I said I would be posting her more often than I did in the past, but seems I have been slacking. Been busy trying to get my mainstream business up and making more money. Seems there is never enough time in the day.

I guess the big news, though a little late here is the latest DeeCash purchase. Seems every week they are in the news, then again, maybe that’s part of the strategy? Always in the news and always talked about? Wouldn’t be a bad marketing plan. Course everything is speculation, not like they have come out in public with their adult industry domination plan.

Anyways, the last acquisition is Rude.com. If you’ve never heard of it, ( I didn’t till I saw the news), it’s basically a sharing type portal. From what I see, users or members share most anything porn. Sure seems to be working, they look to be getting a ton of traffic.

Course the uproar, will slightly quiet uproar is the site itself. Being a porn sharing site, there is a pretty good chance much of the content being shared is not legal to share. Much like the renegade tube sites.

So.. every one is wondering, why they would buy a site, who’s majority of content is probably illegal. The questions beg to be answered, will they lock it down? Will they have the resources to police it properly? Least that’s the questions I come up with.

I do have to wonder, if this is part of the grand scheme? First they buy up much of the adult affiliate programs and now they buy a site that is, well a pre-made, ready to buy customer base? Then again, they might have a hard time getting the illegals to actually pay.

Their statement about the deals talks about how their affiliates will be able to profit from the site. Not sure how that’s going to happen, even if it does.

With the programs and the customers under their belt, will they need affiliates any more? hhmm…

They could be making their own “house” sales without the need to pay out a commission.

I guess time will tell, see if they buy up some more customers.

From the board talk though, this last buy might just hurt their reputation.

For most webmasters it’s all about getting the sponsor converting, if they don’t convert well, they are history. I’m not saying thats exactly a bad plan, but here’s something else to think about…

Over the years one thing I’ve noticed about some sponsors, while they might be tough to get that first sale with the surfer, on the other hand, they can recur quite well. In the long run, numbers of rebills that keep on going can be a nice steady income. Some sponsors are just better at keeping members than getting them on board.

So before you blow off that sponsor because they might not be selling off the bat, look at your rebills or think about giving them a longer run.

I’m not saying to waste your traffic wad on a crap sponsor, just something to think about.

I see many folks talking about not getting sales and not making money in this business and it’s not hard to see why.

Here’s just one example. I had some one submit a Rope Bondage free site and they submitted it to the Bondage category, even though there is a Rope Bondage Category. Which is going to be more targeted traffic and more likely to make sales? Well duh. Plus the Rope Bondage category is just a couple choices down, not like it’s that hard to find or takes any longer to get it right.

It’s not that difficult, it’s not rocket science.

Target, target, target.

Otherwise your wasting your time and every body else’s.

If you follow the news or hit the boards you probably know Wordpress installs have been getting hit just about everywhere. You know it’s bad when your host sends you an e-mail about it.

So yesterday and today I took the plunge. I updated all 15 blogs to the newest Wordpress, 2.5.1. Wasn’t as bad as I thought, I had been putting it off.

In reality, if you want to be one of those that finds the good in everything, which I try my best, this exploit problem was a good thing.

• I was forced to back up my databases, something I don’t do often enough.
• I upgraded to the latest and more secure Wordpress version.
• Now I have the cool new version with all the new extras. (still getting use to it).
• Was able to clean up, un-used theme’s, un-used plug-ins, ect.

It wasn’t a bad thing after all.

Did you upgrade yours? I found the current exploit on every one of my blogs, every one.

I just realized I did not post about my blog getting hacked. How the hell did I forget to post it here?

Anyways, a week or two ago, one of my blogs was hacked. Lucky I caught it pretty quick, though mainly by luck.

Seems some asshole figured out my password and got in to my blog admin. They added a number of direct links, some in posts, some actually in my navigation links by creating new pages and adding to the ones I already had up. Long story short, any one hitting my blog was redirected to another site, which from what I could tell was some weird Islamic message of some kind.

My bad, my lazy.

After looking at my passwords, the ones generated by Wordpress on install, no I didn’t change them, were not very secure, not by a long shot. I am not going to go in to why they are not very secure, as I don’t want to give any other assholes any ideas.

So don’t be lazy and stupid like me, change your passwords, right now! What I did was open notepad and type in a big long password with all kinds of combinations. Then I pasted it in the change password section of Wordpress. I also made sure to save it some where safe as I sure wouldn’t be able to remember the new ones
One thing that got me thinking about the subject was that some one else’s blog was hacked. A little different attack, but you gotta start some where. My thread and the other are both on the Greenguy and Jim Message board, in the blog section, if you want to read more or learn some other things you can do..

I was reading on my usual message board today and some one was asking about ads and banners. They asked if people made their own or used the ones sponsors provided.

First and foremost, the biggest point people miss when trying to run their own online business is testing and tracking. I am amazed at how many people do NOT test and track their ads. So before you even decide on what ads to use, you need to have a system in place to track those ads.

After all, how are you going to know which is better? Just because some one tells you on a board which is best, doesn’t mean they are right or you will even get the same results with your traffic.

If you don’t, your losing money!

Think about this for a moment. If you double you ad clicks, how many surfers click your ads, in reality you double your traffic to your sponsors and should double your sales. I guarantee many folks would be surprised how badly their ads are doing if they had the numbers. The old time 480×80 or so ads, 9 times out of 10, do not pull crap for clicks, your probably lucky to get 1-2%. Last time I re-did my ads I got the overall rate of over 10%. See the difference?

Who doesn’t want to double their income? You’d be surprised.

Sure every one wants more money, but very few do the work.

Here’s a free and powerful solution for tracking your ads: Open X, which use to be Open Ads, phpAdsNew before that and originally started life as phpAds.

I have a much older version, but I know how my ads are doing. Maybe some day I’ll upgrade..:)

So, what have we learned today? An easy way to at least double your income. Why wouldn’t you want to get every dollar you could?

It’s no wonder so many people complain about not making money, it’s because they don’t do ALL the work. Hopefully it’s only because they did not know any better.

Some time back I remarked to my wife that is seemed as though the word “porn” was becoming mainstream. Well, it was being used for often more common. It’s like people are not “as” afraid to use to use the word. I think it would have been consider cussing just a short time ago. It’s like porn hit the mainstream.

Did it really?

I don’t think so. Whole folks might be more comfortable with the word, they still don’t seem to be comfortable with the business.

You could say, well screw them, I don’t care what people think about my adult business, or my lifestyle. For most things in life you’d be a strong person with conviction. But if you run a porn business, you’d probably be a lier. If you a family, it does matter. If you have children, it matters even more. Believe me I know first hand how people can be and how they can turn on you. It’s really quit amazing.

It’s sad because for most of us, it’s not something we can be proud of, or talk about with friends or family.

It’s a big part of reason I have been working in non-adult. Sad really.

It’s not talked about much on the boards, least from what I’ve seen. Like the long time falling down drunk uncle no one mentions.

Do your friends and family know what you do for a living?

Most webmasters I see trade with anybody and any website. It’s not totally wrong, but there should be more thought put into the process.

Course when your new, you don’t have much to give potential trade partners, often time you do need to, “take what you can get”.

When you do have something to give back, here’s a few things I have in my link trade process.

First and foremost you need Alexa, there is a great add-on for Firefox and I’m sure there is one for IE, not sure as I don’t use that browser much any more. Long time back I use to have official Alexa toolbar installed but found that it seemed to clog up my system, think it was a resource hog. The one I use for FireFox is SeachStatus and it’s great. Actually this plug-in does quite a few tricks. Of coure it has all the Alexa data, but it also has the Google info, most importantly Page Rank.

Disclaimer:

Okay, first off I know Alexa is not very accurate, but it does help tremendously as a gauge, at least to get some kind of an idea about a websites traffic. Also I know Google Page Rank doesn’t mean alot these days, but again, it is a gauge.

So, with that out of the way…

When I’m looking to trade, I look at a few things. First I load the site in my browser. From there I can see the Alexa Rank and the Google PR. While the Alexa rank is not accurate, if a site has a rank of 1,000,000 or more, you have a pretty good idea there is not alot of traffic there. A good guess at least. The same pretty much applies to the Google PR, but here’s a kicker, if the bar is grayed out, there is a good chance they have been banned in google. (they still do that don’t they? Can’t remember the last grey bar I saw actually).

Next I look at the site itself, if it’s a banner farm and looks like crap, it’s gone. Be real here a minute, who is going to trade with that kind of site? Probably ones that are not worth being networked with anyways. I don’t mean to put people down, I know there can be a learning curve when making websites. But honestly there are far too many resources available on the web, there is no excuse not to have at least a decent looking site. Or maybe I’m just an ass
Course some folks really need to get a second opinion.

Of course the site I am looking at trading with needs to have content that is related to mine. I also look at who else they trade with. Another important aspect is where they place their trades, if they are hidden at the bottom of a very long page, good chance you won’t see much traffic action. The exception being a very big and popular site where any link back at all is a good thing.

Last thing to remember, I for one have a mindset that this is a business for me, I am doing it to make money. With that said, some trades are just not worth it, I always try to get something out of the deal, other wise, why trade?

Well, thats all I can think of off the top of my head right now, and I need to get some other things done.

Hope it helps.

This might be old news to you, but something I just learned and thought I’d pass it on.

Recently I noticed my new tags were not showing up in the Wordpress default tag cloud widget. Come to find out there is a limit as to the number of tags that will display. The limit is around 45. Odd there is a limit, though some designs or layouts might call for it.

So I got to searching and found the Configurable Tag Cloud widget plug-in. Don’t see much you can’t set with this handy little widget. You can set the limit of tags, the font size for min and max, color range for min and max, how it displays and more. Very nice.

I just installed it the other day, so far working perfectly. I’ll let you know if I have any problems.

Lately I’ve been talking alot about blogging. Some people might think to much or to passionate. Some might wonder why, others might not give a shit. I really don’t care either way, I do what I want and could care less what others think. More accurately, I do what works for me.

Funny thing is, with all the talk about finding a new free site model, most people still don’t seem to be getting the point, or seeing the big picture. It’s also funny that with all the “problems” with the current free site model, that some people are not saying.. duh.

I think most would agree or have agreed that one major problem with free sites is that they do not update. It’s a problem to the free site because the SE’s won’t stay long. It hurts the Links Lists because basically they are linking to dead wood.

Surprising, a webmaster recently asked about updating free sites and at least two webmasters pretty much said it was a waste, or not how free sites were done. They still believed and passed on the “Set it and forget it” attitude. Talk about backward thinking.

Come on, it’s 2008. Free sites might have worked 5 years ago or more, but it’s pretty self evident, they are not fairing so well these day, haven’t for some time.

While I might be overzealous or high on the coolness of blogging, thats not really the big picture. The reality is that I am creating sites that are updating on a regular basis. hhhmm…. where have we heard that word before?

Are the thinking caps on? Powered up? Or has the battery gone dead?

I have come to love the addthis social bookmarking plug-in for Wordpress. The biggest reason is that it adds the smallest amount of code to your pages, compared to the other social book marking plug-in’s I’ve seen or tried.

Remember, the Search Engines are looking for content, not code. There is also a theory, that the search engines reward pages that have more content than code, from indications I’ve seen I believe it to be true. Can’t be 100%, as I said, it’s a theory.

Anyways, there is one slight “problem” with the addthis plug-in, just a little thing, and that is the positioning of the code on the page. From my own experience, the addthis button often ends up say to close to the content. Ya it’s a nit-picky thing, but I’m sure I am not the only one.

Bottom line you can not position the button as you want, with CSS or even hard code on your theme pages.

I worked on it today and made an easy fix. I edited the code for the plug-in itself. I simply added a div container so I could do what I want from the style sheet.

Here’s the code:


$badge = "<div class=\"addthis\"><script type=\"text/javascript\">\n";
$badge .= " addthis_url = '$link';\n";
$badge .= " addthis_title = '$title';\n";
$badge .= " addthis_pub = '$pub';\n";
$badge .= "</script><script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12\" ></script>\n</div>";

It starts on line 57 of my plug-in, yours could differ. As you can see, I just added the <div class=”addthis”> and the closing </div>

As for the CSS code:


.addthis {
padding: 10px 0 0 0;
}


Course that is very basic, just to move the button around as needed. You could dress it up more if you want.

Hope it helps.

Couple of boards have had some recent major drama about a new free site model. Actually the most drama I’ve seen in a while, kind of entertaining. In reality the new model a certain person or two has brought up, solves none of the link list and free site woes. Woes? It’s pretty evident the LL model has been suffering for probably a good year now, I’m not the only one that can show up proof for that one.

In my opinion, the only really concusion that can be drawn is the linking strategy LL’s have been using, is what has put them behind the eight ball. It’s been said many times that free sites are not very useful to the LL’s as linkbacks, for several reasons. Thats my take on it.

It is also my opinion that the Big Guys have not suffered as much of the bad fate as the little guys for a couple reasons. For one, they have tremendous linking power. Most importantly, they have more root domain linkbacks. They can command it, because they are the big guys.

Again in my opinion, no matter the model, I doubt a new one will address or correct the problem. There will always be mirrors (how can any one be sure there isn’t without some serious staff or resources?). Even if there were no mirrors, free site’s are and always will be built many to a domain, are those not still mirrors?

The bigger problem, will any free site builder update their free sites? Sorry to say, my guess is very few. Not trying to knock these builders, just what I’ve seen from past experience.

The only possible solution, as I said possible, because no one works inside G, is for free site builders to maybe use a mini blog/free site model, something that is easy to update. Updating is a major key if you ask me.

One last point, a number of people have said to build things by hand and with unique content. I’ve been trying to get that across with blogging for a long time, but it seems to fall on deaf ears and I looking like a raving lunatic. I say passionate, but ehh..

You can blame people for waiting to make more money with less work, I tend to jump in that boat more often than I’d like to admit. Then again, the same work put into something that will latter out do any great number of free sites, can be a good plan, for those that have the patience.

People don’t want to wait. From what I’ve seen, first hand, it’s a good three months for a blog to really take off and provide consistent traffic. But I guess a blog that does 1k-1.5k a day later isn’t as good as a handful of free sites that die off after three months. hhmm…

I said I’d be posting more on this blog and find I am not totally keeping up with the mark.

I’ve been working my way into mainstream and find it difficult to keep up with the adult and non-adult side. I know part of my problem is I am not always completely focused and productive when I’m on the PC. It’s a tough thing to do. I’ve been hitting the keyboard for over nine years now, will be 10 in Sept. It’s hard not to get burned out, doing anything on the computer. I often have the best intentions, but get time of it some times.

I know I’m not the only one. Many of the people I use to know, years back are either gone or their sites seem to be vacant billboards cluttering the net. I sure don’t see amny of them on ICQ.

Seems I need to tak my own advice and get my butt moving on goals and checklists. Right? Any one else have a hard time keeping going? Or am I the only one even reading this blog? Comment Biatch…

Little bit late on this news, but thats me, always behind.

If you haven’t heard, DeeCash was back at the buying table for a big stake. This round they picked up Extreme Paychecks and Ragecash. I don’t know that much about RageCash, but buying up Extreme had to be a major purchase. I’ll say it again, they must have very deep pockets or some very serious backers.

My only negative on the Extreme buy is that changed the program over to Nats. I’m not a big fan of Nats and I know I am not the only one, like my opinion carries much weight anyways.

I still get this feeling that something big is in the works, behind the scenes of DeeCash. I don’t mean anything sinister or evil, just get this gut feeling something is in the works. At the very least they are gathering a huge share of the adult webmaster/adult paysite market and thats not such a bad plan either.

Well, okay, it’s not really that dramatic.

I don’t know how you work, but I often find myself sitting staring at the computer screen not sure what to do next or what needs to be done. Of course it’s all up there in my head, but doesn’t always make it out to my fingers and the keyboard.

One thing I’ve been trying to do more of, is using checklists. Actually it started out with my wife. It was much easier for her to have a list, so she could follow a schedule if you will, working through each task and knowing what was done and what needed to be done. I have to admit, after making my own, I do seem to get more done. I believe the biggest reason is that it keeps me more on track, not jumping from project to project.

Take it a step futher and have a to-do list that you can check off as you go as well.

Might sound silly but you’d be amazed how much more you get done when you get to checking.