Tired

As many people would be aware, I have given up being a full time blogger. There are more important things in my life than blogging, like family and my job.

However I have been working lately to update my jokes blog with both archived posts and future posts. For 2007 I have made sure that there is one joke per day as well as one funny image per day (so far) for the archives.

Also I have made sure that the jokes blog is updated until the end of January 2009.

Now I just need to upload 90 or so funny pics for June, July, August 2007 and that year is complete. Never underestimate improving your Google Page Rank by writing posts.

The more pages that you have on your blog, the higher your Page Rank.

So remember to post as often as you can, link to yourself and leave some comments as you go!

How about you? Do you post often? Do you leave comments? Are you keen on improving your Page Rank?

Merry Christmas

I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Have fun

Stay safe

Hope you have a good 2009!

Less is more with Project Wonderful

I have been a big fan of Project Wonderful for a long time. It is a very simple system that allows you to buy advertising through individual bids or in a broad reaching campaign system.

Here I have pictured the PW ad unit directly above the EntreCard ad unit on my main blog. As you can see they are currently earning $0.07 and $0.03 a day for me.

Why not simplify things with a single ad unit instead of running two separate ad units? Because with PW, less is more.

Due to the unique way that PW allows both individual bidding and campaign bidding to take place the price of the ad unit is never fixed. It is possible to set a minimum bid to something you want but I find that sites with a high minimum bid often have no bids at all. I am happy to let the market decide directly what a spot on my site is worth, a bidder can see my traffic results and place a bid based on that either manually or through an automated campaign.

Also these are current failings of EntreCard. No traffic results, no automated bidding, no automated campaigns.

Now in an auction based system the law of supply and demand will determine the final price. If you have a 2x1 or 2x2 ad unit there will be far less bidding competition than from a 1x1 ad unit. An advertiser who wants to appear on your 2x2 will only have to out bid one or two other bidders for their ad to appear. An advertiser who wants to appear on your 1x1 will have to beat many more competitive bids.

This will drive ad rates up.

Also this method works well for advertisers too. A single 1x1 ad unit is more likely to generate a click through than an ad placed on someones 2x2 or 3x2. I have found in my own advertising experiments through PW that smaller ad units get more clicks and are worth a 25%-50% premium.

Furthermore I don't spend the money I earn through Project Wonderful, I simply plow it back into advertising campaigns for my jokes blog. This activity creates a vicious circle of more traffic feeding more revenue feeding further advertising etc. And the vast majority of it requires almost no effort at all.

Another short coming of EntreCard. Of the money that comes in I keep 75%, and usually reinvest it in more advertising, automatically. Of the credits that come in I keep 25% to spend on further advertising, manually, a real disincentive if you ask me.

Providing advertising space through Project Wonderful is a great way to make a little money online, but you are going to do much better if you reduce the widget clutter and provide something slightly rare.

How about you? Have you had similar experiences with Project Wonderful? Or has this post made you consider resizing some of your ad units? Leave a comment!

Troublesome Comments

What do China, North Korea, My Blogs and Cuba all have in common?

A) Charismatic Leaders?
B) Happy Citizens?
C) Not Democracies?

If you chose C) Not Democracies, you'd be correct!

Recently I have received a few anonymous character attacks, which only remind me why I choose to blog anonymously.

The internet is a scary place!

It won't stop me from allowing anonymous comments, but if anyone has the time to write a nasty piece of work without even attempting to be constructive or helpful please note that your comment has a life span the same as a snowball in a pizza oven.

If someone has an axe to grind with me, do not hide behind an anonymous comment, have the courage to speak your mind and have your online persona polished or tarnished by what you have to say. Negative, Anonymous comments are doomed the moment you hit Publish.

Previously I was an avid forum user, mostly on the Japan Today and Elt News forums. One of the troubles with internet forum life is having to deal with Trolls. People who only lurk in the shadows, come up with inflammatory comments and then disappear to enjoy the heated debate that follows their post.

One of the major reasons why I walked away from the Japan Today community was their refusal to deal with the trolls who frequent their forum. I could never understand the reasoning behind letting many posts stand until the entire thread had to be deleted because things got so seriously off topic.

This is one of the factors that lead me towards blogging.

Now I decide what comments are allowed on my blogs. No three strikes warning. No Miranda Warning. Into the digital sewer you go! This applies to Spam comments and Spiteful comments. If you are unhappy about this, then you should have read my Comment Moderation Policy before wasting your time.

That said, I'd like to welcome any and all comments that are constructive or critical in a helpful way, thanks and appreciation comments are ALWAYS welcome! But if you just want to share some hate, know that I have pretty thick skin and am adult enough to know when someone just isn't worth my time.

How about you? Have you had any troubles with anonymous comments or internet trolls? I'd love to hear your stories.

Getting Blog Traffic

Recently I took a break from blogging, mostly to get some priorities in my life in order. After coming back, I couldn't stay away, it was interesting to see how traffic to my blogs didn't really drop all that much.

For illustration of this point I will talk about my Jokes Blog as it has the highest traffic of the three.

Currently, according to Google Analytics, the blog is averaging 1230 unique visitors a day. If you check out the Project Wonderful links on my Jokes Blog you can see similar information.

However this doesn't reflect the true readership of that blog. The majority of traffic was being directed from Sumble Upon directly through to pages that have been "favourited" by Stumble Upon users. Of visitors from Stumble, 90% are new visitors and they visit 3.3 pages. Which is great, but doesn't count as having a regular readership. Considering that Stumble accounts for about 70% of the traffic to that blog it speaks volumes for the power of Stumble.

Also, every time there is a new page that recieves a surge in Stumble traffic there is also a similar increase in the number of subscribers, mostly by e-mail.

The next highest referrer is Google. Between Google America, England, Canada, Germany and Australia Google Image search accounts for another 10% of the traffic to my Jokes Blog. Every day a new Joke and Funny picture is published there on a Scheduled Post system and each post is correctly labeled and tagged. Every time a post goes live, Feedburner will ping all of the search engines to come and spider the new post. It seems that people love searching for funny pictures on the internet.

Lastly, just for fun, lets talk about EntreCard. If Stumble Upon accounts for 70% of my traffic, then EntreCard accounts for 0.005% of the traffic on my Jokes Blog. Lately I haven't been promoting any sites using EntreCard as the effort of vetting sites to advertise on wasn't worth the return of traffic generated, so anything that has come from EntreCard has been passive traffic. Passive Traffic rocks.

Now for this comparison it's not fair to say that EntreCard only generates 0.005% of the traffic to my Jokes Blog, it only accounts for 0.005% of the referral traffic. This figure doesn't account for people who visit the site from personal bookmarks. Over all EntreCard justifies the space it takes up on the sidebar for the purpose of encouraging repeat visitors, drawing passive traffic and letting me earn credits to advertise elsewhere.

What should you take away from this?

1. Stumble Upon will drive traffic to your blog if you have something quick and enjoyable for SU users. SU users are curious and will check out other pages as well as subscribe to your feed.

2. Correctly labeling and tagging your posts will cause love to fall upon you from Google.

3. EntreCard is nice but hardly world shattering. I wouldn't put a lot of time into it, but you would be mad to pass up free traffic.

How about you? Do you get Stumble, Google or EntreCard traffic? Are your experiences similar or different to mine? Regardless, if you liked (or hated) this post PLEASE leave a quick comment. I really appreciate them, thank you.

A New Direction

Ahh, it feels good to have had a nice break from blogging.

But it seems that you can't keep a die hard blogger down.

I have improved the time I spend with my family and cut back on my computer time. Mission accomplished, so to speak.

So where do we go from here?

Due to the outpouring of love in the comments field on my Japan blog, as well as the comments I have received from my Japanese students, I have decided to resume blogging. But under vastly different terms.

Previously I was killing myself trying to keep to a weekly Monday to Friday schedule of posting for both this blog and my Japan blog. It wasn't working. Now if I post, I post and if I don't, sorry. Those who know me in real life know that I will do my best to be a regular blogger, but from now on, if I miss an update I won't loose any sleep over it.

So, what do you think? Did you miss me? Or do you think I am still crazy?

Bye!

I think it's time to quit blogging.

My Japanese studies have been non-existent. I haven't focused on improving my work skills. The release of venting my frustrations online is outweighed by the frustrations of thinking about new blog posts. I haven't been exercising. The hours spent on my blogs could be better used elsewhere in my life.

It has been good. I've reached out and connected with people I wouldn't have ordinarily met in normal life. I have connected with some of my Japanese students.

But too often I have found myself thinking of posts to write when I should be concentrating on something else. Too often I have felt guilty for not replying to comments when I should have felt guilty for not spending enough time with my family. Too often I have been trying to improve my traffic or page rank when I should have been trying to improve my teaching or Japanese skills. Too often I have felt that the time spent trying to make money online would have been more productive working at McDonalds.

I know my wife is going to say "I told you so" and that's something I will have to endure, but I feel I need to set new priorities with my time. Even with an extra hour a day - I still wouldn't have enough time for everything I want to do. So it is time to close my EntreCard accounts, Cash out from Project Wonderful & AdSense and to stop thinking about my blogs any more.

Thank you to the bloggers who have helped me along the way. Tom, Lina, Jamaipanese, Paul, Neil, Tornadoes28, Penguin, CeBlogger and Angelika. Thanks for the laughs, the conversation and the link love. It's time to do something else with my free time, other than blogging.

Bye!

Why I Use Two Columns

I use themes from ourblogtemplates.com as they provide free templates for Google Blogger that look really good.

There are many to choose from, one, two, three and even four columns. I have chosen two column and will stick with that for the foreseeable future.

Why? Because I want you to be able to read my blog.

Too often I see blogs that have their content nestled away in the corner or that have "click here to read the full post" rubbish. Doesn't the blogger want you to read their posts? It is more likely that they want to present you with as many advertising widgets as possible to make more money.

I hate that when I see it and can honestly say that nine times out of ten I am so annoyed that I have to delve further that I never investigate further. And the tenth time I am sure that I will be disappointed with what I am offered to read, even from the so called A-List bloggers.

If you want readers to actually read your posts, keep it clean and simple with as little clutter as possible. Do not make them click further to read your posts. The only sites that should offer headlines and a link are newspapers, not blogs.

How about you? Are you frustrated whenever you see half hidden posts? Do you actually follow the link?