chavez, Software Engineer

Sabrina Gana, Publisher Support Specialist

Get a pulse for the posts your readers like most with the +1 counter

As we mentioned in our Connect to Google+ post a few weeks ago, we’ve been hard at work to bring you new ways to grow your blog and engage with your readers using Google+.



Today we’re happy to introduce the +1 counter, which allows you to quickly scan your dashboard to see which posts are most popular on your blog. Each time a reader clicks the +1 button on a post, a +1 gets added to that post's counter and their profile photo and name will appear.

The +1 button is available on all Dynamic Views posts by default, and can be enabled on most other template types by clicking on the Layout tab in your dashboard, clicking Edit in the Blog posts section, and checking the Show Share Buttons box.

If you don't have a Google+ account yet, don't fret. It's easy to join Google+ here.



Happy blogging!



Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Revamped commission reporting for publishers

Last week, we made a few updates to help publishers stay on top of commission rates and commission rate changes.



New commission report for publishers

The new commission report allows publishers to view all of their commission rates (except for tiers & category-level commission rates) in one location. This report allows publishers to sort, filter, and export the commission rates as a comma or tab delimited file. Learn more about commission reports.







Improved commission notifications for publishers

Commission notifications now display the old and the new values for commissions that have changed. This helps publishers easily track changes that have occurred to a commission rate.



------------------------------------------------------------

Test Advertiser 1 (K3)

------------------------------------------------------------

New Commission schedule:

Start Date: 2012-01-01

Event Type: Transaction

Rate: 58.00% of sales

------------------------------------------------------------

Previous Commission schedule:

Start Date: 2011-09-27

End Date: 2012-01-01

Event Type: Transaction

Rate: 10.00% of sales



If you have any questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you at our forum.



Posted by Ali Pasha, Product Manager

Mark your calendar: Affiliate Management Days

We hope to see many of you at Affiliate Management Days on March 8-9 in San Francisco. Affiliate Management Days is a professional forum for affiliate managers and marketing executives responsible for their company’s affiliate marketing strategy, program management and related operations.

Two members of the Google Affiliate Network team will be speaking at the event:

• Kristin Hall, Head of Publisher Development
  
  Publisher Segmentation & Key Optimization Levers
  
  
  
  


• Ali Pasha, Product Manager
  
  Trends & Innovations in the Affiliate Marketplace

You can review the conference agenda and register on the Affiliate Management Days website. Register by Friday, January 20th to take advantage of the early bird rate, which will save you $500 from the onsite price.



Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager

Engage with your readers through threaded commenting

You may have noticed that we’ve rolled out a number of improvements to Blogger recently. The folks over at Technorati referred to it as a “rampage”. Call it what you like, we’re definitely having fun giving Blogger the makeover it’s long deserved, and we appreciate all the positive feedback we received at the recent BlogWorld expo.



If you follow us on our Buzz blog, you’re aware that we publish surveys from time to time. They are one of several methods that we use to collect your feedback about what we can do to make your blogging experience better. A top request on the wishlist is improving Blogger’s commenting system, so we’re happy to announce that we’ve done just that.



Blogger now supports threaded commenting, which means that it is now much easier to differentiate between whether someone is making a general comment on the thread, or responding to another comment on the thread.

What do you have to do to enable this on your blog? Nothing! If you have Blogger’s commenting feature enabled, “Blog Feed” set to “Full”, and are using “Embedded” comments, then you’re ready to start a discussion with your readers. To check, or change your feed settings, select: “Settings > Other >, and then “Full” from the “Allow Blog Feed” dropdown:

To check your current form setting, select: “Settings > Posts and Comments, and select “Embedded” from the “Comment Location” dropdown:

Visit the Blogger Help Center for additional information.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Pat Coleman, Software Engineer

Connect to Google+

Back in October we made it possible for Blogger in Draft users to use their Google+ profile on their blog. This option is now available to all Blogger users, and as a result, we're starting to roll out the first of many Google+ features.



Starting today, if you have linked your blog to your Google+ account you will be presented with a prefilled Google+ share box immediately after publishing a post. The share box will contain a +snippet of your post that you can share with your circles on Google+.

Of course, you can disable this sharing prompt at any time on the "Settings - Posts and Comments" page. And you can always share individual posts on Google+ by selecting "share" underneath the entry in your post list.

You can start using the new Share to Google+ immediately if you’ve already chosen to use your Google+ profile on your blog. If you haven’t yet made the switch, click here to get started.



If you don’t have a Google+ account you can create one here, and then log in to Blogger and follow the above instructions.



To learn more, check out our FAQs or visit our Help Forum.



Want to chat about sharing to Google+ and other Blogger features with someone from the team? Join me on the Blogger +page for a live video Hangout at 3PM PST.



Happy blogging!



Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Google AdSense & Blogger: An introduction

Hi, my name is Andy Chung. I work on the Google AdSense team helping online publishers, specifically Blogger users like you, ensure your blogs are optimized to generate as much income for you as possible.



A few weeks ago we met with many of you at the 2011 BlogWorld & New Media Expo. One of the consistent themes we heard was: "please provide me with more tips on how to make money with my blog.”



At your request, we’re happy to bring you a series of posts with some helpful tips on how to configure AdSense to give you the highest possible return from your blog.



If you've been thinking about monetizing your blog and are unfamiliar with how Google AdSense works, here are the three things you need to know:



1. AdSense is built into Blogger:

You can easily sign up and start showing ads on your blog, without having to leave Blogger, by clicking on the "Earnings" tab in your dashboard. After completing the AdSense application, the next step is to designate where you want the ads to appear on your blog. Once your application is approved, we’ll start serving ads and you’ll start making money. And unlike many other blogging platforms, Blogger doesn’t take a cut of your revenue.

2. AdSense serves relevant ads on your blogs:

AdSense works by matching text and image ads to your blog based on your content and the types of users that visit your site. For example, if you write about running, your readers may see ads next to your post about running shoes and equipment. Ads are created and paid for by advertisers who want to promote their products.



3. Great content is key:

Posting high quality content is the best way to maximize your returns with AdSense. It’s important to take a little extra time defining your topic, creating a post that is engaging and matters to your readers. The more interesting and appealing your content is, the more likely your readers will be to click on the ads on your blog.



This short video will also give you a quick overview of AdSense and how it works with Blogger:

Stay tuned to the Blogger Buzz blog for more tips and tricks about monetization in the coming weeks.



Posted by Andy Chung, AdSense