Gold Surges to Record on European, U.S. Debt Concerns, Currency Gyrations

Gold rose to a record in New York on speculation that the sovereign-debt crisis in Europe will worsen, boosting the appeal of the precious metal as an alternative to currencies. Silver touched a 31-year high.

Gold reached an all-time high of $1,489.10 an ounce after Moody’s cut Ireland’s credit rating by two levels to the lowest investment grade, eroding the value of the euro. The dollar,while up today, is headed for a third straight weekly decline against a basket of currencies as the U.S. Congress debates measures to reduce a record government deficit.

“Gold has become the currency of choice,” said Lannie Cohen, the president of Capitol Commodity Services Inc. in Indianapolis. “The debt crises in Portugal and Ireland are getting worse. The U.S. has its own deficit problems. There’s just so much debt that the U.S. will have to continue quantitative easing to carry the deficit.”

Gold futures for June delivery rose $13.60, or 0.9 percent, to settle at $1,486 at 1:46 p.m. on the Comex, up 0.8 percent for the week. Gold for immediate delivery in London rose as much as 0.9 percent to a record $1,488.18.

The precious metal may rise to $1,750 this year in anticipation of “the dollar getting ready to fall off the face of the earth,” Cohen said.

The Federal Reserve has kept its benchmark interest rate at zero percent to 0.25 percent since December 2008 and has pledged to buy $600 billion in Treasuries through June to stimulate growth.

Inflation Concern

Gold also rallied on demand from investors seeking a hedge against inflation.

Consumer prices in China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, rose 5.4 percent in March, the quickest pace since 2008, exceeding the government’s 2011 target for a third month.

Inflation in the 17-nation euro region quickened to 2.7 percent in March from 2.4 percent in February, the European Union’s statistics office said today. U.S. wholesale costs climbed 5.8 percent in March compared with a year earlier, and the government said today that the cost of living rose for a ninth straight month.

“The inflationary numbers in the backdrop are very bullish for gold,” said Adam Klopfenstein, a senior market strategist at Lind-Waldock in Chicago. “With the sovereign-debt problems in Europe and the U.S., investors want metals to protect them.”

Silver Surges

Silver topped $42, pushing its gain this year to 38 percent, the most among the 19 commodities tracked by the Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index.

Silver futures for May delivery rose 90.7 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $42.571 an ounce on the Comex in New York. Earlier, the price climbed to $42.865, the highest since 1980, when the metal reached a record $50.35.

The commodity advanced 4.8 percent this week, the fourth straight increase.

Palladium futures for June delivery fell $6.15, or 0.8 percent, to $768.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices dropped 3.3 percent this week.

Platinum futures for July delivery declined 80 cents to $1,794.80 an ounce on the Nymex, capping a 1 percent loss for the week.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pham-Duy Nguyen in Seattle at pnguyen@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.

Gold Prices Rising! Should You Secure Your Wealth With Bullion?

Gold bullion experienced a short pull back in prices in December 2009, there are now signs that the gold price blip may well be over with gold back on track for new highs.

After an exciting 6 month rally in which gold prices moved from below $900 an ounce to over $1200 gold dipped in a profit taking correction at the end of last month to just below $1100 an ounce. Today the gold price is back up $1150 an ounce with an upward trend showing signs that the next leg in the gold price rally may well be underway.

Should you be buying gold bullion personally?

Maybe you’re thinking well sure if I had the money and the place to store it why not! Firstly you don’t need to hold it or even see it, it’s just about as easy to have gold bullion in your name in a secure bonded vault as it is to hold cash in the bank; in fact, some would say judging by recent banking performance, possibly holding gold is even more secure than keeping money in the bank.

Gold bullion ownership isn’t just for the seriously wealthy either, the smallest individual unit you can purchase gold bullion in is by the gram, which will cost no more than the price of a meal out.  You can build up your gold bullion holdings just as you would cash in a bank and what’s more it’s easy enough to transfer a percenage of your from gold bullion to cash and buy back again later, so unlike other alternative investments such as real estate you won’t need to fit a new kitchen before you put it up for sale…

Why should you take a serious look owning gold bullion?

Our answer is that gold prices overall have always stood the test of time and have proved to have been one of the most consistent ways to avoid loss of wealth created by sharp rises in inflation or political and global uncertainty.

Gold doesn’t tend to be as reactionary or hysterical in it’s behaviour as the stock market often is, so you won’t need to panic so much when you hear anything negative on the news.  In fact maybe just for the sake of your personal stress levels and some healthy stock market paranoia diffusion, holding a stake of your wealth in gold might well be worth serious consideration.

A few people have said, well what if we’re at the start of a great stock market rally, I don’t want to miss out on this one after losing so much in the last crash…

Firstly you can diversify and there’s nothing to prevent you altering the percentage of gold held in your portfolio according to your risk appetite, if you’re sure the market can only go up and this time you’re bound to win, then the Wall Street Casino is always ready and open to take new dollars.  It’s worth noting though that Gold has already matched the US’s longest stock market rally ever which ran from 1982-1989, averaging annual returns of 16% since 2001.

Gold unlike the many currencies that have come and gone through history has always held value, there’s never been a time when we’ve decided to use gold bullion bars to prop a door open, or at least not in regular family households.  On the other hand quite a few currencies have ended up being a great way to light a fire…and let’s be honest inflation is nothing more than the steady descent of all currencies to a value of ZERO!

If you’re interested about gold price stability and buying gold bullion securely and safely online we recommend that you visit Bullion Vault and register to learn more.  Registration is free, they actually give you a free gram of gold to get started with too!  We do receive a tiny referral fee from Bullion Vault when investors learn about Bullion Vault via Shelter Offshore.

Adsense Tools

If you're just boarding on the AdSense train, and looking to find a quick way to make the profits you've seen all being pulled of all over the Internet, you might be interested in a couple of tools.


These software tools are designed to aid AdSense publishers in getting a better understanding on how traffic flows through their site. Some will help you in understanding which keywords gain you more money and which locations give you the best AdSense payment.

One of the best such tools available is AdSense Gold (http://www.profitbooks.com/go/astracker) which allows you to have a better understanding of which ads and formats actually get more clicks and which are useful or nearly useless.

This program works by tracking views and clicks on all the publisher's pages. It even goes as far as offering you the possibility to see which referrer each visitor came in through.

There's a free tool called SynSense (http://www.singerscreations.com/RSS/Posts/235.asp) which is more of an AdSense monitoring tool. This sits in the tray and offers actualized AdSense stats as you hover your mouse over its icon. It's a very nice tool for those which like to be informed on how their AdSense is doing at all times of the day.

Google provides you with stats in a csv format on their site. So someone made a tool that can automatically download such files and extract a lot of information from them. The name of this tool is CSV AdStats and it is available from http://www.nix.fr/en/csvadstats.aspx?q=download

It has a large number of features, including the possibility to highly customize reported stats, exporting data and charts to other formats. It's in French but the language can very easily be changed to English.

Of course any tool can only access these stats as often as 15 minutes but the authors are well aware of that fact and none of these tools will get you in trouble with Google because of that.

If, however, you're browsing content most of the time, and your tool of choice is the Firefox Internet browser, there's an extension for this program that allows you to view the stats in your status bar.

Again, this software is aware of Google's 15 minute rule and enforces its usage, 15 minutes being the minimum time between updates. The Google AdSense notifier for Firefox can be obtained from http://code.mincus.com/?p=3

There is also a program called Golden Keywords out there that helps you in getting the best keywords for your site. It's really efficient and very easy to use. It does come with a price tag though, it costs $49.95 and it can be obtained from http://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8616-2

So as you can see, software developers are making more and more programs meant to help you in your quest to maximize your AdSense profits. But before you go out looking for them remember that Google has a few features of its own as well.

It does offer some reports (albeit a bit more limited) and using the 'channels' feature is a good way of finding out which ads on your site are really bringing in most of the revenue.

Be on the look out as new tools appear daily and make sure to invest time in your site, as that is the real key in success with AdSense.

Google PPC: Content or Search?

When advertising with pay per click Google gives the advertiser two broad options. Advertising in search results, advertising in websites content or indeed many choose to do both. Advertising in search means that results are displayed in Google under searches, and in its distributors search results.


Google content advertising applies to those websites who choose to incorporate “Adsense” into their websites. As adsense rapidly expands, it is now viewable on millions of web pages throughout the web. However, many advertisers are shunning this in favor of merely advertising in search results.
There are several reasons for this, and the first is trust. This has been a result of smaller websites, through to adsense empires choosing to embark on Click Fraud. Although this issue occurs in search it is far less dominant. Those who commit Click Fraud on search are those trying to weaken a competitor’s ROI. With Adsense the same applies, along with the website owner trying to increase his revenues using similar tactics.

Another reason why website owners are choosing to market out with content is the motivation of the buyer when he is on a website. Someone who is on a different website, other than the advertisers might be there for entirely different reasons. For example a website discussing the disadvantages of Adsense, would actually return adverts for those selling “Adsense Websites” for example. People may click on it, but they are unlikely to buy after reading a negative review. The other reason could be that the person on the adsense website was actually looking for what is the best color palette to use. The person therefore would not find the advert relevant, but might click on the advert in a care free manner.
Adsense websites are also often rejected by the advertiser because they feel it involves more administration. Checking through websites to see how relevant they are, and editing their bids to ensure they still appear on a page. With some words having a network of over 500 websites, it is surely a tedious and expensive task. Although this is the case, many also find that their Adwords account returns websites, that don’t even appear to be trying to support their keywords. The example which is ripe, are those advertising under legal phrases who appear on adsense websites “terms and conditions” and “privacy policy” pages.

Although many are rejecting content advertising, there are still those who feel it provides a similar ROI to search. A reason for this can be found through in the fact that more and more advertisers are only choosing search. As this occurs the advertiser has less competition so the price of the word reduces. Advertisers are also finding a good ROI from publisher’s websites who decide to actively promote the advertiser’s services within their content. An example of this can be realized from when someone is discussing printing services, and actually directly recommends the advertiser’s services. This is a positive move for both the publisher and the advertiser, and a good way for publishers to move forward. Despite this, publishers still have to remember, to not be too obvious in doing this, or savvy buyers will definitely calculate the publisher’s intention.

Another reason why advertisers are opting for content is to increase their scale, however this can also be done across other search engines. The fact however still exists that those who choose content advertising should choose the Google Adsense network. It is regulated far and above yahoo’s and others equivalents whilst its superior network of publishers means the advertisers will benefit from being able to spread their message through a diverse range of websites.
Despite Adsense being the best PPC content distributor, it certainly doesn’t compare to search for the advertiser. On search the leads are more qualified, more regulated, and less fraudulent. This has seen advertisers consistently choose search over content. Despite this advertiser’s should always test adsense and see if it can provide the ROI they are looking for. Some advertisers say that content provides a better return for their business than search. This varies, however in general search remains King for PPC advertisers.

How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated

Google, being the undisputable leader in search engines from then until now, is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search engines. Most especially now that the company is public property. In order to keep the shareholders and users of its engines happy, the quality of the returned results are given extreme importance.



For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated. Nothing like a good action taken to keep wrongdoers from doing the same things over again.

So for those who are thinking of getting a career in Adsense, do not just think of the strategies you will be using to generate more earnings. Consider some things first before you actually get involved.

Hidden texts. Filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty award that is given to those who are hiding links.

Page cloaking. There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.

Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a URL of an Adsense as two separate URL’s is the same as inviting trouble and even termination. Likewise, this is a reason to avoid auto submitters for those who are receiving submissions. Better check first if your domain is submitted already an a certain search engine before you try to submit to it again. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.

Link farms. Be wary of who and what are you linking your Adsense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.

Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.

Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content. In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP’s, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites.

Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your Adsense and site account terminated altogether.

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.


The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites.  It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

Success on Adsense – 5 Quick Tips for you

As you use Google's AdSense for more and more time you begin to learn from the mistakes of the past, and you slowly begin to realize which of your actions kept your site from reaching its full potential.

But an important part to making a mistake is telling people about it and teaching them how to avoid making the same mistake. So this is a list of the top five mistakes people using AdSense make.



You should read them well, and see if any of them is applicable to your contents. If it is, you must stop and attempt to fix such errors as quickly as possible.

The first major no-no that everyone seems to be hitting at one point or another has to do with breaking the rules. Google's AdSense is a great program but it relies on you respecting a few set rules.

The most important thing is not to create "artificial clicks" through any means possible. Never click your own links, never ask your friends or close ones to click the links and never, by any means have your content encouraging the visitors to click the links. You run the risk of being permanently banned, and that will definitely damage your revenue.

Failing to comply with Google's terms could have your AdSense account suspended. And this is why this rule is by all means the most important one of all. It's because this is the difference between life or death.

The second thing users get wrong a lot of time is having a bad color palette for ads. Many times this happens because the publishers aren't knowledgeable enough to change default color palettes.

Others just can't seem to spend enough time in changing those defaults. Having bad ads that stand out is sure to push people away from clicking; whilst having something which is clearly visible yet distinctive will.

Third, of course, the position of the ads is probably the key element you should get right if you want to maximize your profits with AdSense. This is noted in a lot of places on the web and Google talks about this as well. Google can provide you with statistics which illustrate what positions work particularly well on your website.

Fourthly, banner ads are also a very bad idea if you're using AdSense. 480x60 type ads are a sure way to drive many people away as most Internet surfers have developed a natural resistance to such means of advertising.

And last, but clearly not least, is not taking care of the site running the ads. Because ultimately it doesn't matter how cool the site is itself. If it doesn't have updated contents and a lot of daily visitors it will probably never earn you any serious AdSense revenues.

So these are the most important five things people get wrong while using the AdSense program. But of course if you don't like this means of expressing the issues, here are the top five things you should do to ensure your AdSense ads are constantly bringing in that revenue.

Never break Google's policy. Don't make visitors create "artificial clicks" on your website regardless of the person doing so or the reason. Make sure your ads have the right colors that blend in with your site, and make sure they're positioned in the right places to attract as many customers as possible. Always try to avoid using banner-like (480x60) adds unless you really know what you're doing and constantly keep your site fresh and up to date.