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Happy New Year! We thought this might be a good time to make a slight change, purely cosmetic, to Publicity Wheel. Publicity points will now be referred to as tickets. We feel this better represents our service within the "spinning the wheel" context. Rest assured, nothing has changed with your existing points, they've just been transferred to tickets and function exactly the same way.

Purchasing Options

One of the issues low-traffic site owners face is that it's very hard to earn tickets quickly when there are few visitors to click on the widget in the first place. We've provided an additional purchasing option that will allow you to quickly get into the game or boost your existing chances with ticket books. For USD$1.00, you'll receive 20 tickets that will be immediately factored into upcoming spins, giving you a much better chance. This is a great deal considering past winners' tickets. All options are now available on the Get your Tickets page.

Of course, we're mindful that Publicity Wheel should remain free, and that will always be the case. We're confident that free tickets will inherently balance purchased tickets so that both are great options.

As usual, best of luck to everyone during upcoming spins. Let's hope 2009 brings you lots of traffic and exposure!

As much as we all love Publicity Wheel for generating traffic and exposure for our sites, there are many other things you can do to both increase traffic and grow your online business in general. We've collated some useful links below that are all excellent reading, and should help you regardless of the type of site you're running.

Peter from SiteProNews discusses some basic methods for building traffic, Seth from his own blog lists a large number of simple traffic tips, Blogging Basics 101 outlines how Stumbleupon can be utilised more effectively, and Trevor from StrikingUp cautions us with some common mistakes we should be aware of when starting a business (which of course applies to online ventures as well).

• 4 Easy and Proved Ways to Pull in Traffic to a New Website
• How to get traffic for your blog
• Tutorial: Using StumbleUpon for Traffic
• The 5 Mistakes People Make When Starting A Business And The 5 Semi-Mistakes

Why not share some of your own tips in the comments?

You may have already seen a sneak peak of some of our upcoming activities through the Events Calendar, but if you haven't, we're going to be doing things a little differently for 5 days from this Thursday 18th September (we'll be back to normal next week).

Quick Spins

For selected categories, we'll be spinning the wheel once each day to allow more sites to get a taste of Publicity Wheel exposure. You may get lots of clicks or you may not, but we'll give you every chance by giving the quick spin winners 24 hours of full exposure. Winners will be selected the same way, but we won't take any points away from you, so you'll still be in for a real chance next week when we spin the wheel again for 5 days. Now is the time to update your 125x125 banner image, as you'll be sure to get a few more visitors that way.

Double Points

During the entire 5 day period, you'll get double the publicity points you normally would, so get the Publicity Wheel widget into a prominent location on your site to cash in. Given the number of points previous winners were holding at the time, it doesn't necessarily take a lot to win.

Good luck!

There are lots of great activities coming up on the wheel, and we want to make sure you know exactly what's happening and when. As a result, we've just launched our Events Calendar, a great reference that can be used to see all the Publicity Wheel events on one page.

The Events Calendar is powered by Google, so that means it can be integrated into your existing Google or other calendar. You can subscribe to the XML feed in your RSS reader or add the iCAL file into your existing calendar.

Take a quick look at the Events Calendar now to get a sneak peak of what's in the plans. You may notice a few interesting activities coming up, so make sure you keep up with the blog for more info to come!

We've successfully moved servers today without any major hiccups. Things should run much faster now. Please contact us if anything appears broken :)

Just a quick note to everyone that Publicity Wheel will be down temporarily this Thursday 4th September whilst we migrate to a new (and much quicker) server. It is expected that this process should take no longer than 24-48 hours. Your 125x125 pixel banner will display as normal and Publicity Points should continue to tick over.

If there are any issues that may arise unexpectedly, we'll most certainly extend the duration of the next spin to 6 or 7 days.

Our aim is to keep things as open as possible to allow everyone to see exactly what is and what will happen with the wheel. So along with your Exposure Level discussed earlier, we've also released the new Exposure Table, which lists all categories, their current state and number of ad views over the period of one spin (currently 5 days).

The Exposure Table is generated from live data, so you'll know it's always up-to-date. It's also useful to see which categories aren't active yet, so you can choose to wait it out and build up your points until they open, or move over to the "General" category temporarily. More categories will most probably be activated during the next spin on Tuesday.

It looks like the Internet category is the most popular, but that also means there's more competition within. Of course, as can be seen by this week's winners, you don't necessarily need a large number of points to win. In fact, this week was very interesting as the highest winning points were only 25. This means that you could simply invite 2 friends and you'll be well up there!

Things have been heating up on the Publicity Wheel, and we're ready to start spinning the wheel a little quicker to give more of you the opportunity to be featured. Starting Monday, we'll be spinning the wheel every 5 days. We feel it gives the winners a solid amount of exposure, but also provides everyone with a shorter wait between spins. Ultimately, it'll probably come down further to 3 or 4 days, but we're not quite there yet.

Speaking of all things hot, have you checked your exposure level against the 'General' category? Earlier this week, susans home won in this category with 35 points, so if you'd like a bit of a mix-up this week, why not jump on board?

We've also activated a number of new categories, so check out the winners page for more info. If you're being featured, we'd love your feedback. Even if you've won in the past and seen a change in your traffic or an increase in readership, please let us know. The 'Internet' category continues to top the click-rates, but others are experiencing some huge levels of exposure.

Good luck to all during Monday's spin!

One of the great things about the Publicity Wheel is the amount of exposure your site can experience when featured. Whilst clicks are great, consistent exposure of your brand can be just as important, which is what you'll receive for several days. That's why we've added a new field to your Dashboard known as "Exposure Level".

So what does this figure represent? Basically, when you add the Publicity Wheel banner to your site (featuring the winner within your category), we will gather statistics about your site's visitors, in particular the amount of times the ad has been viewed on your site. By comparing this to the amount of times visitors across all members' sites have viewed your ad, a percentage can be calculated that we call Exposure Level.

For example, an Exposure Level of 100% indicates that you're receiving exactly the same amount of exposure as you would if you hadn't been featured. 200% indicates that you're receiving twice as many "ad views" as you are giving out. Of course, you should always have a percentage greater than 100%, and many members achieve exposure levels of several thousand percent. You can certainly see the power of the exposure Publicity Wheel can generate.

But what about those who aren't featured? You'll see a field known as "Expected Exposure Level", which is calculated by assuming that approximately the same number of visitors will be viewing the Publicity Wheel banner when you do become featured.

Feel free to select another category to see what levels of exposure you could expect when featured. In particular, try the "General" category as outlined in the previous blog entry if your site doesn't fit neatly into any other category.

As you may know, not all categories are active or large enough just yet, so whilst you accumulate publicity points, the resultant boost in traffic may not be quite as high as you expect when you do win. The way around this is to temporarily join another category that may be larger, but this probably isn't the best option if you don't expect a lot of users from that category to be interested in your site.

Another method is to join a new category that has recently been added - the "General" category. The aim of this category is to allow sites to jump in together and increase their publicity to a wider audience. It is expected that more sites will participate in this category, so winners will receive a much bigger boost in traffic and exposure. Of course, if you're already in a popular category (such as "Internet"), you'll probably want to stay there.

The "General" category will be activated either this spin or the next (depending on the numbers that join). Feel free to jump between categories at any time, it won't affect your publicity points.

To join, update your site profile through your dashboard and select the General category from the drop-down box. Then replace your existing HTML snippet with this one.

Along with the last weeks dashboard improvements, particularly the Status panel, you may have noticed that the next spin is scheduled for Monday (instead of Saturday). We feel this makes more sense for a number of reasons, but as a result this week's winners get an extra two days of publicity!

If you've been keeping a close eye on the ads, you may have noticed that on rare occasions a "Publicitywheel SPONSOR" tab replaces the usual "Publicitywheel WINNER" tab. These have been added to help keep Publicity Wheel running and cover the costs. They have only a very small chance of being displayed (a few percent), and the overwhelming majority of ads will be reserved for the winners of each spin. Even so, you'll earn points regardless of whether your users click on winner or sponsor ad. Right now, the only ads in these Sponsorship slots promote the Publicity Wheel itself, and it is expected to be a little while before you see anything else. If you wish to discuss sponsorship, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The Home and Garden category has been added to the wheel as the statistics indicate that the ads are now receiving enough views to boost the winner's traffic and publicity. Congratulations to Pink Lemonade for being the first winner in this category!