Definition of CPM, CPC, CPA

CPM (Cost per 1,000), CPC (Cost per Click) and CPA (Cost per Action) are methods of calculating the charge for pages (advertisements) being served.

CPM is a holdover from traditional media advertising, and does not take advantage of the Hypertext nature of the medium. It charges purely on the number of times the advertisement is served.

It does account for branding effects, that are not accounted for in the other models. CPC is a cost associated with each click on the advertisement to the target page. CPA is a cost associated with each lead created from a click on the advertisement (CPL), or each sale (CPS).

Both CPC and CPA are much more accountable means of developing a price for the banner, and either are also used for affiliate programs. They become a variable cost in terms of generating the number of people exposed to the target page (this number is based on the CTR from the host vehicle), the number of leads generated (CPL) or the number of sales (CPS).

The downside for the vehicles is they do not control the design of the banner (poor design = low click-through etc.) and they are not rewarded for the branding effect of the banner.

Source

4.5 Million Blogspot Users are Lazy

Millions of Bloggers on Blogspot.com are either too lazy or don't understand the basic HTML tags.

When you create a new blog on Blogger.com, Google provides a default blogspot template that has three links in the side bar - one link points to Google News while the other two links (Edit-Me) are just placeholders for the blogger to insert his own hyperlinks (see screenshot)

But bloggers are too busy creating content and don't bother changing these "under construction" areas. There are 4.5 million pages hosted on blogspot.com that still have the Google News and Edit Me links [site:blogspot.com "Google News" "Edit-Me"]

Links

1. Google News

2. Edit-Me

3. Edit-Me
   

If your blog also falls in this category, my suggestion would be that you first read the W3 Schools tutorial on HTML and CSS. Once you have a certain comfort level with your blogger template code, throw the default blogspot template in the recycle bin and switch to a more professional design.

Fortunately, there are lot of good folks who have developed some beautiful blogger templates and they are providing them for free. Just download the blogspot template, paste it over your default blogger template and click the republish button. [more details]

Here are some links and resource for free Blogspot Template Designs:

» Free Blogspot Templates - Isnaini, an Indonesia based blogger template designer, has a good collection of 3 column template designs.

» Blogger Templates by Aman - A Singapore based student has some creative blogspot template designs based on popular themese like Desperate Housewives, Tour De France, Harry Potter and Yoga.

» Blogger Templates - Excellent collection of two column blogspot templates. Recommended.

» Blogspot Templates - Contains both text only and graphical version of Blog templates. There are also instructions on how to use Blogger templates.

» Blogger Templates @ Gecko & Fly This site has collected popular blogspot template designs from other designers and put them in one central location.

» Blog Skins - A huge repository of user contributed template designs and blog skins for blogger, Movable Type, Xanga and Wordpress Blogs. Users can rate and comment on template designs.

Want to design your own blogspot template ? Jennifer Apple has some tips on creating your own blog template from scratch using Photoshop.