Total Adsense income for all of yesterday was $131.73, which according to our graph we have sitting our desktop, is fine and dandy this time of year. We are now heading down the rails into THE slowest period on the calender for us. Early December is the worst for traffic on the majority of our sites, so it will be “light” for the next couple of weeks.

By January we will double in traffic, Adsense will be paying more, and our click through rate will climb. It’s a triple whammy effect when it comes to the seasonal aspect for niche blogs.

1. When it’s hot season for your niche, the advertisers are more aggressive and bid higher on their Adwords campaigns
2. Traffic increases online for the same keywords
3. Click through rates climb because the buyers of the service and/or products are more aggressive all around

You’ll see up to 10-12 unique visitors on your site and NOT ONE OF THEM WILL CLICK AN AD. The all of a sudden you might get three of the next five unique visitors click like crazy, checking out every offer they can.

Enough for now.

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So took a bit of a break for a few days here. This is our Adsense income for the last three days.

• Saturday – $132.63 (were not expecting that)
• Sunday – $111.32 (also more that we expected for the TG weekending)
• Monday – $168.70 (pretty well normal)

Very good for pure natural traffic, and considering this the slower season for most our niches. It’s the shopping niche that is keeping us going right now though. Judging by the Google Trends site, we will be getting even lower during this month, but we really don’t know for sure because this is the first December we have been flying solo with no PPC traffic.

Onward….today it is 9:35 Pm Mountain time and we are at around $110 bucks so far – probably only make another $5 bucks before the end of this Tuesday.

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Ironically, I got an email from a friend and business associate (best damn content writer I know) who asked if I was still happy with our web hosting plans we had. Currently we use these hosting companies;

• Godaddy
• IXHosting
• Blue Host
• Hostgator
• Mocha Host

During this American thanksgiving week and weekend we experienced some seriously slow page loads on all of our sites. Why? Because they are all on shared hosting accounts, and the shopping traffic this Black Friday and Cyber Monday (today) were record breaking.

It showed us one painful reality – we ARE NOT HAPPY with our servers, hosting companies, page loading speeds. So I tested all of our sites using this handy web page load speed tester – results = dismal.

Cloud Hosting for Newbies

So I did a good 7 hours of dicking around on the computer today researching cloud hosting – what it is, how it works, and who I should pay to host my domain(s).

After noticing that many of the biggest and most powerful blogs are using Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Hosting product, I was almost ready to bite….glad I kept researching, because Amazon’s Elastic Cloud is VERY powerful and reliable, but customer service is non-existent. I can’t have that. I need help because I am dumber than some.

So I researched hosting companies that had the good old fashion Cpanel AND were cloud hosting providers. There are a few, but not many. Then I found SiteCloud – here comes the AFF LINK!

Enter SiteCloud

SiteCloud runs on the Amazon Elastic Cloud which means we get the rock solid servers, the high speed, and the redundancy – PLUS we get customer support, a normal c-panel, and Bob IS your Uncle. Problem solved.

Update: so far the speed is REALLY good, and I like the c-panel and back end. To the clouds matey….

Update December 1/2010 Evening – I had the SiteCloud Migration tech move my site properly this time, and the speed of the domain load is WAY faster. On Godaddy it was clocking in between 14 – 20 seconds – with SiteCloud hosting the domain my speed just clocked in at 2.1 seconds – we’ll see how fast it is during the day when their servers are being accessed more. I’ll update this post after a full week day of service.

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So after all the time wasted dealing with Adcenter just to get NO TRAFFIC and deal with the huge interruption in our web traffic, it was clear to me that any web site that was presenting Adsense was not going to see the light of day in the Bing and Yahoo! results. At least no NEW sites were going to be let in if they were MFA.

OK – FINE. Fuck you and I’ll piss around awhile (maybe a few hours) and plot your demise…….bitch, whine, snivel, and then take it up the ass.

And it’s a beautiful day.

So during this time I had to buy this new computer because my Sony Vaio exploded - I was pleased. When I click up I.E. it was automatically set for Bing OF COURSE, since I.E. is MSN right. Fair enough.

Then I tried to select Google as my default search engine, and it was not even in the list of choices they gave. They had a drop down in I.E. to select add-ons or some such shit, and they had all of the apps ranked with a star rating. They showed Bing as 5 out of 5, and Google as 3 out of 5.

What a fucking joke! Bing’s absolute piece o’ crap search engine sees like 5% of the search market place, while Google sees 65% of the search market place.

So Bing is a pathetic joke right…..but they’re still a player whether I like it or not.

Then I download Google Chrome and install it – you know, just to give it try because Roboform claims they have a plugin so it works on Chrome (no ….. does not work. Don’t waste your time). When Chrome gives it’s list of search engines to set as default they exclude Bing!!!!!!!!!!!

Hilarious.

Bing and Google hate each other!!!

Glad I’m on Google’s side. The sooner Bing and Yahoo! are drained from the swamp the better day it will be online.

For those readers who are curious to see our Adsense income from the Thanksgiving Weekend, we will post that all tomorrow. Wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought. Had some server speed issues with Godaddy though so I’ll post on that later this week once the migration is all done.

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Email:

Hey there,

I was searching the Internet for some inspiration and came across James Martell’s website. I just finished listening to you speak with James about the affiliate game! What a fantastic 55 minutes indeed. I gained some great info from your chat and just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it.
 
My website is my “baby” as you know and I love it very much. It is truly my PASSION. I also am going to take some creative writing courses from Mount Royal very soon to hone my craft. One day I know I will have that “Freedom” that you are speaking of! In the not so distant future I too will not have to set my alarm and go to work and “roll that ball back up the hill”. With “a little help from my friends” I too will be free and make a great income off of good ol Google.
 
The other day I was thinking, if I kick the bucket which one of my friends would I give my website to. I can’t think of one friend besides yourself who would take the site over and keep posting great original content and help others succeed where they have failed in the past, meaning catching fish on a consistent basis.
 
For me I can write, I have passion and I am teachable, that makes a perfect recipe for success in my opinion.

Reply:

Thanks for the kind words Mike. Yes – it’s still the most amazing method of earning I can think for those of us who don’t want to suck up to others in an office environment. We recently lost all of our PPC traffic because MSN won’t give us any traffic. So this had been my most intensive month of writing yet – scrambling to make the natural traffic pay our bills. We’re making it, but we’re certainly not floating in it like we were.
 
Funny you should mention creative writing because that is what I do now – create stories that attract search engines. Trying new blog niches is a good idea too.
 
It’s really endless in nature – just depends how much time we have to write. The great thing is when we use blogs we don’t need to get involved with linking schemes and just write.

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Had a good friend ask me this morning about hosting server speeds and response times, because he is not pleased with the response times he is getting on some of his domains. So I made it a Q & A regarding hosting services.

Hosting Speed and Response Time Question – What Hosting Company is the Best

Question:

Hi Brent, are you still using these guys. I have been finding that their response time is not great for page loads etc. Here are some comments on their hosting service. I think I am going to switch everything over to GoDaddy. However when you look at feedback for GoDaddy, it is not great either.  Who are you using these days?

Answer:

It’s all very subjective and response time on servers completely depends on the design of the site. Some webmasters add too much Java script, rolling images, big images, complicated designs, are just “too  much stuff” – etc. etc.
 
Our main sites that we rely on for income are on Godaddy because over the years I’ve had less downtime with them.
 
That said though, I have sites that are with different hosts in case Godaddy has a big shut down, we will still make money from that site. We also use IXhosting and Mocha Host for redundancy purposes as well.
 
One thing that applies no matter what hosting service you use is how you setup your site and pages. If you are using the WordPress platform try to use fast loading themes with allot of white space, and images that are light in color and size.
 
There is no real FOR SURE option with hosting, because we are talking about machines, and machines break down sometimes – it’s guaranteed. You know……..like humans –

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So last night my Sony Vaio finally gave up the ghost. The screen has a really ugly big red blotch on the top. Furthermore, the mouse touch pad wanders intermittently, the space bar is feeling funky, and the left click button is totally messed up. Today is the actual 1st year anniversary for this 15″ Vaio, and it’s amazing the beating I give my computers. The left click button is all worn out and not much paint left on it from my clicking.

So I’m taking it back to Best Buy this AM and not expecting much for a fix or replacement, even though I did buy the $185 PSP Warranty for two years. I was reading some forums last night that made it out to be that the BB PSP plan is a scam all around, but the reality is that for every 1 person that has a bad experience, there are likely 50 that have a good one. We’ll see, but I’ve really given this computer a run for it’s money. When I type on the keyboard, I type HARD. My buddy from Victoria mentioned how “ham-fisted” I was with his computer too.

I don’t like to mess around pussy-footin’ with laptops. I’m want the article typed and published on the blog pronto, because I have 3-4 more posts to get done the same day. I doubt I’m going to find a laptop, or notebook that will ever handle this kind of all out abuse.

So I realize that there is no computer that is going to handle a daily pounding in this fashion (well maybe one day they’ll build on that will), so I’m going cheap on the next machine and getting a Gateway with a 15″ screen. My last Gateway machine lasted for 2 years which was the best record yet.

I’m buying the new Gateway at Future Shop here in Calgary, and they’re on for $318 CND. Done deal. It likely won’t make it through the year either so I might as well get the cheap ones. I mean you would laugh if you could hear me type – smack – smack – smack…..slap! I should record the sound and put the audio up on Zulit.

So I’ll keep you up to date on how the next machine does over the 2011 season. You can see a small picture of my old Gateway at the top of this post. Man I laughed when I read the post too. I was so naive when it came to what a post needs to get some traffic from the search engines. I’m amazed I ever figured out how to squeeze a cent out of the Internet.

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