September was another good month for Reality Wired as traffic nearly tripled. Both Adsense and IntelliTXT again posted increased earnings, but Auction Ads and Text-Link-Ads were virtually non-existent.

Adsense - $229.43 (more than doubled August earnings)
IntelliTXT - $538.95 (increase of about 30%)
Auction Ads - $0.72 (think I lost .20 here)
Text-Link-Ads - $3.75

Total: $772.85

So I pretty much doubled august earnings or close to it ($430.55), that’s pretty good for what amounts to just fooling around, testing different things. I have come to the conclusion that Auction Ads suck and I’ll be removing them from the site. I might replace them with something else, I might not but they’ve never really done anything since their first month so to me they’re just taking up space.

Traffic was also up this month, nearly tripling what I had in August. That’s thanks in most part to Stumblers (you guys ROCK!) and a brief brush by Digg. RSS feed count didn’t make the 200 subscriber goal in September so that sucked but it did this morning, close but no cigar. We did however, break into the Technorati top 10,000. Woot for us.

Again, I’m pleased with the performance but like last month I don’t really have a goal for October. For me this is a hobby not a job so it’s not critical that things follow some regimented plan. I post when I can and whatever interest me or seems to be hot at the time. For those that asked last month, to which I never answered (sorry) my biggest referrers were by far StumbleUpon (again, Stumblers ROCK!) who accounted for roughly 23% of my traffic, direct hits accounted for another 13% and Google was 12%. The remainder was split up among various referring sites.

So things are starting to roll along now and I’m sure if I really put my nose to the grindstone things would grow by leaps and bounds but this is simply proof that regardless what all the so called “know it alls” have to say, what really matters is just sticking with it.

There’s a question I’ve wondered about for some time now, whether or not all those people that pony up hundreds of dollars to experience the John Chow Effect really get something worthwhile out of it. Let’s face it, you can save yourself a bundle of cash by landing yourself on the frontpage of Digg or having something that people love to Stumble but more often than not all of that is worthless outside of driving up your traffic stats. However, just like beauty, worth is in the eye of the beholder, so the question is, is it worth spending $400 to have your site or product reviewed by John Chow?

If your Alvin Phang the answer is a resounding NO. Alvin has put together a free 16 page report on his experience with the “John Chow Effect“. While the report itself does tend to cast John in a dim light because overall it states Alvin got $0.00 return on his $400 investment it’s not necessarily intended to convey that message (but it makes for a great headline).

I’m not an ebook kind of person, especially ones that are grammatically challenging to read, but I’m really interested in seeing some results from someone who’s bought one of the many reviews John has done. While Alvin’s approach is from an advertisers point of view and the ebook is full of screen shots there are still a number of lessons we can take from it. For example, Alvin requested a review of his Atomic Blogging product, in his ebook he states “The review was written very well but as an advertiser’s point of view the review did not deliver what as I was expecting from John”.

That’s a great point because whether you buy a $10 review or a $400 review there is some expectation on the part of the person buying the review. However, the first question that comes to mind is, what (if any) conditions/requirements were given when the review was submitted? It would be important to convey your expectations to the reviewer, even if your sending them a product to review, don’t assume they know what your looking for.

Something else Alvin points out that I think is important, especially if you pushing a product, is that the product and even a site needs to be of interest to the reviewer. Alvin argued that John didn’t really recommend his product throughout the review, but he also admitted that he felt it wasn’t something that really grabbed John’s attention. This is so important, the whole purpose of spending this money is to get loyal readers or sale conversions. If the reviewer doesn’t find the lvel of interest your require then your probably not going to get what your looking for, whereas, knowing your expectations up front could influence their review just enough spawn you some sales. If you just want a million hits in your stats meter to say you got lots of traffic then send me $200 and I’ll hook you up, just don’t complain when they don’t provide you any benefit.

Bottom line. Whether it’s John Chow or anyone else, if your looking to get a review done you need to seriously consider what your asking of the reviewer. If you simply toss them some cash and ask that they “just review my whatever” then don’t have very high expectations that your investment will gain you readers or sales. However, if you have a goal in mind, then explain that to the reviewer, tell them what your intent is: whether it’s to generate sales of an ebook or critique it’s content. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time and will most likely make your investment much more beneficial.

Thanks to Andy Beard for turning me on to Alvin’s ebook. I’d really like to see more of this kind of stuff reported from people that have bought reviews, not necessarily from John. I’ve said before I’m actually surprised John doesn’t solicit this feedback to bolster his already bulging ReviewMe wallet.

If you’ve bought a review and have results to show how it did, drop a link in the comments to let us know.

There’s been a lot of rumblings lately about changes with the Google indexing algorithms, particularly as they related to directory listings and sites that are found to be a part of them. While this isn’t something new, it’s been common knowledge Google frowned on “Link Farms” for some time, it does seem like the definition of a “Link Farm” may be broader in scope now than it used to be. What’s more interesting is that even if the definition has been expanded to include a directory listing, there’s a fair amount of noise being made about the Text-Link-Ads service.

Reading through a thread on Digital Point there’s varying opinions on the subject. One poster suggests that Google may now consider TLA a “bad neighborhood” and we all know what Google does to you if they feel your hanging out in a bad hood. Another theory concludes that Google feels that TLA is a form of PR manipulation and you use them at your peril. Yet another site owner claims that after adding TLA to his site, the site dropped like a rock in Google’s index but two months later when he decided to remove TLA everything mysteriously returned to it’s previous level.

So the real question is two-fold I think. First, is Google taking a stronger stance on what it believes to be creatively engineered link farms and two, have they specifically targeted TLA and both it’s advertisers and publishers to make an example out of?

It’s a heated debate and I sent an email to Patrick Gavin at TLA asking for their opinion on the subject but as yet I’ve not heard anything from Patrick. I would think they would have some statement prepared to address the growing discontent being directed at them, but then they could also just not care. There’s plenty of webmasters out there who are making lots of money using the service and it’s arguable whether those sites would be impacted by a loss of indexing in Google. I think it’s a bigger issue for smaller sites and TLA’s ability to attract new publishers and new advertisers in the future.

What’s your opinion on the subject. Got any signs that point one way or another on this issue?

Update: Patrick Gavin has declined to comment on this issue, however, he did note that Text-Link-Ads has not seen any evidence of sites getting dropped from Google for selling links.

Mark Wielgus over at 45N5 recently launched a weekly listing of the top 100 “Make Money Online” blogs and Reality Wired got ranked in the top 25. Damn, I’m impressed. I can’t find any info on what the actual metrics are, but just form observation it appears the Google Pagerank, Technorati and Alexa are the major factors. Makes for a good start and over time I suspect Mark will add more criteria to the mix.

What’s interesting is that as Andy Beard pointed out, Mark didn’t include just blogs with the search term in the name or title tags, he used his own judgment as a reader whether or not the site met what he was looking for. Personally I’m surprised to be that high and I’m sure it won’t last because while I do a good bit of posting about making money online, I’m not into regurgitating what everyone else has to say. If I can offer something from my own experience then you’ll get it, otherwise, it’s a smorgasboard of random thoughts and musings.

Anyway, it’s pretty cool to be listed that high, but don’t ignore the rest of the list. If your not on it, just shoot Mark a note with your blogs details and see where you end up.