Further to my post on how Alexa Rank affects income for those who sell advertising via companies such as Text Link Ads. After looking at the stats of Site 2 on my other post, last week the visitor numbers rose even further to an average of over 800 visitors for the week days.

So I've decided to try adding the Alexa button to the site in question. I know in the past one minute I thought it worked, then more recently I tried it on a quieter site and saw the rank in fact drop. I know others have tried and not really seen any changes either, but I figured that with the bizarreness of this site's stats vs Alexa rank, it was maybe a good guinea pig for the experiment.

I've decided to leave the button there for at least a month. To monitor the visitor stats and of course the Alexa rank, once a week. So first of all, to prove what they currently are:

So, I'll keep an eye on this and see if anything changes.

Today I got word from a colleague who had sold my shopping cart script for me. I need to do some additional custom work on it but I've essentially sold a script that's already been paid for in the past. It got me thinking that perhaps I can finally get this script more modular, and perhaps sell it a few more times over. I realise there are free off the shelf scripts out there such as osCommerce, but I also know how bloated they are. My script is valid XHTML and CSS driven.nnI still have a lot of work to do to take it further, at present it's a little too custom made for general use, but still, theoretically it's been my best AIS day yet! (well it will when I invoice for payment!).

There's been a recent PR update (for the one or two who maybe didn't notice!). The PR seems to have dropped on a few of my own sites plus a few sites I read. I have to say that I've not seen a change this big for a long long time. As we know, when it comes to rankings etc. PR isn't important. But of course it's important when it comes to selling advertising via somewhere like Text Link Ads, or perhaps if you sell advertising space privately. Alexa is another factor which is taken into account. But neither of these should!!nnStu's recent post (Are you a comment snob) got me thinking about this. As he mentioned at first he was taking the PR, Alexa and the feedreader stats into account as to whether a blog was worthy of reading. A lot of people probably do, but as we're all aware (and as he admitted), these stats are so wrong to taken into account.nnWhy? Here are some figures from a few sites of mine:nn

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Site 1

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PR 4 (was 5)

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Alexa 190,000 (ish)

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Visitors – 100 estimated per day, although 200-300 spam bots a day!

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TLA worth – $43*

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Site 2

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PR 2 (was 4)

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Alexa 1,500,000 (ish)

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Visitors – 650 average a day

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TLA worth – $6*

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Client's site

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PR 4 (was 5)

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Alexa 63,000 (ish)

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Visitors – 5000 average a day

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TLA worth – $54*

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nnSo as you can see, the Text Link Ad worthiness* is offering a 650 daily visitor site link for $6, a 100 visits a day site link for $43 and a 5000 visitors a day link for $54! Clearly these prices are skewed by the PR and Alexa. I can understand taking the PR into account as some advertisers just want to pay for the PR received from the link on your site, but for visitors should Alexa really be considered? Take site 2, an Alexa of 1.5 million, yet has 6.5 times more visitors a day than site 1 with an Alexa of 190,000. I know personally I'd rather get a link on site 2 for just $6 a month!nnI personally think Text Link Ads needs a better system for measuring visitor numbers. You have to install their code onto your site to display their links, surely it wouldn't be hard to set up a simple visitor count with this. Perhaps people who have a low PR site (I don't think PR3 or below gets accepted) could still get 'in' if they can prove they have a good visitor count. Afterall, at this point site 2 wouldn't be accepted despite receiving a lot more traffic than site 1.nn* all links were checked on the public calculator with the same factors besides changing the domain.

Unintentionally I've sold a Text Link Ad off a single post on one of my blogs this evening. I knew the option had been available for blogs but I thought I had to physically update my account to allow advertisers to buy a link at the bottom of my posts, however that's not the case so it seems! Again, I didn't have a clue as to what the advertiser was paying, but after authorising the link it seems I get $2.40 for the month. Nothing amazing but considering these links don't affect your sidebar links eg. your 4 or 6 links being sold sitewide, then it's a nice little addition.nnThe other good thing in my opinion is that if the link is on an older post it's not so important as to whether it's as relevant or not. Your regular visitors won't see the link anyhow as it's only displayed on the single post page which is often my concern of selling links on a site that tries to attract return visitors.nnThe link itself? Well below your post it simply comes up with "Related Link: Site name (linked) followed by bit of blurb".nnIt'll be interesting to see how long the advertiser keeps the link however as the post doesn't have any PR and I doubt it gets many visitors. Still, a few extra cents in the pot for the time being

Maybe I've not noticed this but when I get an email through from Text Link Ads telling me there is a new link to approve, I go along and log in to check the site as I want to keep links as relevant as possible. However despite TLA setting a price on the link for your site, the advertiser can undercut that price. That's fine however when you have a link to authorise you can't tell how much the advertiser is offering. Or have a missed something there?nnI've had a few advertisers that have undercut the advertised price, however I cannot tell how much they're paying until I've authorised the link. Then once the link is authorised you can't seem to be able to have the link removed from your site! Surely there should be a way for you to see the price the advertiser wishes to pay before you authorise them?nnRelated Links: Text Link Ads.