The Online Christmas Season is coming to an end. Ground shipping can take two weeks, express shipping makes gifts too expensive. It is foolish to buy online after today.
Darn, I didn't have a single sale this year. My idea of building community directories funded by affiliate sales is now a total bust.
My experience in affiliate marketing is that it takes 500 page views to get a click on an affiliate ad. One in 300 clicks results in a sale. The average commission is $5.00. So, it takes 150,000 page views to make $5.00.
The affiliate industry is notoriously crooked. Most affiliate sales are sucked off by parasites or simply not credited by merchants. I did two test purchases this year. Both failed to pay my commission. If a person with a Browser Helper Object visits my page, clicks on an ad, the Browser Helper Object will change the source of the click to help itself to the commission.
I will take a stab at selling advertising direct to the public. I was getting three dollar for every ten thousand page views from a large advertiser. That fell to a dollar per thousand page views this year.
I want to sell ads in $30 chunks. So, I am thinking of selling blocks of 20,000 ad impressions for $30.00.
My hosting fees average to $100 per month. Selling four blocks of ads a month would pay hosting fees, which is the most a small site can hope to achieve in the current economy.
If you are interested in buying advertising in Utah, Colorado or Arizona, please contact me.
If not, my deals page shows online steals and deals. This is pretty much the last day that you can order online and get economy shipping.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Monday, December 09, 2013
Cyber Week a Lost Cause
Cyber week was a complete bust. I did not get a single sale. Sniff, sniff.
I had wasted a bunch of time uploading coupons to the sites. I loaded about 500 of the silly things. To be truthful, the main reason I did that was because I felt that if I had no sales I would blame the lack of sales on my unwillingness to add coupons.
I actually dislike coupons and most sales gimmicks. Sales gimmicks are designed to coax people into making irrational choices. When people make choices based on coupons rather than on an assessment of the product and their desires, then the person is making a worse choice. The world simply is not as good a place as it could be if people made better choices.
I do like some sales models. For example, the original Overstock.com model was to concentrate on selling overstocked and clearance products. A clearance sale is a sale run for the specific purpose of clearing out unsold merchandise.
The Deal of the Day model is one in which a marketer highlights a product a day. This model allows a store to focus attention on a given product and it provides value to a web site by providing some ever changing content. I like the loss leader concept since it helps people discover new products, but if one gets addicted to steal sites, they will end up with a basement full of garbage and a tapped out credit card.
Deep inside my belief is that people should spend less and spend a lot more time thinking about the full impact of their spending. I am really drawn to the "Local First" model. The business plan was to use the sales from large ecommerce shops to fund the creation of a community portal.
The business model is not working. The sites no longer pay their monthly hosting fee and I am at a loss about what to do.
My current thoughts are to sell direct ads to local merchants. I was thinking of selling ad space in blocks of 20,000 page impressions for $30. If I sold four such blocks a month, I would be able to continue paying my hosting fees.
The problem I have with this idea is that if I am not getting sales through the affiliate channel, I am left wondering if I am selling a product that is valuable to local merchants.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in buying ad blocks on the Community Color sites, feel free to contact me. I am currently running two sizes of ads. I used 728x90 leader board ads on content pages. I use box ads (either 300x250 or 336x280) on the events.
I place the leader boards at the top of relevant pages in the directory and on site reviews. I place the box ads on event pages. The events are viewed an average of 100 times. So, I would put a box ad on about 200 event listings. I am barely making the cost of hosting the site at this ad rate, but in these days of endless recession, what else is one to do?
If you are interested in buying local advertising in the Mountain West. I am selling advertising for cheap.
I had wasted a bunch of time uploading coupons to the sites. I loaded about 500 of the silly things. To be truthful, the main reason I did that was because I felt that if I had no sales I would blame the lack of sales on my unwillingness to add coupons.
I actually dislike coupons and most sales gimmicks. Sales gimmicks are designed to coax people into making irrational choices. When people make choices based on coupons rather than on an assessment of the product and their desires, then the person is making a worse choice. The world simply is not as good a place as it could be if people made better choices.
I do like some sales models. For example, the original Overstock.com model was to concentrate on selling overstocked and clearance products. A clearance sale is a sale run for the specific purpose of clearing out unsold merchandise.
The Deal of the Day model is one in which a marketer highlights a product a day. This model allows a store to focus attention on a given product and it provides value to a web site by providing some ever changing content. I like the loss leader concept since it helps people discover new products, but if one gets addicted to steal sites, they will end up with a basement full of garbage and a tapped out credit card.
Deep inside my belief is that people should spend less and spend a lot more time thinking about the full impact of their spending. I am really drawn to the "Local First" model. The business plan was to use the sales from large ecommerce shops to fund the creation of a community portal.
The business model is not working. The sites no longer pay their monthly hosting fee and I am at a loss about what to do.
My current thoughts are to sell direct ads to local merchants. I was thinking of selling ad space in blocks of 20,000 page impressions for $30. If I sold four such blocks a month, I would be able to continue paying my hosting fees.
The problem I have with this idea is that if I am not getting sales through the affiliate channel, I am left wondering if I am selling a product that is valuable to local merchants.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in buying ad blocks on the Community Color sites, feel free to contact me. I am currently running two sizes of ads. I used 728x90 leader board ads on content pages. I use box ads (either 300x250 or 336x280) on the events.
I place the leader boards at the top of relevant pages in the directory and on site reviews. I place the box ads on event pages. The events are viewed an average of 100 times. So, I would put a box ad on about 200 event listings. I am barely making the cost of hosting the site at this ad rate, but in these days of endless recession, what else is one to do?
If you are interested in buying local advertising in the Mountain West. I am selling advertising for cheap.
Monday, December 02, 2013
Cyber Monday
Black Friday was a bust. My take for the day was a whopping 69 cents.
Since the focus of Community Color is small local business, I was psyched for Small Business Saturday. My goal was to engage in a massive link-a-thon during the day, but I lost steam. In the link-a-thon, I just troll local web sites and post interesting links. So many small businesses have failed in these last few years that it's depressing.
But today is Cyber Monday. This year Cyber Monday is not only the start of a new week, it is the start of a new month. So, I am ready to plow ahead.
Cyber Monday is about ecommerce; So, I've infused my web site with Cyber Monday deals. I add the ads to the coupon site A Fountain Of Bargains (Deal of the Day Page). I then press a magic button which copies the ads to relevant areas in the Community Sites. This page breaks out deals by store.
My goal was to use affiliate marketing to fund community web sites. The community web sites provides 20,000 free links to community services, artists, blogs, churches, and small business.
In theory, Cyber Monday is the big day for online sales.
The idea behind Cyber Monday is that workers across America are sitting in their offices shopping online for bargains rather than doing their jobs.
This actually happened in the early days of the Internet when few people had internet access at home. People would see ads for a big sale; but would have to wait until Monday when they had access to the Internet.
Cyber Monday is such a cool name that web sites still try to make a big deal of the event by posting their biggest sales of the year.
This is the best day to do one's Christmas Shopping. Personally, I am hoping to have a good cyber-monday because I need money to pay my hosting fees. That's my problem, not yours.
Since the focus of Community Color is small local business, I was psyched for Small Business Saturday. My goal was to engage in a massive link-a-thon during the day, but I lost steam. In the link-a-thon, I just troll local web sites and post interesting links. So many small businesses have failed in these last few years that it's depressing.
But today is Cyber Monday. This year Cyber Monday is not only the start of a new week, it is the start of a new month. So, I am ready to plow ahead.
Cyber Monday is about ecommerce; So, I've infused my web site with Cyber Monday deals. I add the ads to the coupon site A Fountain Of Bargains (Deal of the Day Page). I then press a magic button which copies the ads to relevant areas in the Community Sites. This page breaks out deals by store.
My goal was to use affiliate marketing to fund community web sites. The community web sites provides 20,000 free links to community services, artists, blogs, churches, and small business.
In theory, Cyber Monday is the big day for online sales.
The idea behind Cyber Monday is that workers across America are sitting in their offices shopping online for bargains rather than doing their jobs.
This actually happened in the early days of the Internet when few people had internet access at home. People would see ads for a big sale; but would have to wait until Monday when they had access to the Internet.
Cyber Monday is such a cool name that web sites still try to make a big deal of the event by posting their biggest sales of the year.
This is the best day to do one's Christmas Shopping. Personally, I am hoping to have a good cyber-monday because I need money to pay my hosting fees. That's my problem, not yours.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Park City Directory
My Small Business Saturday Link-A-Thon is going slowly. A sustainable small business community grows organically. Organic growth is slow.
My first goal for the morning was to push my Park City directory over the thousand link threshold. This site has a great four letter domain: PCUT.net. When I go bankrupt, I hope to be able to sell the name.
Park City has developed into a luxury resort town. It is the home of the Sundance Film Festival (formerly the Utah Film Festival). The area houses three world class ski resorts: Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley and The Canyons.
One cool thing about Park City is that it has a huge Vacation Property Market. Investors buy vacation homes then rent them out to skiers for the resorts and starlets for the film festival and apres ski scene.
The Internet has facilitates short term property rentals.
Vacation Rentals only work in locations where rich people want to take a vacation.
The Web Site Corporate Housing By Owner out of Denver helps arrange short term rentals for business people. Real estate investors can buy properties and make a little money on the side renting to business travelers looking for alternatives to extended stay hotels.
Park City is also home to a large number of sporting goods companies seeking to have a top notch address for their firm. If I had a source of income, I would consider moving to Park City myself.
Anyway, I just pushed my Park City directory past the 1000 link mark. Through the years I've deleted 349 broken links. My guess is that about 5% of the current listings are broken.
My first goal for the morning was to push my Park City directory over the thousand link threshold. This site has a great four letter domain: PCUT.net. When I go bankrupt, I hope to be able to sell the name.
Park City has developed into a luxury resort town. It is the home of the Sundance Film Festival (formerly the Utah Film Festival). The area houses three world class ski resorts: Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley and The Canyons.
One cool thing about Park City is that it has a huge Vacation Property Market. Investors buy vacation homes then rent them out to skiers for the resorts and starlets for the film festival and apres ski scene.
The Internet has facilitates short term property rentals.
Vacation Rentals only work in locations where rich people want to take a vacation.
The Web Site Corporate Housing By Owner out of Denver helps arrange short term rentals for business people. Real estate investors can buy properties and make a little money on the side renting to business travelers looking for alternatives to extended stay hotels.
Park City is also home to a large number of sporting goods companies seeking to have a top notch address for their firm. If I had a source of income, I would consider moving to Park City myself.
Anyway, I just pushed my Park City directory past the 1000 link mark. Through the years I've deleted 349 broken links. My guess is that about 5% of the current listings are broken.
Small Business Saturday Link-A-Thon
It is Small Business Saturday. So, I figured I should do something to promote small businesses.
I believe that promoting small independent business is the first step to restoring the promise of America.
If done correctly a network of small businesses can create a resilient self-sustaining structure that draws people in and creates path to prosperity for a large number of people.
The political class (progressives and conservatives alike) prefer top down hierarchical structures. Progressives and Conservatives simply disgree about who should be at the top of the hierachy.
Top down hierachical structures tend to be brittle and rife of systematical faults that can tear communities apart.
Even worse, the political minds that favor big hierarchical structures to freedom have an ugly tendency to kick people down and create massive populations of poverty and dependency.
A political hierarchy, by its very nature has limited opportunity. There's only a few worthwhile slots at the top while the rest of the people are pushed down.
A distributed system of small business has unlimited potential because all of the people in the distributed network are helping each other up.
The great European powers of old (The Monarchy) had formed into a stagnant hierarchical structure.
The great promise of America was that the colonies were developing into the framework of a distributed network. This system created widespread prosperity.
The political class (progressives and conservatives alike) prefer a hierarchical structure with politicians at the very top.
I am fiercely independent and fight this tendency to hierarchies whereever I find them because I know that a distributed network is more resilient and sustainable.
So, Small Business Satrurday is one of these days that I cherish.
I believe that the first step to restoring the promise of America is to promote independent thinking and small business.
Putting my money where my mouth is, I created a collection of community directories under the brand of Community Color. This one man project developes directories for towns in the mountain west. The directories currently have 27,169 active links. I've deleted 11,945 broken links through the years.
The goal is to link to every site I can find. This includes artists, photographers, bloggers, churches, big business and especially small business.
My biggest problem is there is no local interst in this project. In twelve years of developing this program, I have not had a single person in Salt Lake City, where I live, express interest in the project (beyond salesmen who were interested in selling me a service).
Utah is under the foot of an oppressive political hierarchical structure. The Tower of Power is on the corner of Temple and State.
I thought about engaging in a link drive today. But that idea is spammy and is unlikely to result in anything.
Instead I think I will simply engage in a link-a-thon.
Contacting people and asking permission to link is tedious. So, the Link-A-Thon will be just me trolling web pages and linking to every site I can find. While no-one is interested in linking to me, I will link to them.
Here's thes starting gate. To date, I've listed 39,114 links, I've pulled 11,945 dead links leaving 27169 live links. I've made 4,658 link review pages. Here is a break down of links by community ordered by total traffic.
If there are sites you want me to consider or sites you want removed from the directory, please use the contact form.
I believe that promoting small independent business is the first step to restoring the promise of America.
If done correctly a network of small businesses can create a resilient self-sustaining structure that draws people in and creates path to prosperity for a large number of people.
The political class (progressives and conservatives alike) prefer top down hierarchical structures. Progressives and Conservatives simply disgree about who should be at the top of the hierachy.
Top down hierachical structures tend to be brittle and rife of systematical faults that can tear communities apart.
Even worse, the political minds that favor big hierarchical structures to freedom have an ugly tendency to kick people down and create massive populations of poverty and dependency.
A political hierarchy, by its very nature has limited opportunity. There's only a few worthwhile slots at the top while the rest of the people are pushed down.
A distributed system of small business has unlimited potential because all of the people in the distributed network are helping each other up.
The great European powers of old (The Monarchy) had formed into a stagnant hierarchical structure.
The great promise of America was that the colonies were developing into the framework of a distributed network. This system created widespread prosperity.
The political class (progressives and conservatives alike) prefer a hierarchical structure with politicians at the very top.
I am fiercely independent and fight this tendency to hierarchies whereever I find them because I know that a distributed network is more resilient and sustainable.
So, Small Business Satrurday is one of these days that I cherish.
I believe that the first step to restoring the promise of America is to promote independent thinking and small business.
Putting my money where my mouth is, I created a collection of community directories under the brand of Community Color. This one man project developes directories for towns in the mountain west. The directories currently have 27,169 active links. I've deleted 11,945 broken links through the years.
The goal is to link to every site I can find. This includes artists, photographers, bloggers, churches, big business and especially small business.
My biggest problem is there is no local interst in this project. In twelve years of developing this program, I have not had a single person in Salt Lake City, where I live, express interest in the project (beyond salesmen who were interested in selling me a service).
Utah is under the foot of an oppressive political hierarchical structure. The Tower of Power is on the corner of Temple and State.
I thought about engaging in a link drive today. But that idea is spammy and is unlikely to result in anything.
Instead I think I will simply engage in a link-a-thon.
Contacting people and asking permission to link is tedious. So, the Link-A-Thon will be just me trolling web pages and linking to every site I can find. While no-one is interested in linking to me, I will link to them.
Here's thes starting gate. To date, I've listed 39,114 links, I've pulled 11,945 dead links leaving 27169 live links. I've made 4,658 link review pages. Here is a break down of links by community ordered by total traffic.
If there are sites you want me to consider or sites you want removed from the directory, please use the contact form.
| Link Summary by Community | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community | Categories | Links | Distinct Domains |
Page Views |
| Salt Lake Sites | 327 | 5874 | 5248 | 3876777 |
| Provo Utah | 141 | 1861 | 1558 | 1243874 |
| Denver Color | 242 | 3736 | 3309 | 898799 |
| Grand Junction | 84 | 911 | 781 | 675113 |
| Missoula Websites | 78 | 756 | 642 | 501299 |
| Park City, Utah | 71 | 940 | 840 | 442143 |
| Saint George | 71 | 697 | 555 | 345084 |
| Moab | 43 | 431 | 378 | 321292 |
| Ogden, Utah | 77 | 784 | 632 | 296170 |
| Cedar City | 43 | 326 | 269 | 268166 |
| Cheyenne, Wyoming. US | 56 | 416 | 323 | 257993 |
| Boulder Color | 84 | 1025 | 826 | 244320 |
| Colorado Springs Color | 91 | 959 | 753 | 229998 |
| Tooele | 34 | 207 | 176 | 214624 |
| Vernal, Utah. US | 35 | 211 | 182 | 214900 |
| Logan Utah | 46 | 460 | 376 | 186830 |
| Fort Collins Color | 68 | 695 | 543 | 165137 |
| Wasatch Color | 23 | 162 | 138 | 138759 |
| Durango Colorado | 36 | 395 | 355 | 124250 |
| Glenwood Springs Color | 33 | 197 | 160 | 112982 |
| Carbon County Color | 27 | 125 | 101 | 109293 |
| Pueblo Color | 37 | 209 | 141 | 70620 |
| Community Color | 9 | 48 | 45 | 50869 |
| Phoenix Color | 81 | 1002 | 791 | 49676 |
| Laramie, Wyoming | 26 | 111 | 92 | 36121 |
| Pima County | 46 | 419 | 307 | 29595 |
| Utah Color | 30 | 329 | 203 | 27256 |
| Mohave County | 18 | 92 | 64 | 21057 |
| Navajo County | 17 | 61 | 48 | 18921 |
| Coconino County | 24 | 143 | 95 | 17279 |
| Arizona Color | 21 | 192 | 154 | 16006 |
| Yavapai County | 21 | 144 | 111 | 15112 |
| Cochise County | 18 | 94 | 75 | 14960 |
| Pinal County | 22 | 112 | 80 | 14653 |
| Yuma County | 19 | 109 | 76 | 13152 |
| Gila County | 14 | 37 | 32 | 12397 |
| Apache County | 9 | 22 | 18 | 12011 |
| Colorado Color | 17 | 145 | 92 | 11307 |
| Graham County | 10 | 29 | 25 | 10521 |
| La Paz County | 9 | 25 | 21 | 10189 |
| Santa Cruz County | 11 | 34 | 27 | 9769 |
| Greenlee County | 6 | 11 | 8 | 9315 |
| Steamboat Springs Me | 6 | 10 | 9 | 570 |
Starting figures
Events Reviews Links Removed Active
Start 16,386 4,658 39,114 11,945 27,169
End
Links: 39114 27169 11945
Friday, November 29, 2013
Small Business Saturday
I find Black Friday frustrating. I posted a ton of coupons and sales for the event, but I just don't get any Black Friday traffic.
My big hope is a new marketing event called "Small Business Saturday."
Small Business Saturday was coined by American Express in 2010.
The fact that "Small Business Friday" was invented by a huge financial firm is one of those ironies of business.
As a huge financial firm selling merchant services, American Express simply must find ways present itself as friendly to small business.
While the origins of Small Business Saturday is questionable, it is a good idea. Come on. Mothers Day was the creation of Macys.. The fact that an store set on world domination created Mothers' Day does not change the fact that we all love our moms.
Small Business Saturday is a great idea.
During the holiday season there is a great deal of attention on Black Friday Sales held by big box stores and on the Cyber Monday sales held online.
This marketing attention leaves out all of the small Main Street merchants and small businesses which are the bedrock of the community.
Declaring the Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday as "Small Business Saturday" focuses some attention on the small merchants.
I realized that the Internet age was harming small business long before the Small Business Saturday. Way back in 2000 I started creating local directories to help focus some on small businesses. The first directories were for towns in Idaho and Montana. I gave away all but Missoula.WS.
I moved back to Salt Lake for the 2002 Winter Games.
I happen to be a third generation native of Colorado, and decided to make directories for my home town of Denver (I grew up in Lakewood) and Boulder County (We lived in Longmont for a bit).
The goal of the Community Color directories is simply to list every web site I can find for select towns in the Mountain West. I don't limit myself to business. I start by listing art sites and include blogs, campaign sites, church web sites, community resources and what not.
The goal of this project is to show how the diversity of small communities is reflected online.
To fund the project, I do the following: If a web site has an affiliate program. I join the affiliate program and post the affiliate links. I also joined the affiliate programs of big stores like Walmart and Target.
Big box stores are still part of the community too. They have employees and the stores support community functions.
The affiliate links go through a redirect program lnk.php which I block in robots.txt. The affiliate links get a worse treatment than straight links for small business.
My hope was that the affiliate links would provide enough income to sustain the community directories. This worked up until two years ago when Google set its eyes on dominating local search traffic. Such is life.
My big hope this holiday is that I might attract some attention this Small Business Saturday.
Essentially, I have two collections of local directories. The Utah Color directories focus on the Beehive State. The Colorado Directories focus on the Mile High State. I recently purchased the domain ArizonaColor.us and I have directories for Cheyenne and Laramie.
The directories contain some 27,000 active links. The links include blogs, restaurants, churches, artists, musicians, dancers, schools and small businesses. Through the years, I've pulled 11,000 broken links. Yes, about a third of the web sites I've listed have gone dark. It is really sad.
My hope for this weekend is that people living in the Mountain West who are interested in supporting the small businesses in their community will visit the web site for their town and might consider linking to the site or tweeting about it.
The web sites are friendly to the local community. I list every site I can find. I list Democrats and Republicans, I list small business and big business. I list artists and athletes. The only sites I avoid are porn sites and hate sites (well if you are a Democrat who hates Republicans or a Republican who hates Democrats, that's okay 'cause that's the just the way partisan politics works).
Some people are really upset at the fact that I list affiliate links. I think this is a good funding source. These programs obviously have a marketing budget. I use that marketing budget to provide free local listings for community services, artists and smaller businesses without such a budget.
Linking to the local directory helps support web sites from the local community. I posted Black Friday and Cyber Monday coupons on a coupon site called aFountainOfBargains.com. This is just a way to fund the local sites.
My big hope is a new marketing event called "Small Business Saturday."
Small Business Saturday was coined by American Express in 2010.
The fact that "Small Business Friday" was invented by a huge financial firm is one of those ironies of business.
As a huge financial firm selling merchant services, American Express simply must find ways present itself as friendly to small business.
While the origins of Small Business Saturday is questionable, it is a good idea. Come on. Mothers Day was the creation of Macys.. The fact that an store set on world domination created Mothers' Day does not change the fact that we all love our moms.
Small Business Saturday is a great idea.
During the holiday season there is a great deal of attention on Black Friday Sales held by big box stores and on the Cyber Monday sales held online.
This marketing attention leaves out all of the small Main Street merchants and small businesses which are the bedrock of the community.
Declaring the Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday as "Small Business Saturday" focuses some attention on the small merchants.
I realized that the Internet age was harming small business long before the Small Business Saturday. Way back in 2000 I started creating local directories to help focus some on small businesses. The first directories were for towns in Idaho and Montana. I gave away all but Missoula.WS.
I moved back to Salt Lake for the 2002 Winter Games.
I happen to be a third generation native of Colorado, and decided to make directories for my home town of Denver (I grew up in Lakewood) and Boulder County (We lived in Longmont for a bit).
The goal of the Community Color directories is simply to list every web site I can find for select towns in the Mountain West. I don't limit myself to business. I start by listing art sites and include blogs, campaign sites, church web sites, community resources and what not.
The goal of this project is to show how the diversity of small communities is reflected online.
To fund the project, I do the following: If a web site has an affiliate program. I join the affiliate program and post the affiliate links. I also joined the affiliate programs of big stores like Walmart and Target.
Big box stores are still part of the community too. They have employees and the stores support community functions.
The affiliate links go through a redirect program lnk.php which I block in robots.txt. The affiliate links get a worse treatment than straight links for small business.
My hope was that the affiliate links would provide enough income to sustain the community directories. This worked up until two years ago when Google set its eyes on dominating local search traffic. Such is life.
My big hope this holiday is that I might attract some attention this Small Business Saturday.
Essentially, I have two collections of local directories. The Utah Color directories focus on the Beehive State. The Colorado Directories focus on the Mile High State. I recently purchased the domain ArizonaColor.us and I have directories for Cheyenne and Laramie.
The directories contain some 27,000 active links. The links include blogs, restaurants, churches, artists, musicians, dancers, schools and small businesses. Through the years, I've pulled 11,000 broken links. Yes, about a third of the web sites I've listed have gone dark. It is really sad.
My hope for this weekend is that people living in the Mountain West who are interested in supporting the small businesses in their community will visit the web site for their town and might consider linking to the site or tweeting about it.
The web sites are friendly to the local community. I list every site I can find. I list Democrats and Republicans, I list small business and big business. I list artists and athletes. The only sites I avoid are porn sites and hate sites (well if you are a Democrat who hates Republicans or a Republican who hates Democrats, that's okay 'cause that's the just the way partisan politics works).
Some people are really upset at the fact that I list affiliate links. I think this is a good funding source. These programs obviously have a marketing budget. I use that marketing budget to provide free local listings for community services, artists and smaller businesses without such a budget.
Linking to the local directory helps support web sites from the local community. I posted Black Friday and Cyber Monday coupons on a coupon site called aFountainOfBargains.com. This is just a way to fund the local sites.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Halloween Links
It's official, the community directory Boulder Color just passed the 1000 active link mark. Boulder Color is a human edited directory. I looked at each of the sites to make sure they are either from Boulder or have something to do with Boulder County Colorado.
The Internet has huge problems with broken links. I check each once every other year and pull out broken links. So far, I've deleted 236 broken links from the site. That's 23% of the links have gone broken over the years. My guess is that about 5% of the links in the directory are broken. Sorry about that.
I am currently working on updating the Halloween directories. I have Halloween directories for Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Provo. The Halloween directories list over 100 activities and haunted houses and over 50 local costume shops. These directories are the most complete list of Halloween related links for the selected communities.
I was going to make a Halloween Directory for each town, but I realized that many attractions like haunted houses and corn mazes attract people from a larger region than just a town. So, Boulder Halloween links are in the Denver Directory and Ogden links in the Salt Lake Directory.
Speaking of Boulder, apparently the naked pumpkin run has been cancelled. If you want to run around naked with a pumpkin on your head, it's no skin off my teeth. Just don't come crying to me when you spend the night in the Boulder County jail.
Have a Happy Halloween!
BTW, if you have a link to an event or Halloween attraction not listed in the directories, you can drop me a line on my Contact Form.
The Internet has huge problems with broken links. I check each once every other year and pull out broken links. So far, I've deleted 236 broken links from the site. That's 23% of the links have gone broken over the years. My guess is that about 5% of the links in the directory are broken. Sorry about that.
I am currently working on updating the Halloween directories. I have Halloween directories for Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Provo. The Halloween directories list over 100 activities and haunted houses and over 50 local costume shops. These directories are the most complete list of Halloween related links for the selected communities.
I was going to make a Halloween Directory for each town, but I realized that many attractions like haunted houses and corn mazes attract people from a larger region than just a town. So, Boulder Halloween links are in the Denver Directory and Ogden links in the Salt Lake Directory.
Speaking of Boulder, apparently the naked pumpkin run has been cancelled. If you want to run around naked with a pumpkin on your head, it's no skin off my teeth. Just don't come crying to me when you spend the night in the Boulder County jail.
Have a Happy Halloween!
BTW, if you have a link to an event or Halloween attraction not listed in the directories, you can drop me a line on my Contact Form.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Reeling from Anti-Competitive Actions at Google
I maintain a collection of independent directories for the mountain west (Durango, Moab, Salt Lake City, etc). This is a labor intensive activity. The directories contain some 26451 active links. Through the years, I've removed 11,000 broken links.
This is a manually edited directory. I actually looked at every single one of these pages. I manually check each site every two years to see if the site is still up.
Removing broken links is time consuming. I actually look at each site to verify the link is broken. Often I will look at a site twice (a month apart) to see that it wasn't just down temporarily.
The goal of the project is to help people find small local businesses. If you go to the sites, you will see links to blogs, churches, foot races, community services, stores and businesses. I list anything I can find with local information.
My hope to fund the directory was with affiliate links. Unfortunately, this has proven a bust. If you have a parasite on your computer, the parasite will steal any commission that I make from the site. The affiliate links no longer pay the hosting cost of the sites.
I allow people to submit links. I was getting a ton of spam entries (places not relevant to the directory). So, I started asking people with a marketing budget to pay a one time $10.00 listing fee. Asking a listing fee reduced spam and helps pay hosting fees. The sites are hosted on a cloud account from WestHost. The hosting fees are $50 a month. I am paying about $360 a year for domain names and about $26 a month for internet access. My costs are about $100 a month.
For awhile I was getting six listing fees a month which paid half of my web hosting costs.
Last year, Google announced that they would penalize any web site that bought listing services from any company except Google. BTW, Google makes its billions by selling web site listings. You pay for inclusion at the top of the web page. If you have a high resolution monitor, you will notice that there is an almost imperceptible shading around the top listings on a page. This very light shading separates the paid listings from the free listings.
Long ago, Google had about 3 paid listings for every 10 free listings. This meant that they were giving away a great deal of free traffic.
A whole industry called "Search Engine Optimization" formed around getting the free listings.
In recent years, the number of free listings fell to about 5 for 10 links on popular search terms. Googling "Toaster Oven" I see there are 10 free listings and 9 paid listings on the page. There is a big link to Google Shopping. 100% of the links on Google Shopping are paid listings.
For the last two years, Google has been on a major campaign telling companies that buying links from any company other than Google is bad and they admonished "SEO experts" to remove their web sites from any company that accepts payment for listing.
The end result of this action was an immediate 80% drop in paid listings on my site. The thing that really upsets me is that I keep getting emails from small businesses demanding that I remove their listing from my site.
My goal was to provide a large list of local links. Being forced to remove sites because of the anti-competitive actions of Google diminishes the quality of my directories.
Removing links is actually more labor intensive than adding the links because I have to go through the task of verifying that the removal request is real. This can take an unpaid hour per request.
The problem here is with authentication. If I were into black hat SEO, I would research the back-links of my competitors. I would then send out emails to all the back links demanding removal of my competitors' links. If I can reduce the inbound links to my competitors, then my site would rise in the listings. Capiche?
Quite frankly, I hate SEO. SEO says the search engines are more important than the content of pages.
When I contact people to verify removal requests. I am often deluged with a hateful torrent from web site owners who have convinced themselves that my linking to their web site decreased the free traffic that they used to receive from Google.
I am here to tell you the truth: The free traffic you used to receive from Google was manna from heaven. The primary reason that you stopped receiving free traffic from Google is that Google has increased the ratio of paid links to free links on search results. The second reason is that the number of web pages grows exponentially. If your site is not growing exponentially, then your free traffic will diminish.
Personally, I think people were foolish to put so much faith in free traffic from Google. A better approach is to be involved in the community and to support smaller sites engaged in organic linking ... like the Community Color project.
This is a manually edited directory. I actually looked at every single one of these pages. I manually check each site every two years to see if the site is still up.
Removing broken links is time consuming. I actually look at each site to verify the link is broken. Often I will look at a site twice (a month apart) to see that it wasn't just down temporarily.
The goal of the project is to help people find small local businesses. If you go to the sites, you will see links to blogs, churches, foot races, community services, stores and businesses. I list anything I can find with local information.
My hope to fund the directory was with affiliate links. Unfortunately, this has proven a bust. If you have a parasite on your computer, the parasite will steal any commission that I make from the site. The affiliate links no longer pay the hosting cost of the sites.
I allow people to submit links. I was getting a ton of spam entries (places not relevant to the directory). So, I started asking people with a marketing budget to pay a one time $10.00 listing fee. Asking a listing fee reduced spam and helps pay hosting fees. The sites are hosted on a cloud account from WestHost. The hosting fees are $50 a month. I am paying about $360 a year for domain names and about $26 a month for internet access. My costs are about $100 a month.
For awhile I was getting six listing fees a month which paid half of my web hosting costs.
Last year, Google announced that they would penalize any web site that bought listing services from any company except Google. BTW, Google makes its billions by selling web site listings. You pay for inclusion at the top of the web page. If you have a high resolution monitor, you will notice that there is an almost imperceptible shading around the top listings on a page. This very light shading separates the paid listings from the free listings.
Long ago, Google had about 3 paid listings for every 10 free listings. This meant that they were giving away a great deal of free traffic.
A whole industry called "Search Engine Optimization" formed around getting the free listings.
In recent years, the number of free listings fell to about 5 for 10 links on popular search terms. Googling "Toaster Oven" I see there are 10 free listings and 9 paid listings on the page. There is a big link to Google Shopping. 100% of the links on Google Shopping are paid listings.
For the last two years, Google has been on a major campaign telling companies that buying links from any company other than Google is bad and they admonished "SEO experts" to remove their web sites from any company that accepts payment for listing.
The end result of this action was an immediate 80% drop in paid listings on my site. The thing that really upsets me is that I keep getting emails from small businesses demanding that I remove their listing from my site.
My goal was to provide a large list of local links. Being forced to remove sites because of the anti-competitive actions of Google diminishes the quality of my directories.
Removing links is actually more labor intensive than adding the links because I have to go through the task of verifying that the removal request is real. This can take an unpaid hour per request.
The problem here is with authentication. If I were into black hat SEO, I would research the back-links of my competitors. I would then send out emails to all the back links demanding removal of my competitors' links. If I can reduce the inbound links to my competitors, then my site would rise in the listings. Capiche?
Quite frankly, I hate SEO. SEO says the search engines are more important than the content of pages.
When I contact people to verify removal requests. I am often deluged with a hateful torrent from web site owners who have convinced themselves that my linking to their web site decreased the free traffic that they used to receive from Google.
I am here to tell you the truth: The free traffic you used to receive from Google was manna from heaven. The primary reason that you stopped receiving free traffic from Google is that Google has increased the ratio of paid links to free links on search results. The second reason is that the number of web pages grows exponentially. If your site is not growing exponentially, then your free traffic will diminish.
Personally, I think people were foolish to put so much faith in free traffic from Google. A better approach is to be involved in the community and to support smaller sites engaged in organic linking ... like the Community Color project.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Hack Attack
My web host was hacked and infected with an injection script.
The injection script added a snippet of javascript to every file in my account that tried to load a virus.
Yesterday, I had my webhost disable all of my accounts; so that I could repair all of the files. I finished repairing the files some time ago and am hoping to bring the sites back online shortly.
Unfortunately, since my host was infected, the tech support department is inundated with calls.
Since it was the host attacked and not my personal account, I don't know if the vulnerability that allowed the injection script was fixed or not.
I apologize for any inconvenience the site being down may have caused.
The injection script added a snippet of javascript to every file in my account that tried to load a virus.
Yesterday, I had my webhost disable all of my accounts; so that I could repair all of the files. I finished repairing the files some time ago and am hoping to bring the sites back online shortly.
Unfortunately, since my host was infected, the tech support department is inundated with calls.
Since it was the host attacked and not my personal account, I don't know if the vulnerability that allowed the injection script was fixed or not.
I apologize for any inconvenience the site being down may have caused.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Domain Auctions
Hi all. I am auctioning two domains on GoDaddy. The auction will end early next week. The domains are LinksAlive.com and BaitShop.us.
When I started developing web sites, I did so with the idea that domain names held some value. But it is foolish to think something has value until you prove that you can sell it.
I began researching the game of domaining. The term domaining refers to the business of buying and selling domain names.
Domain names are not a liquid asset. Yes, people who really want a particular domain name might pay big dollars for the name, but for the most part, selling a domain is a long and tedious process. It takes from months to years to find a buyer for a domain. Most domains sell in the $30 region.
When investigating a new market, I find it best to buy an item before trying to sell one.
Last year, I realized that I had never actually bought or sold any domain names in the domain aftermarket.; So, I visited Bido and followed the auctions for several days. I bid on the domain BaitShop.US because I thought it was a good general name that would be easy to resell.
The domain LinksAlive.com was given to me a few years back after a conversation I had about the importance of link development. I used it for a general directory; So I decided to sell it.
My two auctions will end next week on April 15 and April 16.
When I started developing web sites, I did so with the idea that domain names held some value. But it is foolish to think something has value until you prove that you can sell it.
I began researching the game of domaining. The term domaining refers to the business of buying and selling domain names.
Domain names are not a liquid asset. Yes, people who really want a particular domain name might pay big dollars for the name, but for the most part, selling a domain is a long and tedious process. It takes from months to years to find a buyer for a domain. Most domains sell in the $30 region.
When investigating a new market, I find it best to buy an item before trying to sell one.
Last year, I realized that I had never actually bought or sold any domain names in the domain aftermarket.; So, I visited Bido and followed the auctions for several days. I bid on the domain BaitShop.US because I thought it was a good general name that would be easy to resell.
The domain LinksAlive.com was given to me a few years back after a conversation I had about the importance of link development. I used it for a general directory; So I decided to sell it.
My two auctions will end next week on April 15 and April 16.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Part Time Business Opportunity
It is beautiful out today.
Wouldn't it be great to own a business that allowed you to engage in recreation on beautiful days like today?
If you enjoy social networking and would like to a free business franchise in the recreation industry that lets you travel; please contact me, because I have a deal for you.
The opportunity is to own a franchise in a new social networking sport. Imagine something that combines the best elements of Zumba Fitness, baseball and Twitter.
The first people who respond to this message will get a free business franchise. You will help define the game and help develop the franchising system.
The start up costs for your franchise are very small. The costs of holding a game would be comparable to hosting a volleyball game. Let's see, you need to own a couple balls that cost a dollar a piece. You might need to pay a fee to use a baseball diamond at a park ... that's it.
There is a potentially lucrative money making opportunity involved.
Starting this business would be a fun summer job that would look great on your resume. If you are under eighteen, you will need consent from your guardian to participate.
The program can be used as a fundraising activity. If you are with a non-profit group or church and wish to run a community based fund raising event, contact me as well.
The Zumba Dance Party is a good comparison to this program. Basically, you would get people together to engage in a recreational activity. The game could take place at a local baseball diamond, dance studio, gym or church.
Like Zuimba, this franchise can be established as part of a larger business. For example, if you owned a gym or dance studio and wanted to bring in extra clients, you could start a franchise and I will feed customers to your business.
If you would like to run a booth at a farmers market, you could contact me and set up a franchise at that farmers market.
If your group is hosting a community festival and would like to bring in more people to your festival and make money, you could add a franchise to that effort.
The franchise is a social networking sport. Participants will have the opportunity to travel to destinations of their choice. Note, if you owned a baseball franchise, you would travel to play games at other franchises.
Unlike Twitter, which consumes a lot of time with little financial benefit, There is an income opportunity associated with this opportunity. The income can be used to raise funds for a charity.
I live in Utah. Every time I mention Utah, I am asked two questions: "Is this another MLM scam?" and "Are you Mormon?" The answers are: "The game involves a social network. There is a hierarchical component to the network. There is not an MLM compensation component of the program."
The answer to the second question is "No, I am not LDS. The game is open to all people regardless of race, gender, marital status, nationality, political or religious affiliations."
Quite frankly, the game would be a really fun activity for a church group. Since this is a social networking sport, the game has the requirement that franchise owners cannot discriminate against people for race, religion, gender or age. If a ward or church group opens a franchise, the group must allow people outside their church to participate in games.
I am interested in finding people who either live in or are planning on traveling to Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho or Nevada in the upcoming months.
For example, if you were planning a trip to Moab and are willing to talk shop, I might travel down to Moab to give you scoop on the business. If you want to start a franchise in California, Texas or Vermont, contact me, but you will need to plan on traveling out west in the next month or two.
The first step to getting your free business franchise is to contact me. I don't bite (hard).
Wouldn't it be great to own a business that allowed you to engage in recreation on beautiful days like today?
If you enjoy social networking and would like to a free business franchise in the recreation industry that lets you travel; please contact me, because I have a deal for you.
The opportunity is to own a franchise in a new social networking sport. Imagine something that combines the best elements of Zumba Fitness, baseball and Twitter.
The first people who respond to this message will get a free business franchise. You will help define the game and help develop the franchising system.
The start up costs for your franchise are very small. The costs of holding a game would be comparable to hosting a volleyball game. Let's see, you need to own a couple balls that cost a dollar a piece. You might need to pay a fee to use a baseball diamond at a park ... that's it.
There is a potentially lucrative money making opportunity involved.
Starting this business would be a fun summer job that would look great on your resume. If you are under eighteen, you will need consent from your guardian to participate.
The program can be used as a fundraising activity. If you are with a non-profit group or church and wish to run a community based fund raising event, contact me as well.
The Zumba Dance Party is a good comparison to this program. Basically, you would get people together to engage in a recreational activity. The game could take place at a local baseball diamond, dance studio, gym or church.
Like Zuimba, this franchise can be established as part of a larger business. For example, if you owned a gym or dance studio and wanted to bring in extra clients, you could start a franchise and I will feed customers to your business.
If you would like to run a booth at a farmers market, you could contact me and set up a franchise at that farmers market.
If your group is hosting a community festival and would like to bring in more people to your festival and make money, you could add a franchise to that effort.
The franchise is a social networking sport. Participants will have the opportunity to travel to destinations of their choice. Note, if you owned a baseball franchise, you would travel to play games at other franchises.
Unlike Twitter, which consumes a lot of time with little financial benefit, There is an income opportunity associated with this opportunity. The income can be used to raise funds for a charity.
I live in Utah. Every time I mention Utah, I am asked two questions: "Is this another MLM scam?" and "Are you Mormon?" The answers are: "The game involves a social network. There is a hierarchical component to the network. There is not an MLM compensation component of the program."
The answer to the second question is "No, I am not LDS. The game is open to all people regardless of race, gender, marital status, nationality, political or religious affiliations."
Quite frankly, the game would be a really fun activity for a church group. Since this is a social networking sport, the game has the requirement that franchise owners cannot discriminate against people for race, religion, gender or age. If a ward or church group opens a franchise, the group must allow people outside their church to participate in games.
I am interested in finding people who either live in or are planning on traveling to Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho or Nevada in the upcoming months.
For example, if you were planning a trip to Moab and are willing to talk shop, I might travel down to Moab to give you scoop on the business. If you want to start a franchise in California, Texas or Vermont, contact me, but you will need to plan on traveling out west in the next month or two.
The first step to getting your free business franchise is to contact me. I don't bite (hard).
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
ProtoPhoto Maps
I added a mapping feature to Protophoto.com. The feature uses static maps generated by Open Street Map. If I understand the license correctly, the data in Open Street Maps is controlled by the Open Database License. PNG images generated from the data are considered public domain ... which you can use with attribution.
I only have a few sample maps up. My basic idea is that, if I visit an area, I will record the GPS image of the objects in the photos. I will then create a PNG map of the area and plot the points on the map.
The other big change I made to the site is that I moved the navigation bar from below the picture to a "hidden division" in the navigation bar at the top of the page.
So, if you go to the picture Virtual Office and clicked on the "navigate" link, you will see a box that lets you go the the next photo in the collection. Just below that is a link that brings you to a map of Downtown Holladay. The picture is at point #24. You will notice that when you click on the map, point #24 has a bigger marker than the other points on the map.
I've only created a small number of maps and have added GPS coordinates to a small set of points within the maps. Hopefully the maps will become compelling with time. Right now there are only five maps with sixty points displayed on the maps.
The map titled Salt Lake Valley is a map of the maps I've created in Salt Lake.
I only have a few sample maps up. My basic idea is that, if I visit an area, I will record the GPS image of the objects in the photos. I will then create a PNG map of the area and plot the points on the map.
The other big change I made to the site is that I moved the navigation bar from below the picture to a "hidden division" in the navigation bar at the top of the page.
So, if you go to the picture Virtual Office and clicked on the "navigate" link, you will see a box that lets you go the the next photo in the collection. Just below that is a link that brings you to a map of Downtown Holladay. The picture is at point #24. You will notice that when you click on the map, point #24 has a bigger marker than the other points on the map.
I've only created a small number of maps and have added GPS coordinates to a small set of points within the maps. Hopefully the maps will become compelling with time. Right now there are only five maps with sixty points displayed on the maps.
The map titled Salt Lake Valley is a map of the maps I've created in Salt Lake.
Saturday, March 09, 2013
sTumbling Around
Tumblr allows their program to run under the URL given by end users.
So I decided to change the tumblr URL UtahColor.tumblr.com to tumblr.UtahColor.com. I changed ArizonaColor.tumblr.com to tumblr.ArizonaColor.US (the TLD is .US).
You will notice I have quite a few subdomains on ArizonaColor.us. Phoenix.ArizonaColor.us is a directory for Maricopa county, Pima.ArizonaColor.us is a subdirectory for Tucson and so on.
Developing multiple subdomains for an account makes sense from both a development and organizational perspective.
Tumblr does a great job domain forwarding links from the old name to the new name. The change ended up creating a few hours of downtime during the DNS propagation, but I am quite pleased with the result.
So I decided to change the tumblr URL UtahColor.tumblr.com to tumblr.UtahColor.com. I changed ArizonaColor.tumblr.com to tumblr.ArizonaColor.US (the TLD is .US).
You will notice I have quite a few subdomains on ArizonaColor.us. Phoenix.ArizonaColor.us is a directory for Maricopa county, Pima.ArizonaColor.us is a subdirectory for Tucson and so on.
Developing multiple subdomains for an account makes sense from both a development and organizational perspective.
Tumblr does a great job domain forwarding links from the old name to the new name. The change ended up creating a few hours of downtime during the DNS propagation, but I am quite pleased with the result.
Friday, March 01, 2013
Rounded Image
To help create a well rounded image for my web sites, I started running pictures through a circular filter and uploading them to twitpic. The images will also show up on my Twitter Stream. The twitpic widget shows the items I've uploaded so far:
Saturday, February 09, 2013
Open to Sharing on Tumblr
I've been playing with the photo sharing site Tumblr. I decide to open the pictures on ProtoPhoto to sharing.
Here is how the sharing works. There is a "share" option on each photo. The first box lets you group a small thumbnail URL for the picture.
The second box lets you share on Tumblr. If a photo has already been shared on Tumblr, the page shows a link to the Tumblr post. Click on that link and you can reblog the post.
If it hasn't been shared on tumbr, there is a share button. Press that button. The link will open a new window for a tumblr page. Enter your blog post. When complete, you can go back to the getCode page and enter the URL for your Tumblr post.
This page is open to the public ... and I aggressively delete spam. I will remove this option when I get too much spam (sorry, I've had to remove most of the interactive features from my sites due to spam).
Here is how the sharing works. There is a "share" option on each photo. The first box lets you group a small thumbnail URL for the picture.
The second box lets you share on Tumblr. If a photo has already been shared on Tumblr, the page shows a link to the Tumblr post. Click on that link and you can reblog the post.
If it hasn't been shared on tumbr, there is a share button. Press that button. The link will open a new window for a tumblr page. Enter your blog post. When complete, you can go back to the getCode page and enter the URL for your Tumblr post.
This page is open to the public ... and I aggressively delete spam. I will remove this option when I get too much spam (sorry, I've had to remove most of the interactive features from my sites due to spam).
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Google Maps V3
I am busily changing links from linksalive.com to iRivers.com. I learned the hard way that you should never let someone else choose the name for your company.
Google had deprecated the maps API I was using; so I couldn't just move the maps page and had to create a new version of the maps for the venues page. The version 3 maps look much better than version 1.
Truthfully, I wish I could just find a place to buy map tiles to create my own map; rather than creating a dependency on a third party.
On the tumblr front, since I am created galleries of Utah and Arizona, I decided to expand and created even more sites:
Friday, February 01, 2013
Moving to Internet Rivers
I confess. I never was fond of the domain name "LinksAlive.com." The name was chosen for me.
The business plan I wanted to execute was to build Community centered sites. These sites would feed a larger site that had a general purpose theme. I wanted to concentrate on the community sites. The person who was working on the commercial site chose the name.
The goal of my project is to explore the ways in which different communities are connect. After my initial partnership broke up, I bought the domain name iRivers.com. I like to call the domain Internet Rivers.
I love the name because we are all connected by rivers.
I am currently in the process of moving all the content from LinksAlive.com to iRivers.com. I will hold a Bido auction for the name linksalive.com. There are thousands of links to this site and it currently gets several thousand hits a day. I hope it sells.
The business plan I wanted to execute was to build Community centered sites. These sites would feed a larger site that had a general purpose theme. I wanted to concentrate on the community sites. The person who was working on the commercial site chose the name.
The goal of my project is to explore the ways in which different communities are connect. After my initial partnership broke up, I bought the domain name iRivers.com. I like to call the domain Internet Rivers.
I love the name because we are all connected by rivers.
I am currently in the process of moving all the content from LinksAlive.com to iRivers.com. I will hold a Bido auction for the name linksalive.com. There are thousands of links to this site and it currently gets several thousand hits a day. I hope it sells.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Reblogging Photos
The Community Color project suffers from a distinct lack of back links. So, I decided to start blogs on Tumblr.
I will reblog the images from ProtoPhoto along with other interesting photos found on Tumbr. I created three tumblr blogs which are:
I will reblog the images from ProtoPhoto along with other interesting photos found on Tumbr. I created three tumblr blogs which are:
- Utah Color will show images from the Beehive State.
- Arizona Color will show images from the Grand Canyon State.
- Community Color will show general images with an emphasis on Colorado and Wyoming.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Chirstmas Was a Bust
Income wise, Christmas 2012 was a total bust. The total income was $6.47.
October and November were pathetic as well.
Of course such was to be expected. Google removed me from their index because I (gasp) ask people who add sites to my directory to pay a listing fee.
I started charging the listing fee because it is pain to maintain local directories.
I am still getting several thousand visitors a day ... but they are all looking for local brick and mortar stores. So no commissions there.
Since the Community Color sites no longer make enough to pay hosting fees, I need to figure out what to do with them.
IMHO, they provide a community service by providing listings for the small local sites that no one else will list.
On the bright side. I now no longer have to worry about the effects of the fiscal cliff. I won't have to pay taxes because I have no income.
October and November were pathetic as well.
Of course such was to be expected. Google removed me from their index because I (gasp) ask people who add sites to my directory to pay a listing fee.
I started charging the listing fee because it is pain to maintain local directories.
I am still getting several thousand visitors a day ... but they are all looking for local brick and mortar stores. So no commissions there.
Since the Community Color sites no longer make enough to pay hosting fees, I need to figure out what to do with them.
IMHO, they provide a community service by providing listings for the small local sites that no one else will list.
On the bright side. I now no longer have to worry about the effects of the fiscal cliff. I won't have to pay taxes because I have no income.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Linking is Fundamental
The World Wide Web is written in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language).
The defining characteristic of HTML is the hyperlink. The HyperLink is what differentiates the web from other forms of writing.
For that matter, the links to and from a web site matter almost as much as the content. There are massive new fields in which people study the topology of the hyperlink.
For example, Social Media is all about people linking with other people.
In many ways, linking is more important than content. Twitter is a program that uses 140 character posts and is primarily about linking.
Needless to say, there is an economic component to linking.
Good links on popular sites makes your site popular.
Google is a massive fortune 100 company that has made billions selling paid links.
Google is the dominant search engine. In October, Google announced that they will punish anyone who buys paid links.
I repeat. Google is a company that makes billions selling paid links. In October, Google announced that they will punish any company that engages in business with a competitor.
The hypocrisy aside. Google's direct attack on engaging in link development is attack on the fundamentals of the Internet.
Anyway, I was developing a collection of community directories under the brand "Community Color." It costs about $150 to host the collection of sites. To help offset the cost, I asked people who submit to the directory to pay a listing fee of $12.00.
Needless to say, after Google's announcement that they will punish anyone who does business with competitor, and the directories are now effectively insolvent.
I had started building community directories in 1999. I started up north with a collection of directories I gave away (Missoula.ws is the only site left from the original experiment.) The idea behind the project was that linking is fundamental and that, for small independent web sites to survive they have to engage in active link development.
The best place to start is the local community.
If people do not link with each other, then large evil companies like Google will dominate and we will lose the independent web.
The defining characteristic of HTML is the hyperlink. The HyperLink is what differentiates the web from other forms of writing.
For that matter, the links to and from a web site matter almost as much as the content. There are massive new fields in which people study the topology of the hyperlink.
For example, Social Media is all about people linking with other people.
In many ways, linking is more important than content. Twitter is a program that uses 140 character posts and is primarily about linking.
Needless to say, there is an economic component to linking.
Good links on popular sites makes your site popular.
Google is a massive fortune 100 company that has made billions selling paid links.
Google is the dominant search engine. In October, Google announced that they will punish anyone who buys paid links.
I repeat. Google is a company that makes billions selling paid links. In October, Google announced that they will punish any company that engages in business with a competitor.
The hypocrisy aside. Google's direct attack on engaging in link development is attack on the fundamentals of the Internet.
Anyway, I was developing a collection of community directories under the brand "Community Color." It costs about $150 to host the collection of sites. To help offset the cost, I asked people who submit to the directory to pay a listing fee of $12.00.
Needless to say, after Google's announcement that they will punish anyone who does business with competitor, and the directories are now effectively insolvent.
I had started building community directories in 1999. I started up north with a collection of directories I gave away (Missoula.ws is the only site left from the original experiment.) The idea behind the project was that linking is fundamental and that, for small independent web sites to survive they have to engage in active link development.
The best place to start is the local community.
If people do not link with each other, then large evil companies like Google will dominate and we will lose the independent web.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Disavow Tool
Google is on the warpath against small independently owned web sites engaged in link development. Google's current attack is against web developers that charge for service (gasp). In Google's view, everyone except them should work for free. Google's News Release states:
What a bunch of hypocrites! About half the links on a Google search are "paid links." Essentially, Google is using its monopoly status to penalize websites for using competitors. If you do business with small local sites, Google will use its incredible weight in the market to kick you down. Of course, this is not new. Google has always been the thugs of the Internet.
Anyway, in the early days of the Internet, I became worried that the net would be dominated by just a few highly funded sites; so, I started creating local web directories. Maintaining the directories is time consuming and expensive; so I decided to request a listing fee to cover the cost of listing sites. The listing fee is currently $12. I usually get one or two listing fees a month. My hosting fee and web access costs are about $100/month.
My goal is to list web sites local to a given town or county. I actually look through each site to see if I can find a local address or reasons to list it in the directory. This takes about fifteen minutes for each listing in the site.
My goal is to make the most complete human edited directory for given communities. I troll the web to look for sites and list any site I can find related to a town.
Unfortunately, since I do the unspeakable and ask for a listing fee on my Add Link page, listing in the directory has become problematic for the sites I listed. Google requires that these sites disavow all links from sites like mine.
Anyway, I created a form that allows web owners to request link removal. Simply enter your domain name. If I have links to that domain, the program will give you the option of adding tracking to the link or a complete link removal. Adding tracking will put any clicks to your site through a redirect that blocks webcrawlers. You can also request full link removal.
Personally, it wrenches my heart knowing that Google is now penalizing web sites because I went through the effort to add them to my directory. But, lets face it, Google has always been the bully of the Internet, quick to kick down private efforts to enhance the value of the Internet.
We send you this message when we see evidence of paid links, link exchanges, or other link schemes
What a bunch of hypocrites! About half the links on a Google search are "paid links." Essentially, Google is using its monopoly status to penalize websites for using competitors. If you do business with small local sites, Google will use its incredible weight in the market to kick you down. Of course, this is not new. Google has always been the thugs of the Internet.
Anyway, in the early days of the Internet, I became worried that the net would be dominated by just a few highly funded sites; so, I started creating local web directories. Maintaining the directories is time consuming and expensive; so I decided to request a listing fee to cover the cost of listing sites. The listing fee is currently $12. I usually get one or two listing fees a month. My hosting fee and web access costs are about $100/month.
My goal is to list web sites local to a given town or county. I actually look through each site to see if I can find a local address or reasons to list it in the directory. This takes about fifteen minutes for each listing in the site.
My goal is to make the most complete human edited directory for given communities. I troll the web to look for sites and list any site I can find related to a town.
Unfortunately, since I do the unspeakable and ask for a listing fee on my Add Link page, listing in the directory has become problematic for the sites I listed. Google requires that these sites disavow all links from sites like mine.
Anyway, I created a form that allows web owners to request link removal. Simply enter your domain name. If I have links to that domain, the program will give you the option of adding tracking to the link or a complete link removal. Adding tracking will put any clicks to your site through a redirect that blocks webcrawlers. You can also request full link removal.
Personally, it wrenches my heart knowing that Google is now penalizing web sites because I went through the effort to add them to my directory. But, lets face it, Google has always been the bully of the Internet, quick to kick down private efforts to enhance the value of the Internet.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Link Development
This is disappointing. The site ChefMoz.org bit the dust. The epitaph for the site reads: "Thank you for visiting ChefMoz.org. For more than 10 years, ChefMoz was
the largest international online directory of restaurants and reviews,
covering more than 300,000 restaurants in 142 countries."
A lot of people threw effort into that project hoping to improve local restaurant selection. Now, it is gone, Vanished. Poof!
There is, of course, little money to be made in local link development which consumes substantial time and resources.
I've been worried about the fate of all small and pop web sites. I figured the best bet for helping the community would be to create a link directory for small local web sites. For the last ten years, I've been maintaining link directories for towns in the Mountain West. I currently call the project Community Color.
The sites cost me $150 a month and are time consuming; My goal is to list all the local sites I can find. It usually takes me about 15 minutes to review and add a site. The goal is to list local sites, I have to search through reams of submission requests to determine which ones actually are local.
I was doing it for free. I started asking for profit sites to pay a listing fee of (gasp) $10. I raised the fee to $12 in September in celebration of QE3.
Unfortunately, last month Google declared war on small firms engaged in independent web development. Google and Bing are now penalizing web sites that attempt to engage in link development.
I started this link development project well before Google became the ringmaster of the Internet. Personally, I think the main problem with the internet is that there is not enough people actively engaged in link development.
It makes me sick that Google is now directly engaged in trying to destroy the last remaining small independent sites.
Anyway, i am currently working on a tool to streamline the removal of links from the Community Color sites. I hope to have it up in the next few days.
A lot of people threw effort into that project hoping to improve local restaurant selection. Now, it is gone, Vanished. Poof!
There is, of course, little money to be made in local link development which consumes substantial time and resources.
I've been worried about the fate of all small and pop web sites. I figured the best bet for helping the community would be to create a link directory for small local web sites. For the last ten years, I've been maintaining link directories for towns in the Mountain West. I currently call the project Community Color.
The sites cost me $150 a month and are time consuming; My goal is to list all the local sites I can find. It usually takes me about 15 minutes to review and add a site. The goal is to list local sites, I have to search through reams of submission requests to determine which ones actually are local.
I was doing it for free. I started asking for profit sites to pay a listing fee of (gasp) $10. I raised the fee to $12 in September in celebration of QE3.
Unfortunately, last month Google declared war on small firms engaged in independent web development. Google and Bing are now penalizing web sites that attempt to engage in link development.
I started this link development project well before Google became the ringmaster of the Internet. Personally, I think the main problem with the internet is that there is not enough people actively engaged in link development.
It makes me sick that Google is now directly engaged in trying to destroy the last remaining small independent sites.
Anyway, i am currently working on a tool to streamline the removal of links from the Community Color sites. I hope to have it up in the next few days.
Friday, November 02, 2012
Formatted Option List
Darn. Formatted drop down lists only work in FireFox.
The category lists in the Community Color sites had become somewhat unwieldy; So I decided to add some formatting to the HTML <select> form element. I list the categories in a hierarchical structure with the first level bold and subcategories indented. </select>The three forms below show the category structure for Grand Junction, Denver and Ogden. Click on the select list. It shows you the full hierarchical page structure. Select a page a press the "View Category" button and you go to that page.
People are not used to using the <select> lists for navigation, but the navigation is so tight and quick I think I will add it to all my sites.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Relief, Responsibility and Funky Food
Hurricane Sandy reminds us of the need to have emergency food on hand. Utah prides itself on being a leader in the Food Storage Industry. Apparently, Utah preparedness shops are having a mini boom as people follow the hurricane and clean up.
I like the buckets of freeze dried food as they stay dry in adverse conditions and are easy to move about.
The one problem with dedicated food storage is that even freeze dried food ages. The bucket might have a 25 year shelf life, but you want to have it rotated out of your food storage shed well before reaching that expiration.
So, I thought I would end my blatant sales pitch for preparedness supplies with the actual worthwhile suggestion that anyone with old buckets of unexpired food storage to donate the food to your local church, foodbank or relief agency.
Times are tough and that funky food you've been storing could be put to good use by families in need in your community or by people made homeless by the storm.
I like the buckets of freeze dried food as they stay dry in adverse conditions and are easy to move about.
The one problem with dedicated food storage is that even freeze dried food ages. The bucket might have a 25 year shelf life, but you want to have it rotated out of your food storage shed well before reaching that expiration.
So, I thought I would end my blatant sales pitch for preparedness supplies with the actual worthwhile suggestion that anyone with old buckets of unexpired food storage to donate the food to your local church, foodbank or relief agency.
Times are tough and that funky food you've been storing could be put to good use by families in need in your community or by people made homeless by the storm.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Post Event Web Site
One of the odd things about the Internet is that event based web sites often get more traffic after the completion of the event than before the event.
I know, this the exact opposite of what web developers and event promoters want. As a promoter, I want a great deal of traffic the week before the event. What happens in cyberspace is that is that all the reviews, youtube videos and tweets related to an event flood in after the event is complete.
A smart webmaster or event promoter should plan in advance for the post event traffic. It is wise to have a post event publishing plan set well in advance of the event. Immediately, after the completion of the event, it is wise to thank participants and quickly post any recaps, scores and photos of the event.
You might want to link to reviews of the event. Linking to post event reviews builds web traffic to the next event.
Many people today use electronic calendars. While the event is on a person's mind, they will add it to their calendar even if the event is a year in advance. Having your event in a calendar followed and maintained by your users is the absolute most effective advertising in the universe.
A good post-event web site will have information about upcoming events or action items for the people who missed the event.
If you are hosting an annual event, it is wise to have the date of the next year's event up online immediately after the completion of this year's event.
A final note on events. Always include the year of the event. Search engines have a nasty habit of caching information. If you just have the date and month of an event on your page, the search engines might cache this information and your patrons just might get confusing information about your next event.
I know, this the exact opposite of what web developers and event promoters want. As a promoter, I want a great deal of traffic the week before the event. What happens in cyberspace is that is that all the reviews, youtube videos and tweets related to an event flood in after the event is complete.
A smart webmaster or event promoter should plan in advance for the post event traffic. It is wise to have a post event publishing plan set well in advance of the event. Immediately, after the completion of the event, it is wise to thank participants and quickly post any recaps, scores and photos of the event.
You might want to link to reviews of the event. Linking to post event reviews builds web traffic to the next event.
Many people today use electronic calendars. While the event is on a person's mind, they will add it to their calendar even if the event is a year in advance. Having your event in a calendar followed and maintained by your users is the absolute most effective advertising in the universe.
A good post-event web site will have information about upcoming events or action items for the people who missed the event.
If you are hosting an annual event, it is wise to have the date of the next year's event up online immediately after the completion of this year's event.
A final note on events. Always include the year of the event. Search engines have a nasty habit of caching information. If you just have the date and month of an event on your page, the search engines might cache this information and your patrons just might get confusing information about your next event.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Halloween Links
It's that time of year when all the ghosts start coming out of the attics.
I just updated the Salt Lake Halloween and Denver Halloween pages. I was surprised to find that many of the haunted houses are already up and running. The Halloween season seems to start earlier and earlier each year.
I suspect that the Internet is part of the cause of the trend. There is generally a lag between when you make a website and it appears in the search engine. So, if you want your web site to show up on search engines, you need to have it up and running several months before Halloween and you need to aggressively seek links to the site in September.
Shipping is the big problem for online costume shops. Online costume sales peak ten days before the holiday. To get those sales, your advertising has to be in full swing at the beginning of October.
The result is that what was once a single day event has prolonged into a long Halloween season.
Anyway, I cleaned up my Halloween links. After doing so, I checked the sites link report. The report shows that I've deleted 10,000 broken links to date. The report says I current display about 24,000 links and have deleted 10,000 of the links. About 30% of the sites I've added to the directory through the years have gone dark. That's sad.
I just updated the Salt Lake Halloween and Denver Halloween pages. I was surprised to find that many of the haunted houses are already up and running. The Halloween season seems to start earlier and earlier each year.
I suspect that the Internet is part of the cause of the trend. There is generally a lag between when you make a website and it appears in the search engine. So, if you want your web site to show up on search engines, you need to have it up and running several months before Halloween and you need to aggressively seek links to the site in September.
Shipping is the big problem for online costume shops. Online costume sales peak ten days before the holiday. To get those sales, your advertising has to be in full swing at the beginning of October.
The result is that what was once a single day event has prolonged into a long Halloween season.
Anyway, I cleaned up my Halloween links. After doing so, I checked the sites link report. The report shows that I've deleted 10,000 broken links to date. The report says I current display about 24,000 links and have deleted 10,000 of the links. About 30% of the sites I've added to the directory through the years have gone dark. That's sad.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Pubcon Anyone?
I was just looking at the web site for pubcon (This is a social media conference taking place in Las Vegas in October.)
The event looks like it will be a hoot. So, I need to figure out how to justify going to the event.
Well, I just happen to have a super fun social media business model in my back pocket. The business model is for a social networking sport.
It is a casual sport designed specifically for people who love social networking and media. People would meet periodically, like once a week (or once a month) play a fun game and meet new people while building web traffic for their business or blog.
Okay, the sport is called Juggleball. It works as follows: Everyone in the game is assigned a pair of numbered balls. If you get the number 1234, then you have the balls 1234 and -1234. People meet at a location then play a fun game that involves tossing the balls about and running. (The game lends itself to people of all activity levels.).
At the end of the game people leave with a different set of balls.
Each game will have a host. The host will record the balls at the beginning and end of each game. So, you might enter the game with balls 1234 and -1234 and end the game with two different balls: perhaps 765 and -456.
If the game catches on, the balls will start making an interesting social network map.
Needless to say, the first people who play the game will get in at a founding level. After we get a couple hundred players involved, I will form the International Juggleball Association. The people who get in at a ground level will be playing a founding role in the organization.
Participation in the game costs very little. I would have to make enough money to pay for a hotel in Las Vegas (I like the Days Inn), the balls and for the gas to drive to Las Vegas. I need to make about $300. If I could find 10 people interested in joining a social networking game at the ground level, I would want to charge about $30 to play the game.
Anyway, if you are going to Pubcon and would like to have a founding role in a new social networking game, or if you ever wanted to own your own professional sports team, please contact me. Give me your name and phone number.
PS: I really love the badlands of Utah. If you want to visit the National Parks of Southern Utah (camp in the desert) in the days before Pubcon, I would be happy to meet you at any number of locations in Utah.
The event looks like it will be a hoot. So, I need to figure out how to justify going to the event.
Well, I just happen to have a super fun social media business model in my back pocket. The business model is for a social networking sport.
It is a casual sport designed specifically for people who love social networking and media. People would meet periodically, like once a week (or once a month) play a fun game and meet new people while building web traffic for their business or blog.
Okay, the sport is called Juggleball. It works as follows: Everyone in the game is assigned a pair of numbered balls. If you get the number 1234, then you have the balls 1234 and -1234. People meet at a location then play a fun game that involves tossing the balls about and running. (The game lends itself to people of all activity levels.).
At the end of the game people leave with a different set of balls.
Each game will have a host. The host will record the balls at the beginning and end of each game. So, you might enter the game with balls 1234 and -1234 and end the game with two different balls: perhaps 765 and -456.
If the game catches on, the balls will start making an interesting social network map.
Needless to say, the first people who play the game will get in at a founding level. After we get a couple hundred players involved, I will form the International Juggleball Association. The people who get in at a ground level will be playing a founding role in the organization.
Participation in the game costs very little. I would have to make enough money to pay for a hotel in Las Vegas (I like the Days Inn), the balls and for the gas to drive to Las Vegas. I need to make about $300. If I could find 10 people interested in joining a social networking game at the ground level, I would want to charge about $30 to play the game.
Anyway, if you are going to Pubcon and would like to have a founding role in a new social networking game, or if you ever wanted to own your own professional sports team, please contact me. Give me your name and phone number.
PS: I really love the badlands of Utah. If you want to visit the National Parks of Southern Utah (camp in the desert) in the days before Pubcon, I would be happy to meet you at any number of locations in Utah.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Domains for Sale HeberCity.biz and LinksAlive.com
I am taking a final stab at auctioning off HeberCity.biz on eBay. I moved the contents of the site to wasatch.utahcolor.com.
I also decided to like LinksAlive.com on Bido.com. If this domain sells, I will move the contents to a different domain.
I also decided to like LinksAlive.com on Bido.com. If this domain sells, I will move the contents to a different domain.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Casual Exercise
Americans don't get enough exercise. When we do exercise, we have completely over the top expectations of our actions.
All of the popular team sports were designed to over-emphasize competition. The field of individual sports is dominated by absurdly long endurance sports like Iron Man Triathlons, multiday relays, etc..
The non-profit community hosts wonderful fundraising events that draw thousands of people once a year for a fun run in the park. But a 5K walk once a year is not enough.
There is an massive market in the United States at the moment for a new casual sport that takes place on a regular basis that helps keep people fit.
Imagine yourself starting a business where you met with fun people once a week, to engage in a physical activity. The cost of the sport was modest, and there was a money making component built into the sport so people needing a little extra cash could make a little extra cash?
Owning a reaction business opens up the opportunity to travel. If you owned a for profit "sports team" you can deduct travel expenses when you go to play games at the destination of your choice.
Anyway, if a group of people got together and did ___________ they just might be able to crack the lucrative recreation sports market.
I emphasize the cost of starting a ____________ sports team is negligible. The first people who are brave and respond might make some big bucks for taking a change.
If you contact me (giving me your location, name an phone number) I will give you info about the sport.
NOTE: I live in Utah. I will be traveling to Spokane in early August.
All of the popular team sports were designed to over-emphasize competition. The field of individual sports is dominated by absurdly long endurance sports like Iron Man Triathlons, multiday relays, etc..
The non-profit community hosts wonderful fundraising events that draw thousands of people once a year for a fun run in the park. But a 5K walk once a year is not enough.
There is an massive market in the United States at the moment for a new casual sport that takes place on a regular basis that helps keep people fit.
Imagine yourself starting a business where you met with fun people once a week, to engage in a physical activity. The cost of the sport was modest, and there was a money making component built into the sport so people needing a little extra cash could make a little extra cash?
Owning a reaction business opens up the opportunity to travel. If you owned a for profit "sports team" you can deduct travel expenses when you go to play games at the destination of your choice.
Anyway, if a group of people got together and did ___________ they just might be able to crack the lucrative recreation sports market.
I emphasize the cost of starting a ____________ sports team is negligible. The first people who are brave and respond might make some big bucks for taking a change.
If you contact me (giving me your location, name an phone number) I will give you info about the sport.
NOTE: I live in Utah. I will be traveling to Spokane in early August.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
We Need A Business Revolution
I read a blog post from a Ron Paul Supporter who appeared to be disheartened.
I confess. Although my sympathies lie with the free market message of Ron Paul, I was not an active voice for the candidate during his run for the presidency.
The reason is that I did not support Paul was because I realized that we cannot restore America through politics.
The American experiment was one with a limited government and unlimited people.
Sadly, our educational establishment fails to give students the tools they need to achieve their potential as a free people. Modern education teaches people they are entitled slaves and not free people.
To restore America, we need a business movement that helps people rediscover their potential as a free people.
The easiest way to accomplish this goal is in recreation.
Currently, the world of sports and recreation is dominated by the state or crony capitalists.
Look at high school sports and the NCAA: Most of the teams are owned by state entities and play in government owned arenas.
In professional sports, we see that most professional teams have exclusive contracts with local governments. They play incoliseums arenas which receive varying degrees of state funding.
State run sports is both static and exclusive.
Everyone needs to engage in exercise and recreation.
If we wish to fight the leviathan, the area of sports and recreation is prime playing field.
People who are disillusioned with politics could take to the playing field and excel.
Step back a moment and imagine yourself as the coach or owner of a professional sports team that you ran a couple weekends a year?
Would you enjoy owning a professional sports team?
Would you enjoy traveling to towns (of your choice) to meet and play with other people?
Would you enjoy having the name "Founding Member of ________" written after your name?
Would you like to engage in an activity that is all but guaranteed to feed ten of thousands of hits to your web site or blog?
Would you like to make a YouTube video that received hundreds of thousand of free links?
Would you like to engage in an activity that will put your name in the local newspaper or that will raise funds for the causes you find important?
Would you like to engage in an activity that raises awareness of the values of the free market and a free society?
Would you like to play a founding role in a company that requires little capital but has an unlimited potential?
Would you like to tell your grand children that you made a difference?
Anyway, I will free franchise to the first people contact me . Please give me your phone number and tell me where you are. I will contact you with more information on this chance of a lifetime.
I happen to live in Utah (I am not LDS). I will be traveling to Washington State in August.
NOTE: The sport is actually a game in which we create a social networking market. The game is physical discussion about the way markets work. The game involves simple physical activity and relay races.
I confess. Although my sympathies lie with the free market message of Ron Paul, I was not an active voice for the candidate during his run for the presidency.
The reason is that I did not support Paul was because I realized that we cannot restore America through politics.
The American experiment was one with a limited government and unlimited people.
Sadly, our educational establishment fails to give students the tools they need to achieve their potential as a free people. Modern education teaches people they are entitled slaves and not free people.
To restore America, we need a business movement that helps people rediscover their potential as a free people.
The easiest way to accomplish this goal is in recreation.
Currently, the world of sports and recreation is dominated by the state or crony capitalists.
Look at high school sports and the NCAA: Most of the teams are owned by state entities and play in government owned arenas.
In professional sports, we see that most professional teams have exclusive contracts with local governments. They play in
State run sports is both static and exclusive.
Everyone needs to engage in exercise and recreation.
If we wish to fight the leviathan, the area of sports and recreation is prime playing field.
People who are disillusioned with politics could take to the playing field and excel.
Step back a moment and imagine yourself as the coach or owner of a professional sports team that you ran a couple weekends a year?
Would you enjoy owning a professional sports team?
Would you enjoy traveling to towns (of your choice) to meet and play with other people?
Would you enjoy having the name "Founding Member of ________" written after your name?
Would you like to engage in an activity that is all but guaranteed to feed ten of thousands of hits to your web site or blog?
Would you like to make a YouTube video that received hundreds of thousand of free links?
Would you like to engage in an activity that will put your name in the local newspaper or that will raise funds for the causes you find important?
Would you like to engage in an activity that raises awareness of the values of the free market and a free society?
Would you like to play a founding role in a company that requires little capital but has an unlimited potential?
Would you like to tell your grand children that you made a difference?
Anyway, I will free franchise to the first people contact me . Please give me your phone number and tell me where you are. I will contact you with more information on this chance of a lifetime.
I happen to live in Utah (I am not LDS). I will be traveling to Washington State in August.
NOTE: The sport is actually a game in which we create a social networking market. The game is physical discussion about the way markets work. The game involves simple physical activity and relay races.
Monday, July 02, 2012
Index of Indices
Dang. Revenue for Q2 was even worse than Q1. This was due largely to several advertisers going bankrupt. I am now in a desperate search for new advertisers.
I want to increase the exposure to the events in the calendar. I added a column to the master index that shows community events. The page Recreation Index is an index to the directory page titled "Recreation." It shows both the links and events on that page.
If I make a big effort to be consistent in categorizing the events, this feature will become useful for it will show the total number of links and events by state.
Unfortunately, I have some systematic inconsistencies. Specifically, when a directory becomes large, I start splitting it into subdirectories. If there's only one running club in town, I list the club in Recreation. If there are several, I create a subdirectory called Running. The result is that I list the Grand Juinction Rim Marathon in the "recreation" category and the Salt Lake Marathon in the "running" category. This means the master index fails to provide a comprehensive list of running events in a state.
As I play with the new program, I figure out a way to overcome that problem.
To get my revenue numbers back in the black, I probably need to show more shopping events and auctions..
I want to increase the exposure to the events in the calendar. I added a column to the master index that shows community events. The page Recreation Index is an index to the directory page titled "Recreation." It shows both the links and events on that page.
If I make a big effort to be consistent in categorizing the events, this feature will become useful for it will show the total number of links and events by state.
Unfortunately, I have some systematic inconsistencies. Specifically, when a directory becomes large, I start splitting it into subdirectories. If there's only one running club in town, I list the club in Recreation. If there are several, I create a subdirectory called Running. The result is that I list the Grand Juinction Rim Marathon in the "recreation" category and the Salt Lake Marathon in the "running" category. This means the master index fails to provide a comprehensive list of running events in a state.
As I play with the new program, I figure out a way to overcome that problem.
To get my revenue numbers back in the black, I probably need to show more shopping events and auctions..
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Rating Engine Change
The goal of the rating system in the Community Color sites is to help the best sites surface to the top.
The site had a rating engine and the rating engine would improve the profile of sites in the directory. Sadly, the engine was inundated with spam ratings.
I recently revived the rate engine. To rate a site, you must login.
If you log in, you will see a rate button next to each link. If you are not logged in, the program will show a rate link for any site receiving positive rates. Essentially, if you give a positive rating to a site, the directories will automatically give a second link to that site.
If you give a bad rating to a site, it might remove the second link.
My hope is that this rate engine will help give an extra boost to the best sites.
The site had a rating engine and the rating engine would improve the profile of sites in the directory. Sadly, the engine was inundated with spam ratings.
I recently revived the rate engine. To rate a site, you must login.
If you log in, you will see a rate button next to each link. If you are not logged in, the program will show a rate link for any site receiving positive rates. Essentially, if you give a positive rating to a site, the directories will automatically give a second link to that site.
If you give a bad rating to a site, it might remove the second link.
My hope is that this rate engine will help give an extra boost to the best sites.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
In Page Popup
I created my first inpage (css/div) popup! If you look at the Salt Lake Calendar, you will notice that the box for June 16, 2012 says that there are 8 items for the day. If you click the words "click here to view" the page will dim the calendar and display the eight items in the center of the page.
Clicking anywhere restores the main page.
The code for an in page pop up is a bear. Regular popups are easier, but the in page variety is slightly better for end user navigation.
Having added my first in page popup, I will probably add more.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
An Invitation to the Great Northwest
I've been staring at maps of the Northwest.
Would anyone in Washington State, Idaho, Western Montana, Oregon, Northern Nevada or Utah be interested in engaging in a recreational activity that will cost you about $20 and has the potential of making you some money.
The activity involves social networking and recreation. You will have to sell a product, but that's the way the market works.
I am interested in people who own or who want to own a small business (franchise). This activity can work with any existing business. It would be great for people who want to have a booth at the farmer's market, or for other small businesses looking for clever ways to expand their market.
So, anyway, the idea is that you will own a business that organizes games and sells the product I provide for the game. You will need to get a sales tax ID and pay taxes on sales.
If this idea sounds interesting, please contact me. Here is my contact form.
So, why am I looking at the Northwest?
Well, My niece is getting married in Washington State on August 3rd.
I live in Utah. (no, I am not LDS). Anway, I was thinking of driving up either I25 or US93 to Missoula then take I90 into Washington.
I happen to have a long lost relative in Oregon to visit. On the way back I would drop into central Oregon. I could drop as far south as Nevada on the way back.
BTW, I also have a wonderful presentation on free market health care reform called "The Medical Savings and Loan."
If you knew of a group interested in free market health care reform in Idaho, Western Montana, Washington, Oregon or Utah, I have a great presentation that argues that insurance (group funding of individual consumption) is the problem and that we need to restore a system of self-funded care.
The MS&L and this game are related but different activities.
If you contact me, we will need to arrange an activity that meshes up with my niece's wedding on August 3rd in Northwest Washington State ... either before or after the big event.
Would anyone in Washington State, Idaho, Western Montana, Oregon, Northern Nevada or Utah be interested in engaging in a recreational activity that will cost you about $20 and has the potential of making you some money.
The activity involves social networking and recreation. You will have to sell a product, but that's the way the market works.
I am interested in people who own or who want to own a small business (franchise). This activity can work with any existing business. It would be great for people who want to have a booth at the farmer's market, or for other small businesses looking for clever ways to expand their market.
So, anyway, the idea is that you will own a business that organizes games and sells the product I provide for the game. You will need to get a sales tax ID and pay taxes on sales.
If this idea sounds interesting, please contact me. Here is my contact form.
So, why am I looking at the Northwest?
Well, My niece is getting married in Washington State on August 3rd.
I live in Utah. (no, I am not LDS). Anway, I was thinking of driving up either I25 or US93 to Missoula then take I90 into Washington.
I happen to have a long lost relative in Oregon to visit. On the way back I would drop into central Oregon. I could drop as far south as Nevada on the way back.
BTW, I also have a wonderful presentation on free market health care reform called "The Medical Savings and Loan."
If you knew of a group interested in free market health care reform in Idaho, Western Montana, Washington, Oregon or Utah, I have a great presentation that argues that insurance (group funding of individual consumption) is the problem and that we need to restore a system of self-funded care.
The MS&L and this game are related but different activities.
If you contact me, we will need to arrange an activity that meshes up with my niece's wedding on August 3rd in Northwest Washington State ... either before or after the big event.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Rating Game
I turned the Community Color Rating Engine Back On.
Originally, I worked with some people who were adamantly opposed to login screens. So the rating engine accepted anonymous reviews. This was a big mistake! Spambots kept flooding the system with fake reviews.
I tried manually reading and removing the spam and finally capitulated by turning the engine off.
I really miss the rating system. The ratings program helped direct traffic to the best sites.
The Internet works on positive feedback. If you link the the best sites, they surface to the top.
I designed the rating system so that, when you give a site a positive rate, it gets an extra link!
If you went through the directories and gave good rates to the top sites, they would get more traffic.
As I no longer have a prohibition against requiring a login, I am turning the ratings engine back on for registered users. I will delete the reviews for any user that is clearly spamming the system.
Your Community Color User ID and password works for all sites in the Community Color family. I would really appreciate folks trolling through the Community Color Sites and rate the best local sites. Right now I have directories for communities in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and more.
A rating will stay active for 600 days (sites and businesses change every year or so).
The Ratings by Community Report shows a summary of recent ratings by community. It is super small right now because I just turned the rating engine back on.
PS: I will rate a bunch of sites under the user name kevind and yintercept just to test to make sure everything is working. While I am testing, I might accidentally break the screen, because I am engaged in the time honored tradition of cowboy programming. Yep, I program in production because I am one person with no financial resources.
Originally, I worked with some people who were adamantly opposed to login screens. So the rating engine accepted anonymous reviews. This was a big mistake! Spambots kept flooding the system with fake reviews.
I tried manually reading and removing the spam and finally capitulated by turning the engine off.
I really miss the rating system. The ratings program helped direct traffic to the best sites.
The Internet works on positive feedback. If you link the the best sites, they surface to the top.
I designed the rating system so that, when you give a site a positive rate, it gets an extra link!
If you went through the directories and gave good rates to the top sites, they would get more traffic.
As I no longer have a prohibition against requiring a login, I am turning the ratings engine back on for registered users. I will delete the reviews for any user that is clearly spamming the system.
Your Community Color User ID and password works for all sites in the Community Color family. I would really appreciate folks trolling through the Community Color Sites and rate the best local sites. Right now I have directories for communities in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and more.
A rating will stay active for 600 days (sites and businesses change every year or so).
The Ratings by Community Report shows a summary of recent ratings by community. It is super small right now because I just turned the rating engine back on.
PS: I will rate a bunch of sites under the user name kevind and yintercept just to test to make sure everything is working. While I am testing, I might accidentally break the screen, because I am engaged in the time honored tradition of cowboy programming. Yep, I program in production because I am one person with no financial resources.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Link Ratings
The Community Color sites have an unfortunate history of being attacked by spammers.
The sites featured a link rating and comment section that was being hit hard by spammers. As I was working on a different project. I turned the feature off.
The spam bots finally subsided, and I decided to add the rating buttons back on the site. This time, the site only accepts ratings from registered users.
I found it impossible to separate the spam from the info; so I deleted all of the ratings and comments from anonymous sources.
There is now a rate button next to each link in the directories. If you are registered and logged in, you can leave a rate. To prevent spam, I can delete ratings by user id or by IP address. The iFrame below shows the rate screen for the link rating page for this blog. If you are logged into gjct.com you will see the rate button. If not you will see a summary of ratings. I put in one test rating.
I admit, the primary reason for the rating page is that it gives each web site an extra link.
The sites featured a link rating and comment section that was being hit hard by spammers. As I was working on a different project. I turned the feature off.
The spam bots finally subsided, and I decided to add the rating buttons back on the site. This time, the site only accepts ratings from registered users.
I found it impossible to separate the spam from the info; so I deleted all of the ratings and comments from anonymous sources.
There is now a rate button next to each link in the directories. If you are registered and logged in, you can leave a rate. To prevent spam, I can delete ratings by user id or by IP address. The iFrame below shows the rate screen for the link rating page for this blog. If you are logged into gjct.com you will see the rate button. If not you will see a summary of ratings. I put in one test rating.
I admit, the primary reason for the rating page is that it gives each web site an extra link.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
To Sweeten the Deal
It is so beautiful outside. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a summer opportunity that let you make a little cash while playing a social networking game out in the sun?
Wouldn't it be fun to be the boss instead of just a working stiff?
Wouldn't it be fun to own a business that involves the possibility of travel?
Did you know, if you owned a business that required you to travel, you get to deduct your traveling expenses? So, lets say you had a business that required that you travel to San Diego for a weekend to play a game on the beach,
Imagine an opportunity in which you organized games, sold a product to the people playing the game and kept most of money from the sales (minus the cost of the products and whatever the venue charges to reserve the playing field.)
Do you enjoy social networking. Wouldn't it be fun to have a business geared to social networking and recreation?
As this is a social networking game, I will sweeten the pot by giving the first people who respond a free web site and I will show you how to run your own web site (HTML, PHP, and all)
I am in Utah, but travel alot. To contact me, use This Contact Form. Leave your name, age (The first people should be over 18) telephone number and place you live. If you are traveling through Utah, please tell me when you are traveling. I will then call you and give you more detail.
Wouldn't it be fun to be the boss instead of just a working stiff?
Wouldn't it be fun to own a business that involves the possibility of travel?
Did you know, if you owned a business that required you to travel, you get to deduct your traveling expenses? So, lets say you had a business that required that you travel to San Diego for a weekend to play a game on the beach,
Imagine an opportunity in which you organized games, sold a product to the people playing the game and kept most of money from the sales (minus the cost of the products and whatever the venue charges to reserve the playing field.)
Do you enjoy social networking. Wouldn't it be fun to have a business geared to social networking and recreation?
As this is a social networking game, I will sweeten the pot by giving the first people who respond a free web site and I will show you how to run your own web site (HTML, PHP, and all)
I am in Utah, but travel alot. To contact me, use This Contact Form. Leave your name, age (The first people should be over 18) telephone number and place you live. If you are traveling through Utah, please tell me when you are traveling. I will then call you and give you more detail.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Summer Job Opportunity
They say the summer job market is weak.
If someone in Utah, Colorado, Idaho or is passing through Utah this summer is looking for an opportunity, I just happen to have an opportunity that would be ideal for an enterprising young college student.
The opportunity is open for both men and women.
The opportunity involves social networking and recreation. Essentially, you would be the owner/coach of a sports team.
I emphasize "opportunity." By opportunity, I mean that you will be starting your own business. It is a business that a person could carry on through school.
You will actually be inventing this opportunity. So, I don't know how much you will make ... if anything.
The opportunity involves being outdoor and playing a game.
The opportunity involves minimal investments. For example, you will be outdoors and will need sunscreen. a water bottle, etc.. You will need to get a Tax ID and will need to buy stuff for your business.
If anyone wants to take a risk and start a business for their summer job, please contact me. Leave your name, age and phone number.
If someone in Utah, Colorado, Idaho or is passing through Utah this summer is looking for an opportunity, I just happen to have an opportunity that would be ideal for an enterprising young college student.
The opportunity is open for both men and women.
The opportunity involves social networking and recreation. Essentially, you would be the owner/coach of a sports team.
I emphasize "opportunity." By opportunity, I mean that you will be starting your own business. It is a business that a person could carry on through school.
You will actually be inventing this opportunity. So, I don't know how much you will make ... if anything.
The opportunity involves being outdoor and playing a game.
The opportunity involves minimal investments. For example, you will be outdoors and will need sunscreen. a water bottle, etc.. You will need to get a Tax ID and will need to buy stuff for your business.
If anyone wants to take a risk and start a business for their summer job, please contact me. Leave your name, age and phone number.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Converting to HTML5
I am starting the long, slow process of converting all of the Community Color sites to HTML 5.
It appears that HTML 5 is cleaner and more user friendly than HTML 4 and XHTML. Perhaps I will become enthusiastic about HTML programming again.
I started with Mobile Sites.
It appears that HTML 5 is cleaner and more user friendly than HTML 4 and XHTML. Perhaps I will become enthusiastic about HTML programming again.
I started with Mobile Sites.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Anyone Up for a Game?
Do you like being active?
Do you like social networking?
Do you like the free market?
Would you like to make money playing games on the weekend? (or on the weekdays).
Do you like coaching or want to be a coach? (a life coach)?
Are you in the following states or planning a vacation to the following states this summer: Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, SoCal or Nevada?
To recap, if you would like to participate in a social networking sport and will be within a few hundred miles of Salt Lake this summer; please contact me, and I will get you set up. The game is pro-free market.
MODEL ONE: If you are planning a trip to Moab or Park City, and would like to play a fun game for a few hours, then go home owning a sports franchise that has unlimited potential, then you would be a great candidate.
MODEL TWO: If you own a business and would like to add a side product with unlimited potential. The product would give you a lot of free advertising and would draw people to your business at neglible cost ... and you happen to be planning a visit to Grand Junction, then contact me.
MODEL THREE: A person would like to make money at an activity booth at a Farmers' Market, Fair or community festival.
MODEL FOUR: A college student who would like to make some money playing games on the weekend, during Spring Break or during the summer.
The opportunity involves social networking and recreation (a physical outdoor activity with other people). Running is a physical activity with little interaction. This is a physical activity with substantial interaction.
Do you like social networking?
Do you like the free market?
Would you like to make money playing games on the weekend? (or on the weekdays).
Do you like coaching or want to be a coach? (a life coach)?
Are you in the following states or planning a vacation to the following states this summer: Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, SoCal or Nevada?
To recap, if you would like to participate in a social networking sport and will be within a few hundred miles of Salt Lake this summer; please contact me, and I will get you set up. The game is pro-free market.
MODEL ONE: If you are planning a trip to Moab or Park City, and would like to play a fun game for a few hours, then go home owning a sports franchise that has unlimited potential, then you would be a great candidate.
MODEL TWO: If you own a business and would like to add a side product with unlimited potential. The product would give you a lot of free advertising and would draw people to your business at neglible cost ... and you happen to be planning a visit to Grand Junction, then contact me.
MODEL THREE: A person would like to make money at an activity booth at a Farmers' Market, Fair or community festival.
MODEL FOUR: A college student who would like to make some money playing games on the weekend, during Spring Break or during the summer.
The opportunity involves social networking and recreation (a physical outdoor activity with other people). Running is a physical activity with little interaction. This is a physical activity with substantial interaction.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Miche Shells
I am tired of the world where I buy cheap stuff that I will either toss out or hoard. So, I am interested in finding things that have resell value. So, I spend time trolling eBay to see what people actually are buying.
Interestingly, I discovered that there is a robust after market for Miche Shells. Miche Bag of Salt Lake makes hand bags with interchangeable shells. This way you can match your shell to your wardrobe.
As people's wardrobes change, they will want to change shells, making for an interesting little after market. The online price for the shells seem to run from $25 to $50. Used shells seem to be going for $12 to $25 on ebay. Hmm, I would have done better investing in Miche Bag Shells than in the stock market.
It will be interesting to see if Miche creates a sustainable market, or if they oversaturate the market. Anyway, I will be keeping an eye out for used shells when I visit garage sales this summer.
Interestingly, I discovered that there is a robust after market for Miche Shells. Miche Bag of Salt Lake makes hand bags with interchangeable shells. This way you can match your shell to your wardrobe.
As people's wardrobes change, they will want to change shells, making for an interesting little after market. The online price for the shells seem to run from $25 to $50. Used shells seem to be going for $12 to $25 on ebay. Hmm, I would have done better investing in Miche Bag Shells than in the stock market.
It will be interesting to see if Miche creates a sustainable market, or if they oversaturate the market. Anyway, I will be keeping an eye out for used shells when I visit garage sales this summer.
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Anyone Up for a Game?
I get the feeling that people are hungry for something new.
They want something that is active, that isn't mean.
This morning, I discovered a whole slew of web sites about a sport called Pickleball. Pickleball is a cross between badminton and tennis. The game uses paddles and slow balls; so the game is not as fast as tennis, but involves more strategy.
Because the game values strategy over speed, people of all ages can play the game. In the videos I viewed, people appeared to be having fun.
Because more people can play, pickleball can become part of a more dynamic community than football, basketball or other traditional team sports.
This sport was created in the 1960s. I remember coming across it a long time ago. Wouldn't it be fun to be part of the group that created a new sport?
Way back in the 1980s, I invented a game called juggleball. Juggleball turns the entire concept of a team sport on its head. Most team sports are about vanquishing the opposition team.
The most interesting part of juggling is learning how to toss balls with others. In a toss, both people have a ball and toss it in the air at the same time. Hopefully, the other person will catch it.
You don't have to know how to juggle to play juggleball, you just have to be able to coordinate a toss with another person.
Basically, the sport involves juggle relays. In the sport, you would run with a ball to a base. Coordinate a toss then run to another base. Whoever is best at coordinating tosses with others wins.
In juggleball, people compete to see who is best at cooperating.
I live in a place where people are notoriously close-minded (Utah). In the thirty years since I came up with the idea, I've never been able to find anyone interested in actually living life.
I hope to hit the road this summer. If anyone is interested in taking a leading role in inventing a new social networking sport ... they can contact me.
They want something that is active, that isn't mean.
This morning, I discovered a whole slew of web sites about a sport called Pickleball. Pickleball is a cross between badminton and tennis. The game uses paddles and slow balls; so the game is not as fast as tennis, but involves more strategy.
Because the game values strategy over speed, people of all ages can play the game. In the videos I viewed, people appeared to be having fun.
Because more people can play, pickleball can become part of a more dynamic community than football, basketball or other traditional team sports.
This sport was created in the 1960s. I remember coming across it a long time ago. Wouldn't it be fun to be part of the group that created a new sport?
Way back in the 1980s, I invented a game called juggleball. Juggleball turns the entire concept of a team sport on its head. Most team sports are about vanquishing the opposition team.
The most interesting part of juggling is learning how to toss balls with others. In a toss, both people have a ball and toss it in the air at the same time. Hopefully, the other person will catch it.
You don't have to know how to juggle to play juggleball, you just have to be able to coordinate a toss with another person.
Basically, the sport involves juggle relays. In the sport, you would run with a ball to a base. Coordinate a toss then run to another base. Whoever is best at coordinating tosses with others wins.
In juggleball, people compete to see who is best at cooperating.
I live in a place where people are notoriously close-minded (Utah). In the thirty years since I came up with the idea, I've never been able to find anyone interested in actually living life.
I hope to hit the road this summer. If anyone is interested in taking a leading role in inventing a new social networking sport ... they can contact me.
Monday, April 02, 2012
Income Dropped Again
I tally up the income for the Community Color sites on the first day of the quarter. It appears to have dropped again.
My revenue report shows I have 658 active advertisers, but made only $569.21. The directories cost about $200 a month or $600 to host; The sites are now officially operating in the red.
Due to hardware errors at my web host, I suffered a solid three weeks of down time in September and lost pretty much all of the inbound links to the sites.
On the plus side, the traffic is finally starting to recover ... however, I fear advertising rates for the site has dropped to the point that the marketing plan is no longer feasible for the site.
The sites started with several interactive features. I've systematically turned off all interactive features because the inevitably became full of spam and ugly-speak. I might take a stab at new features ... but realize that my time is better spent on other projects.
My revenue report shows I have 658 active advertisers, but made only $569.21. The directories cost about $200 a month or $600 to host; The sites are now officially operating in the red.
Due to hardware errors at my web host, I suffered a solid three weeks of down time in September and lost pretty much all of the inbound links to the sites.
On the plus side, the traffic is finally starting to recover ... however, I fear advertising rates for the site has dropped to the point that the marketing plan is no longer feasible for the site.
The sites started with several interactive features. I've systematically turned off all interactive features because the inevitably became full of spam and ugly-speak. I might take a stab at new features ... but realize that my time is better spent on other projects.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Ten Million Hits
Every counter gets big with time. Today's big news is that the hit counter on the Community Directories is likely to cross the ten million page view mark some time today. (NOTE, I've lost some of the hit counter data through the years).
Revenuewise, to provide a single minimum wage job, the directory would need about ten million hits per year, not per decade.
To celebrate 10,000,000 page views, I decided to take a peek at the data the site collected: The Link Report says the directory has 23,328 active links, I've deleted 8,866 links. Ten million divided by (23,328+8866) is 310.6 page views per link.
In the first quarter of 2012, I've added 1042 links and deleted 512 dead links. My guess is there's another thousand broken links in the directory.
I track hits on a small subset of the links. The average for the link hit counters is 93.4. The hits per link is, of course, a matter of time. Those added in 2002 average 700 hits. Those added in 2011 have had only a dozen or so hits.
The most important visitor to my site is the Googlebot and other webcrawlers.
There are other pages on the site. The Site of the Day reviews have received several million page views. The calendars and mobile versions of the site have received a steady stream of hits.
So, while few people visit the site, the program does a public good having the googlebot index local community oriented sites. It would be nice if people linked to their community directory. The directories give exposure to small local businesses and organizations that tend to be overshadowed in our world of big business and big government.
Revenuewise, to provide a single minimum wage job, the directory would need about ten million hits per year, not per decade.
To celebrate 10,000,000 page views, I decided to take a peek at the data the site collected: The Link Report says the directory has 23,328 active links, I've deleted 8,866 links. Ten million divided by (23,328+8866) is 310.6 page views per link.
In the first quarter of 2012, I've added 1042 links and deleted 512 dead links. My guess is there's another thousand broken links in the directory.
I track hits on a small subset of the links. The average for the link hit counters is 93.4. The hits per link is, of course, a matter of time. Those added in 2002 average 700 hits. Those added in 2011 have had only a dozen or so hits.
The most important visitor to my site is the Googlebot and other webcrawlers.
There are other pages on the site. The Site of the Day reviews have received several million page views. The calendars and mobile versions of the site have received a steady stream of hits.
So, while few people visit the site, the program does a public good having the googlebot index local community oriented sites. It would be nice if people linked to their community directory. The directories give exposure to small local businesses and organizations that tend to be overshadowed in our world of big business and big government.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
A Tale of Two Crowds
I added new photos. On Friday, I went to the sparsely attended Stand Up For Religious Freedom Rally at the Courthouse, then to a massive crowd at the new City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake.
First the pictures of the rally: The first picture shows the crowd which is about three people deep. My guess is that 150 to maybe 200 people were at the rally. This is maybe half the size of Salt Lake's Occupy Rally.
First the pictures of the rally: The first picture shows the crowd which is about three people deep. My guess is that 150 to maybe 200 people were at the rally. This is maybe half the size of Salt Lake's Occupy Rally.
There was a huge crowd for the second day of the new City Creek Center. The new center has two decks running for two city blocks with both floors and shops filled with spectators.
I admit. I've been feeling sad. I used to work for a state owned insurance group. I quit because I realized that group funded health care (both socialism and private insurance) dramatically under serve the people. For the last three years I've been trying to get people to talk about alternatives funding mechanisms for health care. For some odd reason, people are unwilling to talk about the definitive issue of or day. It's maddening.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Domain Speculation
I've been really sad of late about the large number of small businesses web sites which have failed in the last few years.
Small business is about building equity. I had assumed that businesses will building equity in their web site. But, since I had contempt for the domain speculation process, I never investigated to see if this concept was true.
Anyway, I've been exploring the concept of buying and selling domains.
Last week, I successfully sold the domain PriceHelper.com through the Bido.com auction service. I moved the contents of the domain to the subdomain carbon.UtahColor.com.
Being a silly person, I decided to buy a domain. This way I would experience both sides of the auction process.
Anyway, I decided that I would buy a domain. I searched through several hundred domain names that were on sale and bought the domain BaitShop.US.
I chose this domain because I have affiliate relations with some wonderful small angling web sites. So, I put up a one page affiliate web site. I plan on waiting a year, then putting the auction up for sale again.
Anyway, I am finding this game of buying a web site with the purpose of reselling it at a later date to be quite informative. There is a very interesting rhythm to the auction and domain transfer process.
Although I have no intention of going into domaining as a profession, I think it valuable for people interested in web development to engage in the process simply to investigate if the concept of building equity in a web site holds true.
Small business is about building equity. I had assumed that businesses will building equity in their web site. But, since I had contempt for the domain speculation process, I never investigated to see if this concept was true.
Anyway, I've been exploring the concept of buying and selling domains.
Last week, I successfully sold the domain PriceHelper.com through the Bido.com auction service. I moved the contents of the domain to the subdomain carbon.UtahColor.com.
Being a silly person, I decided to buy a domain. This way I would experience both sides of the auction process.
Anyway, I decided that I would buy a domain. I searched through several hundred domain names that were on sale and bought the domain BaitShop.US.
I chose this domain because I have affiliate relations with some wonderful small angling web sites. So, I put up a one page affiliate web site. I plan on waiting a year, then putting the auction up for sale again.
Anyway, I am finding this game of buying a web site with the purpose of reselling it at a later date to be quite informative. There is a very interesting rhythm to the auction and domain transfer process.
Although I have no intention of going into domaining as a profession, I think it valuable for people interested in web development to engage in the process simply to investigate if the concept of building equity in a web site holds true.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Political Links
The goal of Community Color is to promote local web development. The political sector is currently the most robust area of development. I am concentrating on developing directories for Utah, Colorado and Arizona.
The problem is that the campaign cycle is so short that I often miss important political campaign web sites.
This might include the most important web site or all. Your Web Site! or your favorite candidate's web site.
This is not because I dislike you or your candidate. It is because I don't know the name of their site.
If you know of a web site for a political campaign in Utah, Colorado or Arizona, please use the contact form to tell me about the campaign. You can also tell me about campaign web site in a response to this message.
I will list any local campaign site I find free of charge, provided the site is about a campaign in a community served (Arizona, Colorado, Utah)
Feel free to tell me about your blog as well. The best way to add a blog is to register and use the addLink program. I am happy to list content sites such as blogs free of charge.
Thanks,
The management
The problem is that the campaign cycle is so short that I often miss important political campaign web sites.
This might include the most important web site or all. Your Web Site! or your favorite candidate's web site.
This is not because I dislike you or your candidate. It is because I don't know the name of their site.
If you know of a web site for a political campaign in Utah, Colorado or Arizona, please use the contact form to tell me about the campaign. You can also tell me about campaign web site in a response to this message.
I will list any local campaign site I find free of charge, provided the site is about a campaign in a community served (Arizona, Colorado, Utah)
Feel free to tell me about your blog as well. The best way to add a blog is to register and use the addLink program. I am happy to list content sites such as blogs free of charge.
Thanks,
The management
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.
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.
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.
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.
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