Glen More

This post is pretty lean, but I wanted to make note of some changes that I have completed and why, before my big weekly post about some topic I have yet to pull from my ass. Some small upgrades I have made to the blog are updating the version of WordPress to 2.7. If you are looking for changes on the front end, don’t bother. All of the big changes are in the back end with administrator’s view of things changing to include a pretty side menu and a few menu changes designed to make the software more legible.

I removed the Google AdSense ad and replaced it in the post with an image. Frankly having it there made me feel dirty, like the time you went out with that lazy eye girl because she had tickets to see the monster trucks, but Truckasaurus was broken that night so you went for second base instead and discovered that mole. That kind of dirty. Anyway, I have removed the taint of commercialism, so any other taint is, sadly, my responsibility. Sorry.

I have activated a built in feature called Akismet. Akismet prevents spam comments on your posts. Sadly it has drastically reduced my comments to those who have me confused with Dan Rather’s radio frequency and the terminally disinterested. To activate Akismet I had to create an account at WordPress.com (not .org, where you can download the blog software itself). In creating the account you are given a unique code to enter in the Akismet configuration to make it ‘go’. It seems to work because Joel Kelly hasn’t posted to my blog since I activated it.

Links: I know I assume too much by allowing you to search out links to the software I talk about in the blog. So I went back through and included some of them for you. Is there anything else I can do for you? Perhaps come to your house and read the blog aloud to you? Maybe express it in frenetic dance to the easy listening rhythms of an Enya track? Jeesh, you are ungrateful…Anyway, having links is purportedly a good way to improve my ranking by looking like a good source of information. The links not being self-referencing (referring to information outside my website) the site is judged to be more useful and less likely to be a scam (make cheques payable to cash or directly to “The Church of Glenentology”).

Finally I  have added a component called TTF Titles that will help me add custom header images to each post. Adding a little visual stimuli to the blog helps keep you, the reader, from becoming comatose or dazzled by the letters by giving you some pictures to look at. I haven’t completed the changes yet, so in the meantime try to focus or open a split screen browser to your Google images search for ‘Priceless‘ images and try to keep up.

I know none of this information is too ground-breaking but you should consider most of it as a building process to creating a quality product. My future posts will display some of the small successes I have tracked through Google Analytics so far, as well as discussion of the addition of items to my subpages, in my case the Portfolio. In the meantime Happy New Year. May your year ahead be filled with nothing better to do but listen to my incoherent ranting.

IF YOU DO THIS YOU ARE MAKING PEOPLE HATE YOU–>

Google AdSense sounds great in theory: Toss up some ads and convert all your hits to real cash. Well, it doesn’t work unless you have about 10,000 viewers a day. And if you do, it is time to turn off your webcam before your mother catches you, and to begin talking to targeted advertisers. I could go into a rant about how frequent readers of blogs are offended by advertisements, or how it diminishes credibility…blaa, blaa corporate shill…blaa, blaa, pretentious assumption your ideas are financially worthy…etc. but I will leave that to your local teenager / social activist / vegan, as the case may be. Fact is AdSense makes virtually no money.

An example I have is when I added advertisements to my thriving video game community (~16,000 hits per month). I took a long time placing the ads in tastefull locations and styling them to match the theme. Then I sat back and waited for the fortune to roll in. And waited, and waited.

Herein lies the tale, and both advertisers and fortune-seekers pay heed: no one clicks on ads. Think about the last time you clicked an ad (other than that one that has pictures of ‘Single Women in [your town here]‘. we all clicked on that…). Of the 16,000 hits per month I received 31 ad clicks. This was after announcing to everyone that the money was going to pay for site maintenance. For those trying to do the math that makes 0.2% success. With those stunning numbers I received about $85 for 250 clicks. That is ~$0.34 per click. It is a tough way to make a living when the ads are often offensive to the senses to begin with. On top of that you only get a cheque in $100 denominations so my il-gotten gains have been in limbo for months.

In summation, when you are thinking of using AdSense, punch yourself in the face…and click on my ads…

Today’s small update was to add a component called MobilePress. This will allow me to custom-render the blog for iPhones, Smartphones and other small devices. Unfortunately, being a luddite and not having a cell phone (they are for suckers) or a data plan, I will have to test by stealing the phones of the unaware.

Another nice side perk is that the website can now be crawled by Google for mobile content. because the mobile web search world is smaller I will automatically have a higher ranking for those members of society who feel their value in it is determined by a device that keeps them tethered to the capitalist machine that is causing the collective stifling of personal freedom while sucking the very lifeblood from our values system. Also, I can’t afford one.

Google AdWords feels to me like a cross between hiring a hooker, and sitting down to do your taxes: it leaves you feeling dirty and when you start out, you are not sure if someone is going to show up and steal your wallet afterwards…what a terrible analogy, but I am going to try to work with it. One of the many perks that almost everyone recieves with a hosting package but never uses is a Google AdWords coupon “$25 AdWord coupon! That means my site is, like, free!”  AdWords is Google’s revenue stream for sucking the lifeblood from small advertisers, allowing people targeted links, like the ones on the right side of any Google search, based on the words a person searches for. These are paid for on a per-impression (i.e. the ad is displayed) and per click (i.e. someone clicked your link) basis.

Like showing up at a timeshare presentation because the girl that invited you was hot, I signed up for the “free” promotion. First off, I had to pay a $10 “setup fee”, which is about as classy as “shipping and handling” on eBay. Ah well, what is sacrificing $10 to buy new friends. My old ones were all complainers anyway. I created a small ad, with “Halifax Web Developer” as the keyword. I dismissed the idea of “Girl-on-girl Website Design” and “Brittney Spears Flash Animation” and picked ones that would potentially further the goals of my blog. In setting up my account I had to set a maximum monthly amount I was willing to spend to buy my new friends (reminds me of the bullies in junior high…but I digress). I chose the lowest maximum at $30 and chose the option to pay them at the end of the month, because likely no one will find my blog via this method and I am not really selling anything. In fact, you should be paying me, you bunch of savages… 

All kidding aside: if I had a legit business, this would be a huge way for me to drive traffic because most people can’t get on the elusive “first search page” on Google and must buy impressions however they can. The optimizations for AdWords are actually very interesting: you ‘buy’ keywords by bidding on them. Essentially this means more common terms like “books” and “computers” are extremely expensive per impression, but something like “Halifax Bookshop” would be quite reasonable. Spending time thinking about what users might search for to specifically target you is a good investment in time. Regionalizing, or being specific as to your product, are good ways to find the balance from targeted search terms and cost effectiveness.

On a more speculative level, I think that in actually giving Google money in this way, it is like paying tribute to a volcano god in hopes that he won’t take your virgin…wait, where was I…my point is that Google’s search rankings algorithm are a secret black box. I hope by forming as many relationships with them and jumping through as many hoops for them I can, they will release the cure for cancer that they have been hoarding for years, or at least up my ranking.