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Changes at NoHeat
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First off let me apologize to my loyal readers who have been going
through a little NoHeat withdrawal while I catch up on some of my
deadlines. Between power outages, torrential snow, a dead furnace, and
a crazy work schedule I have every excuse not to keep NoHeat as current
and I know you would like. The good news is I have qued up some great
stories for next week which I think may make up for the brief absence.
In any case I refuse to put up filler content to keep the site rolling.
My theory is if its crap, it won’t get posted on NoHeat, I’d rather let
it sit with older content. After all it wouldn’t be cool tech if I
started adding fluff right? We gave a few writers a chance to help us
out, only to find that its very hard to find someone that can bring
someone that brings unique cool content. We’re going to add a couple
of full time writers, in particular Jenine. Look to hear from her on
the weekends. The other full time writer will be announced soon. We
will also be doing some spring cleaning again, some ads will disappear
and some will appear, the good news is that we will be making more
money and so the more money we make can be re-invested back into the
site. So let me just say thanks for reading and enjoy the surge in
content, hopefully we can keep it up for another couple of years.
WordPress 2.4 is coming!
Big news for Wordpress users, the blue and white admin page you are used to is about to go away! Wordpress 2.4 is on its way and part of the update is a redesigned admin page. The Wordpress team is redesigning each part of the panel page, by page. They aren’t going to make any drastic changes though because they don’t want us old Wordpress users to get lost. Many of the changes are to make navigation and using the software easier for new bloggers, stupid noobs, unless you’re a noob (then you’re not stupid). Well anyway, something that will affect us advanced users is the new color scheme of the administration panel. They have made it so that it is much lighter on the eyes and they have added some contrast to the blue by throwing some earthy orange on there as well. Well, I guess looking at would give you a better idea than me blabbing about it.
Free Hosting with 100Gig of Space and Bandwidth
I was always told if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is, but this time I can’t find the catch. I found the link for this site claiming to be giving away free hosting in a forum and decided try it out. 100 Gig of bandwidth and 100 Gig disk space seemed a little far fetched for only a link back in exchange in my opinion. My first thought was it had to be dog slow server, nope in fact file transfers seemed to upload faster than my dedicated host. I tried to trip it up the best I could but could not find a flaw. They allow most of the popular scripts to be installed from their control panel (like Wordpress) and allow you to use your own domain name. Their back end control panel while somewhat spartan had everything I would need to install normally. Everything seemed to be really well done from back end to front end.
All in all Hostedwith.us seems to be the real deal with the only catch being that you have to add a link back to their page. I have to wonder where they make their money from though a link back hardly seems to be enough but they say free so I guess its free.
So I suppose if you are looking at starting a blog or webpage and you want to get in with a fast server at no cost this may be the way to do it. Just remember to backup and cross your fingers that they stay in business, but the worst case scenario is that you just move your content somewhere else, so what do you have to loose?
The Best Adsense Alternative or Supplement CPC
If you are anything like me you have ads on your website and are constantly experimenting with the newest thing on the block like WidgetBucks. Seems like Google Adsense is the best and highest paying dog on this block but can you supplement your Adsense revenue without getting yourself in trouble with the Adsense police? TTZ Media in my opinion looks like one of the best ways so far at showing ads that don’t get in the way of Adsense. Clean and unobtrusive, they do something other ad engines like Widgetbucks and Amazon Affiliate programs don’t do, they show great deals. We all shop sites like Fatwallet, Spoofee, or Slickdeals for a good deal but in this instance TTZ Media show those great deals on your site and make you some money. Its not all about referrals and CPA either. They pay out by clicks not buys which means you are more likely to get paid than other services that require your reader to go buy something and do it now. This is a great plan for them because their publishers will continue to use them as long as they are getting paid and as they grow they can gain market share. I am assuming the math works also, usually paying out $.15 per click, which makes the little guys feel good when they get a click. As your site grows your click revenue grows with you.
The best thing by far about their code is that it is highly customizable by keywords, colors, and number of products. This way you can blend your ads into your site easily and make them pertinent to your site’s readers. Another extra benefit is that they look great and don’t look like the millions of other ads out there so are more likely to get attention. They are OK to install on a site with Adsense also, and complement Google Adsense with their clean look that reminds you of a Google product. So give them a try and supplement your Google Adsense revenue.
You can see my ads underneath my Adsense and CJ banners and on the right sidebar
NoHeat Gets an New Look
So likely you have been noticing more anomalies here at NoHeat than StarTrek episode in the middle of WTFsville. I have been testing ads and theme components for the newly released NoHeat theme. Keep in mind its not a total rewrite but more or less a revision of the old them with a richer graphical look. The way my ads were converting before it was hard to mess with the conversion rate but you have to break a few eggs to make a omelet and a omlet we now have. I was able to eek out a higher click through rate while not drastically changing the site. You may have also noticed that I have new ads by TTZ Media. TTZ Media and their ads look very promising so far, beating out my Amazon affiliate revenue. I have also found their ads to be attractive, unique, and value adding to my visitors.
I’ve also made my Comment contest a permanent part of the site. Every week someone will win $20 or a prize, this has been a pretty decent way to spur the social aspect of the site.
I also added a new plug-in called Feedburner Feedsmith which detects all the ways to access your site’s RSS feeds and redirects them to your Feedburner account. My subscribers jumped big time after this installation!
I also got rid of my bigger than big category list and added a dropdown menu for my Wordpress categories via the BH Category Dropdown Widget. This has cleared up some serious space on the blog and cleaned up a little clutter.
I always say its good to go through and do some spring cleaning every so often and ask the question “Why is this on my site and what value does it bring either me or my readers”? In this update’s case I was able to clean up some clutter, make the site prettier, and earn enough extra revenue to pay for a few more Christmas presents under the tree this year.
Enjoy the new look, it will keep evolving I promise and keep your suggestions coming.
Use StumbleUpon in Opera
So let’s say you use Opera but still want to get your StumbleUpon on, what can you do besides go back to Firefox right? Wrong, Kyle Anderson over at Crucial Web Hosting created this gem of a plug-in for Opera users that not only allow you view other’s stumbled articles but you get to vote as well. So now if you addicted to Opera and still want to stumble you can have your cake and eat it too.
