Ah YouTube is a beautiful thing. A great place to pass the time if there is nothing fit to occupy you on TV. This little compilation I present to you today includes music, global warming, driving, and midgets.

I caught the under the radar comedy 'Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story'. Highly under rated. Here's a clip of Dewey Cox going through his Bob Dylan faze, writing songs, and singing for the little people.

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Yesterday my Bidvertiser experiment was upgraded to debacle status, now I'm upgrading it to 'balls' status. In case you can't be bother reading yesterdays post, basically Bidvertiser accused me of generating 'invalid' clicks, which is how they justified the 1 in 10,000 click through rate. According to them, only one click was deemed to be valid (a $0.03 click mind you). I fired back a response asking them to explain how it was possible for me to generate invalid clicks when I knew without a doubt that I'd done nothing wrong. I also asked them on what ground the clicks I generated had been found to be invalid.
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The Bidvertiser experiment has turned into a debacle. After 5 days I had delivered 10,000 impressions. These 10,000 impressions earned 1 click for a grand total of $0.03. Wanting to give them every chance of success I emailed Bidvertiser asking if there was anything wrong with my account, and whether or not clicks were being recorded correctly.

Here's an extract from the reply I received:

We have reviewed your account´s activity and your valid clicks are counted as needed. However, we have also detected invalid clicks generated from your ads, while invalid clicks may lead to account termination.

Quite frankly, this pi$$ed me off. I'm not an idiot. I know not to click my own ads, I know not to ask people to do it for me. I've been using Adsense for a few years now without issue. How they decide what an 'invalid' click is, is beyond me. So I replied:

I have never clicked on my own ads.
I have never asked anyone to click my ads.
I don't use popups.

With that said, I do not see how it is possible for me to be generating invalid clicks? On what ground are clicks I'm generating determined to be invalid?

Now I sit and wait, hoping for a response that is not auto generated.

Now if I were to use a conservative click through rate of 0.3%, which is probably below the industry standard you'd expect from ads that mimic adsense, I should have generated at least 30 legitimate clicks by now. But according to Bidvertiser, my "legitimate" CTR is currently sitting at 0.01%.

At this stage if I were to ask myself the question, is Bidvertiser a suitable replacement for Adsense? The answer would have to be a resounding NO!

As I sit watching paint dry, eagerly awaiting my seven day bidvertiser experiment to reach it's conclusion I've become reflective. In the past twelve months or so, I've joined a number of programs with the intention of making some cash from them. Some have been winners, some have been stinkers. But it's always nice to log into an affiliate program after a lengthy absence to find that you've made some 'surprise' money.

The first one, is Deal Dot Com. In it's start up stage there were a few high flyers that apparently did quite well with this program targeting the "Make Money Online" market. Unfortunately I wasn't one of them. To make decent money from Deal Dot Com, you need to be good at building referrals. The cool thing about Deal Dot Com is that you can have direct referrals (tier one) but also second level referrals (tier two).

"You get paid 35% of DealDotCom’s profit for every item that they buy. If someone you referred to DealDotCom refers someone else, you get paid 15% of DealDotCom’s profit every time they buy something for the rest of your life."

Unfortunately, I've never been good at building massive referral numbers, so I haven't made my Deal Dot Com fortune. Still, I was glad to see that my single digit referral brought me in $3.50 the other day! Thanks whoever you are, it paid for my coffee! The other beauty of Deal Dot Com was that it costs nothing to join, so there's nothing to lose. Easy.

Seriously though, if you've go a large network that's interested in making money online (and the associated products) you should give Deal Dot Com a look, they have a facebook plugin now as well, which makes it even easier for you.

The one that has really surprised me though is the phpBay Pro affiliate program. phpBay Pro is an awesome piece of programming, so I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to anyone looking to integrate eBay auction into their site. I use phpBay Pro three sites, and it's the best $49 I've spent. To give you an idea, in this month alone, I've passed the $170 mark (see requisite screen shot below). That's $170 from very little effort. I'm guessing that's why phpBay Pro is an easy sell, and explains why I've made $90 from affiliate sales in the last 6 weeks.

The phpBay Pro affiliate program is a good one because it pays $14.70 for every $49 sale. That's a pretty decent cut if you ask me! What's been my strategy? Buying phpBay Pro, using it, proving it works, and then telling people how good it is. I should write a book!

Not an affiliate program as such, but I made a nice buck from picking the 2008 NBA Champions over at Predictify. I gazed into the crystal ball and picked the Boston Celtics a month or two back, and they got over the line, and helped me buy another coffee. I'm glad I couldn't disagree with Boston fan boy Blankshooting.

After seeing the new Incredible Hulk movie I'm glad to report that it went a long way toward righting the wrongs committed by the 2003 Ang Lee atrocity. Edward Norton was excellent as Bruce Banner, and a much better fit for the character than Eric Bana was. Banner is weedy, vulnerable, but underneath it all, you can tell he's got some hardcore repressed anger issues.

The story starts with Banner on the run, and hiding from the US military, and trying to find a cure for his little problem. It's not long before he's tracked down, and following a tussle with some crack special forces, including ring in Tim Roth, Banner Hulk's up, busts loose and head for home. » Read the rest of the entry..

SwollenPickles.com has averaged over 20,000 unique visits a month for a while now, and whilst I'm happy with that, I'm also disappointed that my adsense earnings haven't increased in proportion to visits. For example, in May this site had 22,302 unique visits yet made only $23.89 from adsense. Even with my dodgy math skills I can tell you that is less than a dollar a day. All this has me thinking that perhaps the glory days of adsense are well behind us, and that I've missed the boat. It's also got me looking around at alternatives.

After seeing BidVertiser used on a number of other sites, I thought the time was right for me to give it a shot. I've setup up an account and have it running on SwollenPickles.com as well as my little car site. I'm giving it a trial until the end of the month, if it can average over a $1 a day on SwollenPickles.com I may well decide to keep it in place of adsense. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. One good point about Bidvertiser is that they payout via PayPal, with a $10 minimum payout level. » Read the rest of the entry..

On one of the many MSN blogs this evening I spotted a list of some of the worst tattoos of all time. Worst of all time is a very big call, but I'd have to agree, there were some dodgy tatts amongst the group.

Rather than force loyal readers to wade through the muck, I thought I'd post a few of the best from that list, as well as some others that, whilst not on the list, perhaps should have been.

Let's begin with this little gem. Someone obviously thought it'd be a good idea to commemorate one of Britney's public melt downs by getting some ink done. » Read the rest of the entry..