Swollen Pickles

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.

If you live in Victoria, you may have noticed WorkSafe's "graphic new ad campaign". Personally, I'm a little tired of the "graphic new ad campaign" thing, it's been done. I'd say I'm borderline desensitized. I'd prefer to see something intelligent and memorable, not disturbing and memorable. The 'shock horror' approach seems to lose it's impact after the first viewing.

In any case, not everyone wants to see someone lose their fingers on a bread slicer while they are eating a toasted cheese sandwich. WorkSafe, I'm talking to you! I sat down in front of the box to enjoy my toasted cheese, and a little time out from work, and was greeted with this nugget.

Warning: This may disturb some viewers. I do not recommend watching this if you are currently eating a sandwich.

I think you'd agree, that ad is a bit of a downer, at best. But on the bright side, it's vastly improved if you play some jaunty baking music over the top of it!

What did we learn? A jaunty tune is a powerful weapon! Use it wisely.

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.

A week ago I posted about my little Project Wonderful experiment. Basically I was wondering whether or not setting my ad spots to have a starting bid of $0.00 would have a positive impact upon my average daily bid rate.

When I started the experiment, the average bid rate for the preceding five days was $0.22. So what impact did this $0.00 experiment have on the average bid rate? Well, sadly, things dropped. For the past five days, the average bid rate per day has been $0.13. The top right hand ad spot has average over 1,600 page views per day over the same five day period. Clearly the experiment was a failure.

Sure, on the plus side it wasn't empty very often (if at all), but on the down side, sending someone away from my beautiful content rich and cognitively rewarding website for the princely sum of $0.00 is just bad for business. With that in mind, I've decided to mix things up a bit and reset the price of the ad spot. Minimum opening bid is now $1 $0.50 per day. I'll check back in seven days.

In other news, if you're an Australian, go join the Australian Survey Panel. You can get paid to do surveys and they may even send you free stuff.

Check out their site by clicking the banner below.

For those of you that think advertising is an evil bad thing, I challenge you to cop an eyeful of this billboard ad and then tell me if your opinion has changed!

This one's simple, clever and border-line NSFW, but since it was an outdoor billboard I'm going to have to go ahead and say that it must be ok.

The top image is the billboard in perfectly dry conditions, the bottom image is the same billboard after a decent down pouring of rain.
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I've decided it's time for another experiment. I've been using Project Wonderful for a while. If you're not familiar with Project Wonderful, it is a program that is free, and lets you sell your own ad spots, kind of like PerformancingAds, however Project Wonderful uses an auction based model.

Currently I have 4 125x125 ad blocks available on this site. The top one, has been set at $0.60 minimum bid per day. It gets picked up now and then, but is rarely taken day after day. This is disappointing. In the past five days, the average daily bid has been a lowly $0.22.

With that in mind, I've decided to drop the minimum bid to $0.00 for five days to see how that goes. So for the next five days, the minimum bid for the top spot on the right will be set at $0.00 per day. If you want to place a bid on the spot, visit the Project Wonderful bidding page here.

My recommendation is to quickly sign up to the PerformancingAds network and start spreading the word. They've just launched and from a publishers 'money making' perspective it often pays to get out there and be the "early adopter". WidgetBucks is a prime example for me as I was able to cash in early, and did quite well.

PerformancingAds looks like a winner for bloggers and they favour the 125x125 ad blocks that are increasingly popular, and easier to position on a page. They also pay via PayPal which is another major positive.

Here's the skinny:

Become an affiliate with PerformancingAds

How it works:

Earn $10 for each new publisher or advertiser you refer

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Massive Potential:

Let's say that you refer 2 new advertisers per month and each spends an average of $250 per month. Within 1 year, you'd be making a cool $300 per month in 100% passive income.

But wait. Let's say that you referred 5 new advertisers per month. Now you're talking over $750 per month after 1 year.

As you can see, the opportunities here are endless.

So sign-up to be an affiliate today.

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I'm excited