The previous week found me bookmarking some good informative articles from fellow bloggers. Let’s take a look at some.

I found a really funny site this week, has little or nothing to do about making money online or affiliate marketing but everything to do with Humor. Anita at “Just Say No To Crack” has a funny site worth checking out.

Larry at PC Pitstop has a very interesting article on reading “License Agreements“. I must confess, I never read them. However, after reading Larry’s article, you can bet I’ll take the time to read them from now on.

Steven Hargrove has a very good article on redirecting a webpage using different codes. If you have outdated pages you want to update or delete but still keep the traffic coming to your website, this article will show you how. This article was posted back in 2006 but the information is as timely today as it was last year.

Free Geekery has an article on 22 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Get For Free. This is a pretty good article and has some good resource links.

Lorelle has an informative article about explaining why she writes a Weekly Digest Post. It’s worth checking out, especially if you’d like more traffic to your site.

eMom is deactivating the DoFollow plugin on her website. She’s tired of fighting cheating comment SPAMMERS and I can’t say as I blame her. I’ve been thinking of doing the same on this blog, I just haven’t gotten to that point yet. One piece of evidence of helping her make the move back to “nofollow” on comment links is this article from Darren at Problogger.Net about a service you can hire to post comment spam on blogs.

And finally, probably one of my favorite post of the week comes from Shoemoney about the WordPress people wanting to ban sponsored links  on WordPress Themes. It seems the WordPress.Com folks only want to embedd their links at the bottom of the themes and into the blogroll.

I hope you all have a great week. I certainly hope I have a better week that the last one!

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I spent a good amount of time yesterday putting the finish hacks on this new layout, but I just can’t seem to get the Masthead logo to look right. I even tried to redo the whole logo and it just doesn’t look right at 1000 pixels wide. So I’ll be shopping for a new logo. Oh well, my wife didn’t care for this one anyway, she said the “eye in the keyhole” thing creeped her out…lol

WordPress 2.2.1 is now availiable for download. This new version is suppose to sew up some of the security gas that version 2.2 had.

Does anyone remember the folks at WordPress telling us that V. 2.2 had security holes? Me either.

Is it me or is WordPress beginning to seem like Microsoft with all the security holes in their software?

I did come across some nice reading this week in the Blogosphere. It seemed like a light reading week, perhaps because I’m going on vacation next week? I dunno. Anway, here are a few articles I bookmarked this week while surfing.

BrilliantCheers had an interesting article on The Great Google Controversy. I don’t really see it as a controversy, just some people being pricks, but many people do think it’s Big Brother coming to get them.

Hem.com has a funny article on the 10 Best Email Auto Replies. I’m fixing to go on vacation, perhaps I’ll have to use some of these!

I received a comment from ChiQ Montes this week telling me about a new WP Theme that is available over at ChiQ Montes. There are some really nice themes, if you’re in the market for a free WordPress Theme, he has several available for download.

Andrew Johnson covered the Google and eBay fit throwing last week. eBay pulled its ads off Google because Google was being a bully and eBay got their feelings hurt.

I’m also very fascinated with Courtney Tuttles “follow along as I build and monetize this site” series. If you’re new to Internet Marketing, hell, even if your not, it will be fun to watch.

And as they say in ShowBiz…that’s a wrap folks! Stay tuned this week, I have a review of Webmerge coming along and an article over article marketing to increase traffic, backlinks and affiliate sales. I hope they’re good!

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Of course there’s a catch, you have to write a review of his site like I’m doing here.

At first, I wasn’t going to write one. I have a system for hunting out .edu backlinks that work pretty well. However, I spent almost an hour on his site and realized I liked what I was reading.

Tim has some very good articles and comes at some of them with a different point of view than most bloggers. I like that.

Tim is currently in J-school so he’ll have plenty of time to get some links sent out.

Well, the common misconception is that Google places a higher value on .edu links than links from .com sites. While that is somewhat true, it’s not entirely correct. Google places a higher value on .edu links from relevant sites and from .edu pages with some PR.

As far as Yahoo and MSN are concerned, I’m not sure and I don’t know that anyone else is sure either, but heck, a link from a .edu site can’t be all bad so grab ‘em when you can.

Don

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For starters, Shoemoney asked for reviews from his readers about their favorite PPC Search Engines and I replied with a review of MIVA and Shoemoney posted in on his site, which brought in some good traffic. Someone also Stumbled the story which increased my traffic PLUS I was able to see which traffic source was more valuable as a website owner. The readers from Shoemoney dugg my content more and clicked on more stuff than the readers coming from StumbleUpon, but I still love my Stumble traffic! BTW, thanks Shoe for posting that review.

In the “surprised” area, I was surprised that I was just above 11,000 in Technorati. Seemed I was hung up around the 50k to 60k area for months then over the last month or so, I’ve started moving up. Hopefully I’ll crack the top 10k soon!

I’ve been researching ways to improve my Alexa ranking. I’m working on several methods right now. I’m trying one method at at time so I can track what works and what doesn’t.

The same is true with the pages I have in Google Supplemental search. I’m tryng a couple new techniques to bust them out and I’ll keep you guys and gals informed as to how that works out. Hopefully I’ll know something in this coming week.

I found Randa Clay’s design website this week. I enjoyed the site and the cool WordPress Themes.

Lisa over at Work At Home Mom Revolution has a good article on Mom’s Helping Mom’s make money.

Tricia at Tricia’s Musings, is celebrating the fact that she hit the $10,000 mark on PPP. I believe her post stated she was the second person to do that. Congrats Tricia!

Josh over at Time For Blogging has a great post on familiarizing yourslef with potential partners. As a small businessman myself, I can tell you first hand it’s important to learn all you can about a person or persons before meeting them. It gives you an edge you wouldn’t have otherwise.

There’s a good article on Last Blogger about PayPerPost Advertising along with some sharing some tips. If you’re into this type of blogging, or curious, you’ll probably find that article useful.

Colleen over at Geeky Squeaky is having a drawing for a 1 GB flash drive. All you have to do is visit this link and make a comment. I left a tongue in cheek comment if ya’ll want to head on over there and read it. Also, while you’re there, tell Colleen how bad I need that flash drive

That’s about it for this week. I have quite a few things going on right now. I’m not sure how much I’ll get to post next week as my “real job” is getting pretty hectic. I will be keeping you updated on my experiments with Alexa and the Google Supplemental rankings though.

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Currently he is running a “review me” type promotion a lot like John Chow has been doing the last few weeks. If you’d like to find out more about it, just click on over to www.jakeldaily.com and read his rules of the review.

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Spring and Summertime are the traditional times when people start thinking about Hiking, Camping, Boating, Fishing, Bicycling and RV Trips. It should also be the time you start thinking about targeting these hardie souls with your affiliate programs as they invade the Great Outdoors.

Here are a few Merchants that service the Outoor Adventurer that I’m familiar with.

Bass Pro

Bass Pro Shops has is the Big Boy on the block when it comes to Outdoor gear. You’ll find gear for all types of activities. Bass Pro’s Affiliate Program pays 5% on orders. The advantage of Bass Pro is they have a household brand name amoung outdoor adventure seekers.

They provide tracking and do not limit your earnings.

The do have a list of keywords that they will prohibit you from outbidding them on.

Bass Pro is part of the CJ affiliate network.

Duluth Trading

Duluth trading is a catalog and internet retailer. Duluth Trading carries a variety of unique and innovative tools and clothing for the Blue collar working guy and gal, many of their products are used while enjoying the Outdoors (I buy a lot of stuff from them myself).

Duluth Trading pays 10% on every sale.

They offer an online management system that allows you to add links to your site, access your sales history, and track your earnings.

Duluth Trading is an independent comapny and runs its affiliate program in-house.

Cabela’s

Cabela’s is in the same league as Bass Pro Shops. They’re a huge retail and online retailer that serves the outdoor community with quality products. You may be able to find Cabela’s affiliate program through Performics, but at last check I was unable to locate their program there. It may be that they’ve dropped their affiliate program all together.

Although I buy a lot of my outdoor gear through Cabela’s, and have for more than 20 years, I don’t know a lot about their affiliate program because I’ve stopped using Performics.

Boaters World

Boaters World sells what you’d think a store with a name like Boaters World sells, stuff for Boaters! (go figure)  Boaters World pays a straight 6% commission on all shipped orders.

Boaters World is part of the CJ Network.

A nice thing about Boaters World is the products they carry have a higher average price than many other Outdoor related merchants. I know I’m guilty of buying expensive boat equipment, just ask my wife!

I particularly like Boaters World because they offer many incentives to get your customers to buy. Things such as no shipping fee for orders over $100, no payments for up to 6 months with the Bill Me Later program, clearance items and seasonal offers.

LandBigFish.Com

LandBigFish.Com is one cool ecommercie website with a very cool affiliate program. It gives you several ways to make some moolaw!

The carry fishing gear including fishing lures and tackle.

With LandBigFish.Com you’ll earn 5% of any order placed through their online tackle store. Their average order is $60. You’ll also get $1.00 for every confirmed registered member you send their way and $.05 for everyone who signs up for one of their newsletters.

LandBigFish.Com is an indepedant affiliate program. 

Sierra Trading Post

Sierra Trading Post has an excellent reputation in the affiliate marketing world. They pay you what they say when they say it. Their affiliate staff is dedicated to helping you push more product.

You’ll earn between 5 and 10% of orders shipped.

Sierra Trading Post was out front in the anti-parasite movement some time ago.  At one time in the past, I remember them stating that they actually removed affiliates from their program due to parasite infractions. That’s says something about their integrity.

Besides that, Sierra Trading Post has some cool outdoor gear!

Ron Kirk Shooting Supplies

The Ron Kirck site has over 155,000 items for sale online. They mainly carry shooting supplies.

They pay on a scale that starts out at 6% and goes up to 8%. They also have specials & coupons on a regular bases to get traffic to your site. They provide their affiliates with a datafeed that contains thousands of prodcuts.

Ron Kirk is part of the CJ Network.

Brigade Quartermaster

BQ as it’s called, carries a huge selection of military surplus items as well as new items. BQ is part of the LinkShare Affiliate Network.

BQ pays up to 5% commission on sales generated through your website.

BQ’s unique and unusual product line can be a real winner if you have a niche in this sector of the consumer market. This niche would include campers and outdoor related consumers as well as paramilitary groups, survivalist and the “back to nature” types.

U.S. Calvary

U.S. Calvary carry’s both military gear as well as gear for law enforcement. As with BQ, a lot of this gear can cross over into Outdoor use and many of their customers are members of both groups.

U.S. Cav pays 3% of items sold through your site. They are a part of the CJ Network. While 3% may not sound like a lot, their prices are on the low side, which can translate into more sales than other retailers carrying the same equipment but at a higher price.

Well, there you have it. Some nice affiliate programs to make a little scratch with the outdoor sector. Many of you could find something in the list above to add to your offerings. You could also open up another section of your sites. Maybe with a “Outdoor Clothing” section or “Military Surplus”.

This is one thing I love about affiliate marketing and making money quick is having such wide range of cool merchandise to choose frome!

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But wait, this isn’t the same ole dry, boring and in-depth type review that brings us to tears. This is Google Analytics the way I see it

I’m assuming most of you know about Google Analytics. If you don’t, go over to Google and sign up.

Let me see a show of hands of those who thought the original Google Analytics sucked?

Good, that’s what I thought. So did I.

The old version was clunky and not user friendly at all. I had all but stopped using it and relied on other tracking software.

What I want out of a tracking service is this;

• How many vistors to my site and how many pages they viewed. I like to drill down to single days or out to an entire month
• What pages they viewed and the pages viewed most often
• I want to know what pages people are linking to
• I want to see the most poplular pages on my website
• I want to see who’s sending me traffic and how much
• I like seeing what times of day people are visiting
• And while I won’t loose sleep if I don’t know, I like knowing where my visitors call home.

Google Analytics has always done this but now the new Google Analytics does this without sucking!

The new interface of Google Analytics makes it a breeze to find the data on your websites traffic.

My two favorite features are the Referring Sites feature under the Traffic Source button. My other favorite feature is the Top Content feature under the Content button. For me, these two features are worth the Price of Admission. (which is free)

Just a few weeks ago I had a major surprise when one of my articles was StumbleUpon and drew hundreds of hits. I’d never thought that article, titled The Secret Of Making Money With Affiliate Marketing, out performed all my other post.  While I thought this post was good, I didn’t think it was almost 12 times as good as my next post! However Google Analytics said it was.

You also have a feature called Bounce. Bounce is the percentage of people who come to a particular page then exit that same page. As if to sample that page of the website, find it boring, disinteresting or whatever, and leave without visiting other pages.

A high “Bounce” rate may mean are finding your page and not finding your content useful, or it could mean that whatever source is driving them is faulty. For example, let’s say ou spammed MySpace with a promise of sexy girl photo’s and when the clicked to come to your page, they found a slog about phome cards. You’d have a high Bounce rate on that page I’m sure.

There are a couple things I don’t like about the new Google Analytics. For one, I seem to get error messages quite often. I’m sure it something on their end since it’s still in Beta.

The other thing is the new Geo Tracking format. In the Old control panel, there were litle dots that would show up where your visitor was located. Move your cursor over that dot and it would tell you how  many visitors you had from that town. That was cool.

Now I have a Map of the Earth with highlighted green areas and muted green areas. It tells me how many visitors I had from each contry. Not cool.

All in all, Google has made a Grand Slam with this version of Google Analytics. It’s cool, useful and easy to navigate. I can get my info quicker which makes me less of a crotchety of fart!

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That is, until I found Aizatto’s Related Post Plugin.

Why hasn’t someone told me about this plugin? There’s no code to cut and paste into your WordPress themes or databases to deal with. This has to be the simplest “Related Post” plugin I’ve ever used, and it works!

You install the plugin as you would any other WordPress plugin. Go to the “Plugins” section of your WordPress control panel and activate it. Then go to Options >> Aizatto’s Related Post >> and choose how you want your related post to show up. It’s that freakin’ simple!

You have the option of choosing how many “Related Post” it shows, whether or not you want excerpts from the Related Post shown to show up and whether or not you want related post to show up in RSS feeds.

So simple in fact, that once I found it, I went and installed it on every WordPress blog I own!

If you’ve fought with “Related Post” plugins, or hate to mess with code and databases, give Aizatto’s “Related Post” plugin a try.

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Text Link Ads sell companies text links on websites. They’re a link broker. They will buy text links off of Webmasters and sell them to advertisers.

If you’re a blog owner or Webmaster, you may be able to make money with them.

In this review of Text Link Ads, I’ll be review their program from the Advertiser side, as one who’s bought text links from them.

I’ve used Text Link Ads for one of my new websites and one for my local business’s.

TextLink Ads Link For Website #1

The first link I bought was for this new website I put up. I wanted to get it indexed quickly and get some traffic coming to the site without spending a fortune on it. I chose a site with a high “link popularity” in hopes of getting some PR link love from the big G. I also wanted the traffic!

The site I chose stated that my link would appear on something like 50,000 pages. The link cost me $50 a month.

It took several days, but my link finally showed up. I kept close tabs on that look through the Text Link Ads control panel as well as my own site. The Text Link Ads control panel will show you how many backlinks are present from the pages where your link is active.  They’ll list the 1st 100 sites with backlinks to your site and highlight the ones from the page/site where your link is located.

I was a little disappointed that they use Yahoo to keep track of their backlinks rather than Google. However, if you stop to think about it, you can understand why. Yahoo counts every link back to your site, Google only counts those it feels has value. (who determines if the site linking to your site has value?)

Over the month that my link was up, I received very little traffic from the site where my link was located. At the end of the month, Yahoo only showed something like 3 links back to my site. I wasn’t very impressed with my first attempt at buying text links.

Text Link Ads Link For Website #2

On my second try at buying text links, I chose to buy a link on a local TV station’s website (even though TextLink Ads said it was a newspaper). I know this website because you can’t open a newspaper, turn on the radio or TV without hearing about this TV stations Website. I decided to buy the link for my website of my local B&M business.

According to the Pop Up to the link on the TV Stations ad, my link was suppose to show up in their “Money” section on a page with a link popularity of 5/10. 

This link cost me $75 per month.

What I noticed after my link went live was that my link didn’t actually show up on the “Money” section page, my link showed up on article pages OFF OF THE “MONEY” page. Why should this matter? Simple, the “Money” page had a PR of 5 while the article pages off of the “Money” page had a PR of 0 or at best 2.

I went back to my Text Link Ads control panel and sure enough, it said my links would show up in the “Money” section and that the “Money” section had a “Link Popularity” of 5/10.

I emailed Text Link Ads and after two days of not hearing from them, I emailed them again. A few days later I received a reply.

In short, it said that my link was live and showing up on the article pages off of the “Money” section. (well duh! I already knew that). It also informed me that their “Link Popularity” does not correspond to a PR rank, although when you visit a page, the “Link Popularity” is the same most of the time as the PR.

In their defense, they did offer to refund my money for the time I had remaining. I declined and kept my link on the TV Stations website. I wanted local coverage for my local business!

I checked back after I received the response from Text Link Ads and the Pop Up for the TV Stations ad now says “Will appear on all story pages in the ”Money” section“. Nice of them to clarify that.

As for the backlinks, I honestly got a lot from those article pages. In the end, Yahoo counted something like 60+ links back to my site out of the top 100. However, none of those links on those pages showed up in Google.

The traffic from those links was minimal according to my stats. Since my B&M website already ranks at the top of Yahoo locally, I received no boost in the rankings.

Was it worth the $75? Yeah, this once it was. It was worth it in regards to the things it taught me, not the traffic or rankings it provided.

After Action Report – Things I Learned From Buying Links From TextLink Ads

• Don’t assume anything – I assumed Google would pick these text links up and reward me with PR Gold. It didn’t happen. In fact, I recieved only 1 backlink indexed in Google and that was for Website #1.
• Save everthing – I wished I had saved the pages when I purchased the link for Website #2 but I didn’t. My bad.
• Ask Questions before buying – See rule #1
• Define the reason for purchasing the links in the first place – Are you looking to get indexed in Google? Do you want to drive a specific target audience to your site? Are you hoping to increase your backlinks with a particular Search Engine, ie; Google, Yahoo, MSN? (some of those pages from the TV Stations website were picked up by MSN also)
• Research, research, research – I should have looked into the site where website #1 was placed. If I had, I’d known that it has pop ups and a bunch of other ads on their pages. When doing research, I like to use FireFox with the SEO Plugin. Makes doing SEO research a lot easier!

Some of the other things I learned that just because the Text Link Ad says you link will appear on 50,000 pages, don’t assume (see rule #1) that any Search Engine index those pages.

I’d like to know how Text Link Ads goes about determining its “Link Popularity”. What formula is used?

The text links you buy may likely end up at the bottom right of a page. About the worst spot they could appear at. These are also below the fold. That means people will have to scroll down and be looking over to the right to find them.  If you can’t figure out the site where your links will appear, then go there and see where the sponsored links are, then ASK! Now I know on some of the more expensive sites, ie; blogs, they may appear above the fold (ie; johnchow.com).

I also have to be honest and tell you that Text Link Ads recommends that you run the links for several months to see the benefits. From my experience with years of marketing my small businesses both online and offline, I can say that’s probably true.

Will I ever buy another Text Link Ad. Sure. But I will go into it knowing a lot more than I did before. I’ll be more careful to research the site my links appear on.

I plan on buying some links on a few of the blogs they have listed. These should produce some Google friendly links and hopefully some traffic. We’ll see.

UpDate 2008: By now nearly everyone knows Google frowns on buying links. I haven’t used Text Link ads since this experience and I’d strongly urge anyone considering buying links to reconsider, especially if you value your rankings in Google!

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I was trying to catch up on the current post to my favorite blogs this morning when I came across Courtney Tuttle’s blog, “Make Money Online Free With Court”. He had one post that caught my attention immediately.

Make Money Online By Taking My Paycheck

Court is giving away his paycheck in May to anyone who can guess within $1 of what the amount will be.

Here are the rules.

• Make a guess! Link to Courtney Tuttles homepage with the text ‘make money online $1.00′, replacing the $1.00 with the amount of your guess. Example: make money online $100.56.
• Leave this link to Court’s rules page intact.
• Use Courts contact page to confirm your entry by letting me know (make sure to include the URL of your post)! I will find most of them, but let me know to make sure!

Okay, so here goes my guess. Court said he made $293.01 in April. He also went on to say that this month’s paycheck looked like it would be more. And as a special bonus, if I act before midnight May 18th, I can guess 3 times, yes folks, you heard that right, act before midnight May 18th and I can guess 3 times! WooHoo! Don’t be surprised if you visit his page tomorrow and the date has been moved up to tomorrow at midnight…

Here are my guesses,

Make money online $482.34

Make money online $356.78

Make money online $376.95

Okay, there you have it, my three guess.

This is a pretty good stroke of genius to generate links. This seems to be all the rage these days. JC has an offer over on his page also and Darren Rowse just finished up with a group writing project.

I’m going to have to sit down and think of a cool way to generate traffic to this site.

Anyone have a suggestion?

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Let’s face it, Adsense is the simplest affiliate marketing program there is. (although technically Adsense is not an affiliate marketing program, but don’t tell anyone)

The easiest way to incorporate Adsense into your site is an Adsense Ready WordPress Theme. I use a variety of WordPress Themes for Adsense. The one I choose depends on the type of blog I running. I’ve compiled this Ultimate List of Adsense Ready WordPress Themes for your enjoyment. I have to be honest and say the idea for this list came about when I saw Dosh Dosh’s list of 17 Adsense Ready WordPress Themes and realized I had those plus a few more in my folders and bookmarks. I just didn’t realize how long it would take to put this list together!

Even though I say it’s the “Ultimate List” we both know it’s not. 5 minutes from now someone else will come out with one. Also, if you know PHP or use the Adsense-Deluxe Plugin, you can turn just about any WordPress Theme into an Adsense ready blog.

If you want to learn advanced Adsense strategies, I highly recommend “Desktop Adsense Cash Machine”. I learned many good tips and tactics that increased my adsense earnings by double on most of my sites. And if you haven’t yet, take a look at “The Next Internet Millionaire“. This reality based show will be sure to teach you some Adsense tactics that the Guru’s keep under wraps.

My criteria for a WordPress Adsense Theme is:

1. Easy to use – I don’t want to spend hours upon hours modifying a theme. I don’t know PHP or CSS so I need a simple plug-n-play theme.
2. Easy on the eyes- You don’t want an ugly WordPress Theme! I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but an ugly theme will cost you money!
3. Widget Compatible- A WordPress Theme for Adsense should be widget compatible, although some in the list are not. Not that I will use them, but I prefer to have that option if I find myself wanting to use a widget.
4. Optimized Adsense Placement – Preferably the WordPress Themeyou choose will already have the Adsense blocks placed in the theme and all you have to do is ad your AdsensePublisher ID code. Not all the themes that are listed are like that. The ones that aren’t designed that way are still easy to set up by adding your code to the PHP files. All you have to do is replace the developers Adsense Code with yours. It’s easier than it sounds.
5. SEO Friendly- I want organic traffic! The WordPress Themes in the Ultimate List are SEO Optimized and Friendly or they are darn near close!
6. Customizable- You don’t want your blog to look like everyone’s else. While not all of the WordPress Themes listed are easily customized, many are and that goes a long way in my book (remember when I said that I didn’t know PHP or CSS?)

The pictures of the themes are either from the developers website or taken from screen shots of blogs running these WordPress themes.

If you use any of these WordPress Themes, please visit the developers website and donate some green to their tip jars (if they have them) and always link back to their site. Also, should you have technical problems with any theme on this page, (although I can cut and paste with the best of them ) go to their website for help, I’m not a techie and I won’t be able to help you.

Some of these WordPress Themes require you open a file and replace existing Adsense Pub-ID with your own. If you don’t know how to do that, here’s a quick tutorial on how to add your Publisher ID to an Adsense Ready WordPress Theme.

Also, some of these Adsense Ready WordPress Themes walk a fine line in the grey area concerning Google Adsense TOS. Always check with the Google Adsense folks about any concerns you have with any theme, whether they are these or not. And always save your emails from them!

#1 – Ad Flex Blog & Niche Themes

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AdFlex WordPress Theme Review

I use this theme on several of my blogs. It’s my favorite theme for Adsense because it is so customizable. In fact, I don’t know of another Adsense ready WordPress Theme that is more customizable than Ad Flex.

In addition to that, this baby comes SEO ready!

This theme has Ad Links at the top and an ad block above the content and an ad block below the content. In the screen shot of the blog above, the blog owner used the 468 x 60 ad block, but I’ve used all sizes. I’ve also used other affiliate program codes in the ad blocks (for example, Azoogle ad code) and all have shown up wonderfully.

While the screen shot above doesn’t show it, you can also put pictures above the Adsense. Whoa there buddy, I know what you’re thinking “It’s against Adsense TOS to put pictures next to Adsense ads”Well, not exactly. I have several websites and blogs with pics near Adsense ads. What Adsense doesn’t want for example, let’s say, images of cell phones next to Adsense ads about cell phones so that the surfer thinks he’s clicking on a link to a particular cell phone. In other words, don’t try and fool a surfer into clicking on an adsense ad.

I have a travel site using this WordPress Theme and have put images of tropical get-a-ways and other vacation looking pictures next to Adsense ads. I then followed up with the folks at Google Adsense to ensure that these were not in violation of the Adsense TOS. I received a reply that they were acceptable. The neat thing is, if you’re concerned about the Adsense TOS, you can turn the pictures off and on with a simple tick in a check box in the WordPress dashboard.

Neat. But that is how this whole theme is. Everything is so easy. If you don’t want certain items such as the Category section to show up in the Nav bar on the left side, just check “NO” in the field. Want the Nav bar on the right? No problem, there’s an option for that.

Here are some other features you get with this theme.

• Meta tag description that is based on the content of the page
• Non duplicate content prevention feature
• Adsense Banner Management
• Blocking Cookie
• Theme can be switched between wide and narrow
• Approximately 150 controllable features

Try this them with some of your blogs. You’ll be amazed at the results!

#2 AdsMinded Adsense Theme

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AdsMinded WordPress Theme Review

I use the AdsMinded theme on 2 of my blogs. This is a great WordPress theme for Adsense with high CTR due to the adlinks at the top. Tip: If you’re not taking advantage of adlinks, you’re losing money!

This theme is SEO optimized plus you can customize the layout and ad placement several ways. On one of my blogs, I left out the 2nd column with the Adsense ads on the main page. They’re only visible once a surfer clicks through to read the entire post. Also, there are several other areas where you may put other affiliate codes from other companies. This really maximizes your earnings potential!

This 3 column layout comes with an optional square ad placement on top of the sidebars. It comes with some very useful WordPress plugins.

You can get this WordPress Theme in a narrow or wide version.

#3 Merah Putih

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Merah Putih WordPress Theme Review

This is a nice clean and simple WordPress Theme I found. It needs some customizing, such as a logo in the upper left corner if you want one and you have to insert your Adsensepublisher ID into the sidebar.php, header.php file and single.php file which is pretty easy to do. All you do is open the PHP files with an editor like Notepad ++ and replace the existing Adsense Publisher ID’s with you own, save the files and upload them to your template folder or modify them in the Theme Editor of the Dashboard and BAM, you’re off and running. It takes me about the same amount of time to do it as it did to type this.

I’m a sucker for clean and simple WordPress themes such as this one. I like the ad placements and an added bonus is that once a surfer clicks on an article heading, the article page has the 300×250 Adsense block in the upper left of the article. That’s the sweet spot and heat maps provided by Googlestates this is the best place to put an adblock in an article.

The side bar has a 300×250 and a 160×600 ad block plus an adlink block at the top of the pages.

#4 SEO Adsense

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SEO Adsense WordPress Theme Review

This is another clean and simple Adsense Ready WordPress Theme. I like this theme for my review type sites. It’s laid out very well and Adsense code is easily added. This theme loads quickly and is designed to accept three ad blocks and one ad link per page, the maximum allowed by Google Adsense TOS. You can also use Google Adsense for search for some additional income.

The advantage of this WordPress theme in my opinion is that it is SEO optimized out of the gate. The title and H1 tags contain most of the information. Category pages carry the category name as the title and on post pages, the post name is carried as the title.

The Adsense code is in three files with this theme. The header.php, the sidebar php and the footer.php files. You also have the advantage of using Google Adsensefor search in the searchform.php

Sometimes less is more when you’re trying to get surfers to click on ads. With that being said, SEO Adsense gives you a great advantage over other WordPress Themes when it comes to the layout and ease of using Adsense to it’s maximum potential.

#5 WP Colors

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WP Colors WordPress Them Review

This is a snazzy looking 2 column theme for WordPress plus it’s Adsense ready and is widget compatible. This WordPress theme is also SEO optimizedand ready to rock once you’ve added your Adsense Publishers ID.

One of my main gripes of other “Adsense Ready” themes is that the sidebar info comes before the main content info in the source code. This is not the case with WP Colors. They’ve coded this theme so that the main content info is read by a Search engine BEFORE the sidebar info!

There is a 728×90 block at the top of the theme below the header image and a 120×600 tower in the sidebar plus a 300×250 box at the top of the sidebar.

Personally, I’d like to see that banner be a 468×60 at the top of the post and a adlink at the top, but hey, with a WordPress Theme that looks this good and is easy to use, you can’t complain about much!

#6 030106 WordPress Theme

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030106 WordPress Theme Review

Okay, this is a mystery WordPress Theme. It has a number for a name! Call it what you want, I call it a high CTR Adsense ready WordPress Theme!

I love this theme for my tech review sites. Very professional looking and good-to-go right out of the box. You can use your Adsense Publisher ID or any number of other ad codes with this template (for example; YPN, Chitika, Azoogle, etc)

This WordPress themehas a place for a adlink banner at the top, a 300×250 box at the top of the sidebar and a tower in the sidebar as well as a place for a smaller box ad toward the bottom.

The single post pages has a place for a box ad at the bottom of the article. I’ve used these boxes for a pre-sell on offers after the article to snag some high paying commissions.

#7 Problogger Clean WordPress Theme

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Problogger Clean WordPress Theme Review

This 3 column WordPress theme reminds me of my #4 WordPress theme, SEO Adsense. However, there are differences.

This WordPress themehas a feature called the Adsense Click Safety (so you don’t click your own ads while working on your blog). Some have had concerns that this may violate Google Adsense TOS. Click here to read Googles reply to the developers question.

I haven’t used this theme in a while on my blogs. I did have some problems early on but I got my blog to work with this theme (don’t ask me how because I don’t remember!). I’ve since changed themes on that blog. Anyhow, just be forwarned that they were having some problems with this theme and I’m not sure they have them all worked out.

#8 MW WordPress Theme

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MW WordPress Theme Review

I absolutely love the name of this WordPress Theme. MW. MW stands for “Monetizing the Web”. That get’s a big “Hell Yeah” from me! Trust me, you can certainly monetize the web with this Adsense Ready WordPress Theme!

This is a 2 column, fixed width, left navigation WordPress Theme with a load of options.

This theme has a banner at the top with a 468 banner between the content about halfway down the page. You also have several options for Adsense and other code for different affiliate programs.

This is just a slick, easy to use Adsense Ready WordPress Theme with a professional look. Give it a try.

#9 Adsense Theme

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Adsense Theme For WordPress Review

This is a smooth, quick loading theme with Adsense blocks in all the right places. Very user friendly and it has basic SEO features. There are no images which contributes to its fast loading times.

I haven’t used this theme as much as some of the others (hey, so many blog ideas, so little time) but when I did use it, I liked it.

To get you Adsense Publisher ID to work with this theme, you’ll need to add your ID to the header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php. Not a problem. If you don’t know how to do this, there are instructions with most themes. It’s quite easy. All you need is an editor like Notepad ++.

Note: I’ve not used the following WordPress Themes so I can’t comment on them.

#10 Blue Sense WordPress Theme

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#11 Citrus Sense WordPress Theme

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#12 Adsense Ready WordPress Theme

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#13 TypoXP Reloaded WordPress Theme

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#14 Connection with Adsense WordPress Theme

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#15 Almost Spring SEO with Adsense Ads

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#16 Bubbles Adsense Theme (comes in 4 colors)

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#17 Blix with Adsense WordPress Theme

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#18 Elite Circle WordPress Theme

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#19 Adsense Bogpod WordPress Theme

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#20 Tigopedia Reloaded WordPress Theme

(there’s also the Tigopedia original but I won’t count that one)

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#21 Simple Corners

(this one seems to be down right now or my bookmark is bad, when I click to their site, I see a message from their host with a “suspended” message) I’m going to leave it up in case they are just short on their bandwidth.

#22 Adsense Ready K2 Theme

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#23 Rockin Newspaper Red WordPress Theme

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24. Activate WordPress Theme

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Okay, I give up! That’s all the Adsense Ready WordPress Themes I have or could find. I hope you enjoy them and again, don’t forget to throw a bone to the developers!

I’ll try and keep this list updated, so check back when you’re looking for a good Adsense Ready WordPress Theme!

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What you may not know is that most of your local TV stations also broadcast their signals in HDTV. Since many Cable and Satellite companies compress their HDTV signal, some savy HDTV lovers have discovered that the modern version of the good Ole Rabbit ears offers a superior picture on their HDTV’s than the signals they receive from their Satellite or Cable provider. Plus, the bonus is that over-the-air signals from local stations are FREE!

Enter Antennas Direct.

Richard Schneider started Antennas Direct from his Garage. He’d assemble them in his Garage and sell them out the back of his car. Last years sales figures hit 1.7  million and Schneider predicts that number will double this year (2007). Needless to say, he doesn’t have to sell them out the back of his car anymore!

With HDTV becoming more and more common place John & Jane Doe’s homes, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the future for HDTV and HDTV accessories will be a hot market for some time to come.

Antennas Direct has an Affiliate Program that pays 20%. That’s great for the price points on these antennas and other equipment that Antennas Direct carries. From browsing their site, you can see that most items range from $19.00 up to $149 for most HDTV antennas.

They also carry antenna amplifiers, coaxial cable, UHF/VHF Combiners amd Antenna mounts. Enough stuff to keep a steady stream of referral fees pouring into your bank account.

Antennas Direct has an Affiliate site where affiliates can manage their profiles, build links, access data feeds, and view traffic and earnings reports.

You can find out more and sign up for their Affiliate program by clicking HERE.

HDTV is here to stay so if you haven’t staked out your claim in this growing market, nows the time!

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For those affiliate markerters such as myself who are code and database challenged, Goldencan offers us the chance to use data feeds and create huge online stores with hundreds or thousands of prodcuts from many name brand merchants, all with only a few lines of code.

If you can cut & paste, you can have an online store with thousands of products almost instantly

Goldencan offers affiliate marketers data feeds from many online retailers. They’re not retailers no one every heard of either. Stores like Amazon, Circuit City, Overstock.Com and Shoes.com. (there are many, many more)

I’ve used Goldencan for a few years now. You’ll first need to be signed up for you choice of merchants under one of the affiliate marketing networks like CJ, Shareasale, LinkShare, BeFree or Performics. Once you’re signed up for the merchant of your choice, and been approved, you then create a free account on Goldencan.

Select the stores from your Goldencan account, fill in the information on the form that Goldencan request, and voila! Goldencan will generate the necessary codes in your choice of Javascript, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET or ASP.NET C#.

Now there is one small catch with using Goldencan. (you knew there had to be for something that sounds this good) That is, some of the merchants are what they call “4th Click” merchants. What this means is that Goldencan will receive credit for every 4th click.

For example, let’s say you had 4 clicks from customers. The first 3 clicks on affiliate links, you’ll get your normal credit for if they buy something. Now when the 4th click is made, Goldencan get the credit for that click, whether the customer buys something or not.

Not all merchants operate this way under Goldencan, but many do and you can see a list of “Free Merchants” and “4th click” merchants on Goldencan’s website.

So why do they charge the 4th click? It’s a way for Goldencan to make money of course. They don’t just sit around and write code to make things like this work. They need compensated for their time just like anyone else. It’s either that or learn to deal with massive data feeds and program coding to make your online stores! For me, that 4th click is well worth it. It lets me create huge stores with thousands of prodcuts that I wouldn’t have otherwise had. (unless I paid someone a LOT of money to code it for me)

I have several different types of stores running under Goldencan. I have a few sites with nothing but products on them. They do sell some products, but my most successful pages are the ones that have good content on them. Stories, reviews, how-to articles, etc. I add affiliate product links from Goldencan at the bottom or at the side of the content pages. These products are relevant to the content.

For example, you wouldn’t have a story about blue trashcans and put affiliate links to womens make-up on the page. You’ll make a lot more money with links about blue trashcans on that page!

Another nice feature about Goldencan, at least the merchants I’ve used, is that the prices and descriptions automatically updates when the merchant updates their database. Sweeeet! (unless you love downloading and tweaking data feeds from merchants)

You also have the feature of making a huge integrated store from many merchants. Let’s say you an affiliate for Circuit City, Amazon, Ritz Camer and Wolf Camera. You could have a storefront featuring all of these Merchants together. All with a few lines (generally less than 5 and in many instances, only 1 line) of code.

Goldencan allows those of us smaller and beginning affiliate marketers to have huge online storefronts that we wouldn’t otherwise have. They make it quick and easy.

Give ‘em a try or just drop by and look over their program at Goldencan.Com.

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In my original post, I told you about the “dots” on the heat map and how it looked like they appeared on the specific area that someone clicked. I also mentioned that these “dots” were appearing on keywords in the links.

Well, I was right. I did some testing on my own and went to the pages of my site that were being monitored and I clicked on specific non-linked areas. I then returned to my CrazyEgg account, logged in and checked the heat map. Yep, right there in those specific spots I had clicked were “heat dots”.

Hiten Shah from CrazyEgg stopped by and verified my findings in a comment to that post.

Now that those pages have been monitored for several hundred clicks, the links in the content are being clicked nearly 3 to 1 over the links in the Nav bar.

I have my Nav bar at the upper left of my pages. Looks like it’s time to move them and put something else in their place. Hmmm….what could I replace my Nav bar with….I dunno….how about some…. ADS!?

I’ll keep you updated on how that test goes. I’m also moving up some aff links at the bottom of the page to above the fold near the top to see if they are clicked. It should be interesting…stay tuned.

Don

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Well, if you’re an Affiliate or Internet Marketer or use SEO practices to make money on the internet, it’s a big deal!

Once you sign up with CrazyEgg, they will give you a snippet of code to put on your website. Once there, this code will monitor clicks on any page that the code snippet is on. You can choose how many days it monitors your site or how many visitors.

Once you log into your account, CrazyEgg will list the pages they are monitoring. You can then choose to run a “report” on any of your pages. This report will show you where people are clicking, how many clicks you recieved for each spot (and the % of clicks in that spot) plus you have the option of checking out a heat map of where people are clicking. This is one “cool” site for sure, but is it really useful?

I honestly didn’t believe that I’d learn anything new about my sites. I mean, I make a little money in this business and I’d like to believe I know my websites and my surfer’s habits.

Well I have to tell you, after 1 week I haven’t really seen anything that surprised me…..except on one of my sites.

On one of my sites I have Forums and a Blog in addition to the static site html site. I have the traditional Nav bar on the left side with navigation links to the Forums, Blog and interor pages.

Down the middle is my content for my home page with text links to my interior pages also. What I learned was that people were actually clicking on the text links in the content to get to the Blog and Forums. The strange thing is, these links are well below the fold near the bottom. It would be logical for them to get the links from the Nav bar, but this isn’t happening. The text links to interior pages are being click by a 3 to 1 margin on this site.

What does this tell me?

It tells me people will follow good content right off the page! It also tells me that text links in content get clicked a lot, more so than what I would ever guess. There is something else that was a little eye opening. Now I don’t know if this is just by chance or not, but when I look at the heat map, there are “hot” spots (small dots where clicks have been made). Up in the Nav bar, the “dots” are centered on the words such as “Forum” and “Blog”. However on the text links the “dots” are spread out over the sentence that I have linked.

The “dots” are centered over the keywords that are in the linked sentence. Not randomly. Now I don’t know if CrazyEgg’s software just spread out the “dots” or if the “dots” are where surfers actually clicked to get to the page they wanted. I have a feeling though the “dots” on the heat map are where they actually clicked.

This tells me that peole are drawn to keywords like moths to a candle. It also tells me I need to be linking more in my content.

There are severa price ranges for this service, I chose the FREE plan and have them monitoring 4 sites (the max number for the free subscription). They also offer monthly plans to track more sites, for a fee.

FYI: I don’t know anyone at CrazyEgg, don’t know where they’re located and sure as heck do not have any monetary or other interest in their company. I’m just giving you my honest opinion of a service I’m using.

I’m pleasantly surprised at how this website’s service works. I’ll probably be paying for the upgrade soon so I can track more sites. This is a “must have” if you have a website. Heck, try the free version out at CrazyEgg.Com.

Give ‘em a try and let me know what you think about this service.

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