In the early part of January 2008, Shopping Ads merged with Auction Ads. I used Auction Ads previously with some success up until July 2007 when things started to hit the skids. I stopped using Auction Ads in early October 2007 after a couple of months of unsatisfactory results.

I joined up to Shopping Ads when it launched in the second half of 2007. The results from my initial, and somewhat brief, trial were not that encouraging so I decided to give them a rest as well.

It's been over a month now since Auction Ads and Shopping Ads merged, so I think it's about time that I gave the all new Shopping Ads a chance. At this stage I'm not really sure about placement nor am I sure of what products I should be serving ads for, but we'll see how it goes. One thing I do know from my intensive scientific research is that the camel toe brigade are big fans of the lingerie ads!

If you're looking for another way to monetize your site, then perhaps you could give Shopping Ads a try.

Join Shopping Ads here.

Are you already using Shopping Ads? If so, how is it working for you?

YouTube is a goldmine, and what good is mining gold if you can't share it with the towns people. Granted, this nugget isn't going to appeal to everyone, but you can't please all of the towns people all of the time.

The union of "Gangsta" rap and Star Wars should have been made long time ago, in a galaxy far away. Now I think about it, when George Lucas releases the 35 year special edition Star Wars DVD, I'm hoping that he has the good sense to have Jay-Z provided the new soundtrack. Word.

Sony PSP UMD STAR WARS THE FORCE UNLEASHED W Booklet

9 Bids

US $31.00

15m

Star Wars Darth Maul Bicycle Helmet w Elbow Knee Pads

0 Bid

US $11.99

16m

STAR WARS EMPEROR PALPATINE SEALED KENNER BAGGIE ROTJ

US $11.95

16m

Grant Morrison is famous for his work on revamping the Justice League of America series, as well as working on Superman and Batman comics. He is also credited with breathing new life into the X-Men franchise, with his 2001-2004 run on New X-Men.

The New X-Men series focuses on a core group of the X-Men, Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Beast, Emma Frost and a new character, Xorn. Although it is a more "traditional" X-Men team, the New X-Men ditch the lycra in favour of the black leathers, similar to the X-Men films.

Whilst the X-Men had previously behaved like a traditional 'superhero' team, in New X-Men they take on more of a teaching role. A lot of the stories center around the school environment, changes to the way Professor X is viewed by the group and the world following "outing" himself as a mutant, the emergence of 'U-Men', as well as the story of Xorn.

New X-Men introduced a number of fairly large changes to the world of the X-Men.

The first one I noticed was the change in the appearance of Beast. I'd always remembered him looking like a furry, sharp toothed umm... well Beast. In New X-Men, he has undergone a "secondary mutation" like makes him look more like a giant pussy cat. Honestly, not a good look for a guy named "Beast".

Emma Frost is a member of the group (she was bad, now she's good), while Jean Grey dies... again!

Genosha, the island haven for mutants is destroyed by a rabid bunch of Sentinals. Prior to the whole Scarlett Witch "no more mutants" House of M thing, the destruction of Genosha caused the biggest reduction in the worlds mutant population since... well I'm not sure since when actually.

A new character that gets a decent run in New X-Men is Fantomex or Weapon XIII. Fantomex is a hybrid human/machine created as a weapon to fight the worlds mutants. His big 'power' is mis-direction. Basically this lets the writers off the hook and gives them a way of explaining any inconsistencies that may pop up in his back story.

The Stepford Cuckoos (no doubt a hat tip to the Stepford Wives) are quintuplets psychically joined. In a lot of ways each one is a mini version of Emma Frost. They play a major role in many of the story lines throughout New X-Men, as well as popping up in future X-Men stories. In the Phoenix: Warsong mini-series, the Stepford Cuckoos are revealed to be Weapon XIV (Wolverine is Weapon X), from the Weapons Plus program, and are actually clones of Emma Frost.

The new character that makes the biggest impact in New X-Men is Xorn. I've read a bit about this character online, purely just to figure out what happened post New X-Men. Xorn is a guy that supposedly has some kind of star thing in his head that can cause things to go 'boom' as well as heal people. He's supposedly Chinese, and rescued from a prison by the X-Men. Upon his rescue he is persuaded to join the group by Cyclops. He begins teaching a group of the Xavier Schools misfits.

At the conclusion of the New X-Men series the Xorn character is no more, an alias used by a major character... awe heck * spoiler warning * Xorn is revealed to be Magneto around volume 5-6 of the New X-Men trade paper backs. This all makes sense given the build up of the Xorn character. The problem is, that once New X-Men concluded, the powers that be decided they liked Xorn as Xorn, so he was introduced as character in his own right in the follow-up X-Men comics... actually reading that back it makes little sense. The problem with the whole Xorn concept is it's hard to describe without launching into a 10,000 word essay... Xorn summary, Xorn in New X-Men makes sense, Xorn following New X-Men makes zero sense.

Would I recommend New X-Men?

I'd recommend New X-Men for anyone that has been looking to get into the X-Men comics but was put off by the lycra costumes, and convoluted story lines that marked most of the 90's. If you were a fan of the X-Men films, then New X-Men is a good starting point. Grant Morrison basically rebooted the series when he took on New X-Men, with a back to basics approach with a few new elements sprinkled in to keep the existing readers interested. Give it a look, it's worth it.

X Men Legends II Nintendo Gamecube BRAND NEW SEALED

US $17.95

41m

Marvel 3 Die Cast X Men Wolverine Mini Figure MoSC NEW

US $6.95

2h 41m

FIG X Men 3 Juggernaut Bust Limited Edition NEW

US $14.58

3h 22m

Marvel X Men Digital Watch New in Box

0 Bid

US $1.99

4h 50m

UNCANNY X MEN Cos Life Hurts CD NEW

US $6.98

6h 53m

So, you're like me, a drooling geek waiting for the Dark Knight to hit cinemas. While the wait continues, there are some things you can do to pass the time, and get a Batman fix at the same time... that's right... search YouTube!

Check out this little fan boy film combining three of my favorite film franchises. Here's Batman vs. Alien vs. Predator, with special guest star, the Joker. That combination is enough to make fan boys harder than a diamond in a snow storm.

Over the past month or so I've received a few emails and private messages in forums from people asking if they can advertise one my site. Obviously I'd love to make this happen, but at the moment I don't have the know how, or the time, to sell ad space privately.

With that in mind, I've finally figured out a way to get Project Wonderful working on SwollenPickles.com. What does this mean? Well, now you can pick up a 125x125 pixel ad spot on Swollen Pickles for as low as $0.70 per day. Why 70 cents? Well I wanted to charge 75 cents, but Project Wonderful rounds to zero, so I set it to 70 cents rather than 80 cents.

Project Wonderful was a good option for me, as it means I don't have to deal with the ad management and exchange of money. That's all handled for me.

For would-be advertisers there are also benefits in having me use Project Wonderful. Firstly, it's managed by an independent third party, and is governed by Project Wonderful. Here's a summary of how the system works.

"Advertising on Swollen Pickles is offered through Project Wonderful. We bring a model of transparency and fairness to online advertising. Ads are sold through our innovative Infinite Auction model: you bid on an advertising slot, and for as long as you are the high bidder, your ad is displayed. You can bid whatever price you'd like for as long as you'd like: two days, a week, a year - it's your choice."

"All bids are in "cost per day" - you simply tell us how much you're willing to pay for a day's worth of advertising, and whenever you are the high bidder, your ad will be displayed! You're only charged for the time periods when your ad is shown. You can also set hard expense limits on your bids, so you'll never get charged more than you expect."

Secondly, Project Wonderful also allows advertisers to view certain statistics for the site they would like to advertise on.

The second advertising option on SwollenPickles.com is the ScratchBack "Tip Jar". I've moved it down the sidebar a little to give the Project Wonderful ads more prominence, and have therefore dropped the ScratchBack price accordingly, from $3.50 down to $1.50. The ScratchBack widget is set to "auto bump" meaning that your link will only stay up for as long as it takes for you to be bumped from the list. In other words the most recent 'tipper' takes the top spot, bumping everyone else down one spot, which would push the last person of the list entirely. With that being said, the 5 links that are on there right now, have been there for over a month now...

So in summary, until I'm able to figure out a simple, easy to manage, system I can use to sell ad space on my own, these are the two easiest methods to advertise your site on SwollenPickles.com.

It's no secret that I've been a big fan of WidgetBucks, and with good reason too. It's made me quite a bit of money over the past couple of months. Their affiliate program has been particularly profitable.

Unfortunately the past few weeks have not been particularly kind. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, my stats for the month of February to date are showing just 14 clicks for a total revenue of $0.00. For a pay per click program, averaging zero dollars/cents per click is obviously not a good thing. To rub further salt into the wound, the CPM ads (served to non-U.S.) traffic have made me a mammoth $0.01 for the month so far. Enough to make you cry into your coco-pops in the morning if you ask me!

I'm really hoping things take a turn for the better over the next few weeks, but sadly, as the below par days continue, my hopes of an about face slowly wither and die. Due to their strong past performance, I'm willing to give WidgetBucks a bit more time, but my patience can only extend so far. After all, delivering them thousands of impressions per day for a zero return is hardly going to help me achieve this years goals!

What have been your experiences with WidgetBucks? Have you noticed a decrease in income over the past month?

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I'd join up with "Project Wonderful" to see if it would work for me. My intention was to run a few spots on this site for a while to see how it worked, and whether or not it was worth my time and real estate. I ran into a slight snag. It seems the Project Wonderful ads widget only seems to work when it's inserted into WordPress sidebar text widgets. When entered straight into the template it does some wacky stuff with php which leads it to not display the ads, something about stripping out line breaks or something... anyway I'm sure there's a fix for it, I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

With that in mind, I decided I'd give it a shot on my Aussie Car News blog to see if it'd work over there. Took me about 2 minutes to create the widget and then I plugged it into the sidebar and I was away.

In case you don't know what Project Wonderful is about, here is a description of how their advertising sales model works:

Ads are sold through our innovative Infinite Auction model: you bid on an advertising slot, and for as long as you are the high bidder, your ad is displayed. You can bid whatever price you'd like for as long as you'd like: two days, a week, a year - it's your choice.All bids are in "cost per day" - you simply tell us how much you're willing to pay for a day's worth of advertising, and whenever you are the high bidder, your ad will be displayed! You're only charged for the time periods when your ad is shown. You can also set hard expense limits on your bids, so you'll never get charged more than you expect.

"Advertising is sold on the basis of time instead of clicks, which eliminates click fraud entirely."

source: project wonderful

I decided to set my opening bid starting price quite low, $0.10 per day for a 125 x 125 adspot. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that 10 cents per day for an ad spot on any site is a fairly good rate. The whole thing is an interesting concept, so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out for me.

I've noticed a bit of competition for the top spot (top left corner), and pretty much no competition for anywhere else, so if you want a dirt cheap ad spot, take a look at my Aussie Car News blog, or order via Project Wonderful here.