If you’ve visited before you’ll probably have noticed I’ve got a new theme installed.

Now as this is my “testing things” blog it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to find out that it’s my own new theme that I’m testing out…

When I say “my own”, I’m not going to claim to have coded it myself, I’ve got a RaC coder called Andre to thank for it (as wel as pay), and I’m pretty pleased with the results, we’re just trying to iron out the few last wrinkles, which always seems to take the longest..

When it is finished it will be available as a free download from my BlogTactics.com blog, which hopefully will be within the next few days, although it may take me a bit longer to get al the tutorial videos for it done and uploaded.

I’ve only just got my hands on this sweet new tool from Neil Shearing, so I’ve got no results to post yet, but I wanted to make a post about it as it goes on sale tomorrow and there’s a 50% discount for the first 278 buyers..

that may seem like a lot of people, but I’ve spoken to Neil andI know that there are over 432 people already signed up for the “early bird” notification list to get in an hour early, so those 278 discounts will go VERY quickly!

So what does the tool do?

It’s a wordpress datafeed plugin.

If you don’t know what a datafeed is it’s basically free content provided by big suppliers through some affiliate programs (like link share and CJ). The content is lots of info about their full line of products and can have your affiliate code embedded.

I’ve been testing out using blogcarnival’s for getting new links and traffic to my main “blogging” blog, BlogTactics and it’s working so well that I’ve started using it for a couple of other blogs, including this one.

The Technorati backlinks count for BlogTactics has jumped by 30+ links in the last couple of weeks from this simple tactic, so I figured it was time to make a post here about it.

BlogCarnival’s are simply blog posts on other blogs where the owners of those blogs post links and comments to a bunch of other blogs that are related.

The better the quality of the posts on your blog, the more likely you are to be included in any specific carnival, although it’s still entirely up to the blog owner which blogs they will include in the carnival, so make sure you post some good stuff before doing a carnival submission.

well, it’s been long enough now and I’ve come to a decision on one of the traffic widgets that I’ve been testing..

I’ve just removed the Link2Blogs widget from my BlogTactics site as the results suggest it’s losing me far more traffic than it’s bringing in:

213 visitors sent to other blogs, and only 10 incoming visitors from Link2blogs.

I’ve replaced it with Jon Ledger’s Real Traffic Exchange to see how this fairs on the site, as I’ve been getting “Click Through Rates” (CTR) as high as 1.3% on other blogs that I’ve got this on.

RTE hasn’t actually sent me any visitors yet, but that’s simply because I hadn’t set up any “ads” for the system to display yet, as I wanted to build up some credits first..

I’ve now got a nice little credit balance with them, so I’ve just created an add for the system and I’ll report back here once I’ve got some results worth posting about..

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve taken the shoutbox off http://iamuncovered.com as it doesn’t seem to be catching anyone’s attention, and I’ve found something new to put in it’s place and test out – WidgetBucks.

although the ad I’ve placed on IAMUncovered.com is just for the WidgetBucks program itself, as the “widget ads” aren’t so well suited for the internet marketing “niche”, they do have some pretty good options available for other markets though, especially techie stuff like TV’s, Home Theatre, Computers, Laptops, Cameras etc.

I’ve added the targeted ads to a couple of my blogs in suitable niches to see how well they perform compared to the ads I’m running tests on for the NeverBlueAds network. I’ll report back as soon as I’ve got any significant results.

For the moment I would recommend getting in on WidgetBucks, as at the moment they’re offering a $25 bonus ofr signing up.

The Alexa rank of my sites and blogs doesn’t worry me too much, as I know from my traffic stats that what the Alexa rank does each update can be totally unrelated to what the traffic is doing, I’ve had sites increase in real traffic and have the Alexa score get worse, and vice versa.

Having said that, it can be seen as a form of “social proof” for you site or blog, giving visitors an idea of how popular your site is, inacurate or not.

It can also help if you monetize your blog or site through certain forms of advertising, such as PayPerPost or selling text links.

So increasing your alexa rank could potentially have a positive effect on the value of your site for both your visitors and advertisers.

With this in mind I thought I’d run a test on a WordPress plugin that is supposed to help increase your sites Alexa rank.

I installed a shoutbox on one of my more popular blogs a couple of months ago to try it out and see what reaction it received and so far there has only been one comment made…

and the comment that was made is “I make webmasters money…”, which I assume is someone’s attempt at “Shoutbox” spam, although I’m not sure why someone would bother as there’s no link back to a site, only to an email address.

So I’ve gotta conclude that a shoutbox isn’t worth the space it takes up in my sidebar and I can replace it with something else.

I’ll be taking the shoutbox off the site shortly, but I’ll leave it up for a few days just in case this post generates any interest and you want to check out what it looks like, tyou can have a play with it here:

http://iamuncovered.com

BlogRush v RealTrafficExchange v Link2Blogs Traffic Widget Test

I’ve had BlogRush (from John Reese), RealTrafficExchange (from Jon Leger) and Link2Blogs (from Cody Moya) each installed on three separate blogs for the last couple of months to try and work out which is best for bringing in some new traffic to my blogs.

I installed each widget on three separate blogs with similar levels of traffic, in different markets to try and make sure the test was a reasonable comparison.

It’s not easy to compare the results as each system presents the “Stats” in a different way, with Link2Blogs being by far the worst for stats as there is no indication of the number of impressions your “ads” have had..

BlogRush is probably the best known of the three and the reporting is quite clear.

The average CTR (Click Through Rate) across all three blogs on BlogRush was a pretty measly 0.04%, and the highest achieved on any individual post was only 0.2%