Black Friday & Cyber Monday Coremetrics Benchmark Reports

If you are curious about how the numbers from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Coremetrics Benchmark has their online retail data from both of the days up for viewing. They are reporting that both days outpaced 2008 levels. If you are wondering what Coremetrics Benchmark exactly is, they have it described here.

I can tell you that from my own numbers, I saw a huge increase thus far as far as money earned. It is however hard for to quantify it at this point, because of all the changes I have made to better convert my surfers and my traffic has increased as well. At some point I will try to drill my own numbers down better, but for right now I am spending my time on making sure I maximize my efforts for this holiday season. Regardless, they are fun numbers to look at.

W-9 Time Again

Just a quick FYI to remind everyone that now is the time of year to be checking all of your affiliate programs that you belong to and make sure you have a properly filled out W-9 form on record. You will probably be sent reminders from several companies soon, but I like to nip it in the bud and do a fly through myself in early December.

Joost de Valk SEO Wordpress Video From WordCamp Netherlands

As many know I am a huge fan of Joost de Valk, known mostly as Yoast. He recently did another video at a WordCamp session in the Netherlands on SEO improvements for Wordpress. I highly suggest you follow his suggestions here. He is a guru as far as Wordpress goes. The video is below:

Joost de Valk – SEO improvements for WordPress from Vileo on Vimeo.

Inside the Mind of Google

Admittedly I do not watch much television which I am very proud of, but last night I made it a point to watch the CNBC special, Inside the Mind of Google. If you get a chance, it is a very good story along with great interviews by Maria Bartiromo. While some of the things they talk about as far as ranking high, are not 100% accurate, the rest is quite mind blowing with what goes on with Google and how it has gotten to where it is in such a short time. It airs again tonight at 9pm & 12am eastern. If you have some free time you should check it out. The list the upcoming air times on the page I linked to above as well.

Amazon, Commission Junction & Geo Targeted BANS Addons

If you have BANS sites that you want to integrate Amazon or Commission Junction into, you may want to buy the multi pack of addons offered by Tao from the BANS forum. I installed the Commission Junction one today on an older BANS site and it was very easy. His directions are written with a newbie in mind and the addons do exactly what they promise to do. The Amazon addon works just the same and allows you to show products from Amazon. The Geo Targeted addon is great for any BANS site, especially if you get a heavy mixture of foreign traffic. It matches the eBay products and EPN program based on the surfers IP, so now you can convert any traffic looking to buy from eBay. Tao is a long time user of BANS and I trust his work, he also offers excellent customer service.

You can buy all 3 of these addons in one package for $60.00 which will save you $20.00. You can use these on as many BANS sites you need to. If you have not yet graduated to Wordpress or have sites you do not feel or now how to convert to Wordpress to add other income possibilities, I highly suggest you look at purchasing these. You will not be disappointed.

Know Your Width Limitations

I have a ton of sites, way too many. Like most in the early days of BANS, it was just too easy to build these things and throw them up. I have several that I blog weekly on and really have too many of those as well. Now it is one thing to build a niche site that will not need weekly blog post and maintenance, as long as it is thick with content and done right, but don't stretch yourself too thin. It is very easy to do. The fact of the matter is, you really only need 10-20 well thought out sites to earn a fantastic income. Concentrate on your site quality, not the quantity of sites you can build. I know several are back into the automated sites, but that just isn't my cup of tea. Trust me when I say you will be rewarded by building great sites and you should not stretch yourself too thin. You can only do so much in a day. I do this full time and never get around to some sites, but maybe 3 times a year. Know your width limitations. Everyone's is different. Before anyone ask, no, none are for sale.

Tips & Tricks For The Wordpress wp-config File

I came across an interesting video on Wordpress.tv today that caught my eye. It is by Josh Harrison and is dedicated to the Wordpress wp-config file and the things you can do to it. That file is the most important file in Wordpress. There are quite a few things I learned myself. I have mentioned the Wordpress.tv site several times in the past and if you are new to my blog or Wordpress in general, you really need to spend some time on that site. there is a ton you can learn there even if you have used Wordpress for a while. I try to visit the site at least once every couple of weeks and try to learn something new.