Gokul Rajaram, was the Product Manager at Google handling a number of it’s advertising products. At this role, Mr. Rajaram’s duties included defining new features and enhancements to Google’s advertising programs and working with engineering on implementation. So, many of the features you see on the Google AdSense is the result of this man’s brainwork.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Rajaram was a Technical Lead at Juno Online, an early internet service provider that is now part of United Online, the second largest ISP in the US. At Juno, he was part of the team that developed Juno’s online advertising platform. Mr. Rajaram has also worked as a Software Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and as a Product Manager at Onetta, a telecom hardware company.

Mr. Rajaram earned his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management, his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian institute of Technology, Kanpur, where he was awarded the President of India’s Gold Medal for being class valedictorian.

He is believed to be one of the “Godfather’s of AdSense”, one of the most successful products at Google.

Now the sad news is that Gokul is leaving Google (he has already) to be on his own. He has not revealed what his future plans are but it’s believed that he’s going to start on his own. Would that be a competitor to Google’s AdSense? No idea.But to us bloggers, that would be music to ears, wouldn’t it ?

It is a trend now that many Googlers are leaving company either to start up companies of their own or to join smaller but upcoming and fast growing companies like Facebook. 

Resources: 1, 2, 3, 4 Photo Courtesy: Webguild

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DailySEOblog had already featured Suhas Gopinath as the world’s youngest CEO in the world sometime earlier. The story was about a guy who made it big owning a company at the age of 17. But hey! That’s old story.

Meet Ashwin Ramesh, the “Youngest CEO in India. Probably the youngest in the world.”

I met Ashwin at the SearchCamp Chennai and was deeply impressed with his skills and am sure you too will be. He is CEO to OrganicApex a company which is into SEO, SEM and SMM services. He started his first firm when he was 15 years old and evolved into Organic Apex. Today Organic Apex has branches worldwide and employs around 35 people.

I managed to interview the man and this is the first of it’s kind interview he’s given ever. Exclusive to DailySEOblog.

How much money do you make per month?
- That is something which I cannot say that openly but yeah, its a good amount. I reinvest most of the profits I make..

What is the size of your company?
- Almost 35 people ( as per my knowledge )

What services do you offer?
- Organic SEO, PPC Related Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing Solutions

What opportunities do you see forth?
- I see an imminent boom in the Internet sector resulting in people everywhere trying to monetize on it.
But as always, only the early birds will really make loads of cash and also Internet Marketing is going to be HUGE ( h1 tags for that? )

What is your current business model?
- We currently do direct sales marketing ( does that make any sense? ) for our services and I do have a set of web ventures which are doing pretty decent for the time being.

When did you start this business?
- I started this about a year back and before that i was here and there into Adsense and affiliate marketing.

What actually made you think about it? Please describe how things rolled out.
- Well, that’s a very very long story.

A friend of mine ( or should I say mentor ) told me that he got his first Adsense cheque. I didn’t know what the heck Adsense was and i though “WTF! When he can do it, I can too”.
I started out with my first blog trying to monetize on Adsense but miserably failed.
I was making 0.00$ a month from Adsense and I decided to resort to click fraud, I worked with click fraud till i made 99$ on my Adsense account and my account got banned just then. That small mistake of mine, is costing me a lot now…
Once Adsense was done with, I met this guy who taught me affiliate marketing and clickbank, I did make a little money with it but wasn’t satisfied.

Then there came Mr. SEO Guy…
He was this guy who was 1 year elder to me who was bragging to me about his BIG SEO FIRM ( which turned out to be bogus ) and his large kitty of earnings.
I obviously got jealous and set out to create my own firm and made enough money freelancing from home to create a fully functioning unit.

Were there any bottlenecks during this time running your business? How did you overcome them?
You Bet! Being a Young Entrepreneur in India Sucks! Especially if your from a very conservative family like mine.
My dad wanted me to become a software engineer and it took a whole load of persuasion and a not or recommendation from my uncle to really make him have a look at the potential in this industry ( I’m sure my dad would agree now that it was stupid to call this a waste of time now )
I still face these bottlenecks - Formal Education.

It gets very tough pursuing formal education and running a firm.
Worse cause people in school don’t understand what I’m doing ( I’m nicknamed foreigner after I told them that I might be going to Adtech NY this year )

Actually, none of my teachers know what I’m doing and I wouldn’t want them to know.

Most of the people I meet think that everybody who makes cash must wear a costly sneaker or own a BMW car - That is dip shit ( inspired by Mr. Someone from Taiwan at SearchCamp )

PS: I get a pocket money of 25 cents a day
PPS: MY bank account is in my mom’s name.

Anybody else in my shoes would have dropped out of school, but I still stick to school because I think I should be DIFFERENT ( Lets see how long that lasts )

If other people were to take inspiration from you, what would you recommend them?
I really don’t know.
If my story inspired you, maybe you should keep this in mind ” Always do what you want even if someone tells you not to do it - They’re telling you not to do it because they couldn’t do it or think it cant be done ”
( Flicked from the movie “The Pursuit of Happiness” )

What are your future plans?
Short Term:
Make Organic Apex the Largest Organic SEO Firm in the World ( IS that too BIG? - Then lets settle for Asia )
Long Term:
To create something which would make everyone else would look up and take notice at ( A competitor to one of Google’s products )

I want to do so many things one of which would be to clear the Internet of people projecting themselves to be nice guys but clearly trying to make cash. 

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Just a little something - By Anita Bora is yet another top ranked influential blogs from India.(According to Blogstreet.com)

As commonly seen in many content based blogs, little importance is given to monetising the blog in this case too. Anita who has written about almost everything in this blog has attempted monetising it by introducing some Google AdSense referral buttons, and a few ads. It seems as though she is more interested in the referral buttons rather than the contextual ads as the buttons are seen more in number than the ads.

If you see the blog, you will notice that there is a small rectangle ad in the right hand panel(apart from the referral buttons) and this one is the only text ad you will see on the blog.

Total number of Ads
Three referral buttons(125×125), One small rectangle(125×40), One horizontal image ad, One vertical Skyscraper Image ad.

The 120×40 small rectangle.

google_ad_client = “MASKED MASKED MASKED”;
google_ad_width = 120;
google_ad_height = 240;
google_ad_format = “120×240_as”;
google_ad_type = “text_image”;
google_ad_channel =”";
google_color_border = “660000″;
google_color_bg = “7D2626″;
google_color_link = “FFFFFF”;
google_color_url = “DAA520″;
google_color_text = “BDB76B”;

If you take a closer look at it, you’ll see that the background colour of the ad(7D2626) is not matching with that of the blog background(A97043).
Also, the text/link colour(BDB76B) does not match with that of document(ffe7d1). I suggest that both the text and the link colour be the same so that viewers don’t get a chance to distinguish between the url and the text.

The font type used in this template is the Georgia, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif family. I strongly suggest that this be changed to Arial family so that they match with the ads.
Also, the ad stands boxed out with a border, the border colour too should be matching the bgcolour in order to blend well.

Property Comparison
Background colour Does not match
Font Type Does not macth
Font colour Does not match
Font size NA
Title colour Yes
Link colour Does not match
Text colour Does not mtach
Background/boxed Boxed
Placement Right hand panel,Above the fold.
Number of ads Maximum - Three

Unfortunately there is no use of the AdLink unit seen at all. Instead there is a google search bar at the right hand panel which unfortunately sticks out. In my opinion this search bar needs to be some where towards the top fold.

It’s my guess that Anita has a liking for Image ads rather than text ads.This in my opinion is a mistake. Because unless you are running a children’s website image ads are an absolute No-No. Simply because they always shout at the visitors that “Hey You! I’m an Advertisement, Don’t come near me”, especially with an Ad-Allergic community, this could prove almost fatal.

In my opinion Anita should take away both the image ads(one on the right hand side and the one on the bottom) and instead, use rectangle text ads at the beginning of the post. So at they really blend with the post.

But if Anita thinks that this will harm the reading pleasure of the viewer’s then she atleast pull the image ad from the extreme bottom to just above that foot note.Because a foot note is suppose to be a foot note and nothing comes below it.

All she got to do is cut the google ads code from the end of the script to right beneath the !– begin footer — code.

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India Uncut is the number 1 influential blog in India - by Mr.Amit Varma.
Though being the best in quality, regarding the monetization point of view, Amit’s blog isn’t the best you can find. Here are some suggestions from me to Amit.

This is his Adsese code - pubid masked.

google_ad_client = “MASKEDMASKEDMASKED”;
google_ad_width = 160;
google_ad_height = 600;
google_ad_format = “160×600_as”;
google_ad_type = “text_image”;
google_ad_channel =”7780443499″;
google_color_border = “eaecd7″;
google_color_bg = “eaecd7″;
google_color_link = “336699″;
google_color_text = “333333″;
google_color_url = “CCCCCC”;
Property Comparison
Background colour Yes, matches the webpage bg. (eaecd7)
Font type Does not match, Uses Times New Roman on the webpage
Font size NA
Title colour Does not match,Uses BLUE(336699) on ads while titles are BLACK on webpage
Link colour Does not match,Uses GREY(CCCCCC) on ads while links are WHITE,BLUE on webpage
Text colour Yes,matches the webpage.(000000)
Background/boxed Not boxed,blended well
Placement 1 used,2 remaining
Visibility Above the fold Number of ads 1 vertical skyscraper(160×600)

AdLink unit Not Used
Placement NA
Background image NA
Category Match NA

Amit of India Uncut seems to be not very much interested in the monetization part of his blog.He’s got an adorable blog with quality articles but a wrongly tweaked AdSense code.

Firstly, surprising to see that only a vertical skyscraper has been used(on the right hand panel). According to the GAS TOS, 2 more ad blocks are possible on a webpage.

I would recommend Amit to place two small rectangles at the beginning/end of the posting area. This can be achieved by pasting the adsense code before the BEGIN POST AREA part of the code. Though the adsense code repeats with each post, It will render only twice and therefore, totally three adsense code visible on the webpage.

This sort of placement, mixed at the end of post, will help much as it will give the viewers a break and prompt them to click on the ads if found interesting and related to the article they just read.

My guess is that Amit simply neglected this placement since he thought that this may take away the readers pleasure. Fair enough!

The Vertical Skyscraper on the right hand panel

Though this is the only ad block seen on the blog, this one too doesnt seem to be tweaked just fine.

The background colour is blended well, and with no borders on it blends well with the page. But the text used in the blog is “Times New Roman” while the text in the ad is “Arial” - Amit needs to change his blog’s font to Arial to match the ads.

The links/text in the ads too are not blended with that of the blog completely . While in the blog, we have white links with an orange “on hover” property on the links in the right hand panel and blue links through out the blog, the links/heading on the ads are neither orange nor white but blue. This is disastrous if you ask me. If all the links in the blog were blue,this would have made some sense.

The visibility of the skyscraper is good - it sticks always above the fold.

Another interesting factor in Amit’s blog is that in the template, the left had panel, with the links on, has a dark background making it difficult to read the links. This in a way, may make the visitors turn their attention on his blog entries rather than the links, and also let the visitors click on the clearly visible ads on the right.I’m unsure if this is a deliberate strategy, but it works at some point of time, if not always.
Overall, Amit has done a good judjement by placing only one skyscraper at the right hand panel - above the fold and deliberately avoiding ads in between posts. BUt in my opinion this ad block needs to be tweaked further for maximum CTR.

I hope this is of interest to all.
All the best to you Amit.

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Meet Mr.Suhas Gopinath, CEO of Globals Inc, The world’s youngest CEO (He’s from India).

BBC, one of the world’s leading news media recognized Mr. Suhas Gopinath as the world’s youngest CEO for his achievement in expanding the organization as a leading multi-national company offering cost-effective solutions in web, software, e-commerce, networking and mobile.
He started his love with the Internet when he was 16 and used to do a part time job at a local Internet cafe, to find money for surfing the net again!
His friendship on Yahoo chat with Mr.Clifford Leslie made way to establishing a freelancing company called Globals in the early days.With Mr.Cliffords help, Suhas did many free lancing jobs for clients abroad in web designing , and he was the only employee at the company Globals.

Today Globals is a company with 700 employees, presence in more 11 countries and with an annual turnover of 30lakh US $.

This young CEO is an inspiration to the young internet enthusiasts in India.

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All of us have noticed that name on the Adobe Photoshop splash screen - Seetharaman Narayanan.
The Indian name that stands out of the rest. Probably because others don’t have long names. The fan club at FlickR proves his popularity!

But it sure will get more interesting if you learn more about the man - “Seetha” as he’s lovely called.

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