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I’m probably one of the few people who wasn’t impressed with Wordpress 2.5. I personally believe that Wordpress 2.3.3 was alot user friendly. At first I thought I’d appreciate Wordpress 2.5 when I get used to it. But then, three weeks of using it gave way for more problems (messy Wordpress theme, errors with plugins, troubles with widgets etc.).

After using Wordpress 2.5 for about three weeks, I decided to revert back to Wordpress 2.3.3. From switching to Wordpress 2.5 and back to 2.3.3, I noticed a potential problem with using Wordpres 2.5. (Note: This is just an observation.)

photo credit: MatthewCo

Right after updating my blog from Wordpres 2.3.3 to Wordpress 2.5, I noticed a sudden increase in the number of spams in my comment and trackback. Before the update, I usually receive about 20-50 spam (comments and trackbacks). Also, before I updated my blog to Wordpress 2.5, the total spam caught by Akismet was nealy 4,500, which was accumulated since I started using Wordpress in November 2007.

Since I started using Wordpress 2.5, on its first day, I received more than 600 comment and trackback spams. I didn’t mind it at first as Akismet is doing a great job in catching spams. On average, I receive about about 150 spams everyday, which is a 200% increase than when I was using Wordpress 2.3.3. Today, the total spam caught by Akismet is over 12,500 (comments + trackbacks).

I experienced receiving tremendous amount of spam after I updated to Wordpress 2.5 so it was my primary suspect. All my plugins, including Akismet, were all updated and yet I still receive lots of spam. It should have not been a big problem if Akismet was able to catch the spam comments and trackbacks but on the third week, spams started to show up in my comments and trackbacks that I needed to manually delete them.

To satisfy my curiousity, I reverted back to Wordpress 2.3.3. Guess what happened? After 24 hours, I just received 24 spams (14 comments + 10 trackbacks).

Was it Wordpress 2.5? Was it Akismet? Or it’s just some circumstances?

I would really appreciate if you share your experiences after you updated your blog to Wordpress 2.5. Did you have the same observation?

Thank you for your time.

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In case you haven’t noticed, I removed ProjectWonderful from my sidebar today. I have had no luck with it after using it for over one month. Moveover, I think that the revenue generated given the space and position it occupied was not worth it.

For 1 month, the three ProjectWonderful 125X125 banners only earned over $25. That’s a little over the price of one 125X125 banner advertisement on my blog. I also noticed that the highest bid price I got so far was only $0.80 and the lowest was $0.02. The huge range and price deviation occur because the price paid by advertisers depend on the number of bid (demand) and how much bidders are willing to pay. So even if you have a high traffic site when there are no advertisers bidding, your earnings will remain low.

Another reason why ProjectWonderful isn’t wonderful at all and why I took it off my blog today is because of the off-topic advertisements frequently shown on my blog. I know that Project Wonderful allows you to filter advertisements and approve only those that fit your blog’s topic but this means additional work to the blogger and lesser opportunity to monetize your blog. The earnings are just too meager that when you consider the time and efforts you put to keep advertisements relevant to your content, it’s not just worth it.

Other than the meager earning and the irrelevant advertisements, another reason why I took off ProjectWonderful from my blog is because it slowed the load time of my sidebar. This caused the advertisements and links below it to load very slow as well. As a result, my click through rate (Google Adsense) and page view (Links to other posts) are also adversely affected.

Lastly, since Project Wonderful requires you to install a script, it does not only slows your blog’s load time but it makes your blog not search engine friendly. If you’re considering optimizing your blog for search engines to get more of pages indexed in their seach result and increase your traffic, then you should minimize using scripts. By removing the long script of Project Wonderful, I am able to optimize my blog for search engines and give their crawlers an easier job.

To be fair, there are other websites like Entrecard.com that are making some decent revenue from Project Wonderful. Entrecard.com receives over $300 every month from Project Wonderful. I personally believe though that Entrecard.com can make more money from the space and position occupied by Project Wonderful.

What about your experience? Any luck so far? I’d love to know why you are keeping Project Wonderful despite the meager income you generate from it.

Thank you for your time.

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One of the reasons why some bloggers are active Entrecard users, other than the traffic, is the boost in their Alexa Traffic Rank. Now that Alexa has overhauled its traffic ranking algorithm to include more sources of data, will Entrecard traffic still be effective in boosting Alexa Traffic Rank?

I was doing my usual Entrecard dropping when I noticed that alot of the top Entrecard users’ Alexa Traffic Ranks have gone down dramatically. Here are a few of the most popular Entrecard users whose Alexa Traffic Rank increased after the changes in Alexa algorithm took effect.

• Ahkong.net - From 5X,XXX to 166,5777 (increased by over 100K)
• JoanJoyce.com - From 6X,XXX to 178,765 (increased by over 100K)
• LeeDoyle.com - From 6X,XXX to 128,108 (increase of about 60K)
• AGeeksJourney.com - From 3X,XXX to 171,153 (increase of about 140K)

These are only a few of those who suffered tremendous decline in their Alexa Traffic Rank.

Of course, Entrecard is still a great way to generate more traffic to your blog but is it still effective to boost Alexa traffic rank? Do you think that the new Algorithm implemented by Alexa is better compared to the old one? Has your rank been affected by the changes?

I would love to hear from you. Do share your experience through the comment.

Thanks for your time.

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There’s nothing wrong with Alexa. It’s just that they have overhauled their ranking system and it’s now in effect. That’s the reason why Blogging Mix’s Alexa Traffic Rank dropped from 65,798 to 169,276. Although the effect of the new ranking system is not good for Blogging Mix, I’m still glad that Alexa did the necessary changes in their algorithm. These changes make Alexa an even more credible traffic measurement.

Image Source: Alexa Company Announcement

If before, Alexa Traffic Rank is computed base on the the Alexa Toolbar users, the new Alexa ranking algorithm is now based on more sources of data. This enables a more accurate presentation of a website’s real traffic rank. This also means that the Alexa Traffic Rank is no longer skewed towards technology related websites.

Check out the changes to Alexa Traffic Rank of these websites. (Source: AmitBhawani.com)

Shoemoney.com : Was 2xxx Rank : Now 19818 Rank
Problogger : Was 3xxx Rank : Now 12917 Rank
JohnChow : Was 5xxx Rank : Now 17088 Rank
DigitalPoint : Was 3xxRank : Now 938 Rank
Global Internet Index : Was 66000 Rank : Now 45323 Rank
JimKarter : Was 40xxxRank : Now 187845 Rank
AmitBhawani : Was 70000Rank : Now 54006 Rank
Labnol : Was 19000 Rank : Now 14626 Rank

Here are some details regarding the changes in Alexa Traffic Rank.

When Alexa began displaying rankings in 1998 it was with the goal of showing Alexa Toolbar users how popular any given site was within the Alexa community. We generated the rankings through an analysis of Internet usage by people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Since that time we’ve been delighted to see that the Alexa Rankings have become a yardstick by which website popularity is measured. We are grateful to the thousands of people who come to Alexa.com each day to check the Alexa Rankings.

In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!

We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.

You gave us many other suggestions as well, and we are working hard to implement them. We won’t tell any secrets just yet, but you can expect to see new features rolled out over the coming weeks and months.

What was the effect of the changes in Alexa Traffic Rank to your blog? Did your rank improved? Share the changes in your Alexa through the comment.
Thank you for your time!

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