May 26 2010

Late Spring Clean

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 11:44 pm

After repairing all my other websites (following the hacking of my server and insertion of malware links), I decided to standardize all the plugins across the sites, and only install themes and plugins that were available from the official WordPress repository. This makes keeping them up to date a lot easier (and semi-automatic) and should any new hacks take place, the clean up job will be quicker. In the last few days, I also finally re-instated the Amazon links; when these sites were not built around WordPress, I’d had Amazon.co.uk books related to each topic displayed, but didn’t see a single sale. I went through my AWStats information, and nineteen out of twenty sites had the most traffic from America. (Actually Russia figured quite heavily as well, but a) Russian visitors aren’t famous for click on adverts and buying products and b) Amazon don’t have a .RU specific site, oh and c) A lot of the Russian visitors were actually spam bots, once again not known for earning web masters money 🙂 ) So, discovering that I had already set up an affiliate account there, I went ahead and inserted Amazon.com adverts on each site. I’m hoping that the sites will start to earn a bit money than the last year’s income, though I know that with summer coming there will be the usual dip in visitor numbers and corresponding income. The grill (BBQ) tips site might just be the exception, I suppose 🙂

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,