Published January 24, 2011 | 
Well it has been an interesting learning experience since I first started blogging. In December of 2009 I was hoping I’d be able to break the 60 cent per month barrier, just a few months ago in July I only had about 7,000 visitors per month across 7 different blogs.
Well jesus that was a mess. I’ve decided to consolidate to four different blogs and my traffic has increased to roughly 13,000 hits per month. I now average $80 per month and have at one point broken $400 in one month. My blogroll is now:
- BloggerBoon.com (this blog)
- A LIL’ Know How (alilknowhow.com)
- Online Scam Website (onlinescamwebsites.com)
- BodyBuildingBoon.com (my bodybuilding website)
And so I have less to manage, less blogs to log into to check for comments, and more content (and better content) for my existing blogs. After starting OnlineScamWebsites.com I broke $400 in one month barrier by writing about niche and hot buzzword topics relative to the latest internet scams. Of course those articles go in-and-out of relevance pretty fast (Turns out online scams don’t last long and thus their topic google-age is relatively short)… After about 3 months the articles written become obsolete, so fresh content is always needed. Interestingly though, my other blog’s content stays relevant for much longer period of time. While the earnings per post are MUCH lower, the traffic and earnings continue to roll in even after over a year.
Interestingly I’ve actually written an article that effectively capitalizes on Amazon.com’s affiliate program. I have been trying to figure out how I could effectively write a blog post that would drive people to buy a product through amazon.com for a while, I had limited success with the windshield wiper review I wrote on here (at approximately $5.00 / month in amazon affiliate earnings)… But a new opportunity presented itself when my sister got new Hunter Rain Boots for Christmas. They were a bargain because they had this sticky white wax residue all over the exterior. I guess real rubber rain boots sweat this white wax naturally, a process called “blooming”… Well it was our difficulty finding a solution to removing this “bloom” that led to me writing a blog post about the topic, and linking to the appropriate products needed to remove the bloom through amazon.com. The affiliate earnings from that one blog post have topped $30 per month and it has helped hundreds of people repair their hunter rain boots to look like new. See: (How to remove white residue from hunter rain boots).
I have also recently re-done this blog’s theme. While when I created the original theme I was pretty satisfied (although it was kind of busy). This new one is much more simplified with a much cleaner header logo. I still feel that it could be much more “impressive” although I really do like the logo I created. I’ll have to think of something to spruce up the sidebar or page design as its really just a giant piece of white. Not extremely creative… But definitely a step in the right direction.
Officially, My Goal for the end of this year is to be making $1000 per month through my blogs. However, I am unsure how realistic of a jump that is. We’ll see how close I can come as I am continually learning new techniques to increase traffic and increase ad conversions.
Published January 22, 2011 | 
Internet explorer 6 always can cause a lot of problems in this modern day of javascript and CSS styling. You may be wondering, is it even worth trying to keep your code compatible with internet explorer 6?
There are certain conditions in which the answer is yes, but usually (and only recently usually), the answer is no.
The latest statistics for internet explorer 6 (IE6) browser usage is less than 5% (w3schools figure). How true is this figure? Well across my three main blogs which average 12,000 view per month, my statistics, according to google analytics, reveals than only 4.5% of my visitors use internet explorer 6 while the rest use newer, more modern browsers.
Why should I care about these Internet Explorer 6 Users? Well in my case, i dont care. If my website looks good to 95% of browsers, that’s fine with me… But I just run a few personal blogs. What if you are designing a professional website from the ground up?
It really depends on your employer / whoever is paying you. If they happen to see the way one of their websites look in internet explorer 6, and it looks terrible, are they going to buy the 5% argument? Maybe, maybe not, it really depends on who you are building the website for. If you have to heavily sacrifice design technique to appeal to this extra 5% of people, it may not be worth it.
It would also be interesting to research the demographics of internet explorer 6 users. It is possible that the internet explorer 6 demographic is a huge chunk of the niche population you may be trying to target with your website (probably either poor or older folk / computer illiterate incapable of upgrading, etc…).
Personally, my old boss avoided installing windows updates at all costs, for some reason (Who knows why)… He was still using internet explorer 6 as of 3 months ago until I finally forced him to upgrade. Internet explorer 6 does not support transparent .png files, it does not support many CSS techniques, and it can cause page layouts to look extremely weird.
Just 1 years ago the internet explorer 6 user base was as high as 10%, and at that point in time, it certainly did make sense for people to program IE6 compatibility into their websites, however, now that the number of IE6 users has dwindled down to less than 5%, reconsideration needs to be taken.
WWGD? (What Would Google Do)… Interestingly enough, Google began to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6 almost a year ago. (read more)
Published October 27, 2010 | You wont believe the stuff people are writing for reviews on Amazon.com… Truly a form of art.
He always brought home milk on Friday….
Welcome to the tool that women were not prepared for, the JL421 Badonkadonk land cruiser/tank.
It gave me a weird tingling sensation in my visual cortex when I stared at its gooey glowing core
Published August 9, 2010 | Jenna Mourey (better known on youtube as JennaMarbles)… Shes a pretty funny lady. I watched her video on youtube titled “How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking” and thought it was hilarious… And it inspired me to create my own youtube video called “(For Guys) How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking”. Not too many views yet, like 70 as of writing this blog post. Watch it and let me know what you think!
Don’t forget to hit “LIKE” it you liked it!
you can view Jenna’s original video here: How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking
Published June 23, 2010 | 
Update: Recently Swipe Bids re-branded their website as Swipe Auctions. I have started a new website dedicated to scams where you can review my report of Swipe Auctions Scam.
If you would like to see in depth how penny auction websites function in general, I wrote a very thorough article here at (How Penny Auctions Work)
I am going to divulge a lot of information about the inner workings of Swipe Bids through out this entire article. Buyer Beware. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to make an informed decision regarding Swipe Bids as well as any other Penny Auction website.
At the bottom of this article, you will find many user comments about their experiences with Swipe Bids which you will probably find useful. Also feel free to add your own opinion and knowledge of Swipe Bids and Penny Auctions.
Swipe Bids is a penny auction website that promises savings of up to 90% and unbelievable deals on EVERYTHING! And their registration page and home page makes everything look great… You might even say, too good to be true? You might even considering googling “Swipe Bids Scam” or “Swipe Bids Reviews” to see what other people have to say about such fishy (perhaps fraudulent) claims. Also be careful, this same company operates several websites with different names, and there are many other “clone” websites out there that are all the same.
Well Here’s How Swipe Bids Really Works
YOU HAVE TO PAY EACH TIME YOU BID!!!!
And each time you bid, the auction’s timer increases just a little bit, by about 10 seconds. So you’ve gotten your camera bid in, you’re about to win a $1000 camera for $124 and there’s 3 seconds left on the clock, right? Wrong, someone else just bid extending the action another 10 seconds and increasing the price by another PENNY …. and this can go on for HOURS.
Gee, how much do these bids cost? Well this is the thing overlooked by most people when they sign up for Swipe Bids penny auction website. They instantly charge you $150 to your credit card to buy 300 bids. This is only shown on the second registration page, after you have already typed in a bunch of personal information… And they make this a little sketchy because the second page looks almost identical except for where they slip in this wording telling you about the $150 charges to your credit card, Its not like a shopping cart with a checkout. A LOT of people don’t notice this part, nor do they notice where it says “no refunds”.
OK so this far it isn’t technically a scam, its just misleading and a little slimy. However, this is where we expose the SCAM part of the process. Swipe Bids has the power to shill their own auction’s bids. In other words, behind the scenes Swipe Bids may at the last second bid on their own auctions to extend them a little longer to keep things from selling at either
- Too low of a price
- Before enough people have spent enough money on bids for them to make a profit on the auction
You see, that’s how they make money selling things so cheap, the bids cost money therefore subsidizing the cost of the actual item, and with each bid, its like a SWIPE of your credit card… Get It LOL. Any one auction may have hundreds or even thousands of bids by the time the auction is finally won, and those bids are what pay for the auctions item and put money into Swipe Bids fraudulent pockets (OK, so this isn’t technically fraud yet but read on). Take this example… What if an auction is ending too early without enough bids? Swipe Bids can step in and bid themselves to up the anti and force you to spend more bids and extend the auction a little longer… And who is going to be able to stop them or monitor this process? Swipe Bids wont even give away their location if you ask!
Sure there are some winners, some people do in fact win very cheap items… however for every one winner, there are SEVERAL losers. Everyone has to pay for their bids, regardless of whether they win the item or not. And in order for swipe bids to actually turn a profit, the odds need to be stacked highly against you – the bidder; so that you will actually, in the end, not save any money at all… If everyone actually saved money, If EVERYONE actually won things for 90% off, the website would be bankrupt. This is the same way casino’s work, the odds are stacked against the gambler. OK OK, casinos are not a scam, people know how casinos work and the house NEEDS to win a majority of the time, however Swipe Bids has the ability to hide behind the internet and can pull all sorts of nasty tricks on you if they want to.
You see, all auctions on Swipe Bids are started by Swipe Bids themselves. They control everything, and if they plug an auction into a mathematical formula and see that their product’s auction is about to end without turning a profit, their software can easily place it’s own bids to extend the duration and force people to buy more bids for the item. HOW ELSE would they be able to operate with such a low volume of customers? I mean this website is NEW and its not well enough known to have an enormous volume of bidders across their pages of listed items, I mean its got nowhere close to the traffic of Ebay, comparing Swipe Bids to Ebay would be like comparing a SkyScraper to a grain of sand in traffic size…. On top of this, they are unlikely to get a lot of return visitors because each auction needs to have several losers, each of whom can waste in excess of $100 in bids on just one auction.
- By the time the auction ended (5 hours later than the first image at the top), the camera in the Swipe Bids auction pictured had had another 13,105 BIDS!!
- At even 10 cents a bid (you can bid on bids and usually win them around this price), people still spent $1,305 on bids alone, and the guy who one had to buy the camera for $256 on top of whatever he spend on bidding.
- Only 1 person won that camera auction, and only after spending several hundreds in bids
- Several people lost this auction and threw their money down the drain and wasted several hours of their lives
- There is no way to know if Swipe Bids extended the auction superficially on their side in order to make more money (is it a coincidence that it ended so abruptly so early (11:00pm), but right after they cleared over $100 in bids (AT LEAST) over the MSRP of the camera?)
So do you still want to try Swipe Bids? What are your thoughts?
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