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If you have been following me for some time now, then you should have noticed that i am a guy that likes to experiment and commit mistakes.

It is how we learn right? At least that’s what i hope. lol

Well, i have a forum with over 1000 members and a very decent traffic count each day.

I am using Simple Machines to power the forum and i was using the version 1.1.4 with a great looking template with ads very well placed, specially the adsense link units.

The forum database was getting too much garbage because i installed many modifications for the forum, i try and then delete some of them. But the deletion usually doesn’t erase the database data inserted when installing the mod, so along these years the garbage was accumulating. And lately, i was receiving to much database errors for my taste. Fortunately only i could see them, but that was pissing me off so i decided it was time to get ride of the crap…

What have i done?

well, i could easily have just upgraded to the newest stable version of SMF (1.1.5), but i had a little itch compelling me to install SMF 2.0 Beta 3.1 Public.

Ok, now you can say “What was this guy smoking? Pot!?!” lol

It’s a risk to install a beta release on a production site (production meaning fully launched and active site), but as i am very comfortable installing, updating and modifying SMF and i had backups to help me in case of despair, and considering this i installed the beta version after doing the proper tables deletions to clean the junk.

Did a full install of SMF because the majority of the modifications weren’t compatible, template included!!! That is why my revenue from adsense was screwed.

I have to stick with the default template, because no one is making templates compatible with version 2.0 due to the fact that the template structure will be completely rewritten for the final release.

With the old template, i was getting around 15-20 clicks a day making me a nice revenue in the end of the day, but now, with the default template with the ads in the exact same place, my clicks fell to 1!!!

The SEO structure was also changed, and this can potentially have some impact on revenue because google is still crawling the new addresses and i have seen a decrease in traffic coming  from the big G.

This could be a concerning problem, but to say the truth, i don’t really care. Yes it is money that im not winning anymore, but i can use my forum to help develop an excellent piece of software by reporting any bugs found, and i was really looking forward to try the new options available in version 2.0, and it was well worth the risk i took.

So, if you are performing very well with your smf forum don’t upgrade to version 2.0, unless you are still using the default template and you are comfortable as i am with SMF management.

Popularity: 31% [?]

I arrived from camping yesterday, but i was so tired from the 8h trip that i fell a sleep.

Every year, all student nurses, and nurses from the all country gather to do what we call the National encounter of nursing students. This was my second one, and this time the weather didn’t helped. IT rained all the 5 days, and the sun only appeared for a few hours, but i still managed to go to the beach and get a sun burn! ouch! lol

The worst part, beside the bad weather, was the trip… 8h to arrive my destiny, and i had to took 3 different transports.. really boring….

In the end it  was very fun, and if there is something similar in your country i sincerely recommend

Now, that i have arrived and read the tons of emails i got, i noticed that the alexa rank for this blog continues to steadily rise, the adsense revenue is basically the same, and one thing that pissed me off a bit were my BANS stores…

In 5 days i got over 200 clicks and no sale!!! What the hell? Very bad, very bad….

I really have to take one week off to properly develop my bans stores…

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you haven’t heard, and if you use google adsense, then you must know that google changed the adsense TOS. Now, all publishers are required to have a privacy policy. And many of you will search for a free privacy policy generator. I sure did searched :p

Here is a short paragraph regarding this:

“You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.”

I will “write” (more search thant write lol) a proper privacy policy for my sites. Google doesn’t specify a time frame, or what consequences publishers may have. I honestly don’t think they will terminate the account without warning you, and let you fix the issue…

This ain’t a big deal to small publishers like me , that have only a handful of sites. But for those Big publishers with thousands of sites, this can be a pain in the ass…

And btw, have you heard of my 3000 entrecard contest running? The deadline to participate is next week, and so far i haven’t reached the minimum number of participants! Apply and bring your friends

Popularity: 6% [?]

A few weeks ago i found an interesting post about “Anti marketing design“.

Anti marketing design are sites that use ugly designs, but manage to be very successful.

The example used was Plentyoffish.com, a site that makes more than $10000 each day with google adsense. According to the founder, Markus Frind , one of the main reasons of this success is exactly the ugly site design.

He evens gives examples of other ugly sites that are very successful such as myspace, craiglist, google.

Markus Frind says that sites with an ugly design tend to generate more revenue, build better brands, and are more fun to participate.

When i read this i thought to my self “what the hell!?”. But i must agree… I have stumbled with sites that in my opinion are very very ugly, but i was surprised with the amount of traffic they had, the amount of users, readers, rss subscribers, the money they made! Even the blog where i found this post had an ugly design and ranks 19,895 in alexa, and has more than 300 comments on that specific post.

Why do we tend to use ugly sites?

I can just give my opinion. I don’t like these kind of ugly sites. But there’s ugly, and there’s UGLY. myspace is UGLY, google is ugly, but extremely simple and effective. Web surfers like simplicity, effectiveness, quickness, and not to many information at the same time.

For me, ugly sites resumes only to a simple equation: ugly sites = less distractions

The users are not distracted by a “state of the art design” with great graphics, and can focus their attention into the content, in what the site really has to offer.

Think a little bit about this, and tell me what you think…

Popularity: 5% [?]

One thing that a webmaster needs to keep in mind is not to concentrate all his revenue sources. The key is to diversificate and experiment. If a webmaster concentrate for example on google adsense, someday he may have a really bad surprise with an email from google telling that his account was suspended…. From a day to another the only source he had was gone! Finding and making profitable the new source of income can be hard.

You all know of google adsense, bidvertiser, adsonar, widgetbucks and shoppingads that deliver ppc ads in banners, squares, whatever…. But does any of them deliver contentlink ads (inline contextual ads)? Nope! But Kontera does! In fact, that’s the only way they display their ads.

You probably will see some kontera link ads in this post.

kontera.com/ContentLinkFormats/images/middel_top_babble_03.jpg” align=”left” height=”144″ width=”230″ />

Some people may think that contentlink may be intrusive, and some say that it might bring your adsense CTR rate down. I personally, am not bothered by these inline text ads. As for the decreasing of CTR i can’t tell you because i haven’t gathered enough info.

Kontera is now more open to accept smaller sites. You should grab this opportunity before they change their minds again!

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Popularity: 10% [?]