I've had one of our AIS sites sitting on Text Link Ads for a couple of months now, waiting for advertisers to choose our site. I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to get any advertisers through the system! However last night I checked my email before climbing into bed and had my first Ad approval email from them. A couple of semi relevant links so I approved them. I then checked to see how much we were earning and saw just 75 cents per link. 75 cents for a link for the month? Ah no, looked again and realised that was for the last 3 days of this month!! So that works out to $7.50 per link for a month, pretty cool for a simple link.nnI then woke up this morning to find another ad to approve! This time it's a much more relevant subject, and leaves just 1 spot left. So 3 links in the space of 24 hours off 2 advertisers, after about 2-3 months of silence! For anyone wondering about the site it's a PR4 which possibly confirms what burt was writing on his post about Text Link Ads, as his PR4 site also has links at $7.50 a month.nnHowever, is the PR of a site a good enough reason to determine the worth of a link? Surely these people are advertising because they want the visitors, or is it because they want the backlink? The site in question gets 250-300 visitors daily, yet my business site, which is PR5, gets perhaps 20 odd visitors a day! So in theory if an advertiser is clever on this system they can pay less and get far more exposure for their site.nnAnyhow, $22.50 a month extra is quite nice for 3 simple text links, so fingers crossed they stay. Wonder what happens if more come along when the block is full? Do they start bidding for spots? I really should read the site more! Shame visitor figures aren't taken into consideration (or maybe they are and I've not found that bit!!).

First off just need to apologise for not updating the front end of the site when I post. I keep forgetting, it's as simple as that. I may set up a cron job to run it once a night so at least if I forget it will still run

Anyhow, I was hoping to be on top of my work by now but I'm still not fully there. Client delays and having to start new work as agreed with other clients means work keeps overlapping leaving me in the middle getting crushed under the weight. Okay over dramatic I know, it's not so bad, but it feels it every night when I'm stressing in my dreams about work and then wake up exhausted, dragging myself out of bed whilst the rest of the house sleeps for another 2 hours.

I turned two jobs down a couple of weeks ago. One was work which I wouldn't have done myself anyhow and hired someone else to do the job and I just don't have the energy to rely on someone else to get work done on time with me running in between client and developer. The other was quite a large project which was urgent, again not something I can cope with at present. Luckily I know a couple of good guys I can pass the clients on to when needed. I then reassessed my work and the idea of actually growing the business more. At present both myself and Dave work pretty much fulltime, or what seems like fulltime should I say, however the money coming in doesn't reflect this. So I'm starting to document everything I do during the day to keep a track of what's being done and when. There's 3 of us here and I want the 3 of us to be working full time or at least 30 hours a week before even considering looking to employ someone. To be paying out a decent hourly rate means that I need to be turning over double what I currently am so we need to see why the work is taking so much time compared to the money paying for it (my bad quoting no doubt!) and get it to how it should be. With that in mind I've now got a few new sites that have come in over the past couple of weeks to start planning for. Loose ends are being tied up on other sites so things are clearing down a little especially as large projects are coming to a close and only smaller ones (bar one) are starting up. If I plan to grow as a business I need to not turn down work unless it's just not financially viable.

On top of all that I'm trying to redesign my business site as the current design is a bit old and boring now. I've got a more modern design in my mind so it's just a case of trying to put it on paper and call on Dave to help me with the CSS! I've also got work to do on other personal sites as well as another business which has been in the works for a few years now and is hopefully going to see the light of day soon. So just a few things to be keeping busy with…!

Yesterday I awoke to the first template sale off a site I bought back in January. The site's had a few affiliate sales on eBooks and the adsense is pretty good (albeit a low CTR) however I've not succeeded in selling any templates until now. A quick and easy purchase from the original template owner and the template was sent off to the buyer nice and easily. This brings my highest sale for one item up to just under £24 from £18 which I had earlier this month, and possibly the highest earning day yet, but I'll have the check the figures for that. However this does mean that this month is working out quite nicely considering we've had a drop in AdSense these past two months.nnThe site that sold the template is also undergoing work as I'm adding a blog (yes another!) to document my work and personal opinions in the subject which I'm hoping may pull a few more visitors in and then channel them to the products on sale.nnOkay so it's not much by the seasoned AISers usual intake, but in the past 2 months I've surpassed the highest sale twice, from $29 to $30 (that was in the same day and what I believe is the highest day yet including adsense), to £18 at the start of this month and now the sale from yesterday. Plus the good thing about this sale is that the money is already in my Paypal account and not lying in an affiliate account.nnAll in all a good day to help with the motivation

I don't seem to be having much luck with getting affiliate payouts at present. I've been trying to find out where my 123-Reg payment has gone. Apparently made on 26th July but they won't reply to my emails.nnNow I'm not getting much joy with Template Monster either. A couple of weeks ago I withdrew $160 into a Money Bookers account and the withdrawal just says being processed on the TM website. Okay a couple of weeks isn't long for payments so I guess I'm just being impatient. I know a few people reading this (or hopefully still reading this!) have had TM payouts – remember how long they took?

Well okay, not 100% free, but anyone in the UK can buy up to 5 half litre bottles of coke or its other versions (diet, cherry etc) and each label has a code on it giving you a free song on iTunes. You're allowed up to 5 per account so nothing fantastic but heck it's free music worth almost £4.

At this point you're saying, but you have to buy the coke. Yes you do, but even if you don't drink coke, a lot of shops around have a deal of 2 for £X.XX (Tescos is 2 for £1.50, Somerfields is 2 for £1.30, McColls is 2 for £1.29). Well take the price of a song, 79p, and so 2 would cost £1.58 right? So even if you don't drink the coke, you still make a saving!

The song codes expire in December but you can credit your account with them whenever you like