Alex... Awesome - your site is flying along and it's still so young! I can see you're putting a lot of work into it and am so pleased it's paying off for you.
To get an Alexa Widget: search your site on Alexa.com, click Webmaster's Corner and then Widgets. Enter your URL and click Build Widget, then it gives you a choice of big, small or banner widgets. Then I copy & paste the code into my site.
It looks like this:
<SCRIPT type='text/javascript' language='JavaScript' src='http://xslt.alexa.com/site_stats/js/t/a?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com'></SCRIPT>
I guess if you don't want to use HTML, you could copy and paste the widget image from Alexa, although it obviously wouldn't update automatically. But it's an option...
Jax... I understand what you mean about straying from being a resource of inspirational quotes. Although, bear in mind that there are already some big websites like this that might trump you on Google (Ken: "you're not Wikipedia"!) so it could only be a good thing to personalize yours. You're already thinking down those lines, so I'm just saying: go for it!
Great ideas for monetizing... I especially like your idea for motivational products. They are rarer and you can review them and get a good commission. (Unlike Amazon books and DVDs, which personally I have a hard time selling and even then you only get 50c per sale! Ouch!!)
In fact, you could stray right into the personal development realm while monetizing. I'd consider meditation music CDs and self-hypnosis CDs which have a huge range of applications and seem to sell very well.