Health Kids Day activities at the Henry County Y, plus a Saturday Easter egg hunt.
From 14-17 hours for newborns to 8-10 hours for teenagers, here are some recommendations for making sure your kids get enough rest.
Dog-Diggity Easter Egg Hunt, MCS Board meeting at West View, classical guitar concert and a plant sale.
The sight of these wildflowers lifts my spirits, but they mean so much more than spring is on the way.
Garden Fair and Farmers Market at Minnetrista, plus LifeStream's golf outing, a concert and health screenings.
A free public talk at Ball State museum, a weekend of book art programs, a breakfast to benefit Delta and a DeSoto alumni dinner.
For an estimated 25 percent of Americans, falling asleep, staying asleep or getting restful, restorative sleep isn't as simple as counting sheep.
As we Hoosiers know, April is wet and the weather is unpredictable.
Free concerts by America's Hometown Band and a Ball State Honors College class, Yorktown Boy Scouts' spaghetti dinner and a pollinators program at Rinard Orchid Greenhouse.
Muncie Civic will present the musical "Big River" on its mainstage April 5-7, 12-14, and 18-20.
A Muncie native in the Navy, DAR contest winners, Central alumni grants and the Muncie Artists Guild's Artist of the Month.
Humans are not the only ones who enjoy the warmer weather; insects like ticks do, too.
Indiana has over 20 species of salamanders. They can be found under leaves and rotting logs in the moist soil of the woods.
The First Thursday monthly gallery walk for April will be 5-9 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in downtown Muncie and on Ball State University's campus.
Play opening Friday in Strother Theater, plus Liberty-Perry teachers vs. Harlem Wizards and a Moms Demand Action meeting.
An event at a local health and rehabilitation facility got its residents out of their rooms and into the kitchen, chef's hats and all.
This club is about a whole lot more than building robots.
Adults should participate in 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every week.
The public is invited to explore and interact with an installation and exhibition by PlySpace resident fellow Kevin Titzer.
Earlier this month at Minnetrista, we began a series of Horticulture Volunteer Days.
A local historian's newest book, and honors for Hillcroft Services, a Muncie photographer, Indiana Bridge and more.
Free spring concerts, a mayoral candidate meet-and-greet and a Jay County bridge closing.
Linda Horner has known her fiancé since they were 12. More than 50 years later, he helped her through one of the scariest moments of her life.
Youth art show winners, plus a new position at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie, an Air Force Reserve airman, a bank VP and an Outstanding Senior.
"There were tears, and I think they were just amazed they could go above and beyond what they thought they could do."
It will be poison ivy season again all too soon, so be ready to take these precautions.
Quintessential musical serves as directoral finale for Beth Turcotte. Plus, senior wellness clases and Wes-Del kindergarten roundup.
Celebrate spring at Minnetrist, register for Muncie preschool and kindergarten and more.
Third and last in a special series highlighting a Native American woman whose visions impacted local Lenape culture and beyond.


Reed & Barton SOHO BRANDY SNIFTER SET OF 4. Ideal for serving spirits or liquors, the Soho Set of 4 Brandy Snifters from Reed & Barton blends the classic with the contemporary. They are made from a heavy lead crystal and stand 5 tall and are part of the Soho Crystal Collection, inspired by the creative energy of the New York artist neighborhood, features classic brilliant cuts that radiate upward in a subtle, understated pattern. The item "Soho Brandy Snifter Crystal Glasses Set of 4 Reed & Barton New in Box" is in sale since Wednesday, December 6, 2017.
This item is in the category "Home & Garden\Kitchen, Dining & Bar\Glassware". The seller is "flatwareamerica2" and is located in USA.


text:
Reliever Mejia agrees to minor league contract with Red Sox
BOSTON (AP) — Relief pitcher Jenrry Mejia, allowed back into baseball after a lifetime ban caused by three positive drug tests, has agreed to a minor league contract with the Boston Red Sox.
If added to the 40-man roster, the 29-year-old Dominican right-hander would receive a one-year contract at a rate of $625,000 while in the major leagues and $90,400 while in the minors.
Mejia will report to Boston's minor league spring training camp. He's been out of the majors since July 2015.
Boston closer Craig Kimbrel became a free agent and the Red Sox are reorganizing their bullpen.
Mejia was suspended for life on Feb. 12, 2016, after his third positive test for a banned steroid. The drug agreement allowed him to apply a year later for reinstatement that would be effective a minimum of two years after the ban started, with the decision at the commissioner's discretion. Commissioner Rob Manfred gave him conditional reinstatement last July 6 and said Mejia could return to the big leagues in 2019.
The New York Mets released Mejia on Nov. 20 rather than allow him to become eligible for salary arbitration. Mejia has four years, 140 days of major league service, and the Mets could have tried to cut his salary to $1,383,200 had he remained on the roster.
Mejia was the Mets' closer in 2014 and was suspended for 80 games on April 11, 2015, following a positive test for Stanozolol, a drug popular among bodybuilders. At the time, he maintained, "I can honestly say I have no idea how a banned substance ended up in my system."
Mejia returned on July 12, appeared in seven games for New York, then was banned for 162 games on July 28 after a positive test for Stanozolol and Boldenone. The third suspension was for a positive test for Boldenone, an anabolic steroid generally used by veterinarians on horses.
Mejia is 9-14 with a 3.68 ERA in 18 starts and 95 relief appearances. In addition to random drug tests, he is subject annually to six additional urine tests and three additional blood tests.
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/tag/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Sports transactions
Athlete contracts
Athlete compensation

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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5 Bollywood Movies That Capture The Essence Of This Generation's Women!
March 7, 2017 by Prateek Modi Leave a Comment
The word 'woman' signifies strength, fearlessness, inspiration and courage. A woman is the life-giver and the one without whom life would be meaningless. It is her courage and determination that keeps you going. Right from raising a family to building business empires, women definitely possess some superpowers! A sister, a mother, a friend, a wife – women play all the roles with utmost perfection. With women taking the front seat in almost every sphere, Bollywood hasn't been behind in appreciating the efforts of women. Bollywood has been quite helpful in changing the mindset of the society and has positively impacted the young women. Here are 5 Bollywood movies that capture the essence of Women's Day:
1. English Vinglish
It is a perception that once a woman turns the 'right' age, she is married off to a good household and is advised to forget her dreams and desires. She is expected to solely take care of her husband and the family. This movie subtly mocks at this sad situation. The movie shows how the women of today are much beyond just being caretakers of the house. The ladies today want an identity of their own. Sridevi fits the role perfectly. She plays the role of a woman who goes out to prove it to the society who laughed at her communication skills and succeeds brilliantly. She builds herself and overcomes her fears and learns to embrace herself the way she is – something every woman should learn!
2. Queen
As soon as a girl is born, a lot of stereotypes come along. A woman is thought of as the weaker one but this movie proves the otherwise. It captures the true essence of women. It shows that this generation's women don't cry over a broken heart, they fix it. The movie showcases a fearless girl who goes alone for her honeymoon and breaks all the conventions of the society. The film tells us that a woman doesn't need a man to be complete. Kangana plays a carefree 'Rani' in the movie and depicts the struggles and achievements of a lady. She indeed proves that all women are 'queens' in reality!
3. Mardaani
We don't often hear physical strength being compared to a woman. Girls are supposed to be 'girly'. This movie showed that this a long-gone scenario. In today's day and age, a lady is fearless and courageous. She can stand up for herself and can match men in every field possible. Rani Mukherji breaks the stereotypes of a lady police officer. She shows how a lady can go to any extent to support the right and fight against the wrongs.
4. Neerja
It is not quite common for people to seek help from a 'woman' during a serious situation. The society undermines the power of a lady and thinks that her independence makes her selfish. This movie tells us the story of the extremely courageous Neerja Bhanot played by the gorgeous Sonam Kapoor. It tells us how an independent lady can also love selflessly and maintain the balance between professional and personal relationships. It showcases how the courage of a lady can save everyone, while the men ran away (the pilots made a swift move when the plane got hijacked but were called back). Women know their duties well and would do anything to fulfill their given work and won't think about themselves even once. The film also shows how her dad believes in her when no one else does and has always treated her like a son! Way to go!
5. Mary Kom
A movie that highlights the real life of Mary Kom. It celebrates feminism in another way and has set new standards for women. It gave a new tagline 'fight like a woman' instead of being constantly said 'be lady-like'. The film brings forward the facts and struggles a girl has to face through every stage of life. The movie proves that strong women can be beautiful, too. Beauty doesn't come with good looks but good thoughts. It redefined the way women are looked at and portrayed them as an achievement instead of a burden. Priyanka Chopra did a fabulous work in Mary Kom and is known for being an independent, courageous woman herself.
After all, why should boys have all the fun? Happy Women's Day.
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Filed Under: Bollywood Movies, Top Tens Tagged With: 2016, bollywood movies, english vinglish, kangana ranaut, mardaani, mary kom, Movie, Neerja, neerja bhanot, priyanka chopra, queen, rani mukherji, sonam kapoor, sridevi, womens day
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Bollykings is a bollywood blog which covers the latest hindi movie reviews and music. We also talk about whats hot on Indian Television.
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There are many excellent companies offering trauma products to UK hospitals so to be relevant in this market Joint Operations looked for a partner that offered meaningful progress to the existing standard of care. We coupled this with the desire to work within our chosen sub speciality of extremities and therefore we had a particular interest in the treatment of fractures for the foot and ankle and the upper limb.
NewClip Technics have an outstanding range of anatomic plates to treat fractures for the fibula, wrist, elbow, shoulder and clavicle. Their philosophy is to incorporate improvements into every element of their plates that combine to make them extremely anatomical, user friendly, efficacious and safe for the patient.
Recently they have taken the great advance of removing the instrumentation and stock required to service a trauma case. With the Initial R (Radius) and Initial A (Ankle) kits the hospital receives the plate, the screws and the instrumentation sterile packed into a single box. This eliminates many of the logistical challenges for the theatre department, reduces the environmental impact of packaging and processing kits and speeds up the surgery reducing anaesthesia and theatre time. Remarkably, major cost savings are also being delivered, the Initial products are less expensive than most traditionally presented trauma implants.


It's almost here--the shopping party that consumers have been waiting for since last Christmas! As the unofficial opening of the holiday shopping season, the Friday after Thanksgiving or "Black Friday" is hands-down THE most promoted day of the year. For decades Black Friday has been recognized by retailers as the point they begin to turn a profit, or move from the red into "the black." According to the National Retail Federation, Black Friday and holiday sales can account for up to 40% of annual retail sales for many business sectors, making it crucial for them to have valuable deals for shoppers. More recently the annual shopping party has expanded to "Cyber Monday," when consumers jump online and grab holiday bargains from their computers, tablets and smartphones.
It's also the day that retailers finally announce their absolute best deals of the year, offering their hottest savings on toys, electronics, apparel, jewelry, housewares and more. But more than that, it's the time of year when consumers want to know about each and every door-buster and early-bird sale, ASAP. They fervently begin the hunt, hoping to find deeply discounted Black Friday ads as soon as they are leaked.
Recognizing a profitable opportunity, I created a website that gives people what they want: early intel about Black Friday discounts and hot items.
Meet ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com (TBFA), a website focused solely on publishing leaked Black Friday ads and circulars weeks before they are printed and distributed in the media. Traffic spikes at TBFA every year just after Halloween, when shoppers start thinking about holiday sales. Visitors flood the site hoping to get an early peek at the ads to plan their Black Friday shopping day. In its third year (last year), TBFA continued to gain strength. It's a healthy site through the holidays and sits basically idle other months of the year.
The year-over-year growth of TBFA had been extraordinary until this 2012 Black Friday because of a Google penalty. (Yes, I tried removing bad links, uploaded a disavow list, apologized and then resubmitted the site for reconsideration, but I have a feeling Google is putting off the reconsideration until they know it's too late for me this year... I submitted the reconsideration request on Oct 19th and followed up again on Oct 31, but still have not heard a word from Google.) This year, organic traffic is down 95% due to the penalty. It doesn't help either that Yahoo/Bing decided to globally deindex almost any site that had the words "Black Friday" in its domain name too.
For the past three years I had consistently tracked a 500 to 1,000% boost in site activity, each year attracting more visitors than projected. Wisely, I had decided to implement the most optimized tools and technology to meet the growing demand. Last November TBFA easily served 5.9 million pages to 413,458 visitors within the 30-day month. At the height of our traffic surge, it served approximately 600 concurrent users up to 900 pages per minute. I was prepared for the traffic rush. Visitors never saw an increase in average page load times, even when the site was under heavy load, as documented here: https://pagodabox.com/case-studies/scale-wordpress-case-study.
Anyways... having a strong, established site with a growing audience, the next challenge was to quickly and efficiently monetize the opportunity. I implemented Adsense--a free Google product that allows a site like ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com to earn money when visitors click on Google ads. Ads compete in an auction, and Google automatically selects and places the ones that have the best revenue potential for each site. Earnings are determined on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis, where the site is paid when a visitor clicks on a display ad. Not all ads earn at the same rate. Payouts vary daily due to advertiser budgets, site content, and the actual ads that visitors click.
Fact: The ad with the most impressions had the most clicks, earning the most revenue.
By far, the 468x60 display ads placed in the middle of the blog posts made the most revenue, followed by the 728x90 leaderboards placed at the bottom of each page displaying Black Friday ad scans. I was surprised to find that a 160x600 skyscraper ad with the best Clickthrough rate (CTR) didn't generate the most money. Most likely, this was because of daily variances in ad pricing.
Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) projects the estimated earnings a site can accrue for every thousand ad impressions it receives. An RPM doesn't show how much a site has actually earned. Instead, it calculates the approximate value of ad impressions by dividing estimated earnings by the number of page views, impressions, or queries received (a.k.a. ad requests), then multiplying by 1,000.
Example: if a site earns an estimated $60 from 15,000 ad requests, the Ad Request RPM would be ($60 / 15,000) x 1,000 or $4.00.
My best-performing ad, measured in RPMs, was a Skyscraper along the right column sidebar, appearing on only a handful of the pages. This ad spot definitely stands out from the rest, since it had the highest Ad Request (CTR), the lowest CPC and the highest RPM. With more experimentation, I'll be able to bring about the maximum ROI for that ad placement.
My revenue stream for TBFA wasn't limited only to Adsense. I also made plenty of money working with affiliate advertisers who gained sales from exposure on my site.
Whenever a visitor clicked on an offer and purchased from a Google-placed affiliate advertiser, I earned performance fees for helping those quality advertisers drive conversions, or sales. This revenue is above and beyond what I earned from Adsense.
Similar to Adsense, publishers put text links, banner ads and coupons codes on their sites. With PepperJam and Skimlinks and such, I earned a commission with each placement on my site that led to a sale. Amazon Associates is basically the same, but works on a lucrative sliding commission scale. The more an advertiser sells and ships as a result of the ad on my site, the higher the commissions I'm paid. Of all the affiliate programs, I made the most, by far, from Amazon.
The holiday season is prime time to maximize web traffic, engage with your audience, and make some money. Sites are seeing plenty of traffic from several sources like email, referrals from links and ad placements, organic searches and more. And, those referrals are looking to buy, so it's an optimum time to cash in on those ad clicks and commissions from affiliate sites. Working with affiliate programs is an easy process and doesn't take much time. Give it a shot, test the ad placements, and tweak your system as you go to up your performance level.
So, was this blog post helpful to you? Did my $13,490 payout make you want to monetize your website as a new revenue stream? Anything you think I could have done differently or added for better performance? I'd love to hear your thoughts and am happy to answer any questions. Just leave a reply for me in the comments section below.
Very interesting post Scott. The whole path that led me to become a SEO started with affiliate marketing, so it's really interesting to hear another SEO talk about it. You know, I made really good money from three different Websites I owned, way way back, like 2004-2006. As you discovered, times change, climate changes, Google changes. I went from making well over $70K a year to next to nothing in a matter of months, so that was pretty scary. Fortunately, I talked someone into hiring me as a SEO strategist, despite the fact that I had zero agency or corporate (or e-commerce eve) experience.
Now that I've developed as a SEO, I wonder what would happen if I experimented with a return to affiliate marketing. Perhaps you've inspired me to try that. It was a great life, I have to admit. Total freedom. What's amazing is how well I did without knowing anything (heck I didn't even know what HTML was when I started, lol). I wonder if I applied what I know now to a new site of my own what would happen? Hmmmm........:-) Thanks Scott!
Yes... times do change! It's crazy how vulnerable the visibility or profitability of a website can be. Almost as scary as the stock market. haha.
It's great to hear you did so well with it in years previously... You should definitely apply your new found knowledge and skills to something like that now.
Can I ask... what was your niche(s)?
... And the tweak that made a HUGE difference for me was the webpage title.
For example, the phrase "donating a used car" averages $79.35 per click (and gets searched 2,900 times a month according to Google's keyword tool).
But a similar phrase of "car donation for cancer" averages $39.03 (for about the same number of searches per month).
Bottom line: A minor tweak to the title of your blog or webpage can make a HUGE difference in your earnings (without changing the theme of your content).
That's very interesting about the page title making a difference. I have honestly never considered that factor. Most of my experience is in the SEO realm. I'm still fairly new at Adsense and affiliate marketing.
I suppose though, that the keywords that cost the most per click could also net you a lot of $ per click on the Adsense side of things too. A world I'd soon like to explore!
I've seen just one single letter in a word make a HUGE difference.
That letter is "s" - as in the plural of a word.
If you notice in my list (above), the VAST majority of expensive keywords are singular, not plural.
As Oscar the Grouch says, "Pssst. You wanna buy an S?"
Hi Markus. Thanks for the article and the list of most expensive keywords. Interesting to note that lawyers and attorneys are paying the highest sums on PPC. I have worked with a few law firms and initially found them to be overly eager to pay for PPC over investing into SEO.
This is why the PPC for legal matters and claims are so high, they are trying to out bid each other all the time.
Thanks for the tip Markus. I didn't know about this.
I love reading about success stories like this. Thanks so much for sharing. It inspires me to keep working on my site that makes me money with Adsense.
On a side note, I wanted to comment on this statement, "I submitted the reconsideration request on Oct 19th and followed up again on Oct 31, but still have not heard a word from Google."
There is a good chance that your second reconsideration request pushed you back to the end of the queue. Lately, since the disavow tool became available, the response time from Google is much longer.
Yes... keep on working at it.
Hmmm. About the second reconsideration request pushing back to the end of the queue... Can someone confirm this could be the case? I'm not exactly sure how their system works and it would be neat to hear from someone who has had experience with submitting and then hearing back from Google.
Did you gather an email list during the good times? Even while being out of the search results, people could get to your site with a good old fashion email marketing campaign.
Did you use it to get some of the missing traffic back this year?
Well, it's all over for this year. :-) I was able to make my investment back this year at least and came out a couple thousand dollars ahead. A far cry from last year, but I think I'll be able to clear up the 'suspicious link' penalty within the next 9 or so months. Here's hoping!
Brilliant post, thank you for sharing. There is definitely quite an opportunity to take advantage in any market if you pick and ideal time/niche and have a good plan.
allsearch52, Yes. These days it's really just about picking a niche that isn't too big and just gettign to know it well, producing read-worthy content and figuring out how to monetize it.
Sorry to hear you're down 95% this year. I'm doing penguin & EMD recovery for a couple sites now and it's not fun to have to disavow, hope, and just do the best you can going forward. Hope it gets sorted out quickly for you and you don't miss the whole holiday season although you're definitely right that once Nov 1 hits, BFAds start up.
Hey Matt, I can imagine it's quite a chore to clean up. And, thanks for the good wishes. Since Black Friday is only 9 days away, I'm pretty sure organic traffic will remain down 95% for the rest of my important season unfortunately... but... there is always next year! I've gotta hear back from Google at least by then, right?! :-) haha.
Awesome idea for capitalizing on the Black Rush to find deals. I have always thought of monetizing one of my sites and this definitely gets me thinking about it again. I hope Google helps you out and you can get the site back up on the SERP.
Do you think that if you did a Black Friday site that was not an exact match domain and just used other SEO elements that you would have been slapped by Google? Or do you just assume that this a link graph penalty?
Philip, What types of sites do you run? You don't have to share the domain, but I'm always interested in hearing other marketers stories.
I was thinking of starting a new website on a new domain (that is not exact match) and just starting right from scratch again... but it seems like such a daunting project to building up all that unique content again. I think your idea is great though. Perhaps it is like you say... it could be partially an exact match domain issue mixed with a link graph penalty.
Most of the stuff I run personally does not do well lol. But, I am in the midst of a new venture centered around a blog and ecommerce site dealing with electronic music and hula hoops with LED lights in them. The space is competitive but we have a good product and it doesn't look like any of my direct competitors have SEO going on. But, the sites out there are very ad heavy and we were thinking about shying away to differentiate ourselves.
I think that there can definitely be a fine line to tread with ads and alienating your customers when you are doing ecommerce. But, people also expect to see ads a lot of times and don't necessarily get upset if you are doing it well.
I hope the best for you in this venture, Philip.
Hi Scott, superb post ...what an Idea .... thanks .... BTW how & from where do you manage to get all those leaked flyers ?? Also would appreciate if you can throw some light on how did you make your site popular in the first couple of years??
The flyers come from many sources. Sometimes they are leaked on other forums, sometimes an affiliate manager sending them directly. Gathering the ads is the hard part.
The site became popular mostly because of long tail search traffic in the first years, then in the second and next years I was able to afford distributing press releases and getting content with links back to my site on "mommy blogger" style websites.
My competitors, however, like to post their press releases on proprietary fake news sites and such that look like legitimate news outlets.
Also, now I have around 20,000 email subscribers that come back to the site almost every time I send out an email blast.
Vijayari1, Do you have sites with adsense / affiliate links?
I cannot imagine that i will get a post regarding Google Adsense, affiliate marketing and with many more ideas as i was thinking to do research on these areas because i got a local client who needed this and hired me.
Now, i am more curious to do those experiments and put my ideas on the paper what i was thinking to implement.
Perfect post with perfect time.
Yes! Put it in to practice. Try it out for yourself. It all starts with an idea and a little bit of work. If you can make $5.00 with Adsense, it's possible to make $100,000! I hope the best for your endeavors.. please come back here once you've tried and let us know how it goes.
That's pretty cool Scott, in a blog post would you say the position of the ad plays a large role? If so where do you find is the best place to position them?
For my site, it depends if it is a page with text content or if it's a page with the actual Black Friday ad scan.
If you have under 350 words in your blog post, for example, you shouldn't really put an ad at the top, middle and bottom. You might want to manually stop too many ads from showing on a page so it doesn't get too spammy-looking.
It is really webmaster preference though and the revenue model of the website. If you site exists to sell a product, you might not want ads in your page content area, so you might just opt for a smaller sidebar ad just in case someone finds the ad relevant and decides to click it. But it you site is just information-based, then it's probably safer to put an ad right inline with the content.
I have found personally, that ads in the middle of the content do well, but sometimes it really just depends on what ads Google is showing that certain day or not. If an advertiser is using Remarketing in their Adwords campaigns, then an ad from a website that visitor previously visited might show up on my site, or it might be an ad from a site the visitor has never visited before if they dont have any cookie in their browser tracking their browsing history.
Samer, what's your interest in Adsense? Any luck with it so far?~ Scott O.
Great post - it's awesome to see the transparency with the numbers, as well as a self-admitted bad experience with the links and Google. Major props.
I can't wait to see what happens with GG's response to the disavow and see where that goes. I have heard some indicate that it is easier to just move on from the domain than try and fix it. Might be a good follow up post??
Anyway, have a great weekend, sir!
I like to share my successes and failures.. although the latter is tougher :-) I'll certainly keep everyone updated (here in the comments at least) once I hear back from Google. However, you're right. Perhaps a followup post is in order once this all gets sorted out!
With all that influx of traffic - I hope you setup some retargeting pixels. Just think about building out other holiday sites that you could reach those users.
Regarding retargeting... I have not yet put effort into hitting my audience with other offers for related niches. I'd think there is plenty of opportunity out there for it.
Any ideas specifically come to mind? Perhaps we could collaborate on something.
@scott - Have you tried other ad networks? What led you to stick with Adsense?
Hi Mike, No. I'd like to next year for sure. The only network I have experience with so far is Adsense. I stuck with that simply because It was easy to implement. I like that the ads are very contextual and there system is reliable.
I do think a split test of ad networks is in order!
Scott, Truly an inspirational article. I am a WP Developer and an SEO, and I have quite a few ideas, and domain names that I have kicked around launching Adsense-based revenue stream websites. Using something as niche as Black Friday is great, though it only gives you significant income one month a year.
Hello Zach, I'm happy to learn you were inspired. That site is developed in WP... perhaps you picked up on that right away since I'm basically using the default theme (heavily modified on the back end... no so much on the front end).
Tell me about your own project(s) when you have time. I'd love to hear.
I saw the request come in, but then it crashed Skype! lol. Let's see if I can get you added. I didn't think usernames could have spaces in them. is it: ProTechIG (one word) ?
Scott, great post. I'm curious to know if you ever change the locations of your ads? For me, I often become "blind" to ads on sites that I regularly visit.
Great article Scott! As a designer, I found your discussion on ad placement inside your posts really interesting and think AJutah's comment above is a great idea - moving ads around to mitigate user "blindness." Does changing ad positioning affect CPC and RPM?
Also, as an employee of Pagoda Box, its exciting to see our service aid in helping users handle significant spikes in traffic, and make a little money off of it.
"Does changing ad positioning affect CPC and RPM?"
Yes, there are so many variables that go into it, just like Google's organic search ranking algorithm changes a lot, I image the Adsense algo changes too, perhaps not as frequently... I don't know.
Does anyone here have insight on CPC / RPM with varying ad slots? I haven't tested it enough myself.
S.Anderson, I'm so glad I hosted with Pagoda.
This story is amazing and really inspirational! How much traffic would a site need before it decides to start having ads on it? I find myself often questioning that!
That's a good question webmarkseo, I guess it really depends on the purpose of the site. In this case, my goals were two fold.
Thank you for the answer and an even better question!
I agree with you, doing what you enjoy should be our main goal and I believe this is something we all share in regards to posting our stuff online. It takes a lot of effort and in the end you start wondering "well, maybe I could make money out of this too".
And as anyone else who start having success (and making money) doing what they enjoy, it can get tricky at this point and one can easily lose focus.
Great stuff I' mlearning frmo all you guys! Greetings from Mexico.
:-) And... be sure to share your journey along the way here on YouMoz!
Hey Scott, thanks for sharing and motivation. Adsense works fine, if we really want to achieve best results.
I'm curious what your revenue breakdown was/is between the adsense and affiliate links? 50/50? 20/80? did one do better without the other?
Actually, the first two years I did this I didn't even have Adsense on the site. I only did Amazon affiliate links and Google Affiliate Network, Pepper Jam, Linkshare, and Commission Junction.
I was pretty happy with the results from that but quickly realized I was missing out on an opportunity to monetize traffic with Adsense. Last year I made around 65% of my revenue from Adsense and 35% from affiliate sales (mostly through Amazon).
This year I was able to sell ad space and email advertising campaigns to a couple of retailers directly for an upfront fee that wasn't tied into commission on sales. If you have the ability to broker deals directly like that, it can be quite lucrative.
Again though, it all takes time and effort and you need proof that you are able to generate traffic and get eyeballs on your site, otherwise, you'd have to rely on Adsense and affiliate sales.
It is difficult to say if one did better without the other, but I think it is a matter of balancing the two. Unfortunately, I only had time this year to really focus on the Adsense optimization, so my purposeful placement of affiliate links was lacking. It changes so much from year to year that split testing is difficult... especially when you have limited resources and time in the month of November. It gets so busy trying to keep up with the ads being leaked!
Yes, Thanks for the explanation Scott!
Interested to see how you do this year given the new environment. Would be a great case study.
Wow, so all the complaining I hear around the forums and blogs these days is not just noise. I didn't expect it'd be so much, but makes sense. Thanks for sharing. Smart man for having that email list. Best of luck to you this year.
can we put "CPA Affiliate Ads Banner" on the ad placements where you have showed in the picture and make Good Leads on those CPA offers ?
Yes your post is insightful, so what strategies are you planning or implementing currently to gain maximum from Ad sense?
Hi! A great place to ask these types of questions is inour Q&A forum.
715 domains completely disavowed this time. We'll see if this finally gets Google's attention after multiple disavow requests and reconsideration requests!
First of all thank you so much for this fantastic article. It's going to help so much to understand the money making tips for all... The truth is that many people ignore high CPC long tail words and join the masses in competing for seed words that aren't worth fighting for.
But I must tell you... Nowadays to get ranking on high CPC keyword is very tough, we have to use only the long tail CPC keywords in our posts, and it will drive more AdSense earnings, you'll net get this high CPC all the times! But if you want to get high CPC, try to choose high paying niche! E.g., cancer, payday loans, forex, hosting, etc! But if you site about blogging, Adsense money, SEO, etc! Trust me you'll get crap!
What is the updated news guies? In 2015?
The URL alone looks like nothing more than spam. I'd rather just create my cool content and monetize from that, instead of monetizing by from ads that monetize from ads. Nonetheless, interesting post!
I hear what you're saying, monetizing by showing ads surrounds Black Friday ad scan images is an interesting revenue model, I'd agree. But it gives visitors what they want. There are hundreds of thousands of searches made every day in the month of November from people specifically looking for leaked Black Friday ads. I do have hundreds of pages of unique content on the site as well, and for the most part I tried including stories on the Ad scan pages themselves.
Nice post Scott! You definitely caught my attention with this article. Creating content around not just a given subject, but a real theme, such as a holiday is quite interesting. It does look a little spammy, but its also creative and insightful. Keep up the good work. This is the first time I've seen anyone do something like this. Its nice to think outside the box once and a while! Thumbs up!
Millscottm, Sure.. just let me know. I'm hear to answer any questions you might have about Adsense or affiliate marketing. It's not my day job, but I have learned a lot through constant failure and pushing through! :-) ~ Scott O.
Please also join the conversion about this over here on the Google Webmaster Central "Crawling, Indexing & Ranking" Forum and on Hacker News (getting mixed reviews there, much different crowds that on seomoz). And finally, on my personal/professional blog where I go into more detail about my experience with reconsideration requests and disavow lists. ~ Scott O.
I just heard back from Google finally. I was denied again. It was 10/19/12 that I uploaded my first disavow list and sent in a reconsideration request.
Do you think I should upload an even more agressive disavow list?
Here's a list of all of my links as seen in Google Webmaster Tools today. Can anyone tell me if there are ANY links in there that I should keep? Because... I'm thinking about disavowing at least 90% of those links. (I've already disavowed a good 75% of them already).
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.thanksgivingblackfridayads.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
WOW, thats a huge list ..... how did you even got so many back-links in the first place ? :-) :-) ... what i understand is that you should start from scratch and disavow almost all of them , the reason being you dont need them as you've already created brand for yourself , also you have thousands of email subscribers so .... keep only those that are reputed else garbage it ...just my personal opinion. good luck !!!
Vijayarai1, I think you are right. Matt from highonseo.com did a quick analysis of my backlink profile and it seems that my competitors have very different link profiles than my site has.
I ran your backlink domain authorities against your top competitors. They have a very predictable backlink profile. Yours is *way* outside the norm on both the high end (DA over 80) and the middle (DA about 30-40). If you look at the report, it's pretty clear why you're penalized. I'm including the actual data chart as well. You can see that you have 8 links with DA in the high high 90s like 99 and almost none from 70-89. That's a bad sign. You also have a very high percentage in the 30-40 range, given the other factors. I would bet that even though I didn't run the data, your page authority and basically most metrics for your links would be "outside the norm" for this site.
In a private email to me tonight, Matt suggested that I ditch as many links as I can.
Seeing as how Google didn't like my first attempt at a disavow list, I think I'll go ahead and disavow everything but the best now.
SEOmoz fans... What do you guys think?
"In a private email to me tonight, Matt suggested that I ditch as many links as I can."
This is somewhat true - but not 100%. I suggest you ditch a majority of the ones causing that very obvious weirdness in the first screenshot. It's pretty obvious that the unnatural links come from the 30-40 and 85+ range so yes, I'd ditch a number of those - but maybe you can do what we started earlier, which is to also grow the numbers of links outside of that. If you had a typical distribution from 20-70, that would help, along with disavowing the forum & blog comment stuff that is doing you no good.
Ah yes.. that's right. Sorry for misquoting you. I will definitely ditch the ones in the range that are creating the weirdness in the link profile as you suggested.
Matt, your data is very valuable. I'm very impressed with your research and reporting skills and I thank you for the time you've put into this. Perhaps we'll have to do a joint case study on the results in a few month?!
This is a pretty good technique right now. Spam garbage links to a site to rank it quick, make some quick cash before the Google slap comes down. Don't need to worry about quality or keeping the site since the sale only lasts for a short time.
Just have to pick a time sensitive sale or event. Make your money. Move to the next one.
Today I uploaded a new Disavowed List to GWT.
Of the entire "Latest Links" that I downloaded from my GWT account, I submitted 2228 spammy or 'not found' links. 654 of the total links to my site were ok, so I left those out of the list. (I spent an entire afternoon and part of the evening clicking through every link.
I'll reply here once I've heard back from Google. Here's hoping!
Is there anymore update did your site recovered from the penalty or not ? How much you have earn in this Black Friday.
Great success Sccot , I have been in shopping site too and done auction and classified but due to a lot of competition and lack of traffic I lost the interest since my domain is aged now I would like to know what niche and how to start in the shopping site too. if you look at my site I am just trying to keep the site live to find a better idea to use the domain . so how did you achieve to bring traffic and how to start the affiliate as I found it very savvy , I am open to your suggestion .
It really was a great read scott and thanks for your answer in PM. I wrote something for youmoz about integrating adsenses into your website but for some reason they turned it down. Funny to read how you made your money. Inspirational? Yes.. definitely.
For a minute there I thought this was a sell. Awesome results. Being nimble is key clearly.
My site www.productsreviewblogs.com made over 30,000 too. but thanks for the new ad strategy you have just showed me.


text:
Cargotec's Interim Report for January-March 2008
Orders received during the first quarter totalled EUR 1,155 (1-3/2007: 915) million.
The order book continued to strengthen during the first quarter reaching EUR 3,287 million (December 31, 2007: 2,865 million).
Sales grew by 5 percent, amounting to EUR 727 (1-3/2007: 694) million. The share of Services sales grew to 26 (25) percent of total sales.
Operating profit was EUR 44.2 (1-3/2007: 58.0) million. The operating margin was 6.1 (8.4) percent of sales. Kalmar booked a EUR 4 million project cost provision during the quarter.
Cash flow from operating activities before financial items and taxes totalled EUR 50.1 (1-3/2007: 52.1) million.
Net income for the period amounted to EUR 31.5 (1-3/2007: 39.4) million.
Earnings per share were EUR 0.50 (1-3/2007: 0.62).
The number of personnel totalled 11,524 (December 31, 2007: 11,187).
Cargotec expects full year sales growth in 2008 to be at the previous year's growth level as a result of the strong order intake and record-high order book. Order intake in 2008 is expected to continue healthy but lower compared to the very strong first quarter. Cargotec expects operating margin to improve from the 2007 level and to be approximately 8 percent for the full year.
Cargotec's President and CEO Mikael Mäkinen:
"Our strong order intake demonstrates that demand for cargo handling solutions has continued healthy, and gives us a confidence on reaching our sales growth target for 2008. The quarterly result is weak, especially in Kalmar where we are now taking actions with Kalmar's new management to improve the underlying performance of the business. Focus in Cargotec this year is on strengthening organic growth and executing the On the Move change programme. The change programme is essential for our aim to achieve a 10 percent operating margin target."
Analyst and Press Conference
An analyst and press conference will be combined with a live international telephone conference and arranged today at 1.00 p.m. Finnish time at Cargotec's head office, Sörnäisten rantatie 23, Helsinki. The whole combined event will be held in English. The interim report will be presented by Cargotec's President and CEO Mikael Mäkinen. The presentation material will be available on the Company's internet pages by 1.00 p.m. Finnish time.
The conference call phone numbers are the following:
+1 646 843 4608 (US callers)
+44 20 3023 4412 (non-US callers)
Access code: Cargotec Corporation
The telephone conference can also be viewed as a live audio webcast through the internet pages at www.cargotec.com. The archived webcast will be available on the internet pages later during the day.
Cargotec Corporation
Eeva Mäkelä
Eeva Mäkelä, CFO, tel. +358 204 55 4281
Paula Liimatta, IR Manager, tel. +358 204 55 4634
Cargotec improves the efficiency of cargo flows by offering handling systems and the related services for the loading and unloading of goods. Cargotec's brands, Hiab, Kalmar and MacGREGOR, are global market leaders in their fields and their solutions are used on land and at sea - wherever cargo is on the move. Extensive services close to customers ensure the continuous usability of equipment. Cargotec is the technology leader in its field, its R&D focusing on innovative solutions that take environmental considerations into account. Cargotec's sales are EUR 3 billion and the Company employs over 11,000 people. Cargotec's class B shares are quoted on the OMX Nordic Exchange Helsinki.
www.cargotec.com
The markets for Hiab's load handling equipment were strong in Europe and Asia Pacific and increased in various customer segments, particularly in Eastern Europe and Russia. Within Europe demand in Spain and Italy was clearly weaker than in 2007. Truck delivery times have lengthened considerably in Europe, thus leading to postponed loader crane and demountable system deliveries. In the United States, the major fall in demand which took place in the construction market last year continued to be reflected in poor demand for load handling equipment.
The markets for Kalmar's container handling equipment were lively and Kalmar received a high number of new orders. Demand was liveliest in Europe and Asia. Heavy industrial forklift markets were healthy although there were indications of slackening demand in some European countries. The US terminal tractor market clearly exceeded expectations, when viewed against a background of slackening economic growth.
Demand for MacGREGOR's marine cargo flow systems and offshore solutions continued extremely lively. Demand for ship cranes, hatch covers and cargo securing systems was high, reflecting strong demand for bulk carriers and general cargo vessels. Demand for offshore solutions also continued buoyant, and markets for this equipment grew. The RoRo equipment market was very active, both in Europe and Asia, while demand for bulk handling equipment continued to be healthy in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Demand for Cargotec Services remained favourable during the first quarter. That for services for load handling equipment was strong in Europe due to higher levels of installed equipment and high usage rates whereas, in the United States, demand fell due to the very low usage rate of such equipment. Demand for container handling equipment services remained high both in Europe and Asia. Also several new orders for marine cargo flow services were secured. In particular, demand for conversion projects grew.
Orders Received
Orders received by Cargotec in January-March 2008 totalled EUR 1,155 (1-3/2007: 915) million.
Orders received, MEUR
1-12/2007
Internal orders received
Of all orders received in January-March 2008, Hiab accounted for EUR 228 (1-3/2007: 264) million.
Hiab's order intake in the first quarter was lower than a year ago. Hiab secured individual orders, which is typical of its operations. In particular, orders received grew in Eastern Europe and Russia. Hiab also received orders from the Middle East, China and India. Demand for XS 1055, Hiab's largest loader crane launched in the autumn of 2007, was strong.
Of all orders received in January-March 2008, Kalmar accounted for EUR 490 (1-3/2007: 393) million. Several orders include navigation, container position verification and remote monitoring systems developed by Kalmar.
In February, Kalmar received an order for 22 E-One+ rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes from South African Transnet Limited. The equipment will be delivered in 2008-2009 for the new Port of Ngqura. In February, Kalmar also secured an order from the Port of Tacoma on the US West Coast for the supply of seven straddle carriers. The straddle carriers will be used in container handling in on-dock rail facilities and they will be equipped with Kalmar's CAN-BUS monitoring system, speeding up their operation. Delivery of the machines is scheduled for October 2008.
In March, Kalmar received an order for 48 EDRIVE® straddle carriers for Eurogate's operations in Germany. 22 units have been ordered for Eurogate's CTB Bremerhaven container terminal, and 13 units will go to Eurogate's CTH Hamburg. Another 13 units will be deployed at the MSC Gate Bremerhaven terminal, a joint venture between Eurogate and Mediterranean Shipping Company. The equipment deliveries will start in autumn 2008 with the last units arriving at the beginning of 2009. In addition, Kalmar secured a contract with Steveco Oy for ten Kalmar EDRIVE® straddle carriers for the Mussalo container terminal in Kotka, Finland. Delivery will commence in the summer and end in October 2008.
In March, Kalmar received E-One+ RTG orders from, for example, Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil. Kalmar will deliver 17 of these cranes to Vietnam International Container Terminals' Ho Chi Minh City facility between 2008 and 2010. LCMT Company Ltd. from Thailand ordered six RTGs for its terminal at the Port of Laem Chabang. The cranes are due to be delivered by March 2009. Furthermore, South America's largest container terminal operator, Santos Brasil S/A, ordered 12 RTGs that will be delivered by March 2009.
Of all orders received in January-March 2008, MacGREGOR accounted for EUR 439 (1-3/2007: 259) million.
During the first quarter, MacGREGOR received a large number of ship crane and hatch cover orders mainly from China and Korea. MacGREGOR will deliver a total of 276 bulk handling cranes for vessels that will be delivered to ship owners in Germany, Singapore, China and Korea. During the first quarter, MacGREGOR agreed to deliver hatch covers for 70 container vessels, 120 bulk vessels and 41 general cargo ships. The equipment will be delivered in 2009-2011.
In January, MacGREGOR received RoRo equipment orders for 12 pure car/truck carriers (PCTCs). The orders include liftable car decks for four vessels that will be built in the Korean Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard and will be delivered during 2009-2010. Additionally, the orders include the design and delivery of key components for eight PCTCs under construction in China.
In March, MacGREGOR received a major bulk handling equipment order from Taiwan as Taiwan Power Company ordered equipment intended for the handling of coal. MacGREGOR's Siwertell bulk handling system features a totally closed conveying system that limits the amount of cargo dust released into the air.
In March, MacGREGOR also received an order for 30 shipsets of tanker cranes for a Chinese shipyard. Provision and hose handling cranes will be delivered in 2008-2010 for tankers ordered by Turkish, Norwegian, Russian and Cypriot ship owners.
MacGREGOR's Offshore division received a large number of orders, in particular for davits, for delivery during 2008-2009. MacGREGOR Offshore is the world's leading supplier of sophisticated davit systems.
Cargotec Services
The services market continued to be active, which was reflected in the number of maintenance and modernisation contracts and spare part orders received.
In March, Kalmar signed a five-year service contract with the Norwegian company, Norsteve Oslo, covering the maintenance, spare parts and repairs of five straddle carriers at the Sjursøya container terminal in the Port of Oslo.
During the first quarter of 2008, MacGREGOR secured several hatch cover conversion projects that will be carried out during 2008. The demand is supported by legislation prohibiting the use of single hull tankers, which leads to many of them being converted into bulkers. Furthermore, MacGREGOR received a major maintenance contract for ship unloaders from the Philippines.
Cargotec's order book totalled EUR 3,287 (December 31, 2007: 2,865) million on March 31, 2008. Of the order book total, Hiab accounted for EUR 253 (260) million, Kalmar EUR 824 (660) million, and MacGREGOR EUR 2,211 (1,946) million. A major part of MacGREGOR's record-high order book is for delivery in 2009-2012.
Order book, MEUR
Internal order book
Cargotec's sales grew in January-March 2008 by 5 percent and totalled EUR 727 (1-3/2007: 694) million. The sales impact of acquisitions completed during the last 12 months was EUR 52 million.
Hiab's sales in the first quarter amounted to EUR 230 (1-3/2007: 240) million, Kalmar's sales were EUR 322 (324) million and MacGREGOR's sales EUR 177 (131) million. The decline in Hiab's sales compared to first quarter 2007 is due to the marked fall in demand in the United States, for which strong growth in Europe and Asia could not fully compensate. The limited availability of trucks in Europe delayed some Hiab deliveries as the equipment could not be installed. Kalmar's quarterly sales were flat reflecting the relatively low order intake in early autumn 2007. The increase in MacGREGOR's sales was attributable to the increased proportion of turnkey solutions as well as the acquisition of the offshore business after the reference period.
Sales, MEUR
Sales for services in January-March 2008 increased by 9 percent year-on-year and amounted to EUR 191 (1-3/2007: 175) million, representing 26 (25) percent of total sales. Services accounted for 22 (17) percent of sales at Hiab, 31 (29) percent at Kalmar, and 23 (32) percent at MacGREGOR in January-March.
Cargotec's operating profit for January-March 2008 totalled EUR 44.2 (1-3/2007: 58.0) million, representing 6.1 (8.4) percent of sales. Hiab accounted for EUR 17.7 (24.4) million of first quarter operating profit, Kalmar for EUR 19.4 (26.7) million, and MacGREGOR for EUR 11.9 (10.7) million.
Cargotec's operating profit falling short of 2007 levels is attributable to several different reasons. In Hiab the decline is a result of the negative impact of the decline of the US markets on profitability. Kalmar's result is weakened by a EUR 4 million project cost provision. In MacGREGOR the scheduling of projects explains the low profitability level as quarterly deliveries were still relatively low and projects recognised during the quarter had lower than average profitability. Cargotec's operating profit includes a EUR 1.4 (0.7) million cost impact from the purchase price allocation treatment of acquisitions.
Net income for the period was EUR 31.5 (1-3/2007: 39.4) million and earnings per share were EUR 0.50 (0.62).
Balance Sheet, Financing and Cash Flow
On March 31, 2008, Cargotec's net working capital amounted to EUR 263 (December 31, 2007: 253) million. Tangible assets on the balance sheet were EUR 252 (254) million and intangible assets EUR 763 (751) million.
Cash flow from operating activities before financial items and taxes was EUR 50.1 (1-3/2007: 52.1) million during the first quarter. Dividend payment totalled EUR 61.3 (59.0) million. Net debt on March 31, 2008 was EUR 331 (December 31, 2007: 304) million. The total equity/total assets ratio was 37.5 (38.3) percent while gearing was 37.8 (33.9) percent.
Return on equity for January-March was 14.2 (1-3/2007: 18.3) percent and return on capital employed was 13.4 (19.9) percent.
Cargotec had EUR 635 million of committed credit facilities on March 31, 2008. These facilities were unused.
New Products and Product Development
In January-March 2008, Cargotec's research and product development expenditure was EUR 11.2 (1-3/2007: 11.1) million, representing 1.5 (1.6) percent of sales.
During the first quarter Hiab opened a state-of-the-art crane-testing centre at its loader crane production facility in Hudiksvall, Sweden. The centre offers Hiab and other business areas the opportunity to test more and longer cranes and components as well as ensuring testing is more precise than ever before.
Kalmar launched a new, fully-automated shuttle carrier that is able to pick, place and transport containers between ship-to-shore (STS) and yard stacking cranes without a driver. The new Kalmar Autoshuttle(TM) ensures the cost efficiency and productivity of port operations, particularly in the very big ports of the future.
MacGREGOR continued to develop electronically operated cargo handling solutions and a new ship crane control system. The Offshore division focused on the development of deck equipment enabling the use of cranes in difficult weather conditions and when operating in deep waters.
In February, MacGREGOR signed an agreement with the US Navy on the development of a ship-to-ship vehicle transfer system. With the help of this system, large vehicles can on sea be transferred from RoRo ships to a mobile landing platform ship. The system will be delivered by the end of 2009.
Cargotec's capital expenditure for January-March 2008, excluding acquisitions and customer financing, totalled EUR 10.2 (1-3/2007: 9.8) million. Customer financing investments were EUR 7.7 (5.3) million.
In January, Cargotec announced the launch of an extensive On the Move change programme aiming at a profitability improvement of EUR 80-100 million. The change programme will consist of several projects to consolidate scattered support functions, such as HR, IT, Finance and Communications, and to improve efficiency at the customer interface by harmonising operations between business areas. In addition, common practices will be established in global supply chain development. This will form the basis for expanding Cargotec's production and assembly capacity as well as its sourcing network in emerging markets. The programme's primary target is to enable increased closeness and time devoted to customers.
The first joint supply chain projects will be in China and Estonia. The expansion of Hiab's assembly unit in Shanghai, China will be made at the same site as the existing local Kalmar facility. The capacity of the production unit in Narva, Estonia, acquired in 2007, will be upgraded in order to meet increased component needs and improve productivity. The country organisation streamlining will begin in Finland, where all operational activities within Finland will be transferred to one company during the year.
Hiab combined its loader crane and forestry crane product lines at the beginning of 2008. This organisational change strengthened the use of shared resources in crane product development, manufacturing and marketing. As of the beginning of 2008, Hiab also combined its forestry crane sales operations in Finland into Hiab Oy's Finnish sales. This change is part of the integration of Hiab's sales companies, which began in Germany and Sweden in January 2007.
Kalmar expanded its presence in the Americas by opening a new sales company in Mexico to respond to higher demand from the intermodal markets and increased port activities. The new sales and service company is situated in Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city. Furthermore, Kalmar opened a new service unit in Zeebrugge, Belgium.
In March, MacGREGOR opened a new offshore equipment production unit in Tianjin, China, approximately half of its production being delivered to ports in various parts of China. The new unit also enables production optimisation and efficiency improvements in the Offshore production units of Norway and Singapore.
During the first quarter of 2008, Cargotec completed four acquisitions of which three in Hiab business area.
In order to strengthen its R&D capabilities, Cargotec acquired 60 percent of Idea Designing & Consulting S.r.l. in Massa, Italy. The company employs ten people for product design.
At the end of March, Hiab concluded an agreement to acquire the South African company Bowman Cranes (Pty) Limited, Hiab's long-term agent in the region. This company supplies, installs and services truck-related load handling equipment. In 2007, its sales were approximately EUR 18 million and it employed 70 people. The deal is subject to the approval of regulatory authorities.
In February, Hiab signed an agreement to acquire 70 percent of the operations of an Australian company, O'Leary's Material Handling Services Pty Ltd., the leading supplier of tail lifts in Western Australia. The company employs 24 people and had sales of EUR 2.6 million in 2007. The acquisition was finalised in early April.
In February, Hiab also agreed to acquire the UK-based Del Equipment (UK) Limited and the US-based Ultron Lift Corp. Owned by Militello Holdings, Inc., these companies manufacture tail lifts in UK and US. The aggregate sales of the companies in 2007 were approximately EUR 23 million and the companies employ 164 persons. These acquisitions were finalised at the end of March.
On March 31, 2008, Cargotec employed 11,524 (March 31, 2007: 9,083) people, the year-on-year increase being attributable to the acquisitions concluded in 2007 and 2008. Hiab employed 4,592 (3,780) people, Kalmar 4,555 (4,041), and MacGREGOR 2,278 (1,203). Of Cargotec's total employees, 13 (16) percent were located in Finland, 22 (26) percent in Sweden and 30 (27) percent in the rest of Europe. North and South American personnel represented 12 (15) percent, Asia Pacific 22 (15) percent and the rest of the world 1 (1) percent of total employees.
Shares and Share Capital
Cargotec's share capital on March 31, 2008 was EUR 64,235,283 (December 31, 2007: 64,220,373). The share capital increased by EUR 14,910 during the first quarter as a result of the subscription for class B shares under Cargotec option rights. On March 31, 2008, the number of listed class B shares totalled 54,709,194 while that of unlisted class A shares totalled 9,526,089. Trading with 2005A stock options ended in March. There were 31,485 subscribed 2005A options unregistered at the end of the first quarter. The remaining 2005B stock options may be used to subscribe for further 142,242 class B shares. In total, the stock options may increase the share capital by EUR 173,727.
Market Capitalisation and Trading
The closing price for Cargotec's class B shares on March 31, 2008 was EUR 31.09. The average share price for the first quarter was EUR 29.21, the highest quotation being EUR 36.49 and the lowest EUR 22.47. During the first quarter, 26.8 million Cargotec class B shares were traded on the OMX Nordic Exchange in Helsinki, corresponding to a turnover of EUR 782 million.
On March 31, 2008, the total market value of the Company's class B shares was EUR 1,642 million, excluding treasury shares held by the Company. The Company's year-end market capitalisation, in which the unlisted class A shares are valued at the average price of class B shares on the last trading day of the quarter, was EUR 1,932 million, excluding treasury shares held by the Company. At the end of the first quarter, the Company held a total of 1,905,725 class B shares, which corresponds to 3 percent of the total number of shares.
Changes in Cargotec's Management
On February 1, 2008, Cargotec's Deputy CEO Kari Heinistö was appointed to lead the On the Move change programme. He continues as a member of the Executive Board and secretary to Cargotec's Board of Directors. Eeva Mäkelä was appointed as Cargotec's CFO as of February 1, 2008. She is responsible for accounting, finance, risk management, investor relations and communications, and will continue as a member of the Executive Board. Minna Karhu was appointed as Vice President, Corporate Communications of Cargotec as of February 1, 2008.
Decisions Taken at Cargotec Corporation's Annual General Meeting
Cargotec Corporation's Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held on February 29, 2008 in Helsinki. The meeting approved the financial statements and consolidated financial statements as well as granted discharge from liability to the President and CEO and the members of the Board of Directors for the accounting period January 1-December 31, 2007.
The AGM approved a dividend of EUR 1.04 for each of the 9,526,089 class A shares and EUR 1.05 for the 52,789,559 outstanding class B shares.
The number of members of the Board of Directors was confirmed at six according to the proposal of the Board's Nomination and Compensation Committee. Henrik Ehrnrooth, Tapio Hakakari, Ilkka Herlin, Peter Immonen, Karri Kaitue and Antti Lagerroos were elected as members of the Board of Directors.
Authorised public accountants Johan Kronberg and PricewaterhouseCoopers Oy were re-elected as auditors according to the proposal of Audit Committee of Cargotec Corporation's Board of Directors.
Authorisations Granted by the Annual General Meeting
The AGM authorised the Board of Directors of Cargotec to decide on acquisition of the Company's own shares with non-restricted equity. The shares may be acquired in order to develop the capital structure of the Company, finance or carry out possible acquisitions, implement the Company's share-based incentive plans, or to be transferred for other purposes or to be cancelled. The shares may be acquired through a directed acquisition as defined in Finnish Companies Act, Chapter 15 § 6.
Altogether no more than 6,400,000 own shares may be purchased, of which no more than 952,000 are class A shares and 5,448,000 are class B shares. The above-mentioned amounts include the 1,904,725 class B shares in the Company's possession on the AGM date, which were purchased during 2005-2007. The proposed amount corresponds to less than 10 percent of the share capital of the Company and the total voting rights. The acquisition of own shares will decrease the non-restricted equity of the Company. The authorisation is in effect for a period of 18 months from the date of decision of the AGM.
In addition, the AGM authorised the Board of Directors to decide on transfer of treasury shares. The Board of Directors was authorised to decide to whom and in which order the treasury shares will be transferred. The Board of Directors may decide on the transfer of treasury shares otherwise than in proportion to the existing pre-emptive right of shareholders to purchase the Company's own shares. The treasury shares may be used as compensation in acquisitions and in other arrangements as well as to implement the Company's share-based incentive plans in the manner and to the extent decided by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors has also the right to decide on the transfer of the shares in public trading at the OMX Nordic Exchange, Helsinki to be used as compensation in possible acquisitions. This authorisation is in effect for a period of 18 months from the date of decision of the AGM.
In addition, the AGM resolved to amend the Articles of Association of the Company mainly due to and to align with the new Finnish Companies Act effective as from 2006.
Organisation of the Board of Directors
Cargotec's Board of Directors in its organising meeting elected Ilkka Herlin to continue as Chairman of the Board and Henrik Ehrnrooth to continue as Deputy Chairman. Cargotec's Deputy CEO Kari Heinistö continues to act as secretary to the Board of Directors. Cargotec's Board of Directors decided that the Audit Committee, Nomination and Compensation Committee as well as Working Committee continue to assist the Board in its work.
The Board of Directors elected among its members Ilkka Herlin, Karri Kaitue and Antti Lagerroos as members of the Audit Committee. Karri Kaitue was re-elected as Chairman of the Audit Committee. Board members Henrik Ehrnrooth, Tapio Hakakari, Ilkka Herlin and Peter Immonen were elected to the Nomination and Compensation Committee. Ilkka Herlin was re-elected as chairman of the Nomination and Compensation Committee. Board members Tapio Hakakari, Ilkka Herlin and Peter Immonen were elected to the Working Committee. Ilkka Herlin was re-elected as chairman of the Working Committee.
Share Repurchases
Cargotec's Board of Directors decided to exercise the authorisation of the AGM to acquire the Company's own shares.
In accordance with the authorisation the shares will be acquired in order to develop the capital structure of the Company, finance or carry out possible acquisitions, implement the Company's share-based incentive plans, or to be transferred for other purposes or to be cancelled.
Class B shares will be purchased at public trading in the OMX Nordic Exchange Helsinki at the market price. Class A shares will be purchased outside the Stock Exchange at the price equivalent to the average price of class B shares paid in the OMX Nordic Exchange Helsinki on the purchase date.
A total of 1,000 own shares were repurchased during the first quarter. Cargotec held a total of 1,905,725 class B shares on March 31, 2008.
Short-term Risks and Uncertainties
The global economic development is affected by significant uncertainty which increases short-term risks. Cargotec estimates that its principal short-term risks and uncertainties are related to general economic development and the availability of components.
The impacts of the slowing US economy elsewhere in the world may decrease the willingness of Cargotec's customers to invest. A possible slowdown in the European economy and construction sector would have a negative effect in particular on demand for Hiab's load handing and Kalmar's heavy material handling equipment.
Cargotec has outsourced a significant proportion of its component production and part of its assembly operations. Due to generally high demand for many of the components used by Cargotec, their availability remains restricted, thus making it more difficult to optimise assembly plant operations and causing risk of extra costs and delivery delays. Additionally, occasional delays in truck deliveries in Europe may have an adverse impact on the delivery schedules of Hiab products during the spring 2008.
Cargotec has made a significant number of acquisitions during the last 12 months. Although these acquisitions are relatively small in size and geographically dispersed, integrations always involve a degree of uncertainty.
Events after the Reporting Period
MacGREGOR signed an agreement to acquire US based Platform Crane Services International Inc (PCS) in April. The sales of the company in 2007 were USD 16 million and the company employs 105 persons. The transaction is subject to due diligence.
Helsinki, April 18, 2008
This interim report is unaudited.
Cargotec's Interim Report January-March 2008
Condensed Consolidated Income Statement
MEUR
-2,376.8
Non-recurring items *
Gross profit, %
Costs and expenses
Share of associated companies' and
joint ventures' income
Operating profit, %
Financing income and expenses
Income before taxes
Income before taxes, %
Net income for the period
Net income for the period, %
Net income for the period attributable to:
Equity holders of the Company
Earnings per share for profit attributable
to the equity holders of the Company:
Basic earnings per share, EUR
Diluted earnings per share, EUR
* Kalmar business area related container spreader inspection and repair programme
Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet
Tangible assets
Loans receivable and other interest-bearing assets 1)
Non-interest-bearing assets
Accounts receivable and other non-interest-bearing assets
Cash and cash equivalents 1)
EQUITY AND LIABILITIES
Loans 1)
Pension benefit and other non-interest-bearing liabilities
Accounts payable and other non-interest-bearing liabilities
1) Included in interest-bearing net debt
Consolidated Statement of Changes in Equity
Attributable to the equity holders of the company
Sha-
capi-
pre-mium
Trea-
differ-
rences
reser-
Retai-
Mino-
inte-
Equity on 31.12.2006
Gain/
on cash
booked to
equity*
ferred
to IS
recognised
recog-
nised
Divi-
dends
sub-
scribed
Share-
incentives,
value of
services*
hedges booked
to equity*
transferred
in equity
for the period
of treasury
* Net of tax
Condensed Consolidated Cash Flow Statement
Other adjustments
Cash flow from financial items and taxes
Cash flow from operating activities
Cash flow from investing activities, other items
Cash flow from investing activities
Acquisition of treasury shares
Proceeds from share subscriptions
Proceeds from long-term borrowings
Repayments of long-term borrowings
Proceeds from short-term borrowings
Repayments of short-term borrowings
Cash flow from financing activities
Change in cash
Cash, cash equivalents and bank overdrafts at the beginning of period
Cash, cash equivalents and bank overdrafts at the end of period
Bank overdrafts at the end of period
Equity/share
Interest-bearing net debt
Total equity/total assets
Return on capital employed
Sales by geographical segment, MEUR
Sales by geographical segment, %
Operating profit, MEUR
Corporate administration and other
Operating profit from operations
None-recurring items
* Excluding the one-off cost of EUR 18.0 million related to a container spreader inspection and repair programme
% *
Cargotec, operating profit from operations
Capital expenditure, MEUR
In fixed assets (excluding acquisitions)
In leasing agreements
In customer financing
Number of employees at the end of period
Average number of employees
Taxes in income statement
Current year tax expense
Deferred tax expense
Tax expense for previous years
End customer financing
Off balance sheet investment commitments
Other contingent liabilities
Fair values of derivative financial instruments
Positive fair
Net fair
FX forward contracts, cash flow hedges
FX forward contracts, non-hedge accounted
Interest rate swaps, non-hedge accounted
Cross currency and interest rate swaps, cash flow hedges
Non-current portion:
Nominal values of derivative financial instruments
FX forward contracts
Interest rate swaps
Cross currency and interest rate swaps
In January-March 2008 Cargotec made a few acquisitions in line with its strategy. These acquisitions were individually immaterial.
In February, Hiab made an agreement to acquire the UK-based Del Equipment (UK) Limited and the US-based Ultron Lift Corp. These companies manufacture tail lifts in the UK and the US. The acquisitions were finalised at the end of March.
In February, in order to strengthen its R&D capabilities, Cargotec acquired 60 percent of Idea Designing & Consulting S.r.l., Italy. The accounting of this business combination also includes the minority share, which includes a redemption obligation.
Management estimates that the consolidated sales for January 1-March 31, 2008 would have been EUR 732 million, if the acquisitions had been completed on January 1, 2008.
The table below summarises the acquisitions completed in January-March 2008. The business combinations were accounted as preliminary as the determination of fair values to be assigned to the assets, liabilities and contingent liabilities were not yet finalised.
Net fair values of identifiable
assets and liabilities of
immediately before the
the acquired businesses
business combination
Other intangible assets
Interest-bearing assets, cash and cash equivalents
Interest-bearing liabilities
Other non-interest-bearing liabilities
Acquired net assets
Transaction price
Costs related to acquisitions
Transaction price paid in cash
Cash and cash equivalents in acquired businesses
Total cash outflow from acquisitions
The interim report has been prepared according to the International Accounting Standard 34: Interim Financial Reporting. The accounting policies adopted are consistent with those of the annual financial statements of 2007. All figures presented have been rounded and consequently the sum of individual figures may deviate from the presented sum figure.
Adoption of new interpretation starting in January 1, 2008
Starting from January 1, 2008 Cargotec has adopted the following new interpretation by the IASB published in 2007:
- IFRIC 14, IAS 19 - The Limit on a Defined Benefit Asset, Minimum Funding Requirements and their interaction.
The adoption of the interpretation does not have a material effect on the interim financial statements.
Calculation of key
Total equity attributable to the shareholders
of the parent company
Equity / share
Share issue adjusted number of shares
at the end of period (excluding treasury shares)
Interest-bearing
net debt
Interest-bearing debt - interest-bearing assets
Total equity /
total assets (%)
Total assets - advances received
Gearing (%)
Net income for period
Return on
equity (%)
Total equity (average for period)
Income before taxes + interest and other
financing expenses
Return on capital
employed (%)
Total assets - non-interest-bearing debt
(average for period)
Net income for the period attributable
to the shareholders of the parent company
Basic earnings /
Share issue adjusted weighted average number
of shares during period
Quarterly Figures
Q1/2008
Basic earnings/share
* Excluding the one-off cost of EUR 18.0 million in Kalmar business area related to a container spreader inspection and repair programme
Cargotec's Q1 2008 Interim Report


so, i um... i guess it goes without saying that i've been vacant from the blog for a while!! but that vacancy means that i have been chickadee chickadee busy lately! what a crazy two months it has been since i opened shop! crazy, good crazy, but busy crazy nonetheless. too busy to blog. too busy to do much of anything except care for the babies and the husband and sew sew sew!
for a while i was trying to post pictures of every package i shipped out here on the blog, but i could only keep up with that for so long...then i switched over to posting those updates on the facebook page... so then the blog sort of became obsolete. but i have not wanted that to happen...and now it seems impossible to catch up! so i will just start over with our yesterday!
my chickadee chickadee-d children took to the mall to hear our favorite local children's singer in concert at pottery barn kids!
miss gail is the best and she had my lil miss dancing and jumping and twirling in no time!
when the show sadly ended, the choo-choo caught the children's eyes! we didn't board, but still had fun watching it chug down the aisles!
i promise more updates soon! now that i have put the etsy shop on holiday to finish all orders in time for Christmas deliveries and give myself a little bit of time to sew the girls' gifts, i hope to have a few more moments in my day to write!


text:
Nigerian Afrobeats singer CKay has released one studio album, three EPs, eleven singles, and one promotional single. CKay started his music career with Loopy Music, as a record producer. Following the merger between Loopy Music and Chocolate City, he automatically joined Chocolate City roaster. His production credits include M.I Abaga's "Your Father", Koker's "Give Them", Yung6ix's "Everything Gucci", Dotman's "Tonight", and Bisola's "Controlla". He is currently signed to Warner Music Africa, and Atlantic Records.

On 30 August 2019, he released his second ep, CKay the First, through Chocolate City. The project helped bring CKay to popularity and earned him his first chart entry on Billboard 200, Canadian Albums Chart, and the Dutch Album Top 100. The EP was a sleeper hit that spawned the hit track "Love Nwantiti", which became the second Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2021, he became the first African artist to hit 20 million Spotify listeners, and the second African artist in 2022 to reach 1.2 billion streams.

Albums

Extended plays

Singles

Promotional singles

References

Discographies of Nigerian artists

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Kuru Myst is a 2D top view exploration game. The player controls a fragile statue spinning around itself and that has the property to change its appearance in order to avoid the traps along the way out.
Will you survive in this tortuous maze, or will you let death triumph?
-	Use the arrows to move the statue.
-	Use WASD to transform the statue.
Cool idea; reminds me of Roundabout.
- When you change form and it hits a wall because you can't see which orientation it'll come as.
Awesome concept and good execution. I agree with PPski that it's annoying when you hit a wall twice in a row. But overall a really solid game with solid mechanics.
Super fun! I got mildly addicted to this one. Very nice style as well with good camera work!
Thank you very much! We are working on a post-ludum version right now, and will take your feedbacks into account!
Strong entry, looks good and nicely designed progression.
Great idea, really fun :).
Great game! I enjoyed it a lot until I got stuck, (too much difficult to go forward and impossible to go back). Kudos for implementing Kururin mechanics, and adding an interesting twist to it.
Loved it. Theme is well applied on this game. Relaxing atmosphere, congratulations!
Well made. You have to plan how and when you move a lot. The corridors are a little unforgiving.
Okay, So this was very well put together and felt very complete. the music responding to the players movement was quite trippy and interesting :) I have a few criticism, First i found that the first puzzle involving the bouncers that allowed you to change spin direction to be a bit of a difficulty spike. I also found myself deliberately talking damage to solve the final puzzle with the yellow blocks and the two cannons because it was a bit too hard for me. might only be me being slow but hey. I also found I didn't have a good idea of when a yellow block I destroyed would come back, it felt a bit random and wasn't conveyed super well.
Ignoring my nitpicking i really enjoyed the game and manged to finish it having fun all the way trough! Sad that there weren't any real puzzles involving the final shape, but i guess there's only so much one can do in 72 hours.
With a ton more levels, a few more mechanics, and some polish, it has some real promise. Best of luck.
I invite you to test the Post-Ludum version, which we are updating often! Big improvements have been made on the Level Design until now.