This month, I tried moving a blog that had a lot of traffic. As suggested, I used a 301 permanent redirect in order to preserve my Google juice. The second week of the experiment saw a big drop off in Google referrers, but this recovered a week later. Now 2 more weeks later and there's yet another complete drop off in Google referrers. I'm considering a move for other blogs, but I think I'm going to wait a month or two first. This is getting really frustrating. My advice, 301 permanent redirects are extremely risky.

Update: Two days later, my Google juice returned again. This is getting scary.

DNScoop currently values my talk-sports.net at $11,309, up from $1,854 just last month. I've noticed that DNScoop is getting slow and buggier. Likely the result of some success.

Back in 2006, I tried AdBrite for awhile and I made a bit of money. So why did I stop using it? Very simple. I feel like a crook taking money from the advertisers. This ad-platform doesn't work at all and the advertisers are paying that bill. Not to mention they were running sex ads on my site even though my setting specified otherwise.

I started using AdBrite again this last week to see if anything had improved. It's actually worse than ever. I got 3 clicks on 375 impressions in my first week. I checked the clicked URLs. They all go to an error page on some poor AdBrite advertiser's website. AdBrite is just as broken as ever. Wow!

As previously reported, I've been engaged by one of the business I have a sucky review to (Dixie Ford). When they first started calling me, I assumed it was for additional service on my vehicle. I was ignoring the calls, but eventually we came in direct contact and I realized they wanted me to delete my review. I wouldn't have anything of it. They even offered $130 (the price of the service) if I removed the review blog entry. In fact, I didn't even pay for the service, it was a recall paid by the vehicle manufacturer (Ford). I refused on the grounds that I'm not into extortion, nor pulling post for money. They persisted. You see, my blog entry was one of the top results in a search for their business on Google. I asked why they didn't just do their own SEO and bump me from the SERPs. Of course, they didn't know how. So, I agreed to engage with them and help them remove my own blog entry from the search results for their own business.

Today, I met with them and showed them how they could populate the Google SERPs with their own favorable webpages. Of course, after about an hour of this discussion, we landed immediately back on the one blog entry review. Basically, if I didn't remove it, then they were gonna take legal action. What a pathetic attitude. Here I show them how to control their own SERPs and they still don't get it. After more arguing, I realized that they simply wanted me to remove the word Sucks from the title of the blog entry. I offered to remove the word (and have), if they sent me a PDF with an apology, for public consumption. They agreed. I also invoiced them for the hour of SEO consulting.

I was putting together a new riskier blog and thought that maybe I'd try AdBrite ads on it. I gave up on AdBrite because they kept putting sex ads on my blogs, even though I specifically didn't want them. Then my Ad Zones disappeared and I could even manage my ad units anymore. That said, AdBrite did pay way and always on time.

Logging onto my account today, I found that I've been making more and more money on their referral program. Wow! That was a surprise. Anywho, I'm back on board to check them out again. Join me!

http://www.adbrite.com/mb/?spid=4216

This last month, I moved The RSS Blog from here to here. As per the conventional wisdom, I used a 301 permanent redirect to avoid loss of Google juice. I only moved the homepage and left the individual blog entries in place. That didn't work at all. I've noticed a big drop in Google referrals in the last week. The old RSS Blog homepage had a PR (page rank) of 6. The new one still doesn't have a PR. I thought the PRs were real time. I suspect that eventually the new sites PR will increase and the referrers will return. In the meanwhile, let this be a lesson.

Update: Success!
http://www.webvertization.com/?guid=20070511073629

I've been getting calls from Dixie Ford. One of the calls was about follow up service. I was ignoring these voice mails, as I'd previously received really bad service from them and didn't want to deal with them anymore. Today, Ted Hogan of Dixie Ford called me and informed me that he was displeased that my Dixie Ford Sucks blog entry was one of the top results for a search for his business. After a heated discussion, we finally agreed to meet and discuss how Dixie Ford can change this. They offered $120 (the cost of the service) if I pulled the entry. I'm wondering about the ethics of that and what it says about me. This is similar to pay per post, but worse. It's pay per pulled post.

As the Internet becomes more mainstream, I suspect that more companies are going to worry about their Google SERPs. This is a business opportunity.

I setup four new websites today. They are empty, but I'll eventually do something with them.

http://www.ibt4im.com/
http://www.friendblab.com/
http://www.myspacelayoutstore.com/
http://www.bestdamnhot.com/

Amazon now offers a $15 referral bonus for each cell-phone plan that you forward to them. This isn't something I'm going to pursue, but maybe somebody has an idea here. Personally, I don't think people buy cell-phone plans from Amazon, so the conversion rate might be too small to make this worth the effort.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/amazonassociates/~3/114048667/earn_a_15_bonus.html

Scott Kingery forwards this link, which he found when logged into AdSense. Basically, it's the beta announcement of Google's new PPA (pay per action) AdSense program. PPA moves the onus of fraud from the publisher to the advertiser. Instead of click-fraud, I suspect that advertisers will fail to report conversions. This is good for advertisers, because they don't have to worry about click-fraud, but bad for publishers, who will undoubtedly begin complaining about low conversions rates and fraudulent advertisers. I also suspect that PPA ads will pay less to publishers than PPC ads, except in the case where the ads are well targeted.

http://www.google.com/ads/adsense/referrals/index.html