Yahoo! Maps opens its APIs to commercial publishers

On Monday, Yahoo! Developer Network announced via its blog that it was lifting most restrictions on the use of Yahoo! Maps APIs for commercial purposes.

“Until today, the APIs were available only for non-commercial use unless you applied for an exception,” writes Product Manager Vince Maniago. “The concept of commercial and non-commercial has gone away and exceptions are no longer necessary in most cases. We have given you explicit Usage Policies help guide you.”

According to the Yahoo! Maps blog, publishers are now free to:

• Build mashups and use our Maps for personal or business use as long as the applications are free of charge and under the rate limit.
• Link to Yahoo! Maps or Driving Directions to your heart’s content.
• Include advertising on the same page or site where you display Yahoo! Maps.

So go forth, ye publishers and budding cartographers, Yahoo! Maps will get your users where they want to go.

And congrats to the Yahoo! Developer Network and the Yahoo! Maps teams for this “one small step for publisher-kind.”

—The Team
 

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable shows you how to get the most out of publisher message boards (without looking like a jerk)

You are a publisher; you signed up with the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta to earn some cash. Wouldn’t you want to learn how to squeeze out higher earnings every month? Wouldn’t you want to learn how to make your ads more targeted and more appealing to your visitors? Wouldn’t you want to share your success with your Yahoo! Publisher Network fellow travelers?

Part of the niche that I cover on my blog, the Search Engine Roundtable, is on the topic of contextual ads, including the Yahoo Publisher Network. And so I know that there are tons of great resources out there to help you monetize your site content with Yahoo!. Some of the best of these resources are the numerous discussion forums and message boards–I personally spend a healthy chunk of my day researching and documenting the discussions at dozens of forums.

Discussion forums are a great way to learn and share information, because you can usually find someone who has experienced first-hand the exact thing you may have questions about. There are hundreds of people on the boards who enjoy answering questions and helping others achieve great results with Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Here are some forums that specifically discuss the Yahoo! Publisher Network:

WebmasterWorld
Because of WebmasterWorld’s size, they have set up strict rules to ensure that the forum operates in a calm and professional manner. Don’t go on this forum if all you’re looking to do is drop a link for your Web site and say, “Hey, this is my site, what do you think?” But for any type of issue or advice, WebmasterWorld is a great place to start.

DigitalPoint Forums
This is a relatively young forum, but one that has earned the respect of many Webmasters in a short time. DigitalPoint Forums has one of the largest groups of publishers who focus on earning money with contextual advertising programs. You can learn a ton here and the rules are very lax, so enjoy.

Search Engine Watch Forums
One of the most respected forums on the Internet, Search Engine Watch is backed by Danny Sullivan, the name most synonymous with search marketing. This forum can be a great place to talk about some higher-level concepts.

Search Engine Roundtable Forums
Search Engine Roundtable is my forum. It’s basically a place to sit back, relax and talk with friends within the search community. The rules for both Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Roundtable are right in between WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Of these four, DigitalPoint and WebmasterWorld have the largest population of Yahoo! Publisher Network members and contributors. 

Each forum has its own personality, so take some time to read the posts in each of those forums. After you do your lurking, pick the one or two forums of which you’d like to become a member. And be sure to read the forum policies carefully: Some forums do not allow you to place a link to your site, but others do. Read the rules and then feel free to ask questions or share knowledge.

Also, if you are strapped for time, you can go directly to the threads on the Yahoo! Publisher Network that I featured on my blog.

—Barry Schwartz, Publisher, Search Engine Roundtable

Lockergnome Chris Pirillo tells why

Last week we ran an post about Gnomedex, along with a Poll that asked why Chris Pirillo’s site was called “Lockergnome” and his conference, “Gnomedex.” Most of you got it right: “Gnome” was Chris’s high school nickname. But why? Revenge of the nerds!

“My college prep writing teacher called me ’shorty’ names,” admits Chris. “Midget, munchkin, knee-high, dwarf, elf… gnome. That one stuck. I wouldn’t let him call me anything but gnome. And, for some strange reason, one afternoon, as I was cleaning out my locker, I turned to my friend and announced: “Hi, I’m the Locker Gnome. It’s my job to stand by lockers and say: ‘Hi, I’m the Locker Gnome.’”

Continues Chris: “When I started to mess around online, I needed some type of handle (truckers have them, why can’t geeks?). ‘Locker Gnome’ was the closest thing I had… ‘Lockergnome’ is a word that, in and of itself, makes no sense. But it has quickly become a Web brand. It was a great marketing tactic… sorta.” Feel better about your Web career, now?

If you’re thinking about going to Gnomedex, let us and your friends know by using Upcoming.org.
 

New Yahoo! Photos beta

Seems like you can’t swing a sack of apples here at Yahoo! without hitting a new product launch, upgrade or enhancement. Following up on an already busy “go-live” season, Yahoo! yesterday released its new Yahoo! Photos beta.

The new Yahoo! Photos should be a plus for publishers wanting to enhance the visual appeal of their offerings. Versatile “Web 2.0” features include:

• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop organization
• Tagging—pioneered by Flickr—for easy sharing and organization
• Advanced search capabilities
• Open APIs that encourage 3rd party development and mashups

Re-written using advanced JavaScript and AJAX, the new Yahoo! Photos is faster, more intuitive and more powerful than any other photo sharing site of its kind.

This limited beta is currently available only on the U.S., but those abroad can expect the global beta to be rolled out later this year. Yahoo! Photos was already the world’s largest photo sharing site, with more than 30 million users around the world and 2 billion photos stored.

Publishers: expect more announcements of interest from Yahoo! in the coming weeks and months . . .

—The Team

Publisher Account Interface to experience scheduled maintenance tonight, Friday June 9, from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., Pacific Time 

Tonight, between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m., Pacific Time, there will be scheduled maintenance on the secure account interface.  For the duration of this maintenance, Performance Reports will be unavailable. In addition, Performance Report data from today (Friday, June 9) will be delayed tomorrow (Saturday, June 10) until approximately 1 p.m., Pacific Time.

This minor bit of monkey business will not impact your account earnings nor the serving of ads to your site.

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

—The Team

Using Reporting URLs can help enhance your performance

At the Yahoo! mother ship campus in Sunnyvale, California, our company commissary is called “URL’s,” as in “Eat at Earl’s.”

It’s a Web pun. Get it?

Here at the Yahoo! Publisher Network, we take Reporting URLs just a wee bit more seriously. Like Reporting Categories—which we talked about last week—you use Reporting URLs to help gauge ad performance. But where Reporting Categories let you gauge performance by categories that you assign (such as for different lines of business or ad layout format), Reporting URLs track performance by URL—whether by domain, by pages in a directory, by a single, specific page, or by a combination of these options.

To use this tool, go to the Reporting URL page under the Reports tab. Then, enter each individual URL for which you would like to receive a report:

Entered URLs will appear in the Manage Reporting URLs table.

Keep in mind that URL reporting requires an exact domain name. For example, if you enter “http://mysite.com,” the system will only track “http://mysite.com.” It will not  track “http://www.mysite.com.”

New to the biz and not sure what’s a domain, a directory, etc? Refer to the table below. 

To view your data, click on the Reports tab and select Performance Report. You may then select the Reporting URL for which you would like to receive a report.

A clever use of Reporting URLs can, we hope, help you earn enough money to eat not only at your local Earl’s, but also at Buck’s, Elaine’s, or (someday) Maxim’s. 
 

 —Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

Jen Slegg interviews Will Johnson on her Webmasterradio.fm show, “Click This”

Jen Slegg is one busy bee. Two weeks ago, she wrote her first guest column for our blog, “Color Me Clickable,” which garnered considerable attention from the publishing community the world over. That same week, Jen went on air at Webmasterradio.fm to interview none other than Will Johnson, our VP and GM here at Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Just in case you missed it, here’s an excerpt in which Will talks about the new direct deposit feature. Or, if you have a little more time, download the complete show and get the inside scoop on what’s happening behind the purple curtain. 

Visit Yahoo! at Gnomedex

What:  Gnomedex 6.0 
When:  June 29 - July 1, 2006
Where:  Bell Harbor Conference Center, Seattle, Washington
Why:  Networking, networking, networking 

“What’s the opposite of COMDEX?” asks Web entrepreneur and Lockergnome.com founder, Chris Pirillo (see Polls, at right). “Gnomedex—something small that’s really big, something people want to attend instead of being mandated to attend, something where everybody gets treated like a VIP.” 

Hosted by Chris and his buddy, Ponzi Indharasophang, this year’s Gnomedex speaker line-up includes Phil Torrone of Makezine, social media opinionator Steve Rubel, Macromedia co-founder Marc Canter, “F’d Companies” author, Pud Kaplan, and a cornucopia of other influencers.

Be sure to come by the Yahoo! Lounge and chat with your favorite Yahoos. Yahoo! Publisher Network will be there, and we hope you will be, too.

Let us know if you plan to attend and we’ll see if we can hook up with you in person. Email us at: publisher-info [at] yahoo-inc [dot] com. And be sure to share your plans with others by using the Upcoming.org tool in the right-hand column.

Nearly 50 million Americans have posted content online

According to a report released this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, 48 million Americans have posted content online. In addition, by March 2006, 42 percent of all Americans had broadband Internet access at home, up 12 percent from March of the previous year. The report’s author, John Horrigan, suggests that user-generated content is now at the leading edge of Internet usage. How does it feel to be in the vanguard?

In another recent study, the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that 73 percent of American adults (over the age of 18) were online as of March 31, 2006.

Can you spell “opportunity?”