Squirrelinabox Network (http://www.squirrelinabox.com)

November continued the holiday surge, breaking my monthly earnings record (which was previously set last month). I added a new source of revenue in November - direct ads - which are ad sales I set up myself with advertisers for certain sites. Adding a new revenue source means most of the percentages for the other sources all went down across the board, even with most of them having their highest monthly earnings yet.

1. Google Adsense - 41% of my November earnings came from Google Adsense clicks - down 9% from last month though on par with October’s totals.
2. Text Link Ads - Text Link Ads accounted for 27% of my earnings which is down 2%.
3. Direct Ad Sales - Selling ads directly proved to be a great experiment as the earnings from those sales made the income source debut in 3rd place for me with most of the ads being purchases for multiple months.
   
4. CJ and Amazon - Commission Junction and Amazon jumped ahead of SIAB GEAR last month, bringing in 13% of my earnings, with both Commission Junction and Amazon bringing in nearly an equal share.
5. SIAB GEAR - SIAB GEAR moved down a spot (2 if you include Direct Ad Sales) and brought in 4%.
6. Chitika - Chitika continues to sit at the bottom, pulling in 3% of my earnings last month.

It will be interesting to see if the holiday push will continue through December or if November will prove to be my biggest month.

Just like September, October has shown yet another increase in profit for me. I hadn’t really added or changed much with my network, so really the increase is mostly due to an general increase in traffic and clicks (which should increase even more as the holidays approach).

1. Google Adsense - 50% of my October earnings came from Google Adsense clicks - down only 1% from last month, though it was by far the most money I’ve earned from the program to-date.
2. Text Link Ads - Text Link Ads accounted for 29% of my earnings which is down 2%, though again, the total money earned from the program was actually up from the previous month.
3. SIAB GEAR - SIAB GEAR moved up a bit to 9% - passing CJ and Amazon. I suspect the store to continue to improve during the holiday season.
4. CJ and Amazon - Commission Junction and Amazon brought in 7% of my earnings, though it was actually Amazon that brought in the entire amount as CJ didn’t perform at all for me last month.
5. Chitika - Chitika was, once again, the worst performing program for me last month, though it did bring in 5% of my earnings (up from 2%). I actually earned the most I have ever earned with Chitika last month (partially due to its implementation on the Wii Play site as well as the holiday surge beginning).

As mentioned during the previous earnings breakdown, the holiday season should continue to provide an increase in my earnings throughout most of my sites and advertising programs. I have been a little slow with adding new sites to the network as well as completing improvements I’ve been planning for awhile now. Hopefully I can get a few of those done during November and December so that I can continue to keep that earnings line pointed upward.

So the big Google news is that the recent Page Rank (PR) update has caused some major ripples online as many powerful sites have seen fairly significant decreases in their PR. I may not really run any powerful websites, but most of my network has been hit by Page Rank dips, and it’s definitely unsettling - not because Page Rank really means anything, but because many people think it does.

You see, webmasters, advertisers, and other online stakeholders have a difficult time valuing the worth of a website, and more importantly, the worth of a link from a specific website. As such, many have come to rely on Google’s Page Rank to determine how much an outbound link from a particular website is worth. While this is fundamentally flawed (since it’s widely accepted that PR isn’t nearly as important as it was once thought), an online economy was established around Page Ranks.

With the recent PR chaos Google has brought upon the digital world, there’s a whole lot of panic going on. Website owners fear losing money on ads while advertisers fear losing a metric they had relied on for so long. Me? I’m definitely a little annoyed that some advertisers may lower their rates on my sites due to this change, but overally I’m pretty excited. Why? Because this may just be the kick in the pants that we all need to get over the whole PR fanaticism. If I have to take a hit in income for a few months while the industry figures itself out - so be it. Hopefully companies will actually spend some effort valuing adspace properly via research and communication. No green tick on a toolbar is going to tell you whether or not you should buy adspace.

Alright… so I may be dreaming to think the industry is somehow going to find a way to replace PR with a better combination of research and metrics, but hey, that’s why I’m just ranting from the peanut gallery on this one.

Another month has come and gone. As such, I present to you my September earnings breakdown. While August was a fairly slow month for me earnings wise, September proved to be the best month so far. A few key things contributed to this, first, the redesign of Wii Play included better positioning of ads and proved to bump earnings a bit. Second, Amazon actually ended up being a decent earner for me for once - partly because of the positioning and usage on Wii Play, but also because of the Blade television series dvd being released. Last, traffic to most of my sites was up, thus bringing in more people to click and follow affiliate links.

1. Google Adsense - 51% of my September earnings came from Google Adsense clicks - up 1% from last month and the highest actual amount ever.
2. Text Link Ads - Text Link Ads accounted for 31% of my earnings which a huge dip down from last month’s 44%. This is mostly due to the other programs doing much better than normal more than Text Link Ads doing worse.
3. CJ and Amazon - The biggest surprise was that the combination of Commission Junction and Amazon brought in 9% of my earnings last month (up from the pathetic 1% in August). This was mostly due to Amazon and the placement adjustments mentioned above.
4. SIAB GEAR - SIAB GEAR was up a little bit to 7%. I need to get off my butt and make some updates to the store… some day.
5. Chitika - Chitika, while down at the bottom spot, earned 2% for me (up from 1%).

This month was probably the biggest shakeup of earners for me that I’ve seen. I expect the actual amount I pull in to steadily increase these next few months as we head into the holiday season.

To help drive some traffic to a few of my sites and to add some potentially valuable backlinks, I’ve created 3 Squidoo lenses. A Squidoo lens is basically a page that you create with links, pictures, and other information about a specific topic. Still confused? Well, check out the three lenses I created below to get a better understanding of what Squidoo can do.

The Home Poker lens features useful information on running and attending home poker games. Wii on the Web pulls together popular websites and information dealing with the Wii. The Office Humor lens is just that, a lens featuring office pranks, jokes, and other office humor.

Ok, so I’m mostly using these lenses as feeders to my other sites. If the prove to be fairly popular, I’ll spend some more time building them up and seeing what they can do.