On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 20:52, Stormy Peters<
stormy gnome org> wrote:
> Just an FYI, I just talked to a small nonprofit that started getting 10,000
> hits a week after they started using Google ads through an Adwords grant.
> They receive a lot of donations from those hits (they didn't share how
> many.)
>
> It also made it easy for them to qualify for a Google Checkout account that
> doesn't take any fees for processing their credit card donations.
>
> Stormy
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Claus Schwarm <
clschwarm googlemail com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Stormy, thanks for your understanding. After some sleep and my second
>> cup of coffee, I'm slowly going back to normal. :-)
>>
>> I'm also more the "Let's get this started" typ, except when applying for
>> free stuff or submitting tax forms. For some reasons, the guys on the
>> other side of the process often take submissions literally -- at least,
>> in my experience. They almost never appreciate what was meant.
>>
>> And it's usually more work to explain afterwards, that one didn't mean
>> what one wrote.
>>
>>
>> So, I had a look at the grants guideline here:
>>
>>
http://www.google.com/grants/details.html#eligibility
>>
>> I may have misunderstood parts of it, due to the language barrier. I
>> apologize in advance if that happened. But it seems to me, we should not
>> take this lightly.
>>
>> It says, among other things:
>>
>> "Your ads must link only to the URL included in your application,
>> as
>> this is the URL approved for your Google Grant."
>>
>> I see a small problem here, especially in the "only". The GIMP and
>> GNUCash addresses are clearly different to ours and to each other.
>>
>> "You must submit any significant changes of content on this URL for
>> our
>> review before the updated site is promoted via your AdWords account."
>>
>> We have no control on the GIMP and GNUCash sites. An innocent change by
>> them that we overlook and not report might cause problems.
>>
>> "Other websites belonging to your organization require our review
>> and
>> approval before they can be promoted through your AdWords account."
>>
>> So, we might add other urls later, IIUC. I'm also worried about the part
>> "belonging to your organization": Surely, GNUCash and GIMP are closely
>> associated but do they belong to GNOME?
>>
>> If not, they can apply for a grant, too, I guess.
>>
>> "Your ads must reflect the mission of your organization, and your
>> keywords must be relevant to your programs and services."
>>
>> Here's another problem. The GIMP has no 'mission' as far as I can see
>> and neither has GNUCash. If they have, it's not obvious on their
>> homepages. And it certainly doesn't reflect our mission.
>>
>> "If you are removed from the Google Grants program, your
>> organization
>> will be ineligible and should not apply again."
>>
>> We should really try to prevent that.
>>
>> I also studied your initial email, and unless there's something missing,
>> what's our answer to the question about "Organization Mission
>> Statement / Primary Objective"?
>>
>> Instead of making it complicated, couldn't we just use the
>> Friends-of-GNOME page as an example?
>>
>> This would also circumvent any later problems when using competitor
>> brands as keywords. Dunno what the US law says about that.
>>
>> Keywords might be
>>
>> "GNOME, Nautilus, gedit, etc." AND "Support OR Help OR Problem"
>>
>> In other words: Whenever somebody is looking for help or support for one
>> of our components, we advertise they could also help us. We can repeat
>> the keywords in the headline, which is common practice. Google makes
>> them bold automatically. An example for the application:
>>
>> 12345678901234567890123456789012345
>> Why Not Help GNOME, too?
>> Join your Fellows in Supporting a
>> Desktop Everyone Can Use Today.
>>
http://www.gnome.org/friends/
>>
>> This might not be the best text, but we can refine that by testing other
>> formulations when the account is open.
>>
>> Here's also a really important opportunity: We can make split test with
>> Google Adwords! This means, we can make a nearly identical friends page
>> and Google automatically directs to just one of them.
>>
>> Split tests are far more effective that questionnaires. It can improve
>> conversions rates by 100 percent or more, sometimes. IIRC, the
>> conversion rate of the current friend page is not that high. So there's
>> lots of room for improvement!
>>
>> Sorry when I sound too worried. But 10,000 dollars a month on
>> advertising is quite a lot of money. If we optimize the click stream for
>> the friends of GNOME program, this may mean the same amount of
>> additional cash for the foundation.
>>
>> What are other people opinions? Has anyone else read the application
>> guidelines?
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Claus
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 16:54 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:
>> > I'm happy to hold off if someone will have time to work on this later.
>> > But if not, I'll just wordsmith and cut it down and submit it. I have
>> > to admit I fall much closer to the "just get it done" side of the
>> > spectrum than the "perfect" side of the spectrum. Which is why I
>> > always appreciate feedback and contributions.
>> >
>> > I hope you get some rest and sleep. Have a good evening!
>> >
>> > Thanks for your feedback.
>> >
>> > Stormy
>>
>
>
