Besting Adwords

Shopping.com Partner Program

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:17:40 GMT

Today, I decided to sign up for Shopping.com Partner Program. They have an API that I can use to place CPC ads on my website. I'll report back later with a full review. The sign-up was not easy. I got an error try to sign-up with IE7. The error happens every time I try to sign-up. I switched to Firefox and all was well. I'm gonna guess their Web developers don't test their stuff on the most popular browser. Not a good sign. I was quickly approved.

https://partners.shopping.com/app

Update: The website is extremely slow (several minutes per page). I found a widget where you can place products on your webpages via keywords. But it's impossible to get the code because the website is so slow that my sessions appear to timeout before the code is generated. This is royally sucking!

Update: I give up! The website is broken. The pages take minutes to refresh and before I can get the widget code, my session times-out and I have to start all over.

$224,664

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:08:32 GMT

dnScoop values KBCafe at $224,664. Not bad for a hobby site :-)

My Site is worth
$224,644

How much is
your site worth?

Sitemap Validator

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:03:05 GMT

Today, I completed my Sitemap Validator. It validates two versions of the sitemap XML, both indexes and sitemaps and it also iteratively validates all the sitemaps within a sitemap index.

http://reblinks.therssweblog.com/sitemap.validator.aspx

ReviewMe Campaign

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:09:30 GMT

Today, I wrote a ReviewMe blog entry on iBt4iM. I expect to get some negative feedback, which you'll likely find in the comments of that blog entry. When the money gets approved, I'll write a further review. It took me 30 minutes to write the 200 required words, although I suspect I could've done it in 15 minutes if I wasn't so anal.

This campaign paid $25 and others are also available in the $6-$7.50 range. I suspect ReviewMe keeps half and I'll confirm that in my next blog entry. In all honesty, this is free beer money. Instead of massaging your Facebook profile all night, you can earn yourself $10-20 for an hour or two of work. It's not a fountain of wealth, but it's there for the taking.

ReviewMe blocked by AdSense

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:21:32 GMT

A very interesting thought about AdSense and ReviewMe. I noticed that AdSense serves PSAs on the majority of the pages where I mention ReviewMe. Since they don't block ReviewMe 100% of the time, I suspect it's a related term. Either way, this could be construed as anti-competitive filtering. ReviewMe might want to consider talking with lawyers about this.

ReviewMe Campaigns

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:27:26 GMT

I had previous received an email about available ReviewMe campaigns, but I didn't have the patience at the time to figure out what they were doing. Today, I got a second email and looked into it to find a small silver mine where bloggers can earn some good coin by blogging for $. There was one campaign paying $25, which I accepted and will take 10 minutes to write a post about on iBt4iM later today. I'll respond with my thoughts on how I felt about the experience. Of course, somebody will comment that they are shocked that I'd do this. For me, it's all about the experience and helping other bloggers discover these silver mines. Not to mention, it's $25 (I bet I only get half) for a few minutes of work.

http://www.reviewme.com/

Create a Sitemap

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:35:17 GMT

Reblinks now allows you to generate a sitemap and text URL list based on Yahoo's Site Explorer data. It's free!

http://reblinks.therssweblog.com/tools.aspx#sitemap

Price/Earnings of a Website

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:44:55 GMT

P/E or Price/Earnings is one of the key variables in determining the price of a company or stock. So, how does this variable measure when it comes to a website. You have AdSense, maybe BlogAds or FeedBurner ads running on your blog. Can't we just plug in a P/E ratio and determine the value of your blog. Why not? Almost any company is worth at least 5 times its annual earnings. Remember, I said earnings, not revenues, so you have to minus off your $15/m cost of hosting your blog. Then depending on growth of your blog, you can multiply your earnings by 5 to find a minimal value for your blog. For blogs that are still growing earnings at least 10% per year, the multiplier might be as high as 10. For blogs that are growing earnings at least 50% per year, then your multiplier is at least 20. For blogs that are more than doubling their earnings year-over-year, then you should use a monthly multiplier. For instance, if your blog is growing earnings 10% most months, then multiply your last months earnings by 100. Where you are still growing at higher rates, then the factor becomes increasingly higher, but increasingly inaccurate. Everything I mention here presumes you actually own your domain and content and should apply equally to blogs, forums and websites.