If you've been looking for a new way to monetize your site I've got some exciting news for you. With little fanfare Amazon has launched a new service for it's Associate advertisers. The service, "Context Links Beta," works a lot like Kontera and Intellitext in that it dynamically adds advertisements to your content using JavaScript.
Unlike Kontera and IntelliText, though, Amazon Context Links are actually CPA rather than CPC. You earn revenue when someone makes a purchase on Amazon.com after being referred by your site. Amazon Context Links also offers a much greater range of customization options. After reviewing everything, I'm about 90% certain I'll be switching from Kontera to Context Links this week.
Here's the lowdown as I've seen it. Read the Rest of this post
This one totally slipped under my radar until today.
Did you know that Google has added an "open results within my own page" option to their AdSense for Search program? Now, rather than sending readers to an off site search result page you can actually build a local template to handle search results on your site! Using some tricky JavaScript Google actually generates search results and places them within your own page.
One of the major reasons I wasn't using AdSense for Search originally was it's lack of customization options. Beside being unable to customize the search box I was also disappointed with the lack of options for customizing the results page. That's all changed today.
While Google still restricts a lot of your options for displaying results (you can't display results in a space smaller than 500px) they have opened up a lot of potential. On this site, for example, I've managed to build a new WordPress theme page specifically for handling Google Search Results. Using a custom page templates, a blank page, and some code from Google you too can get AdSense for Search working in WordPress!
Here's how it works: Read the Rest of this post
Bloggers... I'm begging you... create a print.css file.
Sure, it's important that your site look good on a computer screen but occasionally your visitors may need to print something. If your website doesn't print cleanly on an 8.5"x 11" sheet of paper then you're doing a disservice to your readers. Take a second and look at your site. Select a post and in your browser click File -> Print Preview and see what happens.
You're looking for three things. First, is there anything from your site that is getting cutoff? Second, how long is your sidebar in relation to your post's copy? And finally, are you forcing your users to print a lot of background images?
A Quick Tip for Getting Started
One quick and very dirty way to get your print.css file off the ground is to create a blank css file and cut and paste the entirety of your regular css file into it. From here you can tweak a few settings without giving up the majority of your theme's style and tone. In this post I'll share a few quick tips for tweaking this new css file to make your theme more printer friendly.
Read the Rest of this post
I've had alot of hits coming in from Google which are searching for "Custom GamerCards." The post which covers this topic is mainly about adding a custom image to your GamerCard, I'm not sure this is what people are looking for specifically, so I thought I'd add a quick link to a couple sites which offer "Custom GamerCards" to add to your blog.
Custom GamerCard Services
Currently I use MyGamerCard.net as you can see on my "About" page. If you're interested in sharing your GamerCard on MySpace you'll need to use one of the services which creates an image file - JavaScript or Flash won't make it through their filters.
Over on PopSciBlog (the Popular Science Blog), which is suprisingly on TypePad, there's an interesting post concerning a recent occurence on Flickr. This post, "Flickr, Blogmobs, and a Seriously Fascinating Lesson on Content Licensing", details a recent event concerning a person who was caught plagiarizing photos from Flickr.
I highly recommend giving it a read if you've ever wondered about the power of a CC license, content theft, and the power of (what PopSciBlog calls) a blogmob. Needless to say, you'll come away from the post very interested in getting one of the many CC licenses available at the Creative Commons site.
