Well, to be fair, I'm stoked that in the 6 days it's been running, I've made just under 30 dollars. If that holds up, it will cover a lot for me on an annual basis. And, I pretty much followed your formula of left side box, footer, post and link in the header.tpl, with a search box thrown in for good measure.
I still can't seem to get that login thing working, so I ended up making our tech advice forum which had been protected by access levels at least readable by the public so that it would help influence ad choice.
