December is a crazy time of month. Aside from figuring out what’s going on over the holidays, trying to find that perfect gift for the people I’m buying for, and otherwise keeping up with the holiday stuff, it’s an incredibly busy time for my business partner and I too. So busy, in fact, I’ve done nothing… absolutely nothing… to promote my sites and products this month.

So it’s just a peachy bowl of happiness when I see that Adsense is doing GREAT this month, and Clickbank too — thanks to ContextCash — has been performing far better than average recently.

After a stressful month, seeing money flow in with no effort on my part is like winning a lottery, or finding money in an old coat pocket.

Just feels good.

I normally don’t feel this benevolent about 98 pound gorillas, but Google just sent me a lovely Christmas gift… sent by Courier to Canada, no less… so I’m loving them quite a lot today.

It’s odd that I’m more chuffed about receiving an unexpected gift, that probably had a total cost to Google of $40 including shipping, than the last few record months of Adsense revenues, which came to a much more substantial sum.

Anyway, Happy Holidays Google. Best wishes for a mutually profitable New Year too.

P.S. IF you haven’t taken advantage of John Delavera’s Santa DealTime offer yet, be sure to get in soon. The 1 hour bonus consultation with a pro copywriter is going to be gone tomorrow at 8:00 am EST, and that’s one doozy of a bonus to miss out on.

I just picked up my copy of SantaDealTime from John Delavera. This has got to be one of the best packages I’ve purchased ever.

There are a number of scripts there that I can use personally. Many more are great fits with my existing and planned sites and products.

And a consultation with John D’s copywriter, plus a proofreader for a month is worth the price of the whole package.

I highly recommend it. Don’t miss out. It’s only available for a week.

You can get your copy here. There’s even a bonus just for looking at the page!

I’ve been scouring catalogs and Ebay and Froogle looking for good gifts for those I’m buying for this season, and while I’ve been looking, I’ve decided to catalog a few of the things I think are cool.

1) Cordless Lighted Lap Desk
Ok, maybe I don’t do a lot of work in bed, but it looks like this would be a good way to start, as long as it’s combined with this :
2) The Lighted Massaging Lounger –”This lounger makes reading or watching television more relaxing because it provides soothing massage and heated, supportive foam cushioning to cradle the body in a relaxed, upright position thus alleviating tension.” Sounds good to me.

3) Digital Binoculars – I don’t know why I want these, but I know I always have. And now that I actually have a view from my office window, I like the idea even more.

4) Here’s the geek part of me coming through: Space Age Ant Habitat. Seriously. It looks like something that could be a lot of fun to watch. With the kid. Yeah, that’s it. And to round out the gift — and get rid of any extra ants, how about a Desktop Carnivorous Plant Set. Oh yeah, and a USB Microscope to get up close and personal pictures of both.

5) Lee Valley has some cool stuff I wouldn’t mind too, like a cut flower aquarium and a microwave flower press and companion book.

6) Heck, I saw this on Ebay, and the look of the property is cute, even if I don’t know where Sombra is. If someone’s feeling particularly generous, I wouldn’t refuse it.

I’ve been experimenting with article submissions to increase backlinks, and I want to determine the traffic the articles generate as well, but I’ve been doin’ it wrong.

Since the articles I’m submitting (hopefully) get republished on other websites and sent out in newsletters, it’s getting hard to figure out (short of visiting every site that sends me one or two visitors a month) which traffic is coming from the articles.

So, I want to add a tracking code or special page to the links I put in the articles I submit. But as I peruse other people’s articles, there sure aren’t many people who seem to be doing this.

So, am I missing something? Is there a way to track this traffic without a link to track, or are most folks just not tracking which traffic comes from articles? Or which articles bring the most traffic, for that matter.

Ah well, as much as I hate to deviate from the norm, I’m going to add a unique code to each article anyway.

But I wonder…

-does a tracking link dilute the ‘branding’ of a stand-alone domain name?
-does it mean the main page won’t get the benefit of page rank transfer for the link?
-am I just thinking way too much?