I began March with a change in focus, from web development to the ever changing stock market.  However, so far I feel like I've only jumped from one sinking ship to another and my feet are still wet.  However, despite the market fluctuations, I signed up with Scottrade and feel it's time for an early 1 week review of their website and service.

Signing Up

First of all, signing up to Scottrade.com can be a daunting experience.  Unlike most websites, this investment website requires sensitive information like Social Security numbers, which some people may not feel comfortable sending over the tubes.  Also, there are a number of forms that must be electronically signed and filled out, which were written by main street's lawyers, meaning myself and others may not completely understand what we are agreeing to.

Luckily there is an answer to the above woes, Scottrade offers the assistance of local offices.  As a matter of fact there is a manned office less than 10 mins from my home.  The employees of Scottrade were more than willing to help me get signed up, answer my noob questions, and allow me to make a check deposit.  So, other than be daunting to sign up via the web, the initial 'sign up' process was a breeze, once the professionals were called in.

Deposit

It's odd, but there is only one electronic option for placing funds into a general Scottrade account.  For example, my initial deposit could only be completed by Money Direct or by physically mailing or dropping off a personal check or money order.  I would have much rather preferred linking my PayPal account for transaction and purchase fees, oh well.

I opted to drop off a personal check, since Scottrade's offices were so close.  The deposit showed up immediately, however the funds were not available for purchase until the next business day.  There were also restrictions on my funds for 2 additional days, stating that I could not purchase shares under $4 ea.  Therefore my penny stock trading had to wait until the full clear process, 3 days after my initial deposit.

Again, the employees of Scottrade were very helpful and explained the restriction process to me.  This also opened up the conversation to what will happen during my first trade.  Right inside the office the personnel walked me through a mock transaction, complete with commission fees and different purchase options.

First Stock Trade

Smooth.  It's true, my first purchase within Scottrade was a smooth transaction that qued, completed, and showed in my account within 10 minutes of me left clicking confirm.  As a matter of fact the entire Trade tab is simplified and easy to understand your options.  Anything that might not be clear is explained in the right hand column or has a question mark link, to take you to an explanation.

A typical trade is done by selecting the stock symbol you wish to trade, amount of shares, type of order, and then the length of time you want the offer to be made.  I only purchase on limits, so a time frame is always required, which I typically set to expire at the end of the day.  After completing the fields you will be given with a review of your order and then a final confirmation.  It's easy peezy, even for someone who has never traded stock before.  Furthermore, the employees at Scottrade are available to assist you over the phone, should you be nervous or have some questions.

Recent Scottrade Site Performance

I have not been satisfied with the Scottrade.com site performance.  I am consistently timing out when requesting a quote and the reports they provide usually never load.  I've bested the Scottrade.com site from 3 different computers on 3 different connections and the problem continues to persist.  In addition, I've tried using 3 different browsers, including FireFox, Chrome, and the latest release of Internet Explorer.  Unfortunately Internet Explorer appears to be the most stable when using Scottrade, go figure.

This morning I was in the process of purchasing some stock at market open, only to find that Scottrade had turned off online trading.  After calling my local office I was informed this is the first time this has ever happened that he can remember.  Lucky me, assuming he was telling the truth, which would also translate this article into an unfair review.  You be the judge and I'll be back in another 30 days to fill you in on all the trades and money I've lost.

Affiliate Espionage was a phenomenal tool a few months back, which helped the user track advertising trends amongst competitors in Google Adwords.  It provided research on search trends, money spent on campaigns, and which campaigns worked, so the user wasn't throwing money out the door.  It assisted with the tried and true test, test, test method of spending money on Adwords.  Alas, Affiliate Espionage has closed it's doors and development on the FireFox plugin has come to a hault.

It's been a looonnggg time since I last sent out an email to you
but a lot has been going on and unfortunately as a result I have
some bad news to share with you today.

With much thought and struggle, I have decided to close down
Affiliate Espionage.

It has been a fun ride and the feedback and response to AE has
been fantastic over the past 18 months but things have reached a
point where I had to decide which direction to take my business
and focus my efforts and I did not feel I would be able to
provide the support, service and time required to do justice to
the Affiliate Espionage Software while tackling the major
project I will be working on this year.

Effective March 1st 2010, Affiliate Espionage will be taken off
the market.

All existing customers will still have full access to the
Member's only Site indefinitely to access all software, videos,
and manuals.

There may be occasional software updates but there is no
timetable or schedule (or promise of) these updates.

This has not been an easy decision especially since this project
has been part of my life for well over 2 years now.  I
appreciate your support and understanding.

You can still contact our support desk until March 5, 2010 to
address any questions or concerns you may have.

So, it looks like it's back to studying trends  the old fashion way and spend lots o pennies on testing Adword Campaigns.  But that's ok, because everything the Affiliate Espionage Plugin did can be done on your own manually, just takes a little bit longer.

If you are looking for alternative revenue streams, please check out my Chitika Review.

Let me get this out of the way, I do NOT have the end all answer to monetizing search traffic that originates from Google Image Search.  Traditionally image search traffic does not convert well and requires different methods of monetization than content search traffic.  I've done a lot of looking around the guru sites and no one seems to have a solid answer on what works best for monetizing a website that depends on image searches for their visitors.

BritePic looks like a good place to start and will require some more testing before I'm convinced it's not actually causing a higher bounce rate.  The problem is that my visitors are viewing my website through Google's frames, which hides the majority of my site.  I've tried the script that breaks Google's Image Search frame, but had negative results after a few months, meaning lower image search numbers.  I'd rather keep my non converting traffic and find another way to monetize.

Back to BritePic's issues.  I'm not convinced that BritePic script images are searchable and hold as much weight as a normal image post would.  Therefore I wouldn't be bringing in the traffic to monetize against anyway.  Lastly, my visitors are more likely to view the enlarged image than just hover over the medium sized image on my blog.  Angered visitors, visitors lost, still no monetary gain from image search traffic.

In conclusion, I feel the only way to properly monetize image search traffic is with better affiliate banner and text ad placement.  This comes with it's own set of problems, like how much blending is too much, and is Google going to be upset about where you place the block of ads.  They tend to frown upon a large block above an image and directly below your post title.  I believe they want more content next to the ad, rather than a simple block next to a block which can potentially confuse a visitor into a click.

So far, it looks like Adsense still converts the best with Image Search traffic, but requires placement above the image, but around actual content.  I failed miserably when trying to place Chitika Ads at the top of a blog post, which has no qualms about where it's placed in relation to post title and image.  Chitika Premium ads still look like they convert the best at the bottom of a post, for whatever reason.

More testing is required, but I wanted to get this quick post out, which harbors some of my thoughts and issues.  I'm sure there is a quality solution to monetizing Google Image Search traffic and it may be the next big thing.

Honeymoon is over PJN, time to start offering as many linking options as CJ in regards to the advertisers you carry.  I still stand behind my statements that the Pepperjam Network is one of the best online, but they are only as good as the tools they offer.  From where I'm setting, Pepperjam Ads just isn't cutting the mustard.  Lastly, for the life of me I can't get Pepperjam Store to convert, so what does work?

Currently on my automotive website I'm taking a much more proactive approach at attracting visitors for very specific products.  AutoPartsWarehouse.com seems to have plenty of products that can turn into a virtually endless amount of content for me to write about, but how best to link to what I'm trying to sell?  With Pepperjam my options are limited to banners, coupons, and some text links, however Commission Junction offers some fantastic Advanced Link options.

Specifically within AutoPartsWarehouse.com link catalog on CJ you are able to create interactive product searches.  More importantly there are figures published on CJ that prove these types of linking strategies work.  So why hasn't PJN offered these advanced links yet?  Is it a problem with Pepperjam or with the individuals in charge of AutoPartsWarehouse.com's affiliate program?

It has been a dry year so far in 2010, at least with my revenue stream.  Only thing I can come up with is that people have went on lock down with their typical spending patterns, now that the holidays are over.  Or, perhaps, I've been targeting the wrong products and niche for New Years resolutions. When all reality, I didn't plan for the New Year at all, lesson learned.

In previous years I had niches that were under high demand, year round, but this year I'm not so fortunate.  My websites have remained constant with their visitors and actual statistics, unfortunately the buying has dropped off dramatically.  So it got me thinking about the next holiday coming up and how I can better prepare for what consumers will be after.  I just hope I'm not too late to the game because I've been setting on my laurels.

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.

I'm not sure if a new inspection crew started working for Google Adsense late last year, but it looks like my websites are getting more attention than they used to.  My guess is that my increase in traffic, coupled with high click throughs, raised some sort of a flag.  At the end of last year I was notified by Google to remove the large square text ad from the top of my blog posts on my automotive blog.  Adsense was disabled on my domain until I complied.

Thankfully the people that I had contact with at Adsense were understanding, gave some direction, and allowed me to fix the problem instead of banning me.  Apparently, the large square at the top of posts blended too well with my content.  In my opinion nothing was blended, it was applied almost exactly like it is on Blogspot blogs, only on top of posts, rather at the bottom, or mixed in with the next post.

Nevertheless, I have learned over the years not to argue with the hand that feeds.  So, after complying with their requests, within 48 hours Adsense was again running on my site.  Currently my clicks have dropped considerably and revenue in tow.  I'm hoping to come up with an different ad placement that garners as much attention as previously or perhaps use a diff type of ad in the old location.  This will take some testing and the patience of my regular readers of the automotive site.

I just got done having a brief discussion with a coworker explaining the problem I'm being faced with as an online affiliate marketer.  In the short and sweet I'm being pulled by the bad economy, meaning visitors are not converting as high as normal.  On the other side I'm being pulled by affiliate programs, which are tightening the reins and becoming more exclusive.  Being pulled from both sides puts a huge strain on my already dwindling bank account.

Consider that just a few years ago it was possible to get into almost any affiliate program.  Also, once in these programs there were huge incentives with arguably low ceilings.  eBay is a perfect example of this, with their EPN program switching from CJ to in house and providing lots of easy commissions to affiliates.  Now, they have made it to where they aren't accepting everyone and are booting you for having low conversions.

Is this a trend likely to continue through the end of the year?  I had hoped that we would see an increase in incentives from affiliate programs as we near the holidays.  There haven't been seem to been any ramp of that I've seen, but they could be waiting until the latter part of November.

Without question, this holiday season will directly make or break online companies.  If this is a slow buying Christmas, then some companies will simply shut the doors.  However, if there is an uptick, like others are predicting, then these same companies will be relying on the sales from Christmas to pull them out of the red in 2009.

P.S. Just a friendly reminder, remember to diversify so that one failing affiliate program doesn't bring you to your knees.

This post is not meant to bash Adsense, nor am I writing it because I've found a better alternative.  The point of this post is to illustrate how the advertising marketplace is changing and it appears to be adopting methods to fight ad blindness, yet Adsense ads have remained largely unchanged since day one.  I think that there is more money to be earned by publishers and advertisers if Google would decide to place images next to their text ads.

It Works

Not too terribly long ago it was a method used by Adsense publishers to place their own small images next to their Adsense text ads.  This greatly increased the CTR (click through ratio) in almost every single case.  However, because publishers were adding their own images, Google was unable to moderate the implied related content.

A few bad apples ruined it for the rest of us when they started placing questionable images next to their Adsense Ads.  Probably having a bigger impact was that publishers were placing unrelated images next to the Ads in question.  Then an unsuspecting visitor would click through on an add expecting something else and then immediately bounce out.  Obviously Google doesn't want to piss off Advertisers by sending them unrelated traffic.

How To Fix The Problem

Google could implement their own program to allow Advertisers to upload their own authorized images to be displayed next to their ads.  This way Google could moderate what images were being used before approving the ad and know that these were not being changed by the publishers to drive unrelated traffic.

Who's Doing It Before Google Adsense

Already there are a number of publishers that allow images to be uploaded and used along text advertisements.  The two that stand out the most are Chitika and Facebook Ads.  Both of these programs have already proved to be wildly successful for both their Advertisers and Publishers.

I've used them both and can attest that as an Advertiser I don't mind spending a bigger budget with lower cost per clicks.  And if I'm controlling the images then I know that the traffic can be just as interested in buying what I'm selling.  I forsee Google making some changes, soon, to adjust to this change in the online advertising marketplace.

We have to fight ad blindness somehow.

I've been running a local blog for about a year solid and in the past 3 months I've integrated Twitter in hopes of driving targeted traffic.  Much to my surprise, Twitter has been great at delivering a few hundered extra views a week, but obviously not enough to start quitting other campaigns.  However, I have a few thoughts on what Twitter could do to better help businesses manage their profiles.

Referral Tracking

This is the biggest problem I see facing Twitter as a measurable source of traffic.  In server logs the only indication you have that people are coming from twitter, is from either the Twitter.com/home domain or from your own Twitter.com/mybusiness domain.  I would love to see Twitter integrate some sort of referral indicator that showed who was actually following a link or reading my feed.

Currently an arbitrary number of followers does not really indicate how many people are actually reading your tweets.  Comments and stuff are great, but are only a small percentage of people that are actually reading tweets and interested in what your business is about.  Let's get some actual analytics involved Twitter, show me who is actually reading and following my links.

Light Weight In House Tools

Please come out with some in house tools to make Twitter mor useful.  Tweet Deck is ok and other business solutions fill a void, but are not up to par with what can be produced in house.  I dont want bloated software, I want something light weight that I can update from my desktop on, get notifications of mentions, and accurately track those who are following me.  And while we are at it, make sure you support multiple twitter accounts, I will not use my business Twitter account for personal use and vise versa.

Allow Advertising Already

Lastly, come on Twitter, let us start advertising and target all your users.  Look to Google to see how to create unobtrusive advertising models that actually appeal and target your users.  It's obvious that the traffic produced from Twitter is valuable, let us pay for that gold mine of outbound clicks.  While valuable, I'm not sure the time cost of me tweeting equals revenue earned just yet.