Well, I am not surprised. Evidently Google has decided to punish me as well. At least this may be looked as a consolation to other bloggers out there. Noticed I said consolation not justification.

The drop in page rank from PR4 to PR2 is significant I would say. So am I a bad neighborhood? I wish Google would put out a list of websites that are qualified as “bad websites to link to”. There are about 500 blogs out there that link to me, some have a site-wide blogroll links pointing my way. If you are one of those please consider to remove your link to my website. I am very serious about it- no offense will be taken.

I did not want to write about the WidgetBucks without actually trying it myself. As you can see from the title of the post I am not swept off my feet by it.

There are two major reasons why I dislike the program:

1. Although it is easy to configure and place it on your website, but once its on your website or blog it may take really long time for the widget to load, while preventing your website from loading completely.
2. I have a problem with the fact I forbidden to remove html links by Mpire.

Don’t waste your time! You can make better money with AuctionAds and even Amazon.

It happened again. I was tagged to participate in “Blog Improvement Zone Meme” started by Dane Morgan. Evidently Dane has never participated in a meme in the past, and to be honest I do not blame him. There is only so many times you can write 5 things about you before it gets boring.

As other bloggers I would love to improve on some technical/geeky aspects of my blog, however I will write about some things I would like to improve on that are not necessarily related to my programing skills. Besides there is always Blog Stokes, where you can find tons of info and tips on how to modify your WordPress.

So here is my dirt. I will list the things I would like to improve on as they come to mind not as a prioritized list.

1. Cutting Down On “Drafts”- this one is becoming quiet a problem for me. At the moment 14 draft posts that I started to write some time in the past but never got around to finish them. Main reason I end up not finishing my posts is that as an affiliate marketer there are always more urgent things to do than blogging- one of them is to “baby sit” my PPC campaigns and trying to keep on top of ever changing guidelines in AdWords.
2. In need to “step up” a notch. This one is based on the fact that I have received some good and juicy links from blogs that are much younger than mine but supersede my blog in quality. For me getting a incoming link brings with it not only satisfaction from being “noticed” but also the responsibility to the blogger giving me a link as well as to the visitors he is sending along the way.
3. Staying focused. As you can see from the title of my blog, I am writing suppose to be writing about my experience in affiliate marketing. However I often write about things unrelated to affiliate marketing.

I know that improving on these three things, I can bring my blog and blogging in general to another level, and I am glad Dane tagged me for this meme. How about you, do you think your blogging can be improved?

I am tagging for this meme following bloggers. I subscribe to these blogs but and I think they produce much better content than I do. However as blog owners they have probably thought about improving their blogs so I am interested to find out what exactly would they improve on:

• Josh Spauding- author of Make Money Blog
• David Olsen of Affiliate Profit Ceneter
• Maki of Dosh Dosh- I doubt Maki would be interested in this memem however considering great popularity of Dosh Dosh his readers might enjoy the “dirt”.
• Chris from Search Anyway Blog- some how I have a feeling Chris is going to video respond to this one.
• Maurice- the author of Cayman Host Blog

If you have already participated in such a meme feel free to send a trackback to this post.

Update: Chris from Search Anyway Blog has just responded with a video to this meme, but since he cannot ping my blog I decided to give him a link from this post. Take a look what he said.

I am not sure when it happened, but I notcied today that Tex Link Ads now are offering only javascript code for all affiliate banners and links.

I am not sure if this move is done to prevent spiders from recognizing the “url” to TLA or was there another reason. The bottom line is that javascript while in some cases may be beneficial to use, they are really pain to work with.

I have been using Tex Link Ads both as an advertiser as well as publisher for some time now. I do not make much money with them. In fact whatever I make as publisher and affiliate I immediately spend as an advertiser. Both my earnings and my spendings steadily increased over the period of last few moths. I am however reluctant to serve javascripted affiliate links.

The main problem that I see with javasripts is that it is limiting your on how you can track of outgoing clicks. If you have a solution to that please enlighten me.

Also the new affiliate links can not be embedded into your WordPress posts. And if you utilize OpenAds to serve TLA ads you are out of luck if you did not saved somewhere a good old html code for your affiliate links.

On that note I also have plunged into OpenAds rush after reading several great reviews. I am not sure what I think about OpenAds yet but here are some great reviews for you to check out:

Advertising Management Solutions: Open Ads Review
Video Review of Openads by Mark
Shoemoney Interview With Openads’ Scott Switzer

You may also be interested in Openads Blog, especially if you are planing to run Openads on your websites.

My first impression about OpenAds is that I am literally not sure if such as system can be an “overkill” for my blog. However if you are building your “blogging empire” or have several websites where you want to run your advertising via Openads, it allows you to centralize your efforts and tracking. What I find outstanding from the affiliate marketing point of view is the ability to GEO target with Openads. If you like to read in the future about my experience with OpenAds subscribe to my blog.

After improving dramatically the lading page for “Review My Post” buttons, Pay Per Post is still missing something. The problem can be fixed quiet easy. So what is the problem?

I think Pay Per Post needs to realize that alerting their bloggers (and advertisers) about news in their accounts is essential. I have recently received my first ever request via PPP Direct. Do you know how and when I learned that some one have purchased a review from me? Well it was just by logging into my account, only three days after the request was placed via a button on my blog. It would be of much help to implement a solution that alerts bloggers immediately, especially about Pay Per Post Direct requests.

While there is a snippet of pending reviews (both regular and PPP Direct) when you login into your account:

Things are quiet different when it comes to sign ups via “review my post” buttons. In fact you have to navigate to the place within your account where you get the code for the button in order to see your referral statistics:

Again I have to admit that after improving their landing page, even my blog has referred four bloggers. Yet none of the bloggers have taken the “opportunity” that referred them to Pay Per Post.

I think the problem can also be solved by allowing me to communicate with the bloggers that i have referred to Pay Per Post. In my case only one blogger is my regular reader/commentator, so I can easily contact him to see if he needs help, but I think that should not be my concern.

I have to admit that I have grown into a Pay Per Post fan. You can give them a try as well. If you use the button on the top of this post to sign up, we both can make $7.50. All you have to do is to write a review of this post (minimum 50 words). Do you think you can write 50 words in 10 minutes?