Swollen Pickles

As I covered yesterday, Infolinks appear to be a decent alternative to Kontera. The only problem is, their dashboard is a little light on for information, and makes it easy for people to miss some of the more useful information that they have on customizing Infolinks to get the most out of them on your site.

To find the code you need to include in the footer of your site, you need to click on 'Implementation Guide'. Once there, you have the option of copying the 'Express Installation' code, or an example of an 'Advanced Installation' code. Express is fine if you want to get things up and running and don't mind using the default parameters, but if you want to specify the number of Infolinks that will appear on a page, or help Infolinks better target ads to your content, then the 'Advanced Code' is the way to go. If you're worried about the term 'Advanced', don't be. There's nothing all that scary about it.

Here's an example of the advanced code:

As you can probably tell, this allows you to modify the link color and text color. But there are also other parameters you can modify using the same principles. Here are two of the most useful.

So you want to limit the number of Infolinks that appear on your site?

To do this you'll need to add the variable called infolink_anow. For example, if you only want a maximum of 5 infolinks to appear on a page at once you would add the following line to the advanced code just before the first closing script tag.

var infolink_anow = 5;

So that will limit the maximum number of phrases that Infolinks will underline.

So you want to specify the phrases/keywords that Infolinks will target for linking?

Same principle as above, except you'll need to add the infolink_cat variable. The infolink_cat variable can only be used/populated with the twelve categories listed below:
Adults
Arts
Automotive
Business
Computers
Games
Health
Home
Kids & Teens
News
Recreation
Reference
Science
Shopping
Society
Sports

Say, for example, you wanted to target the keywords belonging to the arts category you would use the following:

var infolink_cat = 'arts';

To summarise

If you wanted to add both the above variables, your final code would look something like this.

So that's it. Hopefully someone finds it useful. If you haven't already, go join Infolinks here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Battle of the content links

I've been using Kontera content links on a few sites for some time now, and whilst they haven't exactly set my little money making world on fire, they have proven to be a slow and steady little earner. Up until recently I'd been under the apparent misapprehension that Kontera were the only player in the content links market, but apparently I was wrong. After some research in forums I found that there was quite a bit of buzz surrounding Infolinks, with people suggesting they paid better than Kontera. Being a natural born sceptic, I decided to take a look myself.

So here's what I did. I ran Kontera on this site for five days, then switched to Infolinks for five days. Here's what I found.

Kontera (18-23 November 2008)

Total revenue: $1.83
CTR: 1.70%
CPM: $0.35

Infolinks (25-30 November 2008)

Total revenue: $3.16
CTR: 1.45%
CPM: $0.54

Kontera links seem to load up slightly quicker than Infolinks, but based on the figures above, Infolinks have the edge in terms of CPM. Kontera seem to have the edge when it comes to reporting, and I have multiple sites setup with Kontera, whereas I'm not sure how to add sites to my Infolinks account (I haven't discovered if that option exists). Both companies have a $100 minimum payout threshold, so there's no difference there.

I may try the same experiment on one of my other sites to see if the results are the same... if I can figure out how to track individual sites with Infolinks that is.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Amazon affiliate program now lets you create your own 'Deal of the Day' widget, that'll showcase one of their... take a guess... that's right, deals of the day. It updates itself, so it's one of those set and forget kind of things. Perfect for a lazy person.

There are a few different options and sizes you can play around with. The example below is designed to sit in a sidebar and is 160px wide and 400px high. Perfect for blogs.

If your looking for something different from the Amazon affiliate program go log in to your dashboard and give the Deal widget a look.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Looking for a way to wring a few more bucks out of your website? Here's an idea worth considering.

LinkBucks is a unique service that allows you to earn money from your out bound links. Let's face it, if a user is clicking on an outbound link on your site, they are leaving, you may as well earn a little from their departure.

Here's the LinkBucks hard sell taken from their website:

Web users: get paid to share your links

Every funny video, file, or web page that you've ever linked to is making money for someone. Linkbucks rewards the people that make the web possible by giving them a share of the advertising dollars that their links generate.

About Us

We aren't a fly-by-night or a startup -- Linkbucks was started in late 2005 and has been going strong ever since. We have never missed a payment, and have been a solid partner for our advertisers.

To be honest, I hadn't heard of them until a week ago, but sign up was quick, easy and free, so I figure they are worth a shot. I'm trialling them on a low traffic site at the moment to see how they go. In my opinion, LinkBucks would be perfect for any site that relies on outbound links for a bulk of its content. For example, imagine a web site that was basically an image gallery with thumbnail images that when users click on, are taken to the high resolution versions stored on Imagevenue or something similar.

Something like this:

...etc, etc... I'm sure you get the idea. Anyhow, LinkBucks allow you create single links (one at a time), multiple links or give you a script you can place prior to the closing body tag on your website that will automatically convert all out bound links to LinkBucks links. You can also specify URLs you want to exclude from converting which is useful if you have other forms of advertising on your site.

LinkBucks is similar to Ucash.in except that I prefer LinkBucks. One of the benefits of LinkBucks is that it features a greater number of options, however on the downside it only offers three levels of referrals as opposed to Ucash.In which goes down to 10 levels of referral.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I'm not sure that anyone out there actually cares, but a week ago I extended my ProjectWonderful experiment to try and figure out how to get the most out of my ad block and find the optimum pricing level. During the first week of the experiment I set the opening bid at $0.00 to see if that would encourage more, higher priced bidding. After a five day period the average bid rate per day over that time period was $0.13. Fairly disappointing.

So I decided to up the ante a bit and for the past week or so I've set the opening bid to $0.50. So what has been the average bid rate per day over the last five days? $0.33. Over that same period, the ad spot averaged 1,898 page views per day. Still, hardly impressive in dollar (or cent) terms.

I realise my experiment was hardly scientific, and is probably not even close to achieving 'statistical significance' but never the less, I think I'm able to draw a conclusion. What did I learn? Setting your ad block to open at $0.00 will only encourage a lot of low bidding. My recommendation is if you are wanting to earn from ProjectWonderful, find that minimum price point your happy with and set your opening bid to that.

Go predict how many copies of the Guns 'n' Roses album will be sold in the first week of release. It's the earth shattering question I've posed on Predictify.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I have some questions.

1. Are you Australian? If you answered yes, go to question 2. If you answered no, click here.

2. Do you have opinions? If yes, go to question 3. If no, follow this guy's lead.

3. Do companies currently give you money and stuff for your opinions? If yes, good for you tiger. If no, read on...

I'm beginning to see an increased number of survey companies based in Australia looking for people to join their panels in return for compensation of different sorts. In other words, you do surveys, and they give you stuff. It's simple, and somewhat entertaining.

Here's a couple for you to consider.

Survey Villiage

Voice your opinion and be rewarded by Survey Village. It’s free to join and no cost to participate. Choose your reward from a choice of 12 online and high street stores. Plus there are monthly $200 dollar gift voucher giveaways.

I think their link speaks volumes.

Valued Opinions

Do you want to become an opinion leader? Join Valued Opinions. Give your opinion and get paid!

I'm not so fussed about the opinion leader part, but the money... mmmm... money...

Light Speed Panel

No rules or expectations. You have your say. Take online surveys and earn rewards, but, more importantly, have your opinions count. Join now for a chance to win $1,500.

Rewards, plus registering their now will put you in the draw for $1,500. Plus, the banner ad looks nice.

Australia Survey Panel

An oldie but a goodie, and very 'stralian.

On that note I'm off, however I'll leave you with one final thought (since you've read this far). My opinion is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In case you are looking to make a little extra money, WidgetBucks are offering a $25 sign up bonus for all new publishers.

According to their blog, this promotion is to celebrate the first birthday of WidgetBucks and will run until the end of October.

Here's what they have to say:

"They say that time flies when you're having fun -- and in a flash, WidgetBucks has just completed its first year. To celebrate our first anniversary, we're reinstating our sign-up bonus that we offered during the first three months for all new publishers: $25 bonus when your account reaches $50."

Initially I did quite well out of WidgetBucks, but things tailed off after a while. They have introduced a range of new widgets though, which look a lot more interesting than the old ones, so they may be worth another look.

If you want the $25 sign up bonus, go join now!

Even if you don't want to join, go take a look at the pretty picture of the cup cake on their front page. It's nice.

Popularity: 1% [?]