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It's Friday and I sure am looking forward to the weekend ... I wanted an interesting and challenging week and that's definitely what I got but interesting and challenging weeks can take it out of you. I'm definitely looking forward to setting my own pace for the next couple of days and it's going to start tonight ... we're off to spend a few hours listening to some jazz ... I can hardly wait!

You've read the blog ... now read the book.
Problogger and its author Darren Rowse have been the leaders in teaching ordinary people how to make money online through blogging and Adsense advertising and over the last couple of years he certainly has built up quite a following right around the world.

He's also led by example and makes some very nice sums of money every month from his blogging but interestingly not much of his income comes from Problogger. Most of his income is derived from several other blogs but now Darren might have found a way to monetize the brand he's built up via all those helpful posts on Problogger because Problogger - the book - has been released.

It's already available on Barnes and Noble and on Amazon and, knowing Darren, I would suggest that it's definitely going to be worth reading. Darren might be a Baptist pastor but that doesn't stop him from being down to earth in his approach to blogging and very occasionally he's not afraid to do something a little controversial.

A year or so ago he even interviewed an adult webmaster on his blog and that certainly raised the temperature in the comments section for a while. The guy who was interviewed just happened to be my Steve and, even though Steve said nothing controversial, just the word ‘adult' in his title was enough to get some people upset.

So don't be afraid to invest a little money in what's likely to be a good book. There's every chance that there'll be something of value in there for every one of us.

Aging domains
There are many search engine gurus out there who suggest that the older the domain the more the search engines like them. It's a bit like a bottle of wine really ... the older it is the better the taste ... or so you might hope. And with domains the older they are the more popular and trusted they are by the search engines ... or so the theory goes.

Well now age and trust could certainly be something of value for Microsoft has lodged a new patent application for a process that ranks domains according to the age of other domains that link to them. That could well spell the end of instant link farms but it could also prove to be of benefit for those who build their web of links for the long term.

And you better believe that the search engines can determine the age of a domain and how long the domain is registered for. That of course raises another interesting question ... is it far better to register your domains for more than just 12 months? In the past that's not something that's bothered Steve or me all that much and we've often just chosen the 12 month option when domains have come up for renewal but I think we'll be changing that from now on.

Alexa changes its rankings
Recently we were doing some mainstream work for a client who just about had an orgasm every time she talked about her Alexa rankings. I'm serious; they were like the most important thing in her life ... far more important than the fact that her site just wasn't making any sales. Those sales just didn't seem to matter as long as she had a wonderful Alexa ranking ... which really wasn't that wonderful at all.

Perhaps now life is one long orgasm for that client because it seems that Alexa has reworked the way they arrive at their rankings and a lot of sites have moved even higher. On the other hand that client could be in Alexa hell because quite a few sites lost ground with their Alexa rankings too.

Whatever the situation might be we'll probably never know because we don't do business with that client anymore. We just couldn't convince her that Alexa ranks are meaningless ... especially if you've got a site that couldn't sell a life jacket to a drowning man ... and Alexa rankings won't put food on your table. But, if she's any example, Alexa rankings can make you very happy.

And that's it for this week - have a great weekend and I'll see you back here on Monday.