It’s miserable, wet and rainy here in London today so I thought I’d use the time to play catch up and start wading through the long list of sites in my Need To Read folder. Regular visitors to the site (hello mum ) will know that I’ve set aside a folder in my Favourites where I put sites that I’ve skim read but not had a chance to digest properly.

Today I’ve got some information on AdSense CTR (click through rates), some great tips on SEO for WordPress users and an update to both the $15k Challenge and the Twenty Steps Challenge.

Firstly the AdSense CTR information. Revealing your actual CTR is against Google’s terms of service (TOS) so the chances are that you never really know how well, or otherwise, you’re doing on your AdSense campaign. Equally if you don’t know what the average CTR is how do you know whether you’re likely to fall foul of Big G and have your account canned? Well I found, via Digital Point, the answer to my question. The StackPoint website has a poll where users feedback their CTR and you can view the results. At the time of writing, two thirds of AdSense publishers have a CTR of less than 5%.

Next up is some great advice by Graywolf for people who run websites or blogs using WordPress. So…ermm…that’ll be me, then The wonderfully titled SEO Plugins for WordPress does exactly what it says on the tin. I’d been looking around for a while for a definitive list and so a big thank you to Graywolf for the info. Personally I’d add Spam Karma to the list as it’s a great tool.

With less than 36 hours to go, it looks like Dan Raine is going to be taking a trip to McD’s wearing a pink leather thong. As you may have read on Twenty Steps previously, Dan set himself a target of earning $15k in a month using his internet marketing skills. The full story of his challenge can be found over at the $15k Challenge site but let’s just say that he’s close to the target but he’s going to need a heck of a lot of good fortune to avoid the forfeit!

Finally my very own Twenty Steps Challenge. Well, in truth, I’ve not done anything since my last Weekend Update. I’ve been very busy with a number of different projects over the last month so The Challenge has been parked up for best part of the last 4 weeks. I’m still on $8 which, in all fairness, is probably a good reflection on the amount of work I’ve done so far. I’ve got another couple of sites I’m working on at the moment which will take up most of next week so I’ll be looking to kickstart The Challenge again after that.

Tech Tags : AdSense, Google, SEO, WordPress, Graywolf, Plugins, Spam, Dan Raine, 15k Challenge, Twenty Steps Challenge