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.
Friday, January 13, 2012
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.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Twitter 10K
My yintercept account on twitter is just 99 followers shy of the elusive 10K barrier.
When I started twitter, social media afficiandos called those with 10K plus followers a "whale."
Twitter Counter says my site ranks #39,413. That number is low because they don't update every account every day. My guess is that there's 50,000 or more twitter users who've broken 10K.
My guess is that 100K is the new whale and I am years away from that.
BTW: I probably would have a higher count, but I am a free market radical and have a tendency to say things that are politically incorrect things ... like freedom is a good thing. Insurance is a bad thing.
Anyway, I think it would be fun to break the 10K barrier on New Years Day. Hopefully 2012 will be the year that America wakes up and restores the freedom that our nation's founder fought to establish.
When I started twitter, social media afficiandos called those with 10K plus followers a "whale."
Twitter Counter says my site ranks #39,413. That number is low because they don't update every account every day. My guess is that there's 50,000 or more twitter users who've broken 10K.
My guess is that 100K is the new whale and I am years away from that.
BTW: I probably would have a higher count, but I am a free market radical and have a tendency to say things that are politically incorrect things ... like freedom is a good thing. Insurance is a bad thing.
Anyway, I think it would be fun to break the 10K barrier on New Years Day. Hopefully 2012 will be the year that America wakes up and restores the freedom that our nation's founder fought to establish.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
A Thousand New Links
Arizona Color just passed its first milestone ... a thousand links. My goal is to get that number up to 5000 by the Centennial.
Speaking of the Centennial, I have a business opportunity for a person or group who is interested in living an active lifestyle in Arizona. Here is my contact form.
Speaking of the Centennial, I have a business opportunity for a person or group who is interested in living an active lifestyle in Arizona. Here is my contact form.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
A Thousand Failed Dreams
Maintaining a links page is a pain ... which is why most links lists have so many broken links.
My goal was to check each link every other year. I hope this will keep the broken links below 5%.
To do this, I placed a "check date" and have a report that lists sites by check date. If the site is still there when I check it, I bump the date. The hard part is that I have to check an eighth of the sites each quarter.
The Link Report shows how many links I add and delete each quarter. I fell a bit behind. To catch up, I checked some four thousand links this month and deleted 1000 of them. I fixed a few hundred others.
The grand total says I've deleted 8,326 links. There are 22,625 links in the directory with a grand total of 30,951. So, about 27% of the links I've added to the directory have gone dark through the years. 37% of the links added before 2007 have gone blank.
I've noticed that when I go to web sites, I usually find that from 20 to 40 percent of their links have gone bad.
In the Community Color project, i am linking to web sites for towns in the Mountain West. In my link deleting fury I discovered that government owned web sites rarely go blank. There have been a few that moved to a different URL. Big brand names and big corporations rarely go blank.
Almost all of the attrition was small businesses, family owned stores, family farms, artists, bands, nature photographers and privately owned creative efforts.
All of the little small mom-and-pop web sites that I was rooting for are failing.
The web is all about linking. If no-one links to small mom-and-pop web sites, then they will go away. The reason I built community color was of a hope that I could encourage people to link their sites together so more small web businesses could succeed.
Pulling 1000 web sites from the directory means that 1000 dreams failed and it is sad.
My goal was to check each link every other year. I hope this will keep the broken links below 5%.
To do this, I placed a "check date" and have a report that lists sites by check date. If the site is still there when I check it, I bump the date. The hard part is that I have to check an eighth of the sites each quarter.
The Link Report shows how many links I add and delete each quarter. I fell a bit behind. To catch up, I checked some four thousand links this month and deleted 1000 of them. I fixed a few hundred others.
The grand total says I've deleted 8,326 links. There are 22,625 links in the directory with a grand total of 30,951. So, about 27% of the links I've added to the directory have gone dark through the years. 37% of the links added before 2007 have gone blank.
I've noticed that when I go to web sites, I usually find that from 20 to 40 percent of their links have gone bad.
In the Community Color project, i am linking to web sites for towns in the Mountain West. In my link deleting fury I discovered that government owned web sites rarely go blank. There have been a few that moved to a different URL. Big brand names and big corporations rarely go blank.
Almost all of the attrition was small businesses, family owned stores, family farms, artists, bands, nature photographers and privately owned creative efforts.
All of the little small mom-and-pop web sites that I was rooting for are failing.
The web is all about linking. If no-one links to small mom-and-pop web sites, then they will go away. The reason I built community color was of a hope that I could encourage people to link their sites together so more small web businesses could succeed.
Pulling 1000 web sites from the directory means that 1000 dreams failed and it is sad.
Arizona Centennial
Arizona will celebrate it's centennial on February 14, 2012.
I don't suppose there is any active "free marketeer" in the state who wants to do something fun for the event?
I said "free marketeer" because the activity is designed to discuss the difference between a free society and socialized one. The event costs very little and has the potential to make some money.
If there is such a person or group, they could contact me. I have a fun, fair-style activity that I've been wanting to try out ... but it takes more than one person to pull of.
If you contact me, please tell me your location in Arizona and the type of recreation activities that you like. For example, you might say: "I am from Tombstone. I like slingin' guns, rustlin' up cattle, mountain bikin', photography, etc."
I don't suppose there is any active "free marketeer" in the state who wants to do something fun for the event?
I said "free marketeer" because the activity is designed to discuss the difference between a free society and socialized one. The event costs very little and has the potential to make some money.
If there is such a person or group, they could contact me. I have a fun, fair-style activity that I've been wanting to try out ... but it takes more than one person to pull of.
If you contact me, please tell me your location in Arizona and the type of recreation activities that you like. For example, you might say: "I am from Tombstone. I like slingin' guns, rustlin' up cattle, mountain bikin', photography, etc."
Monday, December 12, 2011
Link Clean Up
The link clean up project is moving along slowly. The Community Color Link Report says that I've added 1381 links this quarter and deleted 766. On Dec 2, I was at 1200 additions and 600 deletions. So, I've added 181 links and deleted 166 in the last 9 days.
The process takes a long time. After finding a broken link, I check the whois info then do a google search to see if they moved to a different domain. I've fixed about 30 such domains.
While deleting links, I also add new links and events.
I was hoping that this clean up effort might help revive my affiliate income for the holiday season.
Sadly, I was wrong. Commission Junction says I only made $6.00 on 534 hits this month. Last month I made $7.08 on 1,542 hits. I was counting on making $200 or more in this period.
In my other accounts, someone purchased a sample of EvoraPlus. EvoraPlus makes a probiotic tooth care product that replaces the bacteria that eat enamel with teeth friendly bacteria. In contrast most tooth care products try to kill everything in one's mouth, but fail because bacteria grows quickly, eating the enamel as it grows.
My other big sale came from Vann's in Missoula.
Anyway, the online shopping season is wrapping up this week. It looks like I am on track to making $800 for the quarter. Because of the web site crash, I made only $600 in Q3. I was counting on $1000.
For a community site to work, I need to have interactive features. But, I can't think of any that wouldn't be full of spam and require constant monitoring for hate speech.
The process takes a long time. After finding a broken link, I check the whois info then do a google search to see if they moved to a different domain. I've fixed about 30 such domains.
While deleting links, I also add new links and events.
I was hoping that this clean up effort might help revive my affiliate income for the holiday season.
Sadly, I was wrong. Commission Junction says I only made $6.00 on 534 hits this month. Last month I made $7.08 on 1,542 hits. I was counting on making $200 or more in this period.
In my other accounts, someone purchased a sample of EvoraPlus. EvoraPlus makes a probiotic tooth care product that replaces the bacteria that eat enamel with teeth friendly bacteria. In contrast most tooth care products try to kill everything in one's mouth, but fail because bacteria grows quickly, eating the enamel as it grows.
My other big sale came from Vann's in Missoula.
Anyway, the online shopping season is wrapping up this week. It looks like I am on track to making $800 for the quarter. Because of the web site crash, I made only $600 in Q3. I was counting on $1000.
For a community site to work, I need to have interactive features. But, I can't think of any that wouldn't be full of spam and require constant monitoring for hate speech.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Removed Last Interactive Feature
The Community Color sites used to have several interactive features such as a forum interactive maps, ratings buttons, etc.
Every interactive feature became a target of spammers or by really nasty people who swore a lot and said terrible things about others.
So, I systematically turned off each interactive feature of the sites.
I had left the rating button on the site to test different ways of filtering out the spam. In truth, I really didn't want to have a 100% capitulation to spammers.
Keeping the rate button also reminded me that it is impossible to have an interative feature on a site without getting overloaded by disinformation and spam.
Anyway, I finally decided that it is not worth it, and am sad to announce that I turned off the last interactive feature on the sites.
Often I wish I could have a forum or an interactive feature. I can't think of any that would not automatically be abused.
Every interactive feature became a target of spammers or by really nasty people who swore a lot and said terrible things about others.
So, I systematically turned off each interactive feature of the sites.
I had left the rating button on the site to test different ways of filtering out the spam. In truth, I really didn't want to have a 100% capitulation to spammers.
Keeping the rate button also reminded me that it is impossible to have an interative feature on a site without getting overloaded by disinformation and spam.
Anyway, I finally decided that it is not worth it, and am sad to announce that I turned off the last interactive feature on the sites.
Often I wish I could have a forum or an interactive feature. I can't think of any that would not automatically be abused.
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Colorado Giving Day
Readers of my blog have probably figured out that I am not keen on big government, or big business. I prefer small limited government and small business where people matter to big biz.
Likewise, I am not all that keen on big religion that seeks power and prefer to small charity to big charity.
If you've been anywhere near a Colorado based web site or media, you know that today is Colorado Giving Day. This is a day when secular charities in Colorado aggressively market their products.
I've been going through givingfirst.org to make sure the charities are listed in the Colorado Color collection of web sites. GivingFirst does not make link harvesting easy. I have to go to the individual charity pages and click on the link.
What is really cool, is that they list the financials for the charities. The financials of these charities are better than most of the "for-profit" businesses I've worked for.
Most of the sites are excessively slick and slap the visitor silly with "Colorado Giving Day" ads.
It is frightening how aggressive charities are when it comes to begging for cash.
Any, half way through the link harvest, I am starting to have a severe allergic reaction to big charity.
I hate the name "giving first." The idea is that is that you should give to charity bedore you consider yourself or your family. If we had smaller business, smaller government and smaller charity, there would be less need in our society.
The fact that Giving First only lists secular charities also irks me. Secular charity is only a tiny segment of the giving community.
I like my Community Color directories. The goal of this project is to list the web sites from all segments of the society. It has the secular charities, churches, local blogs, merchants, affiliate sites. I think I am doing a better job showing the diversity of American communities.
Perhaps I am guilty of putting business first ... but, without businesses that actually produce for society, there wouldn't be any wealth in our society for secular charities to covet.
Likewise, I am not all that keen on big religion that seeks power and prefer to small charity to big charity.
If you've been anywhere near a Colorado based web site or media, you know that today is Colorado Giving Day. This is a day when secular charities in Colorado aggressively market their products.
I've been going through givingfirst.org to make sure the charities are listed in the Colorado Color collection of web sites. GivingFirst does not make link harvesting easy. I have to go to the individual charity pages and click on the link.
What is really cool, is that they list the financials for the charities. The financials of these charities are better than most of the "for-profit" businesses I've worked for.
Most of the sites are excessively slick and slap the visitor silly with "Colorado Giving Day" ads.
It is frightening how aggressive charities are when it comes to begging for cash.
Any, half way through the link harvest, I am starting to have a severe allergic reaction to big charity.
I hate the name "giving first." The idea is that is that you should give to charity bedore you consider yourself or your family. If we had smaller business, smaller government and smaller charity, there would be less need in our society.
The fact that Giving First only lists secular charities also irks me. Secular charity is only a tiny segment of the giving community.
I like my Community Color directories. The goal of this project is to list the web sites from all segments of the society. It has the secular charities, churches, local blogs, merchants, affiliate sites. I think I am doing a better job showing the diversity of American communities.
Perhaps I am guilty of putting business first ... but, without businesses that actually produce for society, there wouldn't be any wealth in our society for secular charities to covet.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Fixing Links Consumes Time
I spent the better part of the day manually fixing links. i just ran the link report. The link added went up 29 to 1200 and the link delete figure went up 62 to 500. The event count went up 30 links to 2214.
Even with a fast connection, fixing links is a long, dull activity.
Even with a fast connection, fixing links is a long, dull activity.
Web Site Failure Statistics
Did I mention that I have temporary access to a fast internet connection?
One thing I want to do with this opportunity is to clean up all of the broken links in the directory. Cleaning links is a real hassle on a slow connection. While cleaning links, I got to wondering what percent of web sites fail.
Since I include an add and delete time stamp on listings, I can piece together some idea of the fail rate of sites. So, I made a link report which shows how many sites I add each quarter and how many of them have eventually gone black. So far, it looks like about 37% of the sites added before 2005 have gone black already.
My report shows other tidbits of information:
The bottom line of the report shows that I have added 30369 web sites to the directories, and deleted 7806 bad links as of noon on 12/2/2011.
The top line of the report shows that I've added 1171 links so far this quater and have deleted 448 links.
I added a second report about events. It shows that I've added 16801 events to the directories. I automatically delete events three months after the event. I've added 2184 events to the calendar this quarter.
I will not launch into a delete-a-thon. Hopefully, I will pull out a hundred or so dead links, making the directory more useful to the two or three people who use it.
One thing I want to do with this opportunity is to clean up all of the broken links in the directory. Cleaning links is a real hassle on a slow connection. While cleaning links, I got to wondering what percent of web sites fail.
Since I include an add and delete time stamp on listings, I can piece together some idea of the fail rate of sites. So, I made a link report which shows how many sites I add each quarter and how many of them have eventually gone black. So far, it looks like about 37% of the sites added before 2005 have gone black already.
My report shows other tidbits of information:
The bottom line of the report shows that I have added 30369 web sites to the directories, and deleted 7806 bad links as of noon on 12/2/2011.
The top line of the report shows that I've added 1171 links so far this quater and have deleted 448 links.
I added a second report about events. It shows that I've added 16801 events to the directories. I automatically delete events three months after the event. I've added 2184 events to the calendar this quarter.
I will not launch into a delete-a-thon. Hopefully, I will pull out a hundred or so dead links, making the directory more useful to the two or three people who use it.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Church Videos
I have temporary access to high speed internet and can stream YouTube and Vimeo videos; So, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to explore the creations of the local community.
Local church groups and ministries have started streaming video. Some are highly polished works. For example, The River Church of Durango has hired two of the leading intellectuals of Southern Colorado to come out of the mountains and explain up the weekly events at the church, accompanied by banjo and guitar.
Not all churches have access to such gifted prowess, and are doing simple things like posting videos of sermons and church activities.
For the Christmas Season, I will concentrate on carols and church videos for the communities in community color.
I am listing videos at random. I hope no-one feels put off because I missed their church group or video stream.
hmmmm, It would be nice to make my temporary access to high speed internet permanent. On that note. Vann's is the best place to get consumer electronics ... like video equipment.
Yesterday, I was fortunate to be accepted in the 2xl.com affiliate program. I really like this site. They have a good price point and free shipping on three basic styles of earphones: earbuds, behind the ear and full headphones. It is a product that I am likely buy. Here is the link.
Local church groups and ministries have started streaming video. Some are highly polished works. For example, The River Church of Durango has hired two of the leading intellectuals of Southern Colorado to come out of the mountains and explain up the weekly events at the church, accompanied by banjo and guitar.
Not all churches have access to such gifted prowess, and are doing simple things like posting videos of sermons and church activities.
For the Christmas Season, I will concentrate on carols and church videos for the communities in community color.
I am listing videos at random. I hope no-one feels put off because I missed their church group or video stream.
hmmmm, It would be nice to make my temporary access to high speed internet permanent. On that note. Vann's is the best place to get consumer electronics ... like video equipment.
Yesterday, I was fortunate to be accepted in the 2xl.com affiliate program. I really like this site. They have a good price point and free shipping on three basic styles of earphones: earbuds, behind the ear and full headphones. It is a product that I am likely buy. Here is the link.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Back Up for Black Friday
The Community Color sites came back online at 2:00 AM. I've been checking things out and the sites appear stable.
I loaded coupons into the directory. The site aFountainOfBargains.com lists all of the Black Friday coupons.
My webhost claimed there was a hard drive failure yesterday. So far, the cloud server has proven less stable than their standard discount hosting server.
I wish everyone a happy Black Friday.
I loaded coupons into the directory. The site aFountainOfBargains.com lists all of the Black Friday coupons.
My webhost claimed there was a hard drive failure yesterday. So far, the cloud server has proven less stable than their standard discount hosting server.
I wish everyone a happy Black Friday.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Open Technical Support?
Dang. My web sites are down again.
Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if a webhost tried to give technical support online?
The clients would be YELLING at the webhost while the marketers at the webhost would be doing all that they can to misdirect and spin the support calls to fit current marketing plans.
Opening a technical support call to public scrutiny would do nothing but destroy the ability of the people needing technical support to communicate with the support provider.
A technical support call is best performed in private. A frustrated client calls some poor stiff being forced to work Thanksgiving Night to complain about a web outage.
An open technical support call simply could not work.
I need to let people know that the cloud server hosting the Community Color sites crashed again today. They've been offline for the last six hours. The ETA is 3:00AM ... but is likely to be later.
An outage on Black Friday will be terrible for me. Because of all the previous outages, the income of the sites fell off the cliff. I made only $6 from Nov 1-Nov 24. I was really hoping to make something on Black Friday through Cyber Monday.
I had actually spent several hours loading the site with coupons and sale notices in a desparate attempt to save the sites.
When the sites went down, I thought about logging into a hosting forum and venting against my webhost.
But nothing good could possibly come from such a public train wreck.
My petty little complaint is that people won't see my listing of coupons on Black Friday. So What?
So instead of venting against the people forced to work Thanksgiving Day, I started to think about the absurd expectations we have about the word "open."
From the "open society" to "open source." "Open" is the buzzword of the day. Yet, excessive openess simply destroys the ability to communicate.
It my tech support call, I simply wished the workers a Happy Thanksgiving and asked for information on the outage.
There is no point in venting at a person who is working a really lousy shift.
I tried imagining the same communication on a public forum like Twitter .... it simply could not have worked.
An attempt to have "open" technical support would be absurd ... perhaps most of the ideas surrounding the buzzword "open" are absurd as well.
Anyway, Community Color is down again. I don't know when it will be back up.
The silly little coupons are also on the site aFountainOfBargains.com (which is hosted by a different company). I wish the world a Happy Thanksgiving. Let's hope I am back online tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Note on Affiliate Marketing
For the last several weeks, I've been working on my affiliate links while fretting about whether or not the web site will make ends meet this holiday season.
I've spent a great deal of time on affiliate marketing because I think it is an honorable form of income.
Affiliate marketing is a simple game played between web sites. In affiliate marketing, web sites with a product to sell pay a portion of the sale to an affiliate web site that refers traffic.
It is a simple structure that holds the promise of distributing money through our social networks and web development efforts.
The major affiliate networks list over 10,000 merchants actively engaged in mass affiliation. There are thousands more engaged in private deals.
There are millions of web sites engaged in the market. So, it is a big thing.
Sadly, the market has a dark side with slimy operators pulling every trick in the book to steal commissions and engage in anti-market activity.
For example, parasiteware is a class of computer programs designed to steal commissions. Most of the browser helper objects and toolbars you find in cyberspace were designed to get commissions on sales. There are hosts of adware programs that infect computers like viruses in order to grab commissions.
WARNING: Many of the "anti-adware" products on the market are, themselves, adware.
There is good and bad in every industry. The way to improve things is to openly promote the good things we find and to steer clear of the bad things.
This is what I've been trying to do with the Community Color project. I want to make a living by emphasizing the good side of things.
In the early days of the Internet, I feared that big national sites would dominate and effectively crowd out local web development.
So, I decided to combine affiliate marketing with tools to promote local web development.
I put a quarterly summary my affiliate stats on the page: http://afountainofbargains.com/merchant.html
The Community Color sites have had tens of millions of page views. From 2002 to Q3 2011, I sent 587,000 hits to affiliated merchants and have a reported income of $53,000.
The report shows I make an average of $1500 a quarter. A full time job at minimum wage is over $3700 per quarter.
This year I made the foolish mistake of upgrading to a cloud hosting account. I also invested in a smartphone hoping to learn about the mobile market. I increased my expenses to $500 a quarter.
The cloud account crashed in August. I had 6 weeks of down time during which I lost most of my inbound links. My income fell to under a $100 a month. (gulp). From November 1 to November 21, I've sent 1856 hits to affiliated merchants, but only made $2.32 in commissions. (I made $3.84 today bringing my monthly income to $6.32. (gulp)
Because of the crash, I've been working furiously on trying to fix the income structure of the project. I've increase the number of affiliate links. The page http://linksalive.com/slime.html shows the percent of affiliate to standard links. Yes, I call the page slime because my progressive friends consider any action that makes money to be slime.
The slime report shows that community directories tend to have a low ratio of affiliate to regular links. 4.2% of the links in Salt Lake Sites go to affiliated merchants.
Newer sites like ArizonaColor.us have a higher percent of links because I decided to add the affiliate links first.
The bottom line of the report says the directory has 22525 links with 2747 going to merchant web sites. That's about 12% of the links.
This directory structure sends a ton of traffic to community services and small web sites. Close to 90% of the traffic goes to free stuff.
Community stuff is good, but I happen to believe that making money is a good as well.
Look at the chaos that ensued after the financial collapse. In many ways, I believe that the web sites that have viable business models and make money do more for the community than those that are simply excercises in free expression.
Because of the web site crash that took place in August, I've been burning the midnight oil working on affiliate links.
I believe that affiliate marketing is a good thing that could help provide additional income to people in the middle class.
I think that affiliate marketing is something that we should promote, and not shun.
I've spent a great deal of time on affiliate marketing because I think it is an honorable form of income.
Affiliate marketing is a simple game played between web sites. In affiliate marketing, web sites with a product to sell pay a portion of the sale to an affiliate web site that refers traffic.
It is a simple structure that holds the promise of distributing money through our social networks and web development efforts.
The major affiliate networks list over 10,000 merchants actively engaged in mass affiliation. There are thousands more engaged in private deals.
There are millions of web sites engaged in the market. So, it is a big thing.
Sadly, the market has a dark side with slimy operators pulling every trick in the book to steal commissions and engage in anti-market activity.
For example, parasiteware is a class of computer programs designed to steal commissions. Most of the browser helper objects and toolbars you find in cyberspace were designed to get commissions on sales. There are hosts of adware programs that infect computers like viruses in order to grab commissions.
WARNING: Many of the "anti-adware" products on the market are, themselves, adware.
There is good and bad in every industry. The way to improve things is to openly promote the good things we find and to steer clear of the bad things.
This is what I've been trying to do with the Community Color project. I want to make a living by emphasizing the good side of things.
In the early days of the Internet, I feared that big national sites would dominate and effectively crowd out local web development.
So, I decided to combine affiliate marketing with tools to promote local web development.
I put a quarterly summary my affiliate stats on the page: http://afountainofbargains.com/merchant.html
The Community Color sites have had tens of millions of page views. From 2002 to Q3 2011, I sent 587,000 hits to affiliated merchants and have a reported income of $53,000.
The report shows I make an average of $1500 a quarter. A full time job at minimum wage is over $3700 per quarter.
This year I made the foolish mistake of upgrading to a cloud hosting account. I also invested in a smartphone hoping to learn about the mobile market. I increased my expenses to $500 a quarter.
The cloud account crashed in August. I had 6 weeks of down time during which I lost most of my inbound links. My income fell to under a $100 a month. (gulp). From November 1 to November 21, I've sent 1856 hits to affiliated merchants, but only made $2.32 in commissions. (I made $3.84 today bringing my monthly income to $6.32. (gulp)
Because of the crash, I've been working furiously on trying to fix the income structure of the project. I've increase the number of affiliate links. The page http://linksalive.com/slime.html shows the percent of affiliate to standard links. Yes, I call the page slime because my progressive friends consider any action that makes money to be slime.
The slime report shows that community directories tend to have a low ratio of affiliate to regular links. 4.2% of the links in Salt Lake Sites go to affiliated merchants.
Newer sites like ArizonaColor.us have a higher percent of links because I decided to add the affiliate links first.
The bottom line of the report says the directory has 22525 links with 2747 going to merchant web sites. That's about 12% of the links.
This directory structure sends a ton of traffic to community services and small web sites. Close to 90% of the traffic goes to free stuff.
Community stuff is good, but I happen to believe that making money is a good as well.
Look at the chaos that ensued after the financial collapse. In many ways, I believe that the web sites that have viable business models and make money do more for the community than those that are simply excercises in free expression.
Because of the web site crash that took place in August, I've been burning the midnight oil working on affiliate links.
I believe that affiliate marketing is a good thing that could help provide additional income to people in the middle class.
I think that affiliate marketing is something that we should promote, and not shun.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Four Thousand Reviews
I temporarily have access to high speed internet; so I am taking full advantage of every megabyte per second and am rapidly expanding my sites. It used to take 20 minutes to download a 5 minute YouTube video. I can now stream most of the videos.
The goal of Community Color is to promote local web development in the Mountain West. A large number of people are creating and uploading videos.
So, i am scouring YouTube, WelcomeMatt and Vimeo for local videos and posting them in the Site Review section of my site. These reviews serve as the base for the site's RSS feeds.
I just looked at my stats which say that I currently have 3999 site reviews up. These reviews have received 2,533,845 page views. That's an average of 633 views per review.
For the most part the reviews are randomly selected web sites. Some of the reviews are for ecommerce sites with a local connection.
I tend to favor custom coded sites and those that have produced videos or social media content. I am concentrating on Utah, Colorado and Arizona. The mobi optimized page m.CommunityColor.com shows just the You Tube videos by community.
Youtube is overloaded with new videos about the Occupy movement. I've embedded a few dozen occupy videos on the site, but politics is not the primary focus of the community color project, and I apologize to those who think there should be more.
Anyway, the goal of this project is to create RSS feeds filled with a diversity of interesting local links. Currently, the project looks at 40 different communities. Each RSS feed shows a new link about once a week.
I am attempting to fund the project with the Store of the Day program on LinksAlive. This page shows a link to an ecommerce store. My hope is to create a financially viable structure that can help promote community centric web development. My long term hope is to some day make enough to hire a minimum wage clerk to write the reviews.
The goal of Community Color is to promote local web development in the Mountain West. A large number of people are creating and uploading videos.
So, i am scouring YouTube, WelcomeMatt and Vimeo for local videos and posting them in the Site Review section of my site. These reviews serve as the base for the site's RSS feeds.
I just looked at my stats which say that I currently have 3999 site reviews up. These reviews have received 2,533,845 page views. That's an average of 633 views per review.
For the most part the reviews are randomly selected web sites. Some of the reviews are for ecommerce sites with a local connection.
I tend to favor custom coded sites and those that have produced videos or social media content. I am concentrating on Utah, Colorado and Arizona. The mobi optimized page m.CommunityColor.com shows just the You Tube videos by community.
Youtube is overloaded with new videos about the Occupy movement. I've embedded a few dozen occupy videos on the site, but politics is not the primary focus of the community color project, and I apologize to those who think there should be more.
Anyway, the goal of this project is to create RSS feeds filled with a diversity of interesting local links. Currently, the project looks at 40 different communities. Each RSS feed shows a new link about once a week.
I am attempting to fund the project with the Store of the Day program on LinksAlive. This page shows a link to an ecommerce store. My hope is to create a financially viable structure that can help promote community centric web development. My long term hope is to some day make enough to hire a minimum wage clerk to write the reviews.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Site Reviews by Month
I added state level web sites to Community Color to help group the town sites, and things are working out well.
I wanted each site to have an RSS feed. RSS feeds are for periodical posts like newspaper articles and blog posts. So, I created a "Site of the Day" review program that would highlight one site a day. A site a day is too much work.
You can add the RSS feed for your town's directory and you will occasionally see a link to a local web (or local store). I just made calendars that show the reviews for an entire state. Here are the three pages:
My hope is to fund the project with the Store of the Day which presents an affiliate site each day.
The reviews are pretty much random. Basically, if I feel like writing a review when I first find the site, I write a review.
I like to review sites that have YouTube or Vimeo videos because then I can embed the content in the reviews to make them more interesting. If I had time, I would end up making all sites a site of the day. But time is limited.
I wanted each site to have an RSS feed. RSS feeds are for periodical posts like newspaper articles and blog posts. So, I created a "Site of the Day" review program that would highlight one site a day. A site a day is too much work.
You can add the RSS feed for your town's directory and you will occasionally see a link to a local web (or local store). I just made calendars that show the reviews for an entire state. Here are the three pages:
- ArizonaColor Reviews shows the reviews for all counties in Arizona
- Colorado Color Reviews shows the reviews for select towns in Colorado.
- Utah Color - Reviews shows the reviews for select towns in Utah.
My hope is to fund the project with the Store of the Day which presents an affiliate site each day.
The reviews are pretty much random. Basically, if I feel like writing a review when I first find the site, I write a review.
I like to review sites that have YouTube or Vimeo videos because then I can embed the content in the reviews to make them more interesting. If I had time, I would end up making all sites a site of the day. But time is limited.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
User Experience v. SEO
I read a fun article on SEO Experts to Avoid.
The article criticizes conversion experts turned SEO.
Search Engine Optimization SEO is all about trying to get free traffic from search engines. We all love to play the system and get something for nothing, however, it is a market that can easily go away.
Search engines are still king, but are only one source of traffic. This is especially true with local marketing where local printed ads still bring more traffic than international search engines.
Everytime Google changes its algorithm, there is teeth nashing on WeberMaster World as the SEO experts find their page ranks change.
The web designer who concentrates on user experience first will create a design that is valuable to the user regardless of the source of the traffic.
IMHO, the best web designer is the person who designs for the web site users but who is attentative enough to SEO to avoid big SEO mistakes.
The biggest problems with "Conversion Experts" is that they often fail to give any due consideration to SEO. For example, a flash site might have no keywords and the search engines never index them. Having an HTML navigation structure that navigates to the flash pages solves this.
IMHO: Small sites going for competitive keywords are better off concentrating on usability, then using traditional advertising or buying online traffic than competing for an overcrowded keyword.
In conclusion, I would say the best approach for web design is to consider the Free Search Engine traffic to be just one element of advertising and to avoid any SEO expert that wants to make free search engine treffic the primary focus of a web site.
The article criticizes conversion experts turned SEO.
Search Engine Optimization SEO is all about trying to get free traffic from search engines. We all love to play the system and get something for nothing, however, it is a market that can easily go away.
Search engines are still king, but are only one source of traffic. This is especially true with local marketing where local printed ads still bring more traffic than international search engines.
Everytime Google changes its algorithm, there is teeth nashing on WeberMaster World as the SEO experts find their page ranks change.
The web designer who concentrates on user experience first will create a design that is valuable to the user regardless of the source of the traffic.
IMHO, the best web designer is the person who designs for the web site users but who is attentative enough to SEO to avoid big SEO mistakes.
The biggest problems with "Conversion Experts" is that they often fail to give any due consideration to SEO. For example, a flash site might have no keywords and the search engines never index them. Having an HTML navigation structure that navigates to the flash pages solves this.
IMHO: Small sites going for competitive keywords are better off concentrating on usability, then using traditional advertising or buying online traffic than competing for an overcrowded keyword.
In conclusion, I would say the best approach for web design is to consider the Free Search Engine traffic to be just one element of advertising and to avoid any SEO expert that wants to make free search engine treffic the primary focus of a web site.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Politics - A Scary Subject
This All-Souls Eve I am working on the most frightening of all subjects ... politics.
The goal of Community Color was to promote locally centric web development. All of the directories had a politics section because that is a part of life.
In the last two years, I've been consumed with the health care debate (to no avail). Anyway, I want to focus on the community sites again.
In the first effort, I started with the local community and worked outward. In this new effort, I want to start with the state and work inward.
I am currently concentrating on three states: Arizona, Colorado and Utah and have three web sites with the URLS ArizonaColor.US, colorado.communitycolor.com and UtahColor.com.
I am working on the politics pages which have the path /dir/politics. They are Arizona Politics, Colorado Politics and Utah Politics.
The state level political directories will have links to state level political parties and statewide political races. The local directories will have links to local political web sites and local political campaigns.
To help tie the local and state directories together, I created a master index. Here is the master index for Utah politics. This page simply has a link to the politics directories in each of the sites.
Prior to this change I was doing silly things for state wide races. If a race had a candidate from Tooele and one from Heber, I would list the Tooele candidate in Tooele and Heber candidate in Heber. This provided no value to people who wanted to compare candidates and it looked like a tacit endorsement.
I confess, a major reason for this change is that I never found a way to monetize local web directories. People are interested in targetting local customers, but they aren't interested in supporting local web sites. The only revenue source I have is affiliate marketing. Most towns don't have enough ecommerce web sites to pay the bill.
When I bump up to the state level, I find that there are enough advertisers. For example, I've found about 100 Colorado shops doing affiliate marketing. The Colorado Shopping directory will have enough affiliate stores to be interesting.
Anyway, I working on political web sites ... it is much scarier than any of the Halloween attractions in town.
The goal of Community Color was to promote locally centric web development. All of the directories had a politics section because that is a part of life.
In the last two years, I've been consumed with the health care debate (to no avail). Anyway, I want to focus on the community sites again.
In the first effort, I started with the local community and worked outward. In this new effort, I want to start with the state and work inward.
I am currently concentrating on three states: Arizona, Colorado and Utah and have three web sites with the URLS ArizonaColor.US, colorado.communitycolor.com and UtahColor.com.
I am working on the politics pages which have the path /dir/politics. They are Arizona Politics, Colorado Politics and Utah Politics.
The state level political directories will have links to state level political parties and statewide political races. The local directories will have links to local political web sites and local political campaigns.
To help tie the local and state directories together, I created a master index. Here is the master index for Utah politics. This page simply has a link to the politics directories in each of the sites.
Prior to this change I was doing silly things for state wide races. If a race had a candidate from Tooele and one from Heber, I would list the Tooele candidate in Tooele and Heber candidate in Heber. This provided no value to people who wanted to compare candidates and it looked like a tacit endorsement.
I confess, a major reason for this change is that I never found a way to monetize local web directories. People are interested in targetting local customers, but they aren't interested in supporting local web sites. The only revenue source I have is affiliate marketing. Most towns don't have enough ecommerce web sites to pay the bill.
When I bump up to the state level, I find that there are enough advertisers. For example, I've found about 100 Colorado shops doing affiliate marketing. The Colorado Shopping directory will have enough affiliate stores to be interesting.
Anyway, I working on political web sites ... it is much scarier than any of the Halloween attractions in town.
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