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Web Meets Admin
Firstly, I’d like to apoligize for my absense. I’ve been busy.
Anyway, I’d just like to suggest that everyone check out Web Meets Admin - a new site by a new friend of mine. It’s a new forum (run on mybb) that I feel offers a unique perspective on webmastering and forum administrating. This site offers a unique take on webmaster and forum administrating, incorporating both evenly. You have webmaster forums (such as Digital Point and you have administrator forums (such as Admin Fusion) - both of which I visit regularly - but neither significantly incorporate both into the discussion.
I realize that there isn’t really a fine line between the two, but should there be?
The site is customized to a decent extent - one notable thing about them is that for each of their forums they discern between website and forum discussion by a [W] or [A] in front. The range of discussion covers everything from skinning and graphics to marketing and promotion. They’re new, but off to a fantastic start. Check them out.
10 of the Best Wordpress Themes
Below are the top 10 Wordpress themes that I’ve found (in no particular order). I’m sure there are a lot of good ones out there but the 10 below are some of the best I’ve found. enjoy!
Warped by Six Shooter Media: Download
Aqueous Light by Six Shooter Media: Download
Solemnity Two by Six Shooter Media: Download
Dezinerfolio by Dezinerfolio: Download
Twilight by Just Skins: Download
Accord by Just Skins: Download
Curved by Just Skins: Download
Webby Blue by Just Skins: Download
Sleek Bluey by WP Snap: Download
I Feel Dirty by WP Snap: Download
New AOL Page Nearly Identical to Yahoo’s
Well folks, apparently the designers at AOL are lacking creativity these days - if you visit their site and preview the “New AOL” the layout may surprise you. It may even remind of you - bingo - Yahoo.com. Go to Aol.com and near the top there should be a bar that allows you to preview their new design. If you look at it and navigate around the site the layout is almost exactly the same as Yahoo with a few style/color changes. However, the sites are near duplicates.
I’ve attached a screen of each:
Look at these and try telling me this isn’t a blatant rip-off of Yahoo. Everything is the same - the logo position, the sidebar, the tabs, the mail/login menu, even the ads and recent news.
AOL, you’re pathetic.
Adbrite: My Brief Experience
A few weeks ago I was looking for new ways to monetize my site. I’d heard of Adbrite before, but I always thought they were a watered-down version of Google Adsense. In a way they are, at least in design. However, in function, they are not. The advertisers must approve the sites - and the publisher makes much less. I ran Adbrite on a few of my sites to see how it went - I even published the ads on this site.
Basically my results in the Adbrite control panel were that I had roughly 12,000 pageviews and made .09 cents. Quite honestly, that isn’t worth my time. I should have been making 10x - 100x that amount.
Anyway, this was just my experience. Perhaps I didn’t play with the settings enough or perhaps my niche(s) just aren’t good for Adbrite. One thing I do know, however, is that I likely won’t be trying them again anytime soon.
Squidoo Case Study #1 Part 2
Note: This is part 2 of a series of blog entries. To read part one, click here.
Just an update on the Squidoo Case Study. To be honest I had no intend on making another post on this until the end of the month. However, I’m pleased to say I’ve already seen some results. Why these results are not monetary, it’s still rather surprising.
Here’s a screenshot I took around the time I launched the traffic campaign:
As you can see, this lens was pretty standard. It has a lens rank of around 80,000 out of 200,000. 1 unique visitor in the past seven days. All in all, pretty general.
Now here is a screenshot taken today, three days after I launched the traffic campaign:
Look at that! Lens Rank of 130 out of 200,000. If you ask me, that’s pretty darn impressive. Furthermore, this is with only 3,000 visitors, plus 10 five-star ratings. More traffic is on it’s way.
It’s going to be really interesting to see how, or if, this will affect the Squidoo revenue payout.
Hosting Suspended, Server Blacklisted
Today I woke up to a rather unpleasant surprise - my hosting account with A Small Orange hosting had been suspended. This means that all of my websites (50+) were all offline - the result of this was a flood of user emails and instant messages, as well as a loss in revenue.
Now, as you can image, I was very surprise. I pay my hosting monthly and the day I receive the invoice, and I don’t host any pornography, warez, or proxies and I’ve broken no copyright laws. Fortunately my host is known for it’s quick support, so I immediately emailed my host to find how what was going on.
Their response:
You are hosting a spam script in your site.com (url removed) addon domain.
/home/username/public_html
This script (uploaded on June 21st) was sending spam and caused this server to be listed in several public blacklists.
This came as a surprise to me because I don’t send spam. No really, I don’t. I replied immediately proclaiming my innocence and suggesting it was a vulnerability in the script. Sure enough, I find out that there is an exploit in the vbgsitemap hack for vbulletin. Apparently this has been know (see this thread on vbulletin.org.)
My mistake:
Not staying updated on potential exploits.
My problem with my host:
1) Their assumption that I was a spammer. I mean, all someone had to do was look at virtually any of my sites to see that only a fool would risk the loss of all their sites by sending SPAM. Furthermore, all they had to do was google vbgsitemap exploit or even vbgsitemap to see several results for the exploit. Why wouldn’t they take the time to check? vbgsitemap was the name of the directory the malicious file was located in.
2) They didn’t notify me. This makes me the angriest of all. What kind of host suspends an account of it’s users and doesn’t contact them?
3) They changed the priority of my support ticket from urgent to low almost immediately. If this situation wasn’t an urgent issue regarding hosting, I don’t know what is.
My host, A Small Orange, didn’t give me much information on the server being blacklisted, but I can only hope it isn’t too bad. They did say it was listed on several public blacklists. The spam-sending file was active for about 19 days, so that’s enough time to do a good amount of damage. If this wasn’t my account, I’d think it hilarious. Heh.
I really hope next time something like this happens, if it does, that my host will not automatically assume I’m the cause. Or, at the very least, they’ll notify me.
That hurts guys, that really hurts.
Squidoo Case Study #1 Part 1
Squidoo (referral id, yes) has been one of the latest crazes in the webmaster world - hailed novel by some webmasters and hated by others.
Basically, Squidoo is a website where users can create their own pages, also called Lenses. These Lenses can hold affiliate ads from Ebay, Amazon and other companies and you earn a direct percentage from each purchase. They also display Adsense throughout each page. However, this isn’t actually Adsene with your publisher ID. It’s their Adsense and they claim to distribute percentages of it to their top publishers. This is theoretically determined by star rating, traffic, and CTR.
Last month I earned a measly $1.18 from Squidoo. This threw me off because I’d earned $20 the previous month, and $10 the month before. I was expecting a double digit sum. I have yet to receive a penny from affiliate sales.
Onto the Case Study
Anyway, in this case study I’ve ordered some traffic to a specific Lens and hope to study it’s effect. I’ve ordered 60,000 unique visitors to this Squidoo Lens. Traffic will be delivered at around 2,000 uniques/day.
While yes, I did obviously blow some money away on this purchase, my goal is to make it back. I’m testing the legitimacy and practicality of earning money from Squidoo - in particular, Adsense, which should be the easiest way to make money from them.
I’ll keep you guys updated as this progresses.
Stumble Upon - Paid Advertising
I did not actually know they had this feature at Stumble Upon until I read a guest post on Shoemoney’s blog.
They have a paid advertising feature, which is, in theory, highly targeted.
For those of you unaware of what stumbleupon is, it’s a social networking site that allows users to visit and “stumble” websites that are in their database based off of their Firefox and Internet Explorer toolbars. This toolbar collects data which helps recommend sites in the future. Because of the way this is set up, the StumbleUpon administration can easily add paid spots into the seemingly random stumbles that users view.
You can view the advertising’s page here.
The first thing I would like to say about my experience with paid advertising on StumbleUpon.com is that it was all very easy, clean, and professional. My account had to be approved, but that’s to be expected by any respectable advertiser. After my account and first site was approved, I was free to add sites, campaigns, and funds to my Stumble Upon account directly from paypal. You can easily activate or deactivate campaigns you have running, track your +/- feedback percentage, set a maximum visitor/money cap, as well as view the total amount of visitors they’ve given you. Their price was relatively reasonable at $.05 per visitor - and they brought you visitors nearly instantly because their network is so large.
With this case study I did have some difficulty because of a few factors. Firstly, I was already receiving traffic from StumbleUpon prior to purchasing the additional traffic. Furthermore, my niche (writing) didn’t fall into a direct category of theirs (songwriting - too specific) and (entertainment > writing - more about books that writing). To top it up my site, a forum, probably wasn’t the best for StumbleUpon users.
The site’s that do best with StumbleUpon are typically multipmedia sites such as videos, pictures, and news stories.
I ended up adding about $25 to traffic and get a few thousand visitors - however, I did not see a jump in registrations or in revenue.
I don’t think my site was the best for StumbleUpon, that’s why this study failed, in my opinion. I will, however, continue to use StumbleUpon and experiment with different niches. And - of course - I’ll keep you informed.
Blogs at vbulletin.com
Well, the next step toward’s the vbulletin blog product is here - love vbulletin blogs at vbulletin.com. This is a great move on their part as far as testing goes because vbulletin users can test it out and help find bugs.
My first impression was that it was decent for a first look, but it does lack some basic features of blogs. It’s fallen short of my expectations.
Some features I’d love to see:
- User subdomains. I’d love to see users have a username.site.com or alternatively a site.com/username web address
- Custom user styles. Again, it’d be great if users could change the colors of their blog.
- Blog Layout - another great thing. If they could be able to move and arrange sections it’d help give them a more “ownership” feel.
- RSS for ALL blogs. It’s great that we have RSS for individual blogs, but I’d like it for all blogs.
View the official vbulletin blog announcement here.
According to the announcement the live blogging on vbulletin.com is only using the blog component and not yet the social networking one - which means we have more features to come!
I’m looking forward to the full release of this product.
View my live blog here at vbulletin.com
Jelsoft aquired by Internet Brands, Inc.
Jelsoft has annouced that they have been acquired by Internet Brands, Inc. View the official announcement here.
According to James, the current CEO of Jelsoft, most everything will remain unchanged. Internet Brands is apparently investing more money and staff into Jelsoft as opposed to making major changes.
It’s to early to know what this means for vbulletin users, but it’d be apparent that it’s a positive change.