Well it’s about time. I’ve been pretty disappointed with YPN but today the first check finally arrived. The check itself is on time, as you can see, it’s just barely over the minimum or at least the one I’d set in my options. The thing is, it’s taken since March of 2006 to get it.

There is a bit of history there though, I dropped them completely for about 9 months so it really hasn’t been that long but still it’s not even a remote comparison to Adsense. On two separate occasions I’ve switched out ads on a site that produces in Adsense, produces very well but did a fraction in YPN that it did in Adsense. The problem is, I can’t figure out why and that’s the frustrating part. The ads look virtually the same, same color, same positioning, darn near the same ads as well and definitely the same topics but the ctr is so different it’s not even funny.

Now I’ll submit that part of the problem is me, I’m not a very patient person and prefer to see instant results and having to wait 24 hours to get payment details is a prime reason I don’t do more with YPN that play with it from time to time, but this last go round was for almost a full month. That said, I do believe I’ll spend some time going through this data, since I have some now to see if I can spot something. I really had high hopes for YPN but so far have been disappointed. Given the fact I have some other programs working it’s not such a big thing to give up Adsense for a period of time now so I’m sure I’ll be trying again.

If anyone has any experience with YPN, I’d love to get feedback on it.

What’s the Technorati Fav Train and how can it make you money?

Technorati is a long standing blog aggregator and one of, if not the, top service pinged everytime a post is made on a blog. They are a source of pride among bloggers, because of their unique ranking systems. Technorati publishes several lists, the most notable being the Top 100 Most Linked To Blogs which every blogger aspires to get on but to do that one must have major acclaim in the blogosphere so it can be pretty difficult to break into. Another list that’s a bit easier to get on is the Top 100 Most Favorited blogs. Here the only deciding factor is the number of favorites a blog receives. Currently breaking into the top 100 appears to take about 186-190 favorites.

What does making this list buy you? Credibility for starters and mostly prestige, but it can also serve to expand your readership. It provides a mean to gain additional traffic and a number of backlinks which in turn will benefit your SEO and positioning in the search engines. The more backlinks the higher the PR potential your site will have and that will open a host of doors in your effort to make money online.

So how does one get on this bandwagon? Simple. Dosh Dosh started the concept of the Technorati Favorites Train as an experiment to gauge the actual benefit of being on such a list. The concept has since exploded on the blogosphere. Basically it works like this.

You favorite this blog by clicking here or using the Technorati Favorites button below, then leave a comment in this post with your Technorati username (mine is Crazy4bass) along with a link to your blog. I’ll be checking to see who has favorited this blog and I’ll favorite you back. That’s it, pretty simple.

Once your done, jump over to Dosh Dosh and check out their Technorati favorites exchange. While your there I suggest taking a few minutes to look at the blogs already on board and checking them out. There’s more than a couple pretty interesting sites participating and you never know what you might find.

If you wish to participate in other exchange programs we also have a Feed My Feed exchange program you can chekc out.

Does this ever sound like a silly question but in the space of 3 hours I’ve had two people ask what it was. So what is RSS or an RSS feed for that matter? In short, it’s a way to read what’s published on another site without actually going there. Then there is the long answer; any one of a number of file formats (usually XML) that are used to syndicate web content via such things as blogs or podcasts.

A user wishing to keep abreast of the goings on of a site (this site) for example, can simply subscribe to the newsfeed (click here). Using software called “feed readers” you can subscribe to our feed and then anytime we post new content your reader is automatically updated. The advantage is, you can use one view or one tool to keep up with many different sites at once.

Most sites publish only partial feeds, a summary or except that’s designed to get you to come to the site to continue reading while others publish full feeds, as we do here. The hope is that as your scanning through the feeds if you find something we’ve posted interesting you’ll visit the site to find more vs. teasing teasing you into coming.

RSS feeds come in various formats, you’ll hear terms like Atom, XML and podcasts. They’re all basically the same thing, the format is simple a specification that determines how the feed is formated so your news reader can break it down and display it to you in a human readable format.

There’s a big list of newsreaders you can choose from here or I recommend just using Google Reader, it’s free and does a really good job. Plus you don’t have to install anything but you will need to register an account, if you have Gmail your all set.

To subscribe to a sites feed, you simply look for their feed link.

CNN for example uses a combination of text links and image links using a standard orange feed icon located at the bottom of the page.

Blogs, like this one usually make them a little more noticable. Ours is at the top of the page on the right.

- The standardized icon, comes in various sizes.

- Feedburner is a service that aides sites in managing their feeds, works the same for you the reader.

RSS Feed - Others use just a standard text link that links to their feed.

If you want to try it out, click one of the three links just above, we’d certainly appreciate your interest in our site.

I hope this helps explain RSS a little more. I intentionally tried to stay basic with it, but if you really want the gory details visit the RSS section on Wikipedia or you can just read through the entire specification here.

I saw this on Bob Meets World (via Kumiko), it’s a link baiting scheme that looks pretty interesting. Along the lines of Technorati Fave Trains and other link attracting methods, this is designed to increase both linkbacks and RSS feed subscriptions. Interesting concept and it’s fresh so now is the time to get on board. Because we all crave links and readers, I’m jumping on the bandwagon as it rolls by, we’ll see what it brings.

All you need to do is copy the list below to your blog, then click the RSS link list to subscribe to that sites feed. Then add your link/feed link. It’s suggested we add up three additional blogs and their feeds to show the link love.

I don’t know if it will work or not, but it never hurts to try and if you get a little bump in your Technorati or Alexa rating for it, so much the better but just think of the readers you also get, that’s the icing. Anyway, here goes, give it a shot, what have you to lose?

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