Happy New Year
Guess it is a bit late but since this is the first post in 2008 I would like to take the chance and wish the readers of my blog a Happy New Year.
I hope the people who set New Year resolutions and goals for 2008 didn’t give up yet. I’m still sticking with mine but the year just started.
Changes
Let me go over the small changes that I did recently. People who come here regular (you do, right?) might have noticed the changes already; but let me sum it all up:
ScratchBack
In case you are not familiar with ScratchBack then I just sum it up quickly what it is:
Look over to the right and you will see the ‘Are you In My TOPSPOTS’. This is the widget used for ScratchBack. It allows readers of the blog to give me a tip (I promise; I will not drink up all the money I get from tips…). So if someone thinks I deserve a tip then they just click the “Show some love, buy one!”
So what makes this tipping system special is that people can leave a name, message and a URL. If you move the cursor over the first entries you will see what I’m talking about. Each message and URL has to be approved by me and in case I don’t like it then I will just not approve it (and it will not be shown) but I do keep the tip. It is after all about giving a tip. I have approved all tips so far.
New tips appear at the top of the list and bumps the other down; so there are no time limit on them but I can say that ‘macewan.org’ has been on the list for a long time.
I did two changes to ScratchBack:
- Increase number of top spot.
I used to have 5 top spots on the list but today the 5th was bought so I increased the list to 10. This might be changed to 15 or 20 if the 10 spots get bought. - Increase price.
A tip used to be $2 but I increased this to $3 today. I will continue to increase it by $1 each month until it reaches $5. So the quicker people get on the list the cheaper (hint hint).
The earnings from this is nothing special (yet) but I like the idea about tipping and this way (message and URL) is perfect in my eyes.
NeverblueAds
I recently signed up with NeverblueAds. NeverblueAds is an affiliate system where I can select the products/services that I want to promote on my site. (You will see some new banners various places on the site). Their system is very straight forward to use and didn’t cause me any problems.
I’m not able to give any feedback about how well NeverblueAds perform as I only had them on the site for a few days but I have a good feeling about it.
Their service/support impressed me from the very start; they need to talk (voice) with all people who sign up for their affiliate system; so they gave me a call one afternoon this was to verify the information I gave them and to quickly have a chat about how I was planning to use the affiliate system. I later emailed them with a few questions/issues I had and they responded very quickly.
WidgetBucks
I removed the widget for WidgetBucks for now; I liked the design and the idea behind WidgetBucks and how it was possible to promote products (such as games). But the performance was pretty bad, since October I had a few clicks earning me a total of $0.22.
As I said, it has been removed for now but it might return at a later stage or in specific posts; just like I did with the post: Yet another broken XBox 360.
I will keep an eye on possible changes from WidgetBucks side.
BlogRush
BlogRush was yet again an interesting widget that had some promising ideas but failed to perform. Out of all the MANY thousand times my post headlines was shown to other users I got around 20 clicks; so only 20 persons ended up reading the posts this way.
Comments
One thing that has changed over the last few months is that I get more and more comments to my blog entries. This motivates me a lot to continue blogging (Nope, I didn’t consider to stop anyway). Getting feedback and getting the communication working just ROCKS. So keep doing it.
