As promised, I’ve launched the newly designed Watermark Tool for you all to play with. Besides the new design, there’s a few new features adding to the watermarking process itself. The biggest addition is probably the fact that you can do bulk watermarking for up to 10 images at a time.

The site is still 100% free with no signups or registrations required so be sure to check it out if you ever need to protect your images.

So it’s been some time since I’ve given an update on the latest new developments with the network. Back in September I posted about a few projects I had planned, and really not much has changed since then. I did get the big update of Wii Play done a couple months back and I’m currently working on the redesign of Watermark Tool as I had planned. Of course, I did throw in a Poker Directory that I hadn’t mentioned at all, so I’ve definitely been busy.

I hope to have the Watermark Tool redesign done by January, with me then having to decide on what project to tackle next. I’m debating between redesigning the Office Humor Blog (it definitely could use it!) and starting up a new site using the Wii Play architecture. Of course, knowing me, I’ll end up doing something completely different - but at least I set goals right?

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.