Over 2 months has passed since my last update on November 11th, and I’ve been very busy, so I’ll be breaking up my updates into separate posts.   Within the next 2 months, I will have officially quit my day job in order to start building my own company, and to pursue my various online business ideas.  Back in December, I also got heavily into CPC marketing so I have quite a lot to write about on how I’ve made my first $15,000 in CPC marketing.

Since my last posting was about WidgetBucks, I thought I’d continue on that topic by updating on my November, December and January earnings.  WidgetBucks has gone through some big changes in that time – by their description, in order to keep their traffic value up in order to offer high CPC revenues.  In essence what happened was that they cut back on CPC revenue and referral commissions, and by January my CTR had been cut in half.

So, as before I ran WB in a typically low CTR game screen, and saw revenues of $61.62 in November, $88.13 in December and $47.70 in January, despite seeing a 10% increase in traffic per month.   As of today I’ve taken down WB in favor of running some CPA offers through NeverBlueAds.  I’ll update at the end of the month on the differences between CPC and CPA marketing in this ad space.

As a follow-up to my first article about WidgetBucks, I can now report on my first month’s earnings. I placed WidgetBucks in the spots where I had previously been running AuctionAds, and was immediately impressed with the results. My total for October was $79.79, which did well compared to the last few months with AuctionAds, although could not compete with the $25 bonuses I received when people signed up with eBay.

The total seems to have been adjusted and debited, and what was alarming was that I received an email from WidgetBucks claiming that they had detected click fraud and a violation of their TOS on my sites. I ran these ads in a game window where the CTR is typically low, and only saw an average of 0.04% CTR on the 522,875 impressions I sent over. There is no way there was click fraud with such a low CTR to start with, so I will have to monitor this closely and ensure I receive my payment in 45 days when they process payouts. While I am happy that they stay on top of click fraud, I was very disturbed by the email as it did not include any evidence, simply an excerpt of their TOS.

October was a record month for me overall, and I’m looking forward to trying some new things in November. I’m already seeing an increase in Adsense and WidgetBucks earnings this month, and I’m hoping to spend more time tweaking my NeverBlue campaigns to see why they are performing so poorly.

I had my first encounter with a Facebook Ad outside of Facebook today.  My initial response to it was very optimistic.  I had just bought tickets to see Battles in Toronto this weekend, and on the checkout page I saw the following ad:

Initially, I was pretty happy to see this.  I figured that I would be able to click on it and see a list of other people who had bought tickets to see Battles, like I would view a Facebook Group.  This would let me see if anybody in my friends circles were going, or meet new people who’d be there.  The ad was actually a link to install the iLike application, which I installed thinking it might lead me to a list of concert go-ers.

I haven’t found the list yet.  Instead I was profiled by iLike on my music listening habits so that they can let me put links to songs on my profile in exchange for likely selling me concert tickets, cds and movies in the future – and probably targeting my friends list as well.

So, here’s my take on this.  Up to now, Facebook has had the strength of linking us in ways that were not possible before to our friends and our community.  We can view what our friends are doing, who their friends are, pictures of them.  We can join groups and meet other people, increasing our circle of influence and helping us keep track of it all.  This has been so useful and successful that it’s our instinct to think any ad associated with Facebook (especially in Facebook’s familiar style) will similarly link us to useful information.  As advertisers fail to deliver on these expectations, it’s going to have an effect on Facebook’s overall trust and appeal.  Soon, like your inbox, it will become harder to tell what is safe to click on, what is useful, and what is just junk.

On a related note, I also signed up as an advertiser in Facebook Ads to promote Poker Underworld.   I’ve chosen a $0.05CPC campaign so it will be interesting to see if this price can deliver me any new players and how popular it will be.  Once I’ve had time to complete the Poker Underworld Facebook application, I’ll link the ad to that instead.  I’m hoping to see nice growth in November after a very strong October.

This blog has recently become a mish-mash of my exploits in making money online, and my personal interests of cooking, music reviews and writing.  This post will attempt to unify the two.

On the affiliate marketing and web start-up side of life, I’ve had a very successful October, with Poker Underworld, Kill The Zombies! and Toronto Maple Leafs Info all having good months, with Santa’s Arcade and my new startup, Keyword Envy ready to launch in November.

I’d love to start attending affiliate conferences to meet other like-minded online marketers who are launching their own startups, and to network and find out the best possible ways for me to promote my products.  It’s also a good way to figure out what everyone else is doing so I can avoid it and try to stay a step ahead!

Zac Johnson is promoting his contest to give a free pass to a lucky ready of his great affiliate marketing blog.  He recently posted some tips for CPC marketing which were very interesting to read.  I’m testing some campaigns using his suggestions right now and while I’m still waiting to break even, I have certainly learned some good techniques that I had not considered.

On a personal level, I had a great time at the yearly Martyn-Bessette Halloween party in Beeton and it was one of the best ever.  I finally had a chance to try out my Burger King alter-ego and everyone really outdid themselves with the costumes this year, especially Wes who not only fell off of his front porch in his 15lb (each) wooden robot shoes, but also fell face first into his front bushes.  I also had a fantastic birthday last week and was able to toast 30+ people with drambuie at midnight which might be a record so far.

Jasmin has recently started a new job, and today I set an exit strategy in motion to leave my daytime job after 6+ years maintaining online bingo networks.  It’s sad to go, but there are so many things I’d like to do online, and so much knowledge I’d like to pass on in the future working as an Interactive Director or similar position that I’ve been finding it hard to stay motivated at work.  I’m looking to find something new, or start going back to school, by Feb 1st.

Recently I removed AuctionAds from most sites on my network. After reporting problems, poor earnings and a complete lack of trust I’d had enough. Recently, beta access to their new ShoppingAds service has been passed around, and I have to wonder why I should give them a try?

Compared to WidgetBucks, their product is horrible. WidgetBucks manages to squeeze comparative shopping and attractive ads and product photos into their tiny ad units, while AuctionAds somehow looks worse then Adsense units used to. They are poorly aligned and hard to read.

The ShoppingAds service is a complete whitelabel of AuctionAds which sends shivers down my spine and does nothing to initiate trust in a new service. ShoppingAds brings nothing new to the table, and my traffic is too valuable to risk the many issues which plagued AuctionAds without acknowledgement or apology. And with the same company behind it, I’m sure I can expect the same slow and inculpable customer service I’m used to.

Until I read about some other affiliate’s amazing results, I’ll stick with my WidgetBucks which are currently out-performing Adsense. The most I’m willing to do is give a referral link to them.

Earlier this month, I gave WidgetBucks a try as a replacement for the failing AuctionAds (notice I’m not linking to them…) units I’d been running on Poker Underworld. While AuctionAds started out nicely, my earnings declined every month despite increasing traffic and I am convinced they simply lost everyone’s clicks and sales. It was very disappointing because ads that allowed Poker players to shop on eBay while they played did very well, and the customers enjoyed it.

So far, so good with WidgetBucks. In my first 10 days I’ve put through just over 125,000 impressions and seen around a $0.14 ECPM and $0.29 CPC which is nearly triple what Adsense typically pays – pretty good considering that the Poker impressions always show a low CTR and CPM. While $17 in 10 days doesn’t come close to how AuctionAds started out, it’s much better then it ended off and a nice complement to the other ad units on the site.

This year I have been building small websites in subjects that are fun for me to work on.  I try to build websites that are useful to me so that I know others will use them as well.  It’s given me a chance to really work on my SEO skills, and also gives me what is now a very small extra income, but could one day start to add up.

This is in addition to my main website, Poker Underworld, which is celebrating 8 months since it’s launch.

Kill The Zombies – Online Zombie Games
Kill The Zombies! came about after playing The Last Stand one night, and then collecting links to over 50+ zombie games.  I quickly realized that I could build a really great online zombie game website pretty quickly, and a quick search for competition turned up nothing.  Within 3 days, I’d created a template for my zombie site and filled it with what is now over 100+ zombie games.    Kill The Zombies! has grown very quickly, now with over 1000 unique visitors every day!  Unfortunately many competing zombie sites have shown up in the 3 months since I launched, often stealing games and ideas from me, but it’s fun and challenging to continue to improve and stand out from the rest.  I have also built Top Zombie Sites to rank the best zombie sites.

Toronto Maple Leafs Info
As the season was approaching, especially during free agency, I found myself reading at least 5 or 6 different blogs and news sources for my Leafs news.  This lead me to build a site featuring syndicated news from all of the blogs I was reading, plus my own blog which I update with my own Leafs opinions.  I was also the first to create an iCal feed for the Leafs schedule, which you can add to your Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook!  TML.info has grown pretty quickly in the past month, and I hope to really turn it into a great source of Leafs news, possibly adding pools to the site.

Stock Market Blogs Today
After building the Leafs news site, I decided to do the same for the many stock market blogs I was reading.   I had no idea what a great tool this would be for me because every day I get investment ideas from a very diverse selection of blogs, including bullish and bearish views on a large variety of sectors.  So far, there hasn’t been very much traffic to it – which is really a shame because it’s so handy and it can make you money.  I’ve also used Yahoo’s API to add quotes for the major indexes, and to allow each visitor to track their own 5 top stocks.  This has become my own way of checking my stock prices through the day, rather than having to type them into Yahoo Finance over and over.

Santa’s Arcade
Once I’d built Kill The Zombies!, I wanted to build more arcades since most of the work was already done.  Seeing that there aren’t too many sites for Christmas games, I decided to collect any games I could about Santa, snowmen, reindeer, elves and.. Yetis.  I think this site will be a lot of fun as Christmas draws nearer, and I really think it’s the best and easiest to use site for Christmas games.   I hope to add the ability to send games as e-Cards before November rolls around.

Redneck Jokes & Pictures
Redneck Jokes was a quick one to throw together, as a site to test my SEO skills and to try different ways to rank highly for the terms “redneck jokes” and “redneck pictures“.  Of all of the sites I’ve built this year, this is one I won’t be using myself very often.  I am also working on a Redneck Games site to go along with this one that’s got a really fun game where you stack deer on a… well… I’ll write about it when it’s done.

Poker Underworld
The first site I created this year was Poker Underworld, which is a free texas holdem poker game based on my friend at ProWagerSystems software.  The game centers around a social network which allows you to get to know your opponents at the poker table.  You can use these friends to share hand advice, and to add to your favorite competitors list so you can add comments about their playing and challenge them in the future.  The site is very intelligent, and uses sophisticated hand analysis to let you know what your playing habits are.  It ranks your best and worst hands, and ranks you against other players in the game.  Although I haven’t been able to improve Poker Underworld in many months, there are many new features in development which will really set it out as the best free poker game online.

Sexy Fucking Games
I was very tempted to leave this off the list (especially since I may know you) but it’s a great site and one of my more successful so far.  I wouldn’t say that I’m the type to create a collection of sex games, but once I had the gaming site template I couldn’t resist.  The site is a lot of fun and you should check it out — you can’t tell me you won’t enjoy it.  So far the earnings have been very low despite the nice traffic since adult ads are sold based on CPA and require very high volume to convert (especially when I’m giving away content for free!)

That’s it for now, although I have 3 other sites in various stages of development right now.   These new sites, like Poker Underworld, are actual services and not so much a collection of games or blogs like the sites I’ve made this summer, but with all I have learned about SEO and publishing ads, I’ve been much better prepared to launch new products in 2008.

Have fun checking out these links, and I’ll be back with more.

While going through old files, I found a collection of screenshots I had taken on 9/11 of major news websites. On the anniversary of a day that is starting to seem so far away, I get chills looking through them.

I remember taking these screenshots on that day in disbelief – as newspapers scrambled to keep everyone informed, they were forced to shut their websites down and upload these unformatted stories instead. I managed to get screenshots of statements from the airlines, the White House, and Red Cross as well, but most chilling of all are the screenshots of the World Trade Center webcam broadcasting it’s last image from the observation deck, and one more no longer broadcasting at all.

[GALLERY=0]

I haven’t been listening to much new music this summer, mostly new releases from established bands I already like. Surprisingly, I discovered the most interesting band I’ve heard lately on the Urban Outfitters blog.

Battles recently released their first full length album, and the song Atlas has been a lot of fun driving down the road in my truck or trapped in headphones at the office. The song is a high speed juggernaut of indie rock, with relentless pounding drums, and nonsensical chipmunk-like vocals. The music video is very creative and visually stands out as one of the best videos I’ve seen in a while.

This is one of those tracks that most people around you won’t understand. The vocals are strange, there isn’t much of a hook or anything to sing to, and the song is 7+ minutes long. Stick with it though, it’s a fist pounder, and there’s a lot to appreciate here.

Battles – Atlas

We all have this problem. The internet is really big. If you’re like me you have a lot of interests, and you find something new DAILY.

The bookmarks toolbar in your browser is only so big. I’ve got my top 20 or 30 links on my toolbar with the names turned off so that it’s just a row of icons, and that suits me pretty fine for my main links. But when I find a great article that I want to save for later, I always end up dumping it into the black hole called my Bookmarks.

There are many solutions to this problem out there – del.icio.us and other social bookmarking websites claim to help you organize and tag your bookmarks so you can find them later and share them – but I’ve never been able to get into the habit of using it. The bookmarks seem so unreacheable and the Firefox plugin they’ve made is clunky and hard to use – plus it takes up too much room.

Having my own website, the perfect solution for me would be to organize my bookmarks using categories and tags onto my own bookmarks page that I can access from anywhere. The best way to add bookmarks would be with a smart bookmarklet that can describe the bookmark using the title and meta tags from the page I’m bookmarking and add it to my Bookmarks page. Yeah.. it’s pretty much exactly what del.icio.us does, but somehow it feels easier and more personal.

Worried that I’d have to code this myself, I went searching for a WordPress plugin to accomplish this, and to my surprise I found one that does exactly what I need… wpbookmarks. Unfortunately it’s been abandoned for a few years and does not work with WordPress 2.1+

Luckily, with a little bit of work, I was able to upgrade the plugin to WordPress 2.1+ with all of the original functionality. It works great and I’m already using it to save bookmarks. I plan to continue to update it, so I hope that the author does not mind that I’ve adopted his project. Eventually I would like to improve tagging support, make the bookmarks page searchable and better organized, implement a tag cloud and rating system, and support some sort of urgency that will indicate whether it’s a link I intend to revisit quickly or not.

You can download wpbookmarks 1.1 here. You can view the original project here.