I've spent some time discussing the virtues of using Chitika ads next to Google Adsense, but my latest experiment has left me looking for lost revenue.  In this experiment I placed Chitika Ads in my highest click-through location, where I used to keep Adsense ads, directly below my post title.  The result was surprising to say the least.

My impressions dropped by almost half and my clicks fell even further.  I can honestly offer up no reasonable explanation as to why Chitika would fail so miserably in prime realestate.  Keep in mind that I removed Adsense completely from the equation, which would lend Chitika to receiving even more clicks.  What happened?

The lack of impressions I can't explain, considering statistics for my site remained virtually unchanged, in regards to search visitors.  But perhaps, looking at the CTR, the reason is because Chitika Premium Ads look like ads.  Cheesy I know, but Adsense does a phenomenal job at blending in with content and looking natural.  I think that my visitors liked the natural look rather than the picture next to an ad trick.

It will take more testing to know for sure, but lets just say for now I've moved Chitika back down to the bottom of the page.  Time will tell if Chitika will ever warrant the #1 paying spot on my automotive website.

Happy New Year everyone!  The end of 2009 was absolutely wicked crazy and had me busy working out offline duties, rather than monetizing my websites and updating my friends to what I've been up to.  So, see below for a recap of what the last half of December 2009 had me doing.

• Preparing for family vacation to Disney World with my 2 year old.
• Lots of Christmas decorating and preparation.
• 9-5 Job
• Admittedly playing too much WoW.
• Netflix, the new streaming option has me hooked on actually getting to watch LOST.

So, now that things have slowed up a bit I plan on getting back to work.  Expect laundry list of updates to The-Grayline.com automotive blog, some money making ideas here on NailsBlog.com, and some development on my non-linked ecommerce sites.  This cold weather makes my fingers cold and typing slow, but that doesn't mean I'm not trolling around the forums.

Ugh, 2 months since I've made a post and yet I feel like I have so much to talk about.  For the few of you that are interested in what I've been doing, I apologize for the absence.  I'm optimistic that I will be able to focus more on some products that I've been using, methods that have worked, and more importantly those that haven't.

Furthermore, it's been a real interesting Fall so far, right?  No more eBay with Pepper Jam, global recession, and online retailers knocking each other over trying to score some Cyber Monday deals.  So where does that put an online marketer just 1 month away from the big holiday?

I'm going to assume sales and commissions will only dwindle up to and dieing on Christmas Day.  However, like my intention to post more, I'm optimistic that sales will grow exponentially after the first of the year.  I think people will have more disposable income and use it wisely by purchasing on the web.  I hope to isolate a few target niche markets and have these take off through 2010.

Not everything is growth however, I've had to make the difficult decision to not renew a handful of domains.  They just weren't justifying their own existence and more importantly I didn't have the time or money to develop them properly.  These domains became a drain, I had to think about them, spend some time on them, but never really develop.  So, I cut them lose and am now currently focusing on a few core domains.  Hopefully this will spell success in 2010.

So, expect more frequent postings.  Merry Christmas!

Was making up some content posts for a few of my blogs and was greeted by an Akismet error within my WordPress Dashboard.  Annoyingly this error was showing up at the top of every single Dashboard page, not just the plugin or home page.  I had assumed that it was just a problem on Akismet's end and apparently I was right.

After getting the error for about 15 minutes I figured out that my server was unable to contact any of the 5 servers operated by the Akismet spam plugin.  Once I manually checked the servers, via a button at the bottom of the troubleshooting page, everything went back to normal and there were no more errors.

Simple annoyance, no issues, and spam still seems in check.

According to the Akismet website they have reportedly stopped over 11 billion spam comments.  Unsettling however is the figure that only 83% were actual spam.  No doubt Akismet is the best solution to fight spam, but consider that as of this posting Akismet has made over 913 million errors.  Internet wide, but still a good reminder to always check your spam moderation que, you might have some worthwhile comments.

Nucleus

How young was I, how blind was I to the untold treasures that Word Press held.  Little did I know at the time that Word Press would handle all of the issues I had using Nucleus, hardly any templates, little to no support base, and not he most intuitive administrator interface.  Keep in mind this was about 3 years ago and it was simply known as Nucleus, not the now further developed Nucleus CMS.

But really, how much further has Nucleus came along?  To me, it doesn't appear that far, if you go by anything other than it's home page pitch.  Probably the saddest part about this possible Word Press competitor is that it's testimonials page is completely falling apart.  2 of the 3 sites I followed through their testimonials were either nonexistant or were no longer using Nucleus.  Further down the list, one testimonial even spelled Nucleus wrong...but there it was, for all to see.

The easiest CMS I have ever installed, on my quest to find the ultimate open source content system; Nucleas is topping the lot.

Such an unprofessional embarassment.  I'm sure the support and open community are great people, but it's got a long way to go.  Perhaps they should start with their image and figure out how they can make Nucleus fill a niche not already owned by Word Press.  Until then, they are just a first time bloggers mistake.

It seems like to me Piwik has been updating a lot more frequently, which admittedly only causes minor frustration.  The latest version is 0.2.34 and includes only one fix, but a pretty big one.  Apparently there was an error with the Piwik cache generating files that did not count all visitors.  That's kind of important to a stat tracking script.

Piwik Piwik 0.2.34 - April 14, 2009

- FIXED #648 Generating cache files fails resulting in no visits recorded for a few users, due to wrong order in includes in piwik.php

The new download is available on Piwik.org or if you are using at least version 0.2.31 you can upgrade automatically via your Piwik dashboard.  I've updated and upgraded my database using this method in the past, with no issues.

Oh lord, lately I've been ramping up the frequency of blog posts on all of my blogs.  What's annoyed me beyond belief is the fact that the Word Press dashboard refuses to take me back to the dashboard or give me a blank slate to immediately start on another post.  No, I have to set there and be notified that it was posted and asked if I want to view it.  Damn't, just give me a blanks late to start over.

Yes, I'm being picky, and I'm fully aware that a blank slate for a fresh post is just one click away.  But damn't, it's annoying, I don't want to have to do it and it's something I miss of Word Press releases of days gone by.

Does anyone have a mod, plugin, anything that will automatically take me to the dashboard or better yet give me a clean slate to starta  new blog post?  The last thing I want to do after spending 20 seconds typing out a thought out post is to stare at it and maybe edit it.  My ignorance of poor grammar, shoddy typing errors, is what keeps me from blowing my brains out at night from a long day of content creation.

As of late my blog's dashboard has been bogging down and taking forever to load.  At first I tried removing some of my plugins, specifically my Word Press Stats plugin, but it didn't work.  Then I started removing all of my front page load screen options, still slow as ever.

It wasn't until I glanced at my number of comments under overview that I realized what the problem was.  According to WordPress I had over 5,000 comments awaiting moderation.  Of course most of these were spam, but I had not set my Akismet to automatically delete after 30 days.  So guess what, I had a huge ass back log of comments that were slowing my dashboard load down tremendously and some times even timing out.

A quick delete of all Spam comments fixed my slow loading Wordpress 2.7.1 and all is back to normal.

The start of my article writing career, as a means of link building and advertising, has been met with simply the best tip EVER.  This article writing tip is straight from the pros over at EzineArticles.com and can be found within their free Article Writing Training series PDF.

Keep an Ace Up Your Sleeve: Alway skeep a tidbit of important information in reserve to make your readers want more.  Remember, your article can generate traffic, so use the Resource Box to entice your readers to click on your website link.

This little gem just struck me to the bone and really rang true in between my ears.  Furthermore, I wonder how many comments I've made on blogs, threads in forums, or just general blog posts where I didn't keep this tip in mind.  I could have been losing all a lot of traffic over the years, mainly because I've been primarily focused on 'content' content, content.  I think my composition needs to be reworked, proofed, and a specific goal with each article that I write.

Starting with this simple blog post, can you spot or guess the Ace Up My Sleeve?

Wade from phpBay.com is currently working on an all new plugin called phpZon, which will work similarly to phpBay but for Amazon products.  The work seems to be started from a direct response from current phpBay users who have been banned from eBay and looking for an alternative.  In todays affiliate landscape it's becoming increasingly important to diversify your revenue streams, everyone should start taking a look at their current portfolio.

phpZon beta has already been released and current owners of phpBay can take advantage of special pricing.  According to Wade the first official release of the Amazon wordpress plugin will sell for $49.00 and as features are added increase in price.  However, if you purchase phpBay now or are a current owner, you can buy phpZon for only $30.  Like all of Wade's plugins upgrades and added features in the future are all free.

phpZon Features currently implemented in Beta or on the way:

• SEO Urls
• mod_rewrite on Amazon Images
• Options to display reviews, product features, sale price, normal price, etc...
• Display user ratings
• Adjust number of listings to be displayed.
• and more in the future.

As mentioned in previous posts on NailsBlog.com, I'm sold on phpBay and use it on a handful of blogs.  I've already purchased the beta of phpZon and am looking forward to it's final release.  Before the price goes up, I'd suggest you purchase a copy as well.