At some point late yesterday evening Wordpress released the 2.9.1 update patch which has the fixes to the bugs that were found in 2.9, and trust me there were a hell of a lot of bugs found in 2.9.

It fixes a lot of problems but the most important ones are the blank page when leaving comments and the scheduling bug (scheduled posts not publishing when meant to).

It also contains security solutions that were spotted in the original release.

I’d advise everyone to upgrade as soon as possible.

Download 2.9.1 Here

2009 has come and gone, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, and I was sitting at my desk wondering what lessons I have learnt from the past twelve months. Even the most experienced bloggers will have learnt at least one thing a year.

Here is what I have learnt.

Don’t Rush Into Buying Sites

A couple of months ago I bought this blog, along with a collection of others, and to be honest the sale almost didn’t happen.

Earlier in the year I bought a web site from somebody who had written false information about the stats of their site and I believed them and rushed in and handed over the money for it. I haven’t made a profit on that site yet.

When the opportunity came along to buy this blog I was very cautious and went over every single aspect of the stats that the owner had given me, just to be extra sure it was all true. I was almost too cautious and someone else almost took the collection of blogs from under my nose.

If You Don’t Put In Effort Your Income & Traffic Will Suffer

I guess this is a bit of a simple thing to understand. But when I first started it was something that I thought people only said and that I never really happened.

There have been a couple of gaps where content has been very slow coming out of me and it shows in the traffic stats and, more importantly, in my PayPal and bank accounts.

What I’ve started doing is stock-piling articles for the days when I can’t write anything. That way, hopefully, there won’t be as many of these gaps as before.

The MMO Niche Is Full Of People Willing To Scam You

I have only been in this niche for a couple of years but it was not until 2009 that I really found out just how many people in this niche are happy to scam you, rip you off and generally talk a lot of rubbish.

They all have the same agenda: to sell you their product and wares. That is why I have had to scale down plugging my personal Twitter and Facebook profiles because people would add me and them spam me in the hope I’d buy their new e-book or product.

What have you learnt from 2009?

I hope everybody enjoyed their Christmases and also any new year’s eve parties they might have gone to. For a lot of bloggers the Christmas period is a time in the year where they will see a slump in income and traffic as people are busy or on holidays.

OK, so let’s get straight down to business.

Page Impressions & Visitor Count

As I said, the holiday periods tend to see a drop in income and traffic, but for some reason this made me even more determined to increase those two fields. I spent more time blog commenting, posting on forums, publishing posts and generally creating a bit of a buzz about the blog.

The unique visitor count for December stands at 899, which is a very nice jump of 214 from the month of November.

The page impression count for December stands at 1,486, which again is a healthy jump of 258 from the month of November.

This means that each unique visitor looked at 1.65 pages.

Google’s search engine accounted for 21.47% of my traffic. 47.24% of my traffic was from referring sites and 29.03% was from direct traffic.

Money Money Money!

4d18ent = $7.57 (New)
Adbrite = $0.87 (+$0.09)
ADSDAQ = $1.01 (-$0.17)
Adsense = $5.75 (+$4.57)
Adtoll = $2.12 (+$0.55)
Info Links = $0.56 (New)
Kontera = $0.25 (+$0.21)
Reviews = $105.00 (+$30.50)
Paid Tweets = $5.48 (-$1.33)
Smowtion = $0.48 (+$0.04)
Social Spark = $2.40. (-$1.68)
TLA = $12.25 (No Change)
Tradedoubler = $0.97 (+$0.61)
UnderDog = $0.11(New)

Total = $144.82 (+$31.51)

- I know I said I was getting rid of Kontera but just as I was about to do it they started coming up with decent click amounts and this month I have received the most I think I’ve ever had with them. Might put them on my smaller blogs and see what happens.

- The review company that I mentioned last month are still holding onto around $80.00. Linkworth are also dragging their heels slightly on the $65.00+ that they owe me but they promised that by the 10th of this month.

- 4d18ent is a new advertising company that I’m using. They may have a silly name but they do seem to pay well. Although they do tend to insert audio ads and pop ups from time to time.

- Info Links is the replacement on my main blogs for Kontera, as you can see I have earned almost double in one month what I have earned with Kontera in about a year.

Top Five Search Terms

I like this part of the monthly income report. It is amazing how people find my blog on search engines.

1. earn money paid to tweet
2. my plans for the future
3. ? need dofollow site
4. ptc advertisers
5. need for discipline

Popular Posts Of The Month

1. Poll: Would You Pay For Extra Blog Reviews?
2. 19 Blog Review Networks
3. Get Paid To Have A Merry Christmas
4. Fancy Writing A Guest Post?
5. Blogitive – Nice To Add To Your Collection

5 Top Site Referrals

The top five sites that sent the most visitors to this blog in November.

1. forums.digitalpoint.com
2. problogger.net
3. intensedebate.com
4. dailyblogtips.com
5. forum.smorty.com

This blog, and me earning money online, would not be possible if it was not for those awesome folk over at BlueHost. If you are looking for quality, reliable and cheap hosting then I urge you to check them out today.