Traffic has been slowly increasing this month and I want to personally thank those of you who are visiting and making purchases.

But the real indicator we have arrived is the amount of spam we are receiving in our comments. Our comments are moderated and askimet catches most of the garbage. I apologize if any of this gets through the system and offends any of our readers.

In other news:
My webdesign business has slowed somewhat so I took on some work for charity. theFutureForce.org is a non-profit organization which finds under privaledged but tallented students and helps get them the educational help they need to succeed in life. Visit the site to learn more.

BlueHanvaCigars.com is expanding their business to include Golf equipment. We utilized the Associate-o-matic and Amazon’s associate program to offer a wide variety of products. He plans to add additional products as well. The new site is [drum roll] BlueHavanaGolf.com.

As a personal project I started PetScratch.com, a site filled with Pet supplies, toys, food, and anything pet related that Amazon carries. It also is powered by Amazon and Associate-o-matic.

The beauty of partnering with Amazon is that I can create as many themed sites as I wish and each can earn a commission on its sales. The trick is to market the sites without spending any money so it doesn’t offset any income.

To learn more about Associate-o-matic click the banner below. Their system is much easier than writing your own PHP or ASP + SOAP/REST. They allow some control over the look and feel using CSS and their admin panel.

When I set up WDB I used the Amazon A-Store to feed the bookstore products. While the A-Store was easy to implement it does not seem to convert to sales very well. So we are trying the Associate-O-Matic storefront with our google adwords campaign to see if we can get more sales.

You can help us choose which system works better for you. Please visit both of the links below and give us some feed back in the comments. Thanks in advance.

NEW AOM store vs A-Store

MARCH 1, 2007 WDB made its first book sale. I would like to personally thank the individual who purchased Linux Bible: Boot Up to Fedora.“.

But what led to the first sale is a little more interesting. Two things conspired to help me have a successful day.

First I received an email newsletter from Steve Pavlina (self help guru) about the power of intention. I have read his works on the subject before but the refresher was what inspired me to take further action toward my intention to be successful. Steve also has saved me a ton of money by helping me kick the starbucks habit.

Secondly, I have been using Google Adword ads to promote the site but saw very few clicks per week and my keyword costs were going up due to poor conversion. Fortunately there were so few clicks it did not cost me much.

But yesterday I got hold of a $7 e-book titled 9 Killer Adwords Tricks That Will Make You Money. Normally I think of these things as a scam to get you to buy more expensive products, which this did suggest other products, but it also delivered what it promised in the title. And for a mere $7 I could not lose.

I merely applied a couple of the techniques from the ebook and amazingly I have an immediate improvement in clicks and even a conversion (sale). This ebook content was not rocket science. There is little beyond an outline about how to write an ad, and what a landing page should do. But, the content is solid enough for me to recommend it to anyone frustrated with adwords. The e-books marketing page is a good representation of what you get.

Learn More about: 9 Killer Adwords Tricks That Will Make You Money.
Paypal checkout and easy download.

One of my regular clients has tasked me with a redesign of one of his sites. This is likely to be only a few pages with minimal text but a great deal of design elements. He has a graphic designer so I can focus primarily on the code. I thought it might be a good time to put to use what I learned in Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (Voices That Matter).

So here are my goals for building the site:

• XHTML and CSS with Grid based layout for alignment
• Minimal use of Divs
• Positioning of elements rather than using floats
• Semantic use of List items to group related items even paragraphs with headers or menuitems
• write code top to bottom left to right reading even with CSS off or alternate CSS applied
• tables only for tabular data

Of these only using Positioned elements will be the toughest for me, most of the others I have put into practice already. Wish me luck.

We have added Templates to our product offerings here at the webdevelopers bookstore. There are times when you may choose to utilize a prebuilt templates to meet time constraints or to reduce the amount of effort. There are logo templates, flash animations, OSCommerce overlays, and full website templates. All the supporting artwork and fonts are bundled with the templates. Prices start at a mere $20 with most around $60.

Advantages of utilizing Templates
- Designers can offer their customers a high-quality design and also save time and money.
- Developers can modify the base templates CSS and files to create truly custom designs.
- Templates can be purchased outright to prevent further use of the template.
- Developers with lack of design skills can produce designer sites.

Samples: