On my own sites I could tell the referrer was Amazon. Most of the traffic was coming from Seattle, Washington and Fresno, California. There were one or two hits originating from other cities, but the majority came from Seattle. On Suite 101, the traffic referrer was listed as [direct] but I suspect it was Amazon too.

A Suite 101 side note: I find it comical that we, the Suite 101 writers, must wait a year before we can post our Suite articles elsewhere, but plagiarists get to use our articles right away.

Unfortunately, the traffic surge was the equivalent of being Stumbled, a lot of traffic but no clicks.

I did a quick search online to see if I could find any info to shed light on the situation, but couldn’t find anything.

Out of curiosity, did anyone else notice such a traffic surge and if so, do you have any idea what caused it?

From time to time I experiment with different plugins to enhance my blog’s functionality (functionality…such a tech writing word).  Anyway, I use a plugin that is supposed to help detect hack attacks.

After having a couple of my blogs hacked some time ago, I’m a bit sensitive to hacking.

The plugin I use is called WordPress Firewall 2.  Recently I had been receiving notification emails initiated by the plugin telling me a certain IP address was attempting to insert malicious code into my site by attacking a certain file.  After receiving 20 such notification emails in a short period of time, I decided to take action.

A Little Research

I looked up the IP address and it seemed to be a Google bot.  Not being 100% sure that it was, I did a little research.  My research left me on the fence.  It could in fact be a Google bot or it could be a hacker redirecting an IP address to make it look like a Google bot.

After being online for several years and never having this happen before, I decided to err on the side of caution and ban the particular IP address.  I did so by modifying my .htaccess file and inserting the following code:

order allow,deny
deny from XX.XXX.X.XX  (x represents actual IP address)
allow from all


Sit Back to See What Happens

The world didn’t come crashing down after inserting the code and the annoying emails stopped.  Whew, dodged a bullet.

Several days later (about 3), I noticed the traffic for that particular blog dropped significantly.  Hmmm, what’s going on?  So, I searched for my site in Google and found it. The site was there in a great position on page one of the search results but beneath the site’s URL were the words “You are banned.”

Yup, I dodged the bullet when I should have employed fancy footwork.  Instead of getting shot in the upper body, I shot myself in the foot.  The IP address was actually a Google bot.  So, I immediately removed the code from the .htaccess file and temporarily deactivated the plugin. Fortunately, the “banned” statement was removed within seconds and the traffic returned.

Better Safe than Sorry

When I originally received the email notifications, my first line of action was to contact Google to see if it was really their bot.  The problem with contacting Google is contacting Google.  It’s not easy finding the right department, email address or even forum thread in which to post a query.  Instead I took matters into my own hands.

Bottom line, I lost about half a day’s worth of income, but I’d rather that than have lost several weeks or months worth by fighting hackers.  Another online lesson learned.

Internet marketing 101 states:

• The money is in the list. If you don’t have a list, stop now and build one.

Internet Marketing 102 states:

• Create a squeeze page. Give ‘em something free so they’ll sign up.

NJFM is a No Pressure Zone

Internet Marketing 101 and 102 might work for other sites and other niches, but I’m opting not to squeeze or pretend to give away things for free. When I give away things for free, it’s just that, free. No strings attached.

I gave my first ebook away for free, I share info here for free and the information I’m sharing in my newsletter is also free. I don’t feel a need to give away anything else in an attempt to get folks to sign up.

Here’s the scoop. I’d like for you to sign up for my motivation for writers newsletter. Here’s the link. Don’t look for free give aways such as another book, a report or anything of the kind. Sign up because you want to. You can always unsubscribe if you so choose. I’d like you to stay because I believe the info is worth it, but if it’s not for you, I understand.

About the Squeezin’

I’m sure you guys have been squeezed before. My question is, once you’ve been squeezed, did you stick with the newsletter or did you drop your subscription after the 2nd or 3rd mailing?

Don’t get me wrong. Squeeze pages work. Folks have doubled, tripled and quadrupled their email list by creating effective squeeze pages and email campaigns. If that’s your thing, by all means, squeeze on. As for me and NJFM, we’re a no squeeze zone.

In reviewing my numbers I see that my overall traffic is down. I did a quick analysis of my top 6 sites and have found an average decrease in page views of 15% and a 17% decrease in visitors.

The lower traffic could be a result of the Panda algorithm change or it could be the result of old content. I haven’t spent much time posting new content on my sites this month. As a matter of fact, I’ve added 19 new pieces of content to my sites. 15 of the new pieces of content were posts here on NJFM, and I’ve shared in the past that NJFM is not my road to riches (far from it).

I’ve been spending my time working on projects that will help to shield me and my income from Panda fluctuations and other search engine modifications.

Effects of Less Traffic

Now that I’ve analyzed the lack of traffic and the cause thereof, it’s time for me to look at the income from my top 6 sites to see if the income trended accordingly.

Much to my surprise, the income didn’t follow the traffic. The income from my top 6 online properties is up 14% over last month’s. To what do I attribute this? Well, I believe a large portion can be attributed to adding the authorized sites to my AdSense account.

The rest I’ve got to attribute to changing some of the AdSense ad blocks. The first modification (authorized sites) took a total of 5 minutes or less to implement. The ad block changes took a little longer because I had to change each site. In total, it took a couple of hours to implement.

Sharpening the Sword

I’m reading several books by Dr. Steven R. Covey. If you have time, I strongly suggest you pick up his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’ve got to warn you, this book is not mental candy. It will cause you to think, reflect and change.

In his books he talks about sharpening the sword, which means retooling, sharpening your skills, learning new tools and taking care of the items/tools used on your journey to success.

Although it is my goal to reduce my reliance on Google and Google AdSense, it is a tool in my online writing arsenal. While I’m creating new venues and working on new projects, it is to my advantage to sharpen my AdSense tool to make it work better for me. I truly believe that if it were not for the sharpening of the sword, November would have been much worse. Instead, it’s my best month for online residual earnings.

If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up for NJFM’s Motivation for Writers Newsletter. A dose of motivation will be sent to your inbox every Monday.

If you’re an AdSense publisher, I’m sure you’re familiar with the warning atop of your AdSense account. The warning tells you that your ads are displaying on unauthorized sites. The warning looks like this:

After seeing this warning for years (It seemed like years), I decided to look into it a little further. After all, AdSense had emailed me a few earning increasing tips in the past, I might as well see what this warning is about.

Horse before the Cart

I’m going to back up just a bit for those AdSense publishers who are not aware of the authorized site feature.

To prevent unscrupulous scrapers, spammers or other villainous fiends (sorry, was watching an old cartoon this weekend) from stealing your AdSense code, placing on their sites and clicking the heck out of the links to get your account suspended, AdSense implemented the Authorized Account feature. You can find the feature by clicking on Account Settings  link located on the upper left-hand section of the Home page.

Once on the Account Settings page, scroll down until you see Access and authorization. There is where you set the authorization preferences. I learned the hard way that it really works.

One of my sites consistently received clicks, but I never received earnings. It took me months to realize I had not included it as one of my authorized sites. I lost quite a bit of income for that little oversight.

Unauthorized Sites

If your account is anything like mine, after your list of authorized sites, you’ll see a few sites and IP addresses that are not authorized. The sites look like this:

www.google.com.sg
webcache.googleusercontent.com
translate.googleusercontent.com
www.bing.com
74.6.238.254
74.6.117.48
www.google.ca

These sites are search engine cached pages. I researched the two IP addresses listed and they belong to Inktomi Corpation (aka Yahoo). In other words, they are legitimate cached pages of your blog/website. These are not spammer sites.

I always ignored the warning until I decided to get to the bottom of it all. I found this on the AdSense Known Issue site:

Message for Unauthorized Sites Persists on Homepage
Details: When using the authorized sites feature, any sites that you haven’t authorized will trigger an alert message on your home page. We currently consider any framed or cached pages to be unauthorized, including when a user searches using Google Images and your site is displayed via frame. We encourage you to add framed and cached URLs of sites you trust to your authorized sites list. We’re investigating ways to improve this feature.

After reading that, I decided to add the sites to my authorized list (always check the IP information before adding an IP address to the authorized list).

Results of Adding the Unauthorized Sites

I did this research around midday on Thursday of last week. That means half of my Thursday’s earnings are based on the old authorization list and half on the new. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I waited a couple more days before performing an analysis.

Here’s the scoop. My AdSense earnings from Thursday to Sunday of this past week are 62% higher than they were for the same period of time the week before.

Milk, Spilling, Crying and Such

When I realized how much money I had consistently left on the table I thought about crying over spilt milk, but what good does that do? I’m happy that I made the changes and am encouraging you to do the same if you haven’t done so already.

I love it when small changes yield large results!

If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up for NJFM’s Motivation for Writers Newsletter. A dose of motivation will be sent to your inbox every Monday.