Friday, January 13, 2012

Wasatch Color

I am transitioning some of the rural Community Color sites from a town focus to a county focus. I moved PriceHelper.com to carbon.UtahColor.com.

I decided to do the same with HeberCity.biz. I moved the contents of HeberCity.biz to wasatch.UtahColor.com.

This means I have a second domain to sell (HeberCity.biz) which I just listed on eBay.

Monday, January 09, 2012

Giving Sites a Boost - Video

A company from American Fork called Boostability opened up an affiliate program on Share-A-Sale. I was one of the first to join the program, and their manager called me up and asked my opinion on ways to improve their affiliate program.

People reading this blog know that I am always quick to give opinions.

Like Newt Gingrich, my goal in life is to never leave a thought unspoken.

Rarely have I been asked for opinions.

Anyway, the site had several YouTube videos. So I suggested that they upload their videos to the Share-A-Sale video sharing utility. I love YouTube; but I also enjoy seeing other firms taking a stab at video streaming. Since the affiliate industry has a built in revenue stream, I think they are a key candidate for advancing streaming technology.

Other affiliate networks offer video streaming. Oddly, few merchants are taking advantage of the service. I would give the same advice to all merchants engaged in affiliate marketing. USE THE VIDEO UPLOAD SERVICE. The more companies engaged in video streaming, the better.

The market tends to improve with competition. For example, there are many companies offering SEO services. The fierce competition in the industry forces each company to improve its offerings.

The video below is from the Share-A-Sale system. It's not as slick as Youtube ... yet. I tried the Boostability free trial and it does what the video says.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Q4 Was a Bust

The work I did didn't pay off.

Q3 was a bust. I thought I could turn things around by cleaning up the directory listings. During the quarter, I checked about 10,000 links. I pulled 1000 broken links and added 2000 new links (link report).

That was not sufficient. Income for the quarter actually dropped from $632 in Q3 to $614 in Q4. My expenses are $600 a quarter. (income report)

With income dropping below cost, I need to find a way to cut costs.

The big problem, of course, is not the site. There just isn't any interest in local web development. The majority of small independently owned web sites of five years ago failed due to lack of interest.

The success of Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook shows that people want to network. The independently owned web sites are all failing because people simply will not link to small sites.

My twitter account just passed 10.000 followers. I have at top six or seven links to my web sites.