I have a site that I am trying to rank in Google for a certain keyword phrase (whitehat only) that is constantly shifting. One hour I’ll be at position 6, the next hour I’ll be 15, then 11, then 9, then 3, etc. I have done everything in my power to properly SEO my site to rank for this keyword phrase. I also have plenty of inbound links from sites in my niche with this keyword phrase as my anchor. In fact, I have far more backlinks than my competition. I just don’t get how Google decides to rank at times…

It frustrates me to no end that it won’t stay in any one position for more than a few hours at a time despite the fact I add relevant content on a regular basis and keep my link building campaign steady. But, it’s not all bad.

You see, in all this SERP bouncing, I have discovered something that I found rather interesting. It’s probably not the case in every niche, but for this niche it seems to be pretty consistent.

I get more traffic when I’m at the top of page 2 (rank 11) then I do when I’m at the bottom of page 1 (ranks 7-10). Maybe surfers browse through the first few results on page 1 and then get impatient and click over to page 2. I’m at the top so they just click it. Who knows?

So, to break it down:

• Great traffic = Rank 1 to 6
• Good traffic = Rank 11
• Okay traffic = Rank 7 to 10
• Bad traffic = 12 and higher

As you can see, this doesn’t occur when I’m in position 12, 13, etc. It ONLY happens at 11. I just find this interesting and thought I would share.

So kids, if you can’t be number 1-6, be number 11.

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Adengage is migrating data and has been having some problems lately due to this move. Instead of keeping everyone in the dark about it (like most networks would) they sent out an email where they let everyone know exactly what’s up - and then throw out some kickass freebies.

Why can’t more companies be like this? Here an excerpt from the email:

We know that service disruptions cause significant issues for both our advertisers and publishers and would like to offer the following compensation:

All time based ads that were running this morning will be extended for an additional 24 hours. If your ad expired at some point today, it will be reactivated and then expire again after the additional 24 hours. The technical issues that we experienced did not affect CPC advertisers, as no clicks were billed during the downtime.

All Publishers will receive one full day’s credit of extra earnings at the end of the month. We will calculate the day’s credit by taking 1/31 of your earnings for the month of May and adding this to your next payment. We will be issuing this during our payment cycle which occurs on June 16th.

As someone who has quite a few ads running with them right now, it gives me confidence knowing I’m working with a network who actually appreciates their adverisers and publishers.

MyOwnDemon out.

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After a couple weeks of testing, I am proud to report I have increased my Adsense earnings by over 200%. And I did it with link units.

To be honest, I always thought link units were worthless. A visitor has to click twice for you to earn any revenue, so I figured why bother? I have never used link units on any of my sites. Ever.

The other day I was running out of ideas as far as placement and sizes, so I figured I might as well test out a link unit on my highest traffic site to see if it would perform. I replaced my 728×90 horizontal ad unit at the top of the site with a link unit. I set it up and let it sit for 24 hours. This site gets a good amount of traffic, so it would be sufficient for 24-hour testing purposes.

The next day, I checked my adsense stats and was greeted with a higher than normal earnings for the day. And it was all due to that one little link unit. I can’t say what the CTR was (Adsense policy, not mine), but it was double digits.

I quickly set up link units and scattered them all over my other sites. Adsense allows up to 3 per page, so go crazy with it. My adsense earnings are at 200% compared to what they were 2 weeks ago, and staying pretty steady. And all the clicks are coming from these link units.

Now, I’m not saying stick link units all over your pages just for the sake of having them (just like regular ad units, it ain’t gonna work), but if you can find good placement for them and integrate them flawlessly into your site design, you will be richly rewarded by the Adsense gods.

Okay, that’s all for now. Go forth, my children, and use this information to your advantage.

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A while back, Adsense changed their ad unit format so that the entire ad unit was no longer clickable. Now, just the actual title and url link in the ad can be clicked. The entire middle “content/description” portion of the ad is no longer clickable. I have a feeling this one little change is the biggest factor in lowering alot of publishers’ CTRs.

Another thing that irritates me about Adsense at the moment is those little arrows they decided to put on every ad unit. While they’re not overly intrusive, they basically make your nicely blended adsense unit appear more like an ad. In the event someone actually decides to use the arrows to browse more ads (I have no idea why anyone would), they sure as hell aren’t scrolling over into more expensive ads. The first ad shown will most likely always get you the highest paying click — so, in theory, the more someone scrolls, the less you’re likely to earn when they do click.

After these incredibly stupid changes were made, the sites I did have making a few bucks per day with Adsense are now only making a dollar or so. I figure sooner or later Adsense will change these things back when they realize it’s hurting their bottom line, but in the meantime, publishers will remain frustrated with their lowered Adsense revenues.

You’d think a company that earns a majority of their revenue through their Adsense/Adwords advertising platform would think about these things in more detail before they go into effect. After all, they earn money from every click - just like we do.

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Anyway, I got an idea of a simple way you could potentially use it as a small traffic generator, or possibly even indirectly monetize it. As a quick side note though, I don’t think this site has enough of a userbase of people swapping files to really make this profitable or push much traffic, so this is just more of an idea rather than something you should actually try.

First of all, you could do one of the following…
1. Write a crappy ebook about anything you want. Stuff it with aff links. Give it some catchy title that would make people want to read it.

2. Watermark your URL onto a funny picture.

3. Even simply type your URL and save it as a text file. You never know, someone might get curious and check it out.

Next, Automate the swap…

(I’m not a coder by any means, but I am guessing this would be pretty basic)

Now that you have this watermarked file or ebook or whatever, just write a script that “swaps” your file automatically every 5-10 minutes or so. I figure any more “swaps” than that and you might set off some flags, given the size of the site.

Also, if you uploaded “yourfile.jpg”, you can’t upload that same file again. Since you cannot upload the same file name twice, make sure your script alters your file name to a unique name each time you swap.

There are no captchas on the site that I encountered. So, just make sure the script discards whatever crap you get back in the swap, and just let it run.

Alrite, that’s all for today. I hope somebody found this rambling useful.

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It all started back in 1998, when Alexa launched their first toolbar which allowed people to see the popularity (Alexa ranking) of any given website they visited. When a surfer had the toolbar installed, Alexa would track the sites they visited and compare this data with other surfers to determine which sites on the internet were most popular. Basically, if someone had the toolbar installed and visited your website, it would improve your site’s ranking.

Since, I’m guessing,  a majority of casual internet users didn’t use the Alexa toolbar, this ranking was somewhat skewed and flawed as it couldn’t possibly record all traffic on the entire internet. The data was only coming from a limited amount of toolbar users who probably frequented the same sites again and again.

Back in the early days of Alexa (and up until rather recently) it was also very, very easy to artificially improve your rankings. In it’s early stages, Alexa didn’t count hits based on unique IP, so you could visit your site multiple times daily with the toolbar installed and acheive a better rank. Some people even wrote scripts that would refresh their homepage every minute or so to make it look like their site had more traffic than it actually did. Now, Alexa has since improved their algorithim to count unique IPs as one visit only, so this gaming method doesn’t work anymore unless someone has access to a bunch of unique IPs.

But don’t be so quick to brush Alexa off because of it’s rocky past. They seem to be getting better and more accurate than ever before, and that’s good news for people who closely monitor their rank on a daily basis.

With the new algorithim, Alexa claims it now draws it’s traffic from several different sources to give a more accurate reading. As a result, you’ve probably noticed your Alexa rankings change dramatically over the past week (for better or worse) as this new system is slowly being put into place. Alexa also claims they are not only updating current ranks, but they are updating historical data as well. Since your ranking is really made up of present AND past ranks, this should get pretty interesting in the coming weeks.

While I still feel Alexa isn’t a completely foolproof way to measure the popularity of a site, I do think it’s a valuable tool and probably one of the best at what it sets out to do. With every new algorithim, they are definitely improving and evolving, so I believe Alexa rank may live up to it’s legendary hype eventually.

A lot of people who buy and sell websites, ad space, and traffic still use Alexa rank as a way to gauge a site’s worth, so it is important in that respect.  It’s pretty commonplace for people to only buy sites with good Alexa ranks or only buy ads on sites that have great rankings. Like it or not, your site is constantly being judged by that little blue bar.

Based on the changes Alexa is making now and the momentum they’re gaining in the tech savvy communities, I have a feeling they may become more important than ever before.

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The first mistake a lot of people make when using traffic sources such as AdEngage, AdBrite, etc. is that they log in, don’t look around, and simply buy a bulk traffic package. Do NOT buy the bulk traffic packages. Ever. AdEngage has a great setup where you can pick and choose sites to run your ads on, so why would you settle for the bulk package? When you pick this bulk package, your ads will run on any site in their network, no matter the content, traffic, country of origin, or quality of the site. You will have no control over where your ad is shown. It’s useless. Don’t do it.

When finding sites to target, do your research and take your time. Browse through ALL the publishers in their network (yes, even the ones at the end of the search results, ya lazy bastard). Pay special attention to the CPC and repurchase rates. Compare these to the weekly cost of the ad. Some simple math will tell you if an ad purchase is worth it or not. There might be alot of shit sites, but if you are patient enough to sift through it, you WILL find some gems. If you’re going to be buying an ad to send to an affiliate offer at least make the effort to target a site related to that offer. I know this is common sense to most people, but some people just buy the cheapest ads they can find on some non-english site in Korea and then get pissed when it doesn’t convert. Durrrr.

As a personal example, I found a site in the AdEngage network that is a dress up site for kids. You basically get to customize cartoon characters and then you can dress them up, play with them, etc. So, I logged into one of my affiliate networks and grabbed a linking code for the Zwinky offer and threw together a landing page. I figured a Zwinky offer on a dress up site would do really well. And it did. The ad cost me like $5 to run for the entire week. Zwinky paid $3 per conversion. Needless to say, I made quite a nice chunk of change and ROI was through the roof. I milked this ad for a few weeks and then moved onto other things using the same logic.

Which brings me to my next point. AdEngage traffic is absolutely dirt cheap. You can buy a few thousand unique visitors (or more) for around $10 if you target the right sites. I found one publisher that only charged $2 per week for an ad. They consistently sent me over 1k unique visitors every single week without fail. Not a bad bounce rate either. Most of these visitors even stuck around and clicked their way through my sites. A lot even clicked my ads. I was earning more than I was spending and my sites were staying traffic heavy.

Another thing you can leverage to your advantage is the photo ad feature. Not only do you get room for some ad copy, you also get to attach a small thumbnail photo to your ad. The possibilities for traffic here are endless folks, especially if you’re buying an ad on a Teen rated site. Write up some attractive ad copy, slap on a picture of a hot girl in a bikini - and watch the traffic roll in. Now, granted, that might be deceptive advertising and not get you the best quality traffic, but I use that method time after time to jumpstart my new sites or give a new breath of life into my neglected sites. If you’re just looking for raw traffic to inflate your numbers, it’s the way to go. I can also think of a few Blackhat type things you could do with this traffic (and I have), but we’ll save that for another post.

And last but certainly not least, practice common sense when choosing offers to run. Some offers will just not convert no matter how hard you try. If it helps at all, I’ve had success on AdEngage with ringtones, zwinky, screensavers, and things of that nature. A majority of the publishers on AdEngage are entertainment and video sites, so keep that in mind. I know enough about the traffic to know I wouldn’t ever try to run things like mortgage and insurance ads. Stick to trendy, fun offers and you should do well.

Bottom line - with a little research, AdEngage can provide you with cheap, quality traffic. But, they’re not going to hand it to you on a silver platter. You’re going to have to do a little digging while you scope out publishers and separate the good from the bad. Then you’re going to have to try these publishers out by purchasing ads and then determine which ones send quality and which ones send crap. It’s a mixed bag, and it’s a lot of work. But, at the end of the day, it’s worth it. I guarantee you can earn more than you spend on AdEngage with a little research and patience.

So, the people who are bitching and complaining about getting poor quality traffic from AdEnage are the noobs buying bulk traffic packages and not targetting their ads to the proper sites. They’re probably also the same people using shitty boring, ad copy about a US ringtone offer and expect it to convert on a site about Asian travel. It ain’t gonna work.

That’s all for today, people. Take care and cya next time.

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Let me show you a well-known example of domain hacking in action: del.icio.us

Notice how they make use of the letters in both the subdomain (del) and domain extension (.us) to form a recognizable word? They form this domain name by “hacking” (think splitting with an axe) up a keyword. It’s pretty clever, and a lot of people don’t think to do that when they’re searching for domains names.

Since not many people think like this, you can use domain hacking in almost any niche to still grab some nice looking names.

I’m sure you can all connect the dots from here, so I’m not going to ramble on about in some long ass, winded post. Just keep it in mind the next time you purchase a domain name, and you might be able to get some better names than you thought if you’re willing to think a little outside the box.

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If Origins turned out like the other games in the series, I knew it was going to be one hell of a great game. Well… it was. And it wasn’t. At times.

You play the game as Travis Grady, a truck driver who “accidently” ends up in Silent Hill. As the game progresses, you learn more about Travis’s past and the history of the town itself - and in true Silent Hill fashion, the real story is revealed only in small layers and little clues dropped along the way. As Travis, you’ll travel around the town of Silent Hill, visiting different areas, solving cryptic puzzles and fighting with some truly disturbing monsters.

The first 10 minutes or so into the game, it feels like a Silent Hill game should. A creepy intro, the (superior) haunting music, and gritty graphics. 25 minutes in and you hit your first clever puzzle. Everything seems eeriely similar and you feel like you are back in that “sleepy” little town once again - ready to brave it’s demons and secrets.

There were some really good parts to this game and most of the gameplay mechanics and puzzles were very well done. Using mirrors to travel back and forth to the Otherworld and Mistyworld was one of the game’s crowning achievements and a nice breath of fresh air into the series. Being able to throw objects at monsters was also a nice addition.

Despite being a great game overall, I feel the main flaw in this game is the camera. It just cannot be ignored. I’m sure if you play Origins, you’ll quickly agree it’s one of the worst cameras in any video game you’ve ever played. It would constantly switch angles on me at all the worst times. I know it was done to add suspense to the game blah blah blah, but it made it hard to see certain things like important items you’re supposed to pick up. I also died on more than one occassion because I couldn’t even see the monsters attacking me no matter how much I manuvered Travis around the room. Still, don’t let the camera keep you from enjoying this game. It’s still playable on all accounts.

One thing I just didn’t understand about the game is the complete rarity of health items and ammo. Yet, somehow, the game still manages to have five different gun types. There’s little ammo for them so why even bother putting them in the game? For example, there’s a gun called The Reedemer, but good luck finding bullets for it. A few rounds and you’re done.

The developers, again, probably did this to increase the feeling of dread by forcing the player to ration health items and ammo as they explored the town - but I think in this case it does more harm than good. The melee weapons, however, are plentiful and scattered everywhere. There’s nothing like smashing a monster with a toaster or typewriter or smacking a monster with a shovel or pool stick. This game is definitely more action oriented than the other Silent Hill games, even though there is only half as much health items and ammo.

The presence of monsters is kind of imbalanced too. At some points there are way more monsters in this game than there needs to be (and at other points not enough and you’ll go 20 minutes without a confrontation). My biggest gripe is they’re either constantly taking cheap shots by appearing right when you enter a room (you have literally no time to react) or they gang up on you in groups of 2 or 3. You will take alot of damage from these surprise attacks, yet you have to ration very little health items. It did kind of become frustrating after a while not being able to take much damage, but you’ll get used to it as you go and learn to avoid a majority of the monsters.

If you’re thinking about conserving ammo and health for boss fights, however, I wouldn’t sweat it. These were the easiest boss fights in any of the Silent Hill games and didn’t really provide any kind of substantial challenge (the end boss was the easiest one and I only fought with melee weapons). To put it bluntly, I beat every single boss on my first try without taking any damage in most cases. Way too easy.

On the bright side, these monsters and bosses are very well designed and come in many different shapes and sizes so you’ll still have that good Silent Hill scare of “What the hell is that?” everytime you enter a new area. In fact, most of this game looks great from the nicely rendered cutscenes all the way to the levels designed for perfect flow. The theatre level is absolutely beautiful and has to be played to be believed. Alot of thought went into that particular part of the game.

As a final note, one thing I noticed about this game (that might anger some veterans of the series) is that is has no difficulty settings. In games such as SH2 and SH3, you could choose Easy, Normal, or Hard for the action AND puzzles. While it was kind of sad to see this staple feature left out of this installment, Origins does have alot of unlockable special features, costumes, secret items, weapons, and 3 different endings to keep players coming back for more.

At the end of the day, Origins really captures the essence and feel of Silent Hill, and I’m glad I finally got the chance to play it on the PS2.

If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll definitely want to play this game a few times through. It has all the familiar Silent Hill elements we’ve come to know and love over the years, and at it’s core succeeds at being a fun game to play. If you’re new to the Silent Hill franchise, you’ll still be able to play and enjoy this game as a genuine survival horror game, and it might even spark your interest to play through the rest of the series.

Pick up a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

Pros: Stays true to the roots of Silent Hill. Great graphics. Levels are genuinely fun to play. Nice selection of melee weapons. Clever puzzles. Killer sound design and excellent soundtrack.

Cons: Camera is terrible. Combat is sluggish with occasional unresponsive controls. Boss fights are too easy. Not enough health items.

Final Score: 8 out of 10

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Love it or hate it - you have probably used (or will use) Google Adsense as a way to monetize your website. Adsense, when used correctly, is a very effective, quick, and easy way to make a few extra bucks (Google paid me to say that). But, don’t expect those precious clicks if you don’t take the time to properly place and design your ad units.

No Brainer: Targeted text links + great placement + proper blending = $$$

Example:

The other day I was putting together a quick niche website about a cult movie. I stole some content off Wikipedia and IMDB (dupe content doesn’t exist; more about that in later posts), found some related pictures, videos, etc. I slapped wordpress on the domain and set everything up. The site was live with content, and it was time for my favorite part - monetizing.

For this particular site, I decided to monetize with Adsense. There are literally ZERO affiliate offers related to this movie, so instead of loading up my site with poorly designed, seizure-inducing banners, I figured contextual text links would be the way to go.

Okay, awesome. But…

… where do I place these ad units? What spot would get the highest CTR? Should I blend them? Should I make the ads stick out like a sore thumb to attract attention? What size ad unit should I use? Where do babies come from? Why does MyOwnDemon get all the tang?

Well, young apprentice, a lot of these things can only be determined by trial and error. Here’s the boring answer you don’t want to hear: you will have to play with placement and colors to see what works best for your particular site. I know. What a cop out, right? But, don’t worry, there is a simple answer to your questions…

You see, below I have listed several strategies for effectively placing ad units until you get enough testing data to make better decisions. Simply follow the instructions below and increase your CTR, earnings, and ePenis size. It’s that simple.

AdSense Placement:

The highest performing adsense unit you can place on a page is a 728×90 horizontal unit, right underneath the header. I say that with confidence. Some may disagree, but in my experience, no matter the niche - this has always proven to be the best performer by far. Always put an adsense unit under your header, unless you don’t like making money.

Another good place to put adsense is right within the content itself (wow, who would have thought it?). Any size ad unit will do - just make sure it doesn’t appear out of place. Usually if the site is running wordpress, I will modify the theme to place an adsense unit in the first post on EVERY page. Some people swear by the 336×280.

So, there you go. You should now have 2 adsense units ABOVE the fold. However, just like a genie will grant you 3 wishes, Adsense allows you to place 3 ad units. So you might as well take advantage of it.

“But, MyOwnDemon, where should I place this 3rd unit?”

Glad you asked (like you had a choice). Place this 3rd unit wherever you want. This will be your test unit to move around the page. By having a movable test unit you can experiment a bit and find areas that might get a high CTR while not messing with your moneymakers (ad unit 1 and 2).

But, please, always use a 728×90 under your header. Do it for the kids.

Blending:

I’ve done extensive testing on this in the past, and it’s pretty common sense, but I still have to mention it. What do YOU think someone will be more likely to click on - An ad that looks like it’s part of the content, or a pink and purple ad that resembles a poorly designed Myspace profile (this begs the question - is there such thing as a well designed myspace profile)?

Anyway, I think the choice here is clear. Make the internet a better place and blend your ads to match your site.

See you next time.

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