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Many of you iTunes users may have recently (and possibly inadvertently) downloaded the new iTunes 10.  While there are many positive changes included in this new version (e.g. faster performance, UI improvements, etc), there are some odd design decisions in the program as well.

What the hell were they thinking?

One of the more perplexing changes was the vertical alignment of the control buttons (the “Stoplight buttons” as some people call them, now even more true to the nickname).  What would prompt Apple to go against their own, time-tested, mother-approved OS interface standards?

While I may not be able to answer the “why”, I can tell you how to change your iTunes control buttons back to horizontal.

Here’s how:

1. Close iTunes (if its not already closed)
2. Open Terminal app
3. In Terminal, type the following command:
   defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1
4. That’s it!  Open iTunes to see the changes you’ve made!  If you happen to want to restore iTunes 10 back to the vertical buttons, go to step 5 below
5. To restore buttons to the vertical layout, paste this command into Terminal app:
   defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -0

Your iTunes control buttons should now look something like the picture below:

Aahhh, much better

So here I am, sitting on the sixth (and top) floor of my office. Idiotically, I volunteered to do a project over my 20 day Christmas vacation…what I

5.8 Earthquake Centered about 20 miles SE of Mexicali

was thinking, I still don’t know. In any case, I’m the ONLY PERSON on the floor.

As I pour through some CSS my monitor does a little shimmy (I would compare it to a chubby girl doing a quick hula dance). From my back, I hear some unnatural creaking, cracking and groaning sounds coming from the core of the building.

I am by no means a stranger to earthquakes, but being high atop a building, alone, wondering if its going to take the plunge…not my favorite moment of 2009.

Thankfully, the quake didn’t last long, and I only felt 2 of the aftershocks. I still haven’t heard how Mexicali is doing, but the quake was a 5.8 so I have to assume there was some damage down there.

Here’s to no earthquakes in 2010!

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Here’s a fun little email trick I came across recently.  Try the following:

YourEmail+AnyTextHere@example.com

Replace “YourEmail” with your usual email address.  Replace “example.com” with your usual mail server.  And try replacing “AnyTextHere” with, well, any text you want.

Believe it or not, this is a valid email address, and just about every email provider supports this format.

Think of the implications of this…conditionally add a “+spam” to filter email from some websites.  Have friends and co-conspirators add “+TopSecret” to keep emails on the DL.  The possibilities are endless…or at least numerous.

Bon appetit, faithful followers!

Here are some questions you can quietly contemplate on your drive home:

1. Are potatoes put in New England Clam Chowder only to fool your tongue into thinking they are clams?

2. Ultimate Food Combo: Steak + Poptart = STEAKTART

3. What if there were no hypothetical questions?

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While perusing my Adwords campaign today, I started playing around with the graphing options.  I normally let the numbers speak for themselves and ignore the graph, but today I found a particularly interesting tidbit.

Adwords CTR vs COST

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What I found is this:

DAILY CTR appears to be closely correlated to DAILY COST

How can this be?  By this hypothesis, the more I spend on ads each day, the higher my click-through-rate would be.   While this sounds like something I shouldn’t complain about, I don’t understand why these two items would be proportional.

Has anyone else experienced this type of oddity?

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Amazon Associates hasn’t always played nice with social media.  Rather, it has NEVER played nice with social media, at least publicly.

You might remember a couple months ago when Joshua from SearchEngineJournal posted about Amazon denying commissions from sales coming from Twitter.  Amazon, citing their Associates Agreement, stated that affiliates could only make commission on referrals that originate from “your site”.  The debate about whether a user “owns” their Twitter domain ensued, and Amazon continued to hang its affiliates out to dry on this policy…until today.

Today, Amazon Associates announced the integration of Twitter with the Amazon Site Stripe, which includes 2-click posting of links to specific products on Twitter (once logged into Twitter), including URL shortening via bit.ly.  Amazon also posted a Social Media FAQ for Amazon Associates which lays out its new policies with decent clarity.

Some users have reported that the “Share on Twitter” functionality is intermittently not including the affiliate tracking ID in the shortened URL, so be sure to test your links!

After a quick test, it appears that Twitter randomly chooses a “Just saw this on Amazon” or “Check this out” message, along with the shortened bit.ly link.  Here’s what it looks like:

To summarize, Amazon’s Social Media Policies are as follows:

1. URL Shorteners: You may now post links via URL shortening services, as long as page does not get framed by the service.  If the address bar shows Amazon.com, you’re probably okay.
2. Twitter: You may now post shortened links via Twitter.
3. Social Media Usernames: Your social media username may NOT contain any Amazon copyrighted terms like “amazon” or “kindle”.
4. Product Advertising API: You may use the Product Advertising API on social media properties, however, they must still abide by the previously established Product Advertising API Policies (which bar the use of the API on mobile devices!)
5. How to Best Use Social Media: Amazon ain’t gonna tell you!  Why they had to include that in the FAQ, I don’t know (see question #6 here)

All in all, I’d say this is a good step for Amazon.  I know that personally, it will alleviate many hassles for me in getting around Amazon’s formerly nay-saying social media policy (let’s just say that all URL shorteners aren’t equal…especially when you build your own and use “fancy” META tags).

Kudos to Amazon for addressing this issue in a less-than-outrageous amount of time.

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Today I was perusing Google for a site that compares the overdraft fees of different banks. I just assumed that Google would know that I only want results for US banks, since I’d rather not convert my money in to pounds (and flying 12 hours to see a banker in person seems inefficient).

The search that raised the red flag for me was a search for “compare bank overdraft rates“.  Here’s what my results looked like:

compare bank overdraft rates

Why would Google assume that me, a guy in San Diego, would want to see results within the UK?

To be sure that Google knew I was in the US, I did search for “wells fargo” and I was given a result for a bank just down the street from me.  Hence, Google knows where I am.

Has anyone else seen this behavior before?

October was a fairly average affiliate marketing month for me with a few exceptions.  Revenue was up about 15% from just over $900, which I don’t consider to be a significant jump by any means.

Improvements

What IS encouraging is that last month I had 9 days with negative ROI’s (only amounting to about $50), whereas this month that number dropped to 2 days and only $20.  This tells me I’m polishing my current campaigns and plugging the holes.  This is even more apparent when you tally my negative days in the month of August (10 days for a loss of $215)!

Even MORE encouraging is that my affiliate marketing ROI is up from 247% in September to 277% for the month of October.  I attribute this to thinning out my herd of campaigns and terminating paid ads for any that weren’t performing well (or performing at all).

Underachievers

One of the under-performing sites was my Sony Bravia V Series website, which didn’t convert well enough to be a good CPC campaign.  My focus for it now is simply organic traffic, as sparse as it may be.  It does, however, rank fairly well on bing for several terms (#7 on Bing for “sony bravia v series” and #5 for “sony bravia v series reviews”), and I’m seeing several hundred uniques each month.  This month, the site converted 1 46″ Bravia V Series LCD hdtv for a commission of about $45.  Nothing to complain about, but I definitely wouldn’t mind some more conversions.

Non-Affiliate Earnings

My Adsense campaigns are struggling, but I haven’t really given them much attention lately.  I did start blogging more often, but the site is still climbing its way up the search engines at this point.  Time and more quality content should help increase that revenue trickle into a revenue stream (or even better, a revenue river?)

I still plan to start marketing within some ClickBank niches, but I haven’t had time to start that endeavor quite yet (the 9-to-5 is keeping me really busy lately).

Break it Down (dancing optional)

Here’s the breakdown of revenue for this month:

Adsense Revenue (7 sites): $19.18
Amazon Affiliates Revenue: $1,437.14
ClickBank Affiliate Revenue: $0 (nothing done with this account yet)
Shareasale Affiliate Revenue: $0 (nothing done with this account yet)
Commission Junction Revenue: $0 (nothing done with this account yet)
TOTAL Gross Affiliate Revenue: $1,456.32
(Minus) Adwords PPC Spend: $367.75
(Minus) Adcenter PPC Spend: $13.16

Total Net Affiliate Revenue: $1074.24

Swine Flu Mortality Rate (infographic)

Having survived the N1H1 virus recently, I find the topic especially interesting.  Swine flu was no vacation, but it sure wasn’t as bad as everyone assumes it is.  I had one day of severe symptoms (102°F temperature, horrible aches & pains, nausea, dizziness & appetite loss), but after that it was like a mild cold.

I just stumbled upon a great infographic via Digg.  If this isn’t a commentary on the American culture of fear-mongering, I don’t know what is.

Take a peek at the graphic linked to the right. Looks like Leprosy is just barely less deadly than N1H1.  Wait…what?  Leprosy, a word you probably haven’t seen since the 1960′s, is almost as deadly as this “epidemic” of Swine Flu.

Why isn’t the media telling us to be afraid of Leprosy too!

Hey Fox, why haven’t you explained this one:

For every ONE Swine flu death, there have been 2,521 (two thousand five hundred and twenty one!) deaths from Cardiovascular disease.

What this says is, its much better to be SICK than to be LAZY.  This should also tell you to go outside and jog somewhere.

So how do you survive Swine Flu? The answer is simple: stay healthy and active. Go outside and DO THINGS.  You’ll be saving yourself from a plethora of much deadlier diseases as well.

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So, you’d like a Google Wave invite, eh? Well, the first 5 people to follow my devious instructions below will get their very own Google Wave invite. Follow along carefully, I have to be fair about this or I’ll get complaints. Do exactly as I say below:

Tweet this: “@empirenine is giving away Google Wave invites. Please follow him and RT this!”

or you can just click here to magically tweet it.

YOU MUST HAVE MORE THAN 500 FOLLOWERS TO QUALIFY!!!

Once you tweet it (and if you’re one of the first 5), I’ll ask you for your email address.  Tweet on y’all!

(I know that this may seem like a pain in the ass, but I also know that Google Wave invites are in high demand.  My friends and family are begging me for the invites but I’m actually spreading them out into the public.  If you know how to get a Google Wave invite by other means, go for it!)