Oli Allen's Blog

I'm moving!

2006-06-15T18:56:00.000+00:00

This blog will not be updated (much) any longer, I'll be posting over at OSWorld.biz from now on. Myself and Gary agreed that there was no point in both blogging about the same topics in seperate places, when we could pool our resources a bit, and have just the one really good blog.

See this post for more information.

I may still use this blog to post my AIS stats, we'll see...

An Annoying Thing

2006-06-06T11:25:00.000+00:00

Is setting up an Adsense site and forgetting to set up a channel for it in Adsense. Then several weeks later, getting untracable clicks :-(

May AIS Earnings

2006-06-01T07:20:00.000+00:00

This post dedicated to Tom and Empress ;-)

Adsense: $119.02 [More than double my April Adsense income!]
Nothing else to report... although just Adsense this month beat my entire AIS earnings for last month.

I had my first actual Paypal payment from Dreamhost at the start of May - for $181.45 - I believe I'm owed another one today.

Adsense

I launched several new sites in April, and they got indexes and started making money in May.
I have launched a number of new sites this month too - now it's time to play the waiting game...

What's The Plan?

June's main plan should probably be to find a new product AIS to sell, and either a new affiliat eproduct to sell, or somewhere else to promote Dreamhost

Is Adsense Bad For Search Engine Rankings?

2006-05-27T18:10:00.000+00:00

Earlier this month, I read a post on Tom's "Nothing-Ventured" about whether it's a good idea to add Adsense to your Adsense AIS sites right from the start, or to let them get indexed first.

At the time, I couldn't see any benefit to this.

So how is the “wait 6 months to add Adsense” method any better than being in the Google sandbox for 6 months?

At least with the Adsense there from the start you can still earn from other SEs while you’re waiting for G.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense - a new site generally wouldn't have Adsense on it, unless it was designed simply to display Adsense, and the SEs know this. I have created a new site to test Tom's theory on.

However, having to go through all of my sites to add Adsense code to them later doesn't sound like much fun, and the whole point of AIS is little/no ongoing work, so I wrote a little PHP script to do the work for me.

You'll have to edit the second line - it controls the date on which the Adsense will start showing. In this example, the 28th May 2006.


<?php
if ( time() >= mktime(0, 0, 0, 5, 28, 2006) ) { 
    ?> 
    Your Adsense code goes here. 
    <?php
}
else {
    ?>
    You could display some alternative content here 
    (affiliate links etc) or just leave it blank. 
    <?php
} 
?>

Offline Advertising

2006-05-24T23:51:00.000+00:00

Tom over at Nothing Ventured has posted an article about advertising your AIS sites offline

This is something I've been thinking about doing recently, so this article is very useful to me - giving an overview of the pros and cons of this advertising method.

People are starting to realise that they might need to think “outside the box” if they want to make significant money. And one of the ways that people might be able to do that is by bringing in visitors from the ‘real world’.

Update to "How Many Adsense Blocks"

2006-05-18T17:28:00.000+00:00

I've noticed that another useful side effect of my "less Adsense blocks" experiment seems to be that the ads on the site I'm trying it on now seem to be a lot more relevant to the site's topic. This means that not only should it be displaying higher paid ads, but the CTR seems to have actually gone up!

Of course, it's early days yet, so this may just be a fluke. Will keep track of it over a longer time span...

How Many Adsense Blocks?

2006-05-14T19:52:00.000+00:00

The "average" Adsense AIS site seems to have as many Adsense blocks as possible all over it. Hey - more chance to get a click, right?

However - consider how the Adwords system works, with the higher bidding advertisers getting better exposure, rather than all advertisers paying the same amount. Would you prefer to have 12 potential ad links, with some worth just $0.01, or 4 highly targetted, high value links in a prime position on the page?

I'm currently testing this with a few of my sites - expecting a lower CTR, but hopefully higher actual earnings.

Yet More Cheap Domains

2006-05-11T18:37:00.000+00:00

Thanks to jimk for this (posted in the comments of my last cheap domains post):

Looks like RegisterFly are having another $0.60 .info domain sale this Friday.

PROMOTION HAS ENDED
The SUPERINFO special was a complete success. Do the incredible response we will be running this promotion again from 7:00 AM till 8:00 PM on Friday.

Didn't get any .infos myself during the last sale, as I was expecting to be able to pay with Paypal - aparently they don't accept it anymore :-(

Have Your Visitors Write Your Content

2006-05-10T22:05:00.000+00:00

Those who have seen examples of my music fan sites will know that I include a "shoutbox" feature on each one. At first this was simply because I had space in my design template that I needed to fill, but it's worked out great for me...

Regularly Updated
Along with the "news" pages (using RSS feeds from Google News), this shows the search engines that the site is changed/updated regularly, without me actually having to do anything (which is kind of the point of AIS ;-))

Search Queries
Another trend that I've noticed recently is that having the shoutbox feature increases the amount of search engine hits I get. I check my own content for spelling errors, but users of the sites tend to be less strict with this. Hence, my sites get hits from users searching for terms like "artic monkeys lyrics", because someone on the shoutbox has misspelled "arctic" as "artic".

Double Edged Sword
Of course, this does have downsides - having the users chatting in the shoutbox takes their attention away from the Adsense blocks ;-)

A Good Start To The Day

2006-05-10T10:01:00.000+00:00

Clicks: 1
Earnings: $1.50

More Cheap Domains

2006-05-09T15:50:00.000+00:00

Just recieved an email from RegisterFly about a domain name sale they're having tomorrow.

.info domains - $0.60
.info domains will drop to $0.60 for just 12 hours, starting tomorrow

Make sure you are logged into your RegisterFly account

You must have at least one .info domain name purchase in your cart

Enter the code "SUPERINFO"

.net domains - $2.99
This offer is valid for the next 48 hours

Make sure you are logged into your RegisterFly account

You must have at least one .net domain name purchase in your cart

Enter the code "NETSPECIAL"

.com domains - $6.99
Offer valid for the next 48 hours

Make sure you are logged into your RegisterFly account

You must have at least one .com domain name purchase in your cart

Enter the code "COMSPECIAL"

Domain Transfers
Offer valid for the next 24 hours. Transfer your domain in to RegisterFly and they'll add another year to it's registration for just $4

Go to http://www.registerfly.com/transfer/index.php

Select Transfer my domains

Enter your domains to transfer

Enter the Transfer promotion code "FLY6PROMO"

I do not use RegisterFly myself, so cannot offer a personal recommendation - may have to register some .infos though...

Demystifying SEO

2006-05-05T11:59:00.000+00:00

Jason Chance has written an article summarizing SEO in seven points.

The one that stood out to me the most was point 6 - Don't Try to Bullshit Google

Google is smarter than you. They will figure it out if you try to cloak text, use meaningless keywords, or do anything else that is specifically forbidden by the man. This is what they do for a living people, and they will yank your site from the rankings faster than you can say “Sorry!”. Losing favor with Google is the kiss of death for any eCommerce site. Mark my words, nothing is worth pissing Google off.

It still suprises me how many local business websites I see with a list of keywords the same colour as their site's background at the bottom of their pages. All designed by the local web design company that *everyone* seems to use.

Contracts

2006-05-03T01:14:00.000+00:00

An essential part of web development work is a contract with your client. This will help protect both parties from any legal issues, and allows you to refer back to it at a later date to see exactly what work was agreed to.

Unfortunatly, getting a contract drawn up by a legal professional can be expensive, so "TheJohnBoy" over on the DDN forums has put one online for free!

You can download it in MS Word or Open Office formats here.

Why have we made available a completely free web design contract? We feel it will be useful to any design / marketing agency who wants a water tight contract which should exempt you and your business from any legal issues that may arise.

April AIS Earnings

2006-05-01T10:06:00.000+00:00

Dreamhost affiliate program - $97 (refunded :-()
Adsense: $56.94
Proxy Template sales: $29.99

Total AIS: $86.93

------

This has been my worst month for AIS this year - I have been busy with client work and developing a new application of my own, so not had much time for new AISs.

Adsense

As you may know, most of my Adsense type sites are relating to bands - the problem with this is that they only make money while the band is popular. I launched two new sites this month, and they're just starting to get indexed - so hopefully Adsense should pick up in May.

Dreamhost

Only one Dreamhost referral this month, which made me $97, but then got refunded :-(
I will not be renewing my Dreamhost banner ad this month - I think that on that particular forum, everyone who needs cheap hosting has now got it ;-)

AIS site sales

I sold off an underperforming Adsense site this month for $20 - the guy who bought it didn't care as all he wanted was the domain name.

May's plans

Dave from Brightonvibes.com has started an online money making forum. One post there caught my eye - "Advertising in Local papers and shops". This is something that I plan to look in to this month - promoting Clickbank etc products in the offline world...

Google really likes blogs

2006-05-01T10:00:00.000+00:00

After seeing it mentioned on Gary's blog, I decided to try out the Wordpress "Blogger import" feature to make a quick backup of my blog.

I did this, played around with the Wordpress control panel for a bit, and then left it. By that evening, Google blog search had indexed my new blog, and was showing posts in it's results!

I suspect it helped that I installed Wordpress in a subdirectory on oliciv.net - which I've had registered since mid 2003. Will have to try doing the same thing on a fresh domain at some point, and see how long it takes to get indexed that way...

Understanding AIS

2006-04-29T13:06:00.000+00:00

Many people misunderstand the concept of AIS when they first try it, and this causes them to lose faith in the whole concept and give up.

Gary B has written an article addressing this, explaining exactly what AIS means.

To be able to benefit from AIS, first of all you need to understand that not all AIS are equal. There are many facets to AIS, it might have been an idea to not lump all these together as one word => this would solve a lot of problems with understanding what AIS means…

It's a good read for anyone working (or planning to work) in the AIS field.

Promotional Idea - Submitting Designs

2006-04-25T20:34:00.000+00:00

Many people write (or buy/modify) articles and submit them to article directories to promote their sites. They get a little "infobox" at the bottom of every article they submit, which can contain links to their site. They get a backlink to their site from the article directory itself, and from every site which uses their article.

Another idea, for the creative types out there, would be to create website templates and submit them to sites such as oswd.org or OpenWebDesign.org with a link to your site at the bottom.

These sites allow visitors to download and use website templates submitted by members. Some will allow you to use their templates royalty free, others will ask you to leave a link back to their site somewhere - this is where the benefit to you comes in.

It then works the same as an article directory would - you will get the backlinks from the template site, and then another one from each site which uses your design.

I havn't tried this myself, as I'm not the most creative person, but I'm sure most people have a few designs laying around that they've made and never found a use for...

Cheap Domains

2006-04-25T10:11:00.000+00:00

I was just registering some domains, and thought I'd share this. A lot of people may know about it already, but I'm sure it'll help somebody...

Domain names at Namecheap can be reduced from $8.88 to just $7.99 using the coupon code "BESTVALUE".

Not a massive saving, but it does add up if you buy a lot of domains.

They also appear to be offering free "Whois Guard" subscriptions with every new domain registered - this allows you to hide your name and address in whois listings, replacing them with Namecheap's. I do not use this service myself so I cannot comment on it's quality.

There are, of course, registrars who can already beat Namecheap's prices, but I have yet to find one that can beat their ease of use and quality of customer support.

(And no, this post does not contain any affiliate links)

The Importance of Customer Service

2006-04-22T15:30:00.000+00:00

Earlier today I needed to buy a piece of software for a project I was working on (non AIS related). I had the choice between two.

Both products cost the same, and perform the same tasks.

Product 1) No obvious "contact us" link
Product 2) I noticed that their payment form wasn't working, and sent them an email about it. I was leaning towards Product 1 because of this. Within minutes, they responded saying that they'd look in to it. In less than half an hour, they'd fixed it.

I made my decision to buy Product 2 based nearly entirely on this.

Since buying the product, I have reported a bug to them (nothing major), and recieved an equally good response.

I think I made the right choice :-)

Earnings With No Clicks

2006-04-21T15:03:00.000+00:00

Just been checking my Adsense stats, and I've noticed a site that has had no clicks today, but made $0.04. Anyone had this before/know why it happens?

Blogs vs. Email Lists

2006-04-21T11:08:00.000+00:00

There's been a lot of talk recently (ok, mostly by people trying to sell you something ;-)) about how critical it is to get people signed up to an email list so you can sell stuff to them.

I'll be honest - I don't get it.

I'd much rather have 100 people subscribed to my blog's XML feed than have an email list of thousands.

I personally have never bought anything through an affiliate link in an email, but would be much more likely to buy the same product (still through somebody's affiliate link) if I saw it recommended on a blog like Gary's.

People subscribing to your blog are making a conscious effort to read what you have to say - it's very easy to simply delete an email that is trying to sell you something (lot's of practice from deleting unsolicited spam). Blog readers are subscribed because they like to read what your articles, and are interested in your opinions. Email subscribers tend to sign up to gain access to something else (a free download etc).

Proxy Sites

2006-04-14T18:47:00.000+00:00

There seems to have been a lot of new web proxy sites created recently. They seem like a pretty safe bet AIS wise - just upload them, mix some ads in to the default template and wait for the users to roll in.

However, obviously nothing is that easy ;-)

A few months ago, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and set one up myself.

Naming

I'm pretty bad at picking names for sites, so I decided to keep it simple, and register pr0xy.org.

This turned out to be a great choice of name, as it gets SE traffic for people searching for the term "pr0xy". I assume they are behind firewalls which block the string "proxy" in URLs.

Hosting

I made a few changes to the default template, hiding the advanced options and adding a Javascript link to toggle their visibility, making the "URL" input box bigger and adding Adsense ads above and below the form.

I then uploaded the site to my shiny new Dreamhost account.

Promotion

I did not spend much time on promoting this site. All I did was add a link to my sig in two forums and join four proxy "top list" sites.
Soon, the hits started rolling in...

Problems

As I said, nothing is that easy. After a week or so of the site being online, I recieved this email from Dreamhost:

Unfortunately, your username "pr0xy" is causing the server you're on,
boyd to crash. I've had to disable your username for the time being. I'll
re-enable it when your usage calms down a little.

For anyone considering setting up a similar site: Proxy sites use a lot of server resources ;-)

I couldn't (and still can't) justify a dedicated server for this site, so as a temporary fix, I edited the script to reject random connections. I have not been able to remove this so far.

Revenue

Like all good stories, this one has a happy ending. This site has so far made just under $24 in Adsense revenue, and should require no more maintanence (outside of security updates) for as long as server resource usage stays low.

Ad revenue could possibly be improved if the ads were a bit more targetted towards the users of this kind of service (kids in schools trying to get around web filters mainly - they're probably not that interested in ads for other proxy services ;-)) However, the kind of ads that would appeal to them are likely to be blocked by their filters anyway...

Advertising Methods

2006-04-04T21:04:00.000+00:00

I was thinking about different promotional methods I have used recently, and the relative success of each.

It would be nice to hear about others' experiences with advertising their products, although I can understand not wanting to give all your secrets away ;-)

Sitepoint.com

I paid $10 to post a thread in the "Advertise Your Services" forum on Sitepoint.com.
What I then realized was that replies were disabled in that particular forum (unlike Sitepoint's other sale forums). This means that there is no way for another user to "bump" your topic, and it will quickly fall off of the front page.

I made no sales from this, and only had about 40 visitors to my site as a result of it.

Lesson: Do more research in future ;-)

I would not recommend this method of advertising. I've heard good things about the other sale forums there, but not tried them myself.

Banner Advertising

I took out a banner ad at a popular domain name forum. I paid $30 for a 30 day campaign, and made myself a banner.

I was promoting the Dreamhost affiliate program with this campaign.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, Dreamhost allow pay you $97 per referral, but allow you to create your own "promo codes". When entered by a new user, these give a discount (of your choice), but reduce your commission.
For example: A $50 discount to your referral would leave you with a $47 commission.

I created a $50 discount code, and gave it a name relating to the forum.

I have currently made $379 from this, and renewed my campaign twice.

Investment: $90
Earnings: $379
Profit: $289

And, of course, other than creating the banner, no work was involved in making that money!

I like Dreamhost's referral method. You get your commission for referring somebody, and your referral gets a better deal too.

Will update with more later...

Paypal Fraud

2006-04-02T09:44:00.000+00:00

Just had my first fraudulent Paypal order. For a proxy template pack.

Had the email from Paypal shortly after I sent out a download link, and looking at my server logs, it seems that I removed the file before it got downloaded.

Dear Oliver Allen,

It has come to our attention that you may be the recipient of potentially unauthorised funds. We have initiated an investigation into this event. In the meantime, we have placed a temporary hold on the funds in question until the investigation is complete. This temporary hold will show as a deduction in your available balance. In the meantime, you are free to continue transacting using your PayPal account.

March AIS Earnings

2006-04-01T18:56:00.000+00:00

Just a quick post today, for my March AIS earnings. Not been to great this month as I have been concentrating my efforts elsewhere...

Earnings:

Adsense: $73.20
Dreamhost affiliate program: $97

Total March AIS: $170.20

Goals:

I set up Niche Sites Monthly in place of a (pure AIS) product site, so I am on target for my "one new product AIS per month" goal.
I set up one new Adsense site (target = one per week)

Goals for next month:

Release a new product (in development)

Launch 4 Adsense sites

Update the blog more often