Bling for your Blog

Posted by stuart as ,

Most people who read this blog would probably already be a reader of Empress’ Building My Empire, but in case you missed it, or aren’t aware, she has launched a new project called Beautiful Blogging.

It’s a collection of all sorts of bling for Wordpress blogs, from themes, to widgets and plugins, and more.

Well worth bookmarking

So much bling, so few blogs…..

OT - Love’s coming to town

Posted by stuart as

A bit off topic, I know, but as a father of two young kids, I don’t get out that much. In just two more sleeps, U2 finally plays a sold out (66,000 people) Football Park here in little ol’ Adelaide. The concert has been delayed about six months due to illness of a member of the Edge’s family.
I just can’t wait is all! Bring it on!

Inexplicable AdSense CPM spike

Posted by stuart as

I wrote the other day about a crazy increase in AdSense earnings so far this month. It’s continued unabated, although not quite at the levels outlined in my previous post.

Upon closer inspection of my AdSense stats, there’s been no dramatic increase in traffic, it’s the CPM (income per 1,000 impressions) which has jumped dramatically:

These are the numbers (CPM) across all my blogs and sites over the last 5 months:

Jul ‘06 $9.06
Aug ‘06 $2.55
Sep ‘06 $6.32
Oct ‘06 $7.30
Nov ‘06 $19.19 (this month so far)

Anyone else seen a spike like this?

Google decides redirects no good for AdWords

Posted by stuart as

I logged into my AdWords account today to see zero ad impressions today for the campaign I’m running at the moment.

This struck me as odd, as I’d been averaging around 1,000 impressions a day up till now. On closer inspection, I discovered that my ads had been rendered inactive due to an “Inaccurate Display URL”

What I’d been doing was funnelling ad clickers through a domain, to an affiliate site with a redirect. I couldn’t see this being a problem, and it made tracking clicks much easier.

Apparently, this is not ok:

• Your Display URL must accurately reflect the URL of your website. If your actual Destination URL link is too long for your ad, use a shortened version (such as your homepage) that meets the character limit for this field.
• The Display URL field cannot be used as another line of ad text.
• Your Display URL must include the domain extension, for example: .com, .net, or .org.

Example:
Destination URL: http://www.shoesforsale.com/ladiesshoes/highheels.html
Display URL: www.shoesforsale.com

Apparently, as the URL I listed in the bottom of my AdWords ad was not the actual URL the clicker ended up at, I’m doing the wrong thing. Interesting to note that it’s taken Google around a month to pick this up. I wonder how many people out there are doing the exact same thing?

Payperpost manufactures controversy - well duh!

Posted by stuart as

Darren at Problogger’s written how the light has dawned on some in the blogosphere, that payperpost inc. has actually cultivated the controversy surrounding their blog advertising service to their own benefit.

Well Duh!

Anybody who’d looked at the opportunities presented on payperpost would have known that this was the case, such as when they presented an opportunity for bloggers to name and shame the top shelf bloggers who had belittled them.

One interesting thing is that this buzz creation must have cost Murphy and his mates a small fortune, as they presented these opportunities as paid ones, in essence, paying people ten bucks to take the piss out of nay-saying A-List bloggers.

I just assumed that controversy was the whole point of the excercise?