Did you know that the iPod has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in third-party and aftermarket sales? Many people have termed the money that is being created by the popular Apple device an iPod economy. The iPod alone is the single source of revenue for many companies who make products for it. Whether it is cases, headphones, or other add-ons, there will never be a shortage of iPod accessories. But what about the upcoming iPhone? Apple has released a short list of official iPhone accessories, but they haven’t really unveiled any partnerships with any third party suppliers. We know that there will be thousands of accessories on the market shortly after the launch, but we’re anxious to see what manufacturers are coming up with for the device now.

The iPhone and iPod economies are very powerful, and so is the buying power of the millions of iPod loyalists worldwide. We’re not sure if Apple is trying to craft a better contract to ensure quality accessories for their quality device, or if the are trying to just take a larger cut by requiring the “Made for iPhone” certification. Due time will tell as we near the launch of this spectacular phone.

There are too many reasons to want to visit such a historic and exotic location such as the Island of Kos. Whether you are there to enjoy a beach holiday on the white sands of the Agean Sea beaches, or if you are there to visit ancient civilization ruins and learn more about the Ancient Greeks, you can count on a trip to Kos to truly be a vacation that you’ll remember for a lifetime.  Summer is approaching quickly and if you hurry you can book your last minute holidays to Kos.

The weather at Kos is the same great Mediterranean weather that keeps this a highly valued tourist location. You can expect many sunny days depending on the season with temperatures in the 60s and 70s year roud.

Be sure to book a hotel in Kos as early as possible. With it being a favorite tourist destination, advanced bookings do have a better chance at lower rates.

Back before my internet marketing days, I had a fairly easy job of building dedicated webservers for one of the nations largest hosting companies. We’d order the different components in bulk from several different vendors and ship them all to our fulfillment center. That’s where I’d work up a whirlwind gathering all the parts and building computers out of them. I’d then ship the servers to different parts of the country, different parts of the world even, and that would be where my tracking trail of my inventory ended Server build-outs were actually a very enjoyable task, but what I lacked was a common inventory solution. If I could have had better tracking software and some labels from a company like Seareach, I would have been able to tell anyone where that last batch of 80gb hard drives ended up, or what processors were in the machines in Dallas, or how many sticks of ram ended up in Seattle.

It wasn’t that we didn’t keep track. We had the paper work for all incoming orders of components and outgoing completed machines, but if we ever needed to know a where something ended up, we’d need to hunt down a paper trail.

Nowadays, I know my former company is doing things differently. A colleague informed me that they scan everything as soon as it hits the door, incoming or outgoing. The recieving data centers are on the same system and they do the same thing. It sounds like it is making their life easier.

Keeping track of inventory isn’t just a logistics challenge either. The company I work for now uses inventory labels to keep track of assets so they can adjust their amortization schedules. If we were ever to be audited by a potential investor or buyer, the total worth of our physical assets can be easily calculated because we are keeping track of everything.

If you are under the impression that it takes a large bankroll, skill and a little bit of luck to get started in trading on the stock markets, you probably have been living in a cave. For the past 10 years, the web has enabled potential day traders with the tools they need to take the leap into trading stocks with a very minimum initial investment. Previously users would have had to hire a large investment firm with a very large down deposit. Now you can find an online discount stock brokerage and be making trades for as low as $1 per transaction!

With a world of financial news available at your fingertips, you can arm yourself with the tools and knowledge necessary to be making smart trades for very little money. Participation in forums and finance sites will only make you stronger and more wise in the day trading game. Don’t worry about letting on to any secrets either, by sharing advice and helping others, you’ll not only help them succeed but you’ll more than likely get the favor returned later down the road. No need to worry about competing with others in the market, there is plenty of money for everyone.

My wife came to me today and told me some very bad news. “Jason, we need to cut back on your magazine subscriptions.” What, did I hear that correctly? She went on to tell me that while I read almost all of them cover-to-cover each and every month, I also have a hard time getting rid of read issues. I always seem to find a gem of an article in each one that wants me to hold on to the ‘zine for future reference. She also told me that my subscriptions have become much too expensive, and that if I were to keep them, I’d have to find a way to get them for a lot cheaper. This was very alarming for me. Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE my magazines. I had to find a few other options.

I decided to cut down on the bulk after all. It was a very tough decision, but Wired and Inc are the two business magazines I decided to hold on to, while Maximum PC was kept as my “guilty pleasure”.

Oh, and I also held on to my free subscription to Website Magazine, since it only makes sense. I am a webmaster after all and website magazine always seems to have an extra idea or two that makes well worth the investment (well, if you call Free an investment).

If you frequent this site, you are most likely a pixel site owner. The answer to the question above should hit very close to your heart (or wallet). Do you have any idea what the future holds for pixel ads? If you want to make any money, you better think about this question a LOT!

As many of you are finding out, buying the script and a domain name, learning 30 minutes worth of HTML and uploading a blank grid does not turn you in to an overnight millionaire. As a matter of fact, if this was your plan, you should have bought $60 worth of lottery tickets instead. Then at least you’d have a chance (even if the odds are 1:88,000,000).

Listen when I say, if the main focus of your site is a big block of advertising space, don’t quit your day job. Your site has to have a purpose. A reason for visitors to go there. I know what you are saying, “Hey, that Alex Tew kid did it, so why can’t I?” I can answer that in 3 letters. CNN. Did you see Alex’s site listed on CNN.com’s front page for an entire week back in January? I did. So did millions of other people. Is your site likely to get listed on CNN’s home page?
There IS a future for pixel advertising. Have a look at ohgizmo.com. Content first, and oh, by the way, you can purchase advertising in small quantites in their header bar. With an Alexa rating under 30K, an advertement on this site may have cost a few hundred bucks for a traditional sized ad. You can instead purchase a much smaller chunk of real estate and test the waters.

The idea is to give potential advertisers a place where they can purchase an ad as big or as little as they want, but, you are focused on giving your visitors a reason to come back to the site.

Even with 10-20 new signups each day, I take the time to check out each site that signs up. It doesn’t take very long to see which sites are going to have a chance to succeed and which are destined to sit empty for all eternity. This is, of course, just my opinion, but anybody who goes out and purchases a script for $50 or $100, plus a domain name & hosting just so they can put up the default installation with absolutely no effort to give visitors a reason to come back AND THEN expects that they are going to sell $1,000,000 worth of pixels… well, they are sadly mistaken. The internet is not one big get rich scheme (though, many seem to think it is). If you plan on getting in to any market, you should at least try and stand out. Even if it’s just a little.

Sites like millionblinkenlights.com, covermyhairybutt.com, bushcoverup.com… The owners spent some time, came with an idea that was different than every other pixel site, and because of it, they stick out. I’m much more likely to tell a friend about one of these sites than 98% of the sites out there. Just because they stuck out. Nothing more, nothing less.

Also, there is nothing wrong with using a small chunk of pixes on a “non-pixel” site. Have a look at ohgizmo.com. They have added a section of pixels at the top of their page for advertising. Mixed in with the rest of their content, this is a site that will likely see their grid continue to grow over time.

So, before you spend the money, make sure you have a plan. You will be much more likely to attract advertisers’ attention if they see you care enough to put in a solid effort.

“What is Page Rank?” This is a very common question. Google provides each site (and each page within each site) on the internet a page rank between 0 and 10. I will not begin to explain how the calculate it as it is far too much information for this post. But, you can view this page which has done a fantastic job of explaining all there is to know about google page ranks.

One of the key ways to improve your page rank is to have other sites on the internet place a link on their site pointing to your site. The more links you have coming in, the higher your own page rank will go. You need to be careful to not have your site linked entirely from sites with a zero rating. The more links you have coming in from sites with a PR of 3, 4, 5 or higher, the better your over all score.
Recently we have had several (about a dozen) site owners email us and ask if we would change the way our links worked. Rather than linking to the internal redirect, they wanted the benefit provided from a link to their site from ours since we have a solid pagerank (4). With their requests in mind, we came up with the Gold Membership program.

“What is the gold Membership?” you might ask. For a complete explanation and to sign up, click here.

Do you know what your Alexa Rating is? No? I’ll bet your potential advertisers do.

The Alexa Rating is a numeric representation of how popular your site is based strictly on the amount of traffic received. So, for example, yahoo.com has a rating of 1. It is the most visited site on the Internet based on Alexa’s count. Most sites you can name off the top of your head will rate in the top 100,000 or so. I’m sure you could guess 5 or 10 that are in the top 100. (ebay, google, cnn, etc…) One of they ways that Alexa captures data for it’s analysis is through the use of the Yahoo browser tool bar. Web surfers using the yahoo tool bar automatically provide data back to yahoo (Alexa is owned by yahoo) on what sites they are visiting. Sum up all the visits by site, put all the sites in order from 1 through 5 million (they don’t count much higher than 5 million) and give them each a sequential number. Now you have your Alexa rating.

So, you might think that the way to build a huge Alexa rating would be to drive a few million people to your site one day. Wrong answer! Sure, driving a million visitors to the site is certainly going to help, but, the ratings are an average visitor count over a 3 month period. You would be much better off to drive 10,000 visitors each day.

It’s best to keep in mind that results are not immediate. If you drive a large volume of traffic to the site this week, it could be 1 - 2 weeks before your rating is affected. To give you an example, have a look at the rank data for PixelTrafficWatcher.com. It shows that the 1 week average for our site would put us at a rank of 15,287. But, our 3 month average has us at 42,306. When Alexa updates their rankings again I’m expecting to see our ranking jump to 35 - 37,000. And, as we continue to grow, I’d like to see us break the 20,000 mark in the next 4-6 weeks.

Some common questions I’ve been asked:

How do I find my site’s Alexa rating?

1. If you use Firefox, there is an extension called SearchStatus. It displays the Alexa rating and Google PageRank for whatever page you are browsing.
2. Go to alexa.com. Click the “Traffic Rankings” link. Type your domain name in the search box and click Get Traffic Details.

What if I don’t have an Alexa rating? How do I get one?
Your rating is based on traffic, but also, Alexa needs to know your site exists. Follow these steps:

1. Go to alexa.com and search for your traffic rankings.
2. Click the “Traffic Details” link.
3. Scroll to the very bottom of the page and find the link that reads “Correct errors and omissions in this listing” and click it.
4. Click the “Update Thumbnail Image of [site name]”. This will cause Alexa to spider your site and take a screen shot. When they update their ratings next, as long as you are in the top 5 million sites on the internet, you will be given an Alexa rating.

How do I get traffic to my site?

1. Find sites that will swap links with you. The more links you have back to your site the more potential you have to be seen.
2. Buy advertising space. Again, more banner links = more chance to be seen.
3. Pay-per-click ads. There are MANY pay-per-click advertising networks out there. Be careful though. You can wind up spending a LOT more than you get in return.
4. Buy traffic. This is my least favorite way, but, if you just need to get some visitors to your site, this will do the trick. There are two main companies I use. Both have been excellent at providing traffic. But, don’t expect to convert a large % of these visitors to sales. This traffic is a lot less responsive, but they are warm bodies. Check out e-mailpaysu.com and donkeymails.com (click the “advertise” link on either page)

Earlier today we solved an issue that had been causing problems for members who were using the “Trade Pixels” feature of our site. When we moved servers earlier this month we somehow missed a directory permission that was causing all pixel uploads to fail. Unfortunately the issue wasn’t caught during our testing sessions after the site was moved.

During the time that the problem was happening, approximately 55 pixel uploads were attempted. They all appeared to be going through just fine, but the pixels never went anywhere. We suggest that you log in to your account, check to make sure your pixels are in place. If not, please upload new pixels to your account.

If you aren’t familiar with our “Trade Pixels” feature, please log in to your account for more information on how it works!
We apologize for the inconvenience.

- PTW