Swollen Pickles

March flew by quicker than Superman during sexy time. This months goal update is fairly brief seeing as though I struggled to get it done on schedule, so here t'is.

Goal Number One: Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that can generate $350US per month.

Slight improvement here in relation to the past couple of months. The site brought in $164.20US in March, up from $138.24 in February and $112.77 in January.

Goal Number Two: Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that receives 35,000 unique visits per month.

March was a good month traffic wise with Swollen Pickles nudging past the target mark. There were 36,657 unique visitors in March, up from 32,627 in February.

Goal Number Three: Exercise a minimum of three times per week (30 plus minutes per session).

I missed one session in March due to an unforeseen commitment I unwittingly became committed to.

Goal Number Four: Achieve a Body Mass Index (BMI) within the "Normal" range (from 18.5 to 25).

I'm slowly getting closer to my goal. In February I was 28.6, at the end of March I was 28.5. I started the year at 29.

Goal Number Five: Reduce my waist measurement to below 94cm.

I've still too lazy to source a large enough tape measure. My bad.

Here's some good news for anyone that's looking to make a little extra cash online. WidgetBucks have increased their referral payouts to 15 per cent. In other words you earn a 15 per cent referral fee based on commissions earned by the publishers that you refer. This 15 per cent referral offer runs for the first 12 months after your referred member joins.

Now's a good time to get on board WidgetBucks as the company has just launched what they are calling "YieldSense". YieldSense works behind the scenes to optimize your WidgetBucks widgets to maximizes the rate of return.

So, go join WidgetBucks now, create some groovy widgets, and start making some money.

In my eternal quest to make this site profitable I'm trialling a new program called LinkShowOff.

The LinkShowOff program allows you to run a simple javascript based widget on your site (eg. your blog's side bar) and earn money when someone purchases a link in your widget. LinkShowOff is said to be Google safe as all links sold are 'nofollow' as per Google's guidelines.

You can set the price per link to your liking, however the lowest you can set it at is $1. I've decided to leave my price at the lowest possible for the time being at least in order to gauge demand.

For bloggers, LinkShowOff is a good option as they allow all sorts of blogs, including those hosted by blogger (eg. blogspot), into their network. As they say, "as long as you can add a JavaScript widget to your website, you can use LinkShowOff".

For potential advertisers LinkShowOff is worth investigating because the system allows advertisers to buy link spots without the need to go through any sort of registration process.

Here are some of the key FAQ's from the LinkShowOff website:

How long do links stay on the widget?

Links stay on the widget forever until they are bumped off by newer links. For example, if you set a max amount of five links on your widget and you achieve that
number, the next link bought will take the place of the first link, the first link will be bumped down to the second link, and so on. The fifth link would be removed
overall from the widget.

Are there any fees or revenue sharing?

We charge a small fixed transaction fee of $3 on every payout made monthly to our widget users, but that’s it. For example, if you earn a total sum of $100, you will be paid $97.

What are the payment methods?

All payments will be made by Paypal.

What's the minimum payout limit?

The minimum payout limit is $10.

Is there any referral system?

Yes, you will get $3 for every referral that earns $3.

Another good reason to register your blog with LinkShowOff is that upon registration you get a free link in the LinkShowOff directory. The directory is free from the 'nofollow' tag so it's a nice little bonus for those that are link obsessed.

I've only had the widget live for less than 24 hours, so it's early days at the moment. If you'd like to check out LinkShowOff, register your website here.

As the door closes on 2008, it also close on another 12 months of the Swollen Pickles goal project. It's been a big year, with some decent gains made in some areas, and some disappointments in others.

Join me, as I take a look at how I went in December 2008.

1. Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that can generate $350 per month.

To say that the past couple of months have been disappointing is probably an understatement. In November 2008 SwollenPickles.com limped to $98.55. December 2008 saw revenue increase to $121.83 for the month. I'm not much of a mathematician, but I doubt that increase is statistically significant.

I made ten bucks from AdBrite this month. I have set up AdBrite to run as an alternative to Adsense if no Adsense ads are able to be displayed.

2. Develop Swollen Pickles to the point where it receives 30,000 unique visits per month.

A grand total of 27,048 unique patrons stopped by in December 2008, up slightly from 25,101 unique visitors in November.

Here's a graph showing unique visits to this site for the past 2 years, comparing actual traffic to my target.

3. Develop Digital Burn into a website that can generate $150 per month.

December 2008 saw DigitalBurn nudge past is revenue goal, bringing in $159.54 for the month, well up on the $70.51 for November 2008.

4. Develop Digital Burn to the point where it receives 15,000 unique visits per month.

Another traffic increase, with 13,028 unique visits to the site in December 2008 up from 11,284 in November.

The first full month of statistics tracking on DigitalBurn for a couple of months. There were 11,284 unique visitors in November.

5. Develop Motor Dude into a website that can generate $50 per month.

A record high month for MotorDude.com, with the site generating $229 for December, up on $151.92 in November, and well over the goal I set at the start of the year of $50 per month.

6. Develop Motor Dude to the point where it receives 7,500 unique visits per month.

MotorDude.com seems to be proving that it is possible to do quite a bit with very little. There were only 697 unique visitors to the site in December, down from 740 in November.

7. Achieve my goal weight of 85kgs.

In a case of better late than never, the start of December saw me start up at a gym for three visits a week. While I know it's still early days, and my work hasn't really impacted on the scales, I think I can say that I actually feel better for it.

In summary 2008 was an interesting year for me and my little goal experiment. Besides the revenue generated by MotorDude I can't really say that I hit any of my goals for six (or out of the park - depending upon where you are from), but I can say that they gave me something to aim for. It's funny how things pan out, as I started 2008 with SwollenPickles.com as my 'flagship' and number one earner. At the end of 2008 that was no longer the case. It's left me scratching my head a little. On the one hand, I'm glad that a couple of other sites have developed the way they have, on the other, I'm disappointed SwollenPickles.com didn't live up to its financial promise in 2008.

I'm yet to sit down and think about what goals I should set/work on for 2009... any suggestions?

I'll be honest, when I first read about Infolinks in various forums, I was more than a little sceptical. Whenever a new advertising program kicks off, it's not unusual for discussion boards to become flooded with people spouting off about the overwhelming success they are having with the next big thing, no doubt in the hope of building a few solid referrals to their affiliate link. Never the less, I took the bait, and signed up to Infolinks, because a) these things interest me, and b) if it pays off I can use the money.

In the interests of disclosure, yes, I would love for you to join up to Infolinks using my affiliate link, but that's not the only reason I'm writing this. I'm happy to report that Infolinks has actually worked for me. It's making me money, and if it's working for me, then it can work for you too!

If you're not familiar with Infolinks, they provide 'next generation' in-text advertising. From a layman's point of view they appear similar to Kontera, however, from what I can tell, and the this is the most important point from a publishers point of view, they pay more! By way of comparison, from the 1 July 2008 - 30 November 2008 I was averaging $0.72 eCPM with Kontera. My average eCPM with Infolinks so far is $3.01.

I've implemented Infolinks here and on another site and they providing a return that puts them on a par with Google Adsense. Here's a screen shot of the last seven days.

Here's the sales pitch from InfoLinks:

Infolinks presents the next generation of In-Text Advertising, leading the industry with the most relevant in-text advertising links and the highest revenue share - guaranteed.

Quick and easy setup with no changes to your website
Ads are tightly integrated with your content - no additional space required
Free sign up with no commitments or risk
User triggered, less intrusive advertising that won’t distract from your site’s content
Highly relevant In-Text ads for your site visitors with record high conversion rates

Are you an Online Publisher? Join us now and start linking text to revenue today.

The Infolinks platform is open to any online publisher, big or small, with no sign up fees, hidden commitments or minimum requirements for page views or visitors. So it's definitely worth a look for anyone with their own blog or site, large or small. Infolinks have definitely thrown down the gauntlet, and Kontera are really going to have to step up if they want to maintain their publisher base.

Would I recommend Infolinks? At this point in time, heck yes.

November is traditionally a very busy month for me, and 2008 was no exception. I say this, because basically I spent very little time on any of my websites, so I guess I should be grateful that they made anything at all! Enough of the rambling, the goal project keeps on keeping on...

1. Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that can generate $350 per month.

What's that smell? Oh, that's just the chances of SwollenPickles.com reaching it's goal turning to crap. For the second month in a row, SwollenPickles.com failed to even scrape past the $100 mark. Total revenue for November was $98.55. Maybe it's the financial crisis?

Small figures across the board, with Commission Monster and MoreNiche both contributing this month.

2. Develop Swollen Pickles to the point where it receives 30,000 unique visits per month.

Edging closer to the target, with 25,101 unique visitors in November up from 23,996 in October.

3. Develop Digital Burn into a website that can generate $150 per month.

There was a massive nose dive here as well, with November seeing $70.51, well down on the $200+ from October. The big difference here was the eBay Partner Network (EPN). There were some well documented issues with the EPN reporting in November. DigitalBurn made $0 from EPN in November, which has not happened since I started using them, and well below the $100+ from last month. I've emailed EPN support so I'll see what they say and whether there's a problem.

4. Develop Digital Burn to the point where it receives 15,000 unique visits per month.

The first full month of statistics tracking on DigitalBurn for a couple of months. There were 11,284 unique visitors in November.

5. Develop Motor Dude into a website that can generate $50 per month.

After a whoop ass September, where this site brought in a grand total of $151.92, MotorDude.com managed to better that figure in October, bringing in $192.99.

6. Develop Motor Dude to the point where it receives 7,500 unique visits per month.

MotorDude stunk up the place in terms of traffic, with a more than mediocre 740 unique visits in November. There's a lot of competition in the automotive website world, and there are a lot of people that do it better than I do, so I shouldn't be surprised. My post on the Shelby GT500 Super Snake is by far the most popular post over there.

7. Achieve my goal weight of 85kgs.

* crickets chirping *

In summary, maybe you do get out what you put in?

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.