Google Analytic has been something of a Godsend for me. I have used countless traffic tracking plugins, scripts and websites over the years and nothing has come remotely close to being as accurate as Google Analytic has.

Although many of us use this free stats tool I am going to gamble by saying that very few of us actually know just how powerful this site can be. It has little features that even I have only just found out about and I’ve been using this site for around two years now.

Two of the features, that I recently discovered, have made my online income-earning life so much more easier that I thought I would create a post and share them both with you.

1. Have Your Traffic Reports Emailed To You

On the first of every month I log into my Google Analytics account to get the information that I need to write my monthly Blog Income Reports. This is the most time-consuming part of the process and sometime it can become quite tiresome.

So just how must it feel for people who like/have to check their stats more than once a month, like once a week?

Google Analytics have a lovely feature where you can have the stats emailed to your email address. This means no more having to visit their site and login just to look at your stats and they will only email you the information you ask for.

It is easy to set up as well.

To send on a regularly scheduled basis:

(a) Click Email below the title of the report you want to send.
(b) When the Set-up Email screen appears, find the Schedule tab.
(c) Enter a list of recipients in the To field.
(d) Specify a format for the email (XML, PDF, CSV or TSV).
(e) Provide a subject and description.
(f) Select a schedule from the drop-down menu of daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
(g) Click Schedule.

2. Exclude Traffic That Is Generated By You

I am sure you have done this, you visit your blog every now and again to check out if the posts are showing up OK or if the ads or widgets are not messing about with the overall design of your blog.

If, like me, you do it regularly then this can play a bit of havoc with your stats because Google Analytics will count these hits.

You can use a neat little feature to exclude your own visits from the stats and all you have to do is enter your IP address (or a collection of IP addresses). It will then exclude any visits form the IP addresses you listed.

(a) Click Filter Manager from the Analytics Settings page
(b) Enter a Filter Name for this filter
(c) From the Filter Type drop-down list, select Exclude all traffic from an IP address
(d) The IP address field will auto-populate with an example IP address. Enter the correct value. Remember to use regular expressions when entering any IP address. For example, if the IP address to filter is:

176.168.1.1
then the IP address value will be:
176\.168\.1\.1

You may also enter a range of IP addresses. For example:
Range: 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14
IP address value : ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$

For help finding the correct expression for your range of IP addresses, use our tool:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55572

(e) Select the profiles to which this filter should be applied in the Available Website Profiles box
(f) Click Add to move the selected profiles into the Selected Website Profiles list
(g) Click Finish to save this filter, or Cancel to return to the previous page

A more detailed tutorial can be found here

There are many other features but I think those two are the ones that we will be able to get the most from for now. Did you already know about these? Are you using ones that I have not mentioned? Drop us a comment below and let us all know.

A couple of weeks ago I found out that I had been unceremoniously kicked out of the Blogitive network and banned from using it. I had no idea why as I had received no communication about this at all.

They refused to answer any of my emails and I had to resort to throwing a public tantrum on my Twitter account before one of their employee (who I had tagged in the rant), from another department, offered to pass on my emails to them.

They eventually replied to me and accused me of stealing reviews, submitting them to their network and passing them off as my own. But as it was my first offense they would take pity on me and let me back in just this once.

No apology though.

As you can imagine I was outraged and fired off an email insisting that I was innocent and urging them to send me proof that I was a thief. I may be a terrible writer but I would certainly not contemplate stealing content from anybody.

Of course I heard nothing back so I fired off a second email and I also emailed the person from the other department. Within hours I had received an email back from Chelsea Parry:

Yes, that is what I said.

We do not keep a record of why bloggers are banned so I cannot tell you with certainty what the problem was. It is indeed possible that you were banned by accident but not very likely.

So what I am taking away from this is that they are accusing me of stealing and submitting duplicate reviews (the second option has never happened to me) but refuse to put forward any proof to back up their allegation?

This experience has left me with a rather bad taste in my mouth. I think after they approve my latest collection of articles I will not be using them any more. Which is shame because apart from throwing around (false) accusations of theft and plagiarism I actually looked upon them as an OK company.

Most of you will no doubt be aware that I have a policy when working with networks and companies. That policy is that I like to give networks and companies the benefit of the doubt when I work with them. A lot of the time it works but some times, like now, it can backfire on me and leave me feeling rather stupid.

I first came across Blog Advertising Store when it was going by the name of Paid Post, they then changed their name to Paying Post before finally changing it to their current name of Blog Advertising Store. I’m not sure if they have had more than three name changes.

Some people might point out that any company that changes their name three times in two years obviously should be avoided. Even the $100 payout minimum did not look too off-putting to me.

As I write this I have earnt a total of $116 and even though I have sent them at least half a dozen emails they have not paid me and have ignored every email I’ve sent. And apparently I’m not the only one, nobody has received a payment from them and a quick Google search proves this.

Will I learn something from this? I doubt it. The next time a network comes along with great promises, and an excellently designed web site, I’ll probably still sign up and write about things like sexy costumes because I’m an idiot.