In the ongoing struggle to figure out how to make ends meet, I decided to add a bid for placement game to my community web sites. The front page of the site tends to get the most traffic. On that page, I placed an "ad block" with three slots. People in the community can bid for those three slots. It will be interesting to see if any one does. Here a list of the sites in the program.
As you can see, I don't have a lot of traffic. At the moment, the adBlock is live on ten different pages (whoopie!). To average page views per day for these ten pages is just over 500. So, if the three ads paid $10 per 1000 page views. I would be collection ($10 * 3)/(500/1000) = $15 a day!!!! Not minimum wage, but in Bush's America that is a lot for an independently owned organization.
During the beta test, I set reserve at $10 to $12 per 1000 ad views. I will probably drop the reserves when I feel comfortable with the whole process.
I think the ad block idea is a good way to handle bid for placement on small sites. If people like the ad block program. I will open source the code for it.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Mais, non.
I can't help but feel happy that the French said "non" to the EU Constitution. The pundits are all saying that the Constitution is too free market and not socialistic enough...I suspect, however that the reason for the "non" is that people are seeing that the march toward the EU is decreasing the ability of people to participate in the government decisions that affect them.
On the home front, I admit I would also feel a bit of glee if the Congress rejected the Bolton nomination. I think the US should have a strong willed diplomat whose eyes are on reforming the UN. However, the fact that so many US diplomats can't stand the guy, really indicates to me that Bolton is too much an abrasive iconoclast for the job.
I am always happy when the people's will stops the plans set by the empowered elite.
Now, if only more Muslims denied Al Quaida and the PLO, and if the Isrealis rejected the plans of Sharon and their ideologues, then we could have a few years of peace and prosperity.
On the home front, I admit I would also feel a bit of glee if the Congress rejected the Bolton nomination. I think the US should have a strong willed diplomat whose eyes are on reforming the UN. However, the fact that so many US diplomats can't stand the guy, really indicates to me that Bolton is too much an abrasive iconoclast for the job.
I am always happy when the people's will stops the plans set by the empowered elite.
Now, if only more Muslims denied Al Quaida and the PLO, and if the Isrealis rejected the plans of Sharon and their ideologues, then we could have a few years of peace and prosperity.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Dog Heaven
I took Coco on a walk through 
dog heaven (the "wink, wink" off-leash area at Parley's Hollow).
The picture is from last year. I wish I took my camera along on this hike. Everywhere I look, I see cool pictures that I want to take. Unfortunately, my web host has not upgraded the service contract since 1999. I will have to change web hosts before I am able to upload any more pictures. Grrrrr!!!!!
Changing hosts wouldn't be a problem if I had make a decent revenue stream. The problem is that he only people willing to pay me for listing in the community sites are the mass affiliate marketers, and most of those are crooks.
I've been pouring through my stats to figure out which ones to continue and which to drop. It appears that Regional Help Wanted just passed the 5000 hit mark. They've paid zero zero dollars and zero zero cents for 5000 links. They are typical of the game.
I would actually be sending them several thousand users a month if they had a legitimate program. The world is full of people who would rather trick a little out of people than making a lot by being fair.
Since I want to list all of the sites relevant to the communities served by my directories, I've been hesitant to cut them off completely. I've experimented with different ways to stem the flow of traffic to their program.
My current idea is to make an interim page. Rather than linking directly to the regional help wanted sites, I link to the interim page. This page has links back to my directories.
My idea is to make interim pages for all the big institutions that affect communities. This structure might get more traffic flowing into the small independent shops.
dog heaven (the "wink, wink" off-leash area at Parley's Hollow). The picture is from last year. I wish I took my camera along on this hike. Everywhere I look, I see cool pictures that I want to take. Unfortunately, my web host has not upgraded the service contract since 1999. I will have to change web hosts before I am able to upload any more pictures. Grrrrr!!!!!
Changing hosts wouldn't be a problem if I had make a decent revenue stream. The problem is that he only people willing to pay me for listing in the community sites are the mass affiliate marketers, and most of those are crooks.
I've been pouring through my stats to figure out which ones to continue and which to drop. It appears that Regional Help Wanted just passed the 5000 hit mark. They've paid zero zero dollars and zero zero cents for 5000 links. They are typical of the game.
I would actually be sending them several thousand users a month if they had a legitimate program. The world is full of people who would rather trick a little out of people than making a lot by being fair.
Since I want to list all of the sites relevant to the communities served by my directories, I've been hesitant to cut them off completely. I've experimented with different ways to stem the flow of traffic to their program.
My current idea is to make an interim page. Rather than linking directly to the regional help wanted sites, I link to the interim page. This page has links back to my directories.
My idea is to make interim pages for all the big institutions that affect communities. This structure might get more traffic flowing into the small independent shops.
Living Traditions
I went to the Salt Lake Living Traditions festival last night. The festival will run through Sunday.
I remember previous festivals having more art booths. The quality of food at festivals is definately improving. Many of the booths are now operated by area restaurants.
The next event on my schedule is Questioning Minds which will feature a talk by Pat Cutting on Kofi Annan and the UN.
It will be interesting to see if Ms. Cutting prefers a strong executive in the United Nations. Personally, I prefer the UN having separate and independent boards for each if its initiatives. For that matter, I think the one on going flaw of the United States is that the structure of the government places too much power in the president. The questioning minds presentation will be on Sunday at the SL Library from 1:45PM to 4:30PM.
I remember previous festivals having more art booths. The quality of food at festivals is definately improving. Many of the booths are now operated by area restaurants.
The next event on my schedule is Questioning Minds which will feature a talk by Pat Cutting on Kofi Annan and the UN.
It will be interesting to see if Ms. Cutting prefers a strong executive in the United Nations. Personally, I prefer the UN having separate and independent boards for each if its initiatives. For that matter, I think the one on going flaw of the United States is that the structure of the government places too much power in the president. The questioning minds presentation will be on Sunday at the SL Library from 1:45PM to 4:30PM.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Community Arts
One of my primary goals in creating the Community Color sites was to help local artists and bands promote their work. The site is succeeding to a small extent. To help give an extra boost to the arts directories, I just finished creating a arts directory directory. Hopefully, this little piece of SEO spamming will increase the flow of traffic to artists sites.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Ordered Lists
Grrrr!!!!!!
I was finishing up a web page to discover that the W3C in all their great wisdom deprecated the start element for ordered lists. Since it is impossible to know the beginning element of an ordered list at design time (when I wrote the linked style sheet), I am forced either to have an embedded stylesheet in the document or convert all of the lists to tables. The document worked so well with ordered lists. Basically, since I was talking about natural numbers, I wanted to begin the list at zero rather than 1.
I really hate the W3C. Personally, I think the ideal design for a style sheet language would be to only deprecate those tags which are defined at design time (such as fonts, background color), and to leave the tags that are used at run time to add meaning to a document. For example the strike tag was extremely useful to show editing information. The person who wrote the stylesheet would have no idea what text the editors remove or change in a document. The style sheet designer could not possibly know the start element for an ordered list. Likewise, the style sheet designer could not know if an image added in text is left or right aligned.
Speaking of design tags. The W3C gets rid of the helpful start attribute in ordered lists and they get rid of the aligh tag for inline images, but they require that images have a width and height attribute. Last I looked, width and height are design elements.
I was finishing up a web page to discover that the W3C in all their great wisdom deprecated the start element for ordered lists. Since it is impossible to know the beginning element of an ordered list at design time (when I wrote the linked style sheet), I am forced either to have an embedded stylesheet in the document or convert all of the lists to tables. The document worked so well with ordered lists. Basically, since I was talking about natural numbers, I wanted to begin the list at zero rather than 1.
I really hate the W3C. Personally, I think the ideal design for a style sheet language would be to only deprecate those tags which are defined at design time (such as fonts, background color), and to leave the tags that are used at run time to add meaning to a document. For example the strike tag was extremely useful to show editing information. The person who wrote the stylesheet would have no idea what text the editors remove or change in a document. The style sheet designer could not possibly know the start element for an ordered list. Likewise, the style sheet designer could not know if an image added in text is left or right aligned.
Speaking of design tags. The W3C gets rid of the helpful start attribute in ordered lists and they get rid of the aligh tag for inline images, but they require that images have a width and height attribute. Last I looked, width and height are design elements.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
This Close to Peace
Reuters reports that Dutch peace activists were nabbed in an attempt to grab Bush's nuclear. You know, the one with the portable red button that can launch all the nuclear weapons.
Of course, Bush could still launch nuclear wars left and right with the red button under his desk in the Oval office, but we could have some peace while Bush is on the road lying to everyone so that he can build up a context to justify nuclear.
As Agent Maxwell Smart would say "We, were this close." We were this close to finally having peace.
Except, why do I always have a nagging feeling that we would be worse off if the people who claim to be "peace activists" were in power?
I've gone to several peace meetings that could best be described as people brimming over with hate, projecting their emotions onto others and getting paranoid in the process.
Of course there's also a lot of rational people who are working diligently to open communications, clean landmine fields and build a structure where peace can prevail.
Of course, Bush could still launch nuclear wars left and right with the red button under his desk in the Oval office, but we could have some peace while Bush is on the road lying to everyone so that he can build up a context to justify nuclear.
As Agent Maxwell Smart would say "We, were this close." We were this close to finally having peace.
Except, why do I always have a nagging feeling that we would be worse off if the people who claim to be "peace activists" were in power?
I've gone to several peace meetings that could best be described as people brimming over with hate, projecting their emotions onto others and getting paranoid in the process.
Of course there's also a lot of rational people who are working diligently to open communications, clean landmine fields and build a structure where peace can prevail.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
April Totals
The April totals are in. In April, I sent 8442 clicks to merchants. The reported earnings were $876.12. I will generally get about 85% of the reported earnings.
Sadly, I find that the general impression of the community sites is that they are nothing but ads. Few people in a community will link to the directories because of the ads. I ran a report that compares the number of affiliate links to community links. Here's the total:
The most developed site in the collection (Salt Lake Sites) currently has 4030 free links and only 121 ad links. That is 2.97% of the total links are "affiliate links". Currently, only 10% of the "affiliate" programs I've joined have paid me anything. This Sears Home Center is the only page that consistently results in income.
Lesser developed sites (like Boulder Color, are a different story. I just haven't had time to add many free links. Currently, Boulder has 43 affiliate links and 111 free links. That figure will drop with time. Of course, the site has neglible traffic at the moment...since it is new.
One the positive side. The sites still show revenue growth. The growth isn't fast enough to pay for development. sigh.
Sadly, I find that the general impression of the community sites is that they are nothing but ads. Few people in a community will link to the directories because of the ads. I ran a report that compares the number of affiliate links to community links. Here's the total:
| Affiliate v Free Links | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | Aff Links | Free Links | Percent |
| Global | 320 | 529 | 37.691% |
| Salt Lake Sites | 121 | 4030 | 2.915% |
| Worland | 1 | 103 | 0.962% |
| Missoula Websites | 23 | 531 | 4.152% |
| Bend Open Directory | 21 | 135 | 13.462% |
| Idaho Falls Web Sites | 21 | 241 | 8.015% |
| Moab | 8 | 362 | 2.162% |
| Grand Junction | 21 | 488 | 4.126% |
| Heber City Biz | 5 | 110 | 4.348% |
| Provo, Utah.US | 72 | 1119 | 6.045% |
| Vernal, Utah. US | 9 | 138 | 6.122% |
| Price Helper | 4 | 68 | 5.556% |
| Saint George | 33 | 326 | 9.192% |
| Tooele | 8 | 110 | 6.780% |
| Cedar City | 11 | 194 | 5.366% |
| Cheyenne, Wyoming. US | 16 | 232 | 6.452% |
| Park City, Utah | 23 | 564 | 3.918% |
| Ogden, Utah | 35 | 266 | 11.628% |
| Denver | 107 | 842 | 11.275% |
| Boulder Color | 43 | 111 | 27.922% |
| Colorado Springs Color | 52 | 120 | 30.233% |
| Glenwood Springs Color | 14 | 38 | 26.923% |
The most developed site in the collection (Salt Lake Sites) currently has 4030 free links and only 121 ad links. That is 2.97% of the total links are "affiliate links". Currently, only 10% of the "affiliate" programs I've joined have paid me anything. This Sears Home Center is the only page that consistently results in income.
Lesser developed sites (like Boulder Color, are a different story. I just haven't had time to add many free links. Currently, Boulder has 43 affiliate links and 111 free links. That figure will drop with time. Of course, the site has neglible traffic at the moment...since it is new.
One the positive side. The sites still show revenue growth. The growth isn't fast enough to pay for development. sigh.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Remembered my Password
I finally remembered my password...so I will be able to start posting on this blog again. I really should write these things down. I currently have about 20 different passwords jumbled in my brain and I keep getting them mixed up.
I went to the Wasatch Rock Garden annual garden tour on Saturday. Wow, there's some fantastic gardens in Salt Lake. Sadly the Wasatch Rock Garden Society doesn't have a web site. But, I made them the site of the day anyway. I took photos, but I currently don't have any diskpace on my server to display them. The North American Rock Garden Society has the domain NARGS.org.
I went to the Wasatch Rock Garden annual garden tour on Saturday. Wow, there's some fantastic gardens in Salt Lake. Sadly the Wasatch Rock Garden Society doesn't have a web site. But, I made them the site of the day anyway. I took photos, but I currently don't have any diskpace on my server to display them. The North American Rock Garden Society has the domain NARGS.org.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
March
The stab at ecommerce is still floundering. In March, the take was a paltry $871.08. Costs run about $250.00 a month. Counting in labor, the program is pretty much a certified failure. I am now up to 638,155 page views. My orginal goal was to get to 1 million page views a month. I guess I would need about 4 million to call the open community directory idea a success.
To keep better track of revenue, I made a little database of the advertisers on the site. It really is a just a formula. I add all of the web sites I can find for a town. If a site has an affiliate program I join it. That means I've joined about 500 such programs. The main problem is that I am not doing a good job sending traffic to the advertisers.
On an unrelated note. Yellow Echo is a well designed travel photo site. Here is his Antelope Island Page. It does a great job capturing the Great Salt Lake. I especially like the USA Map.
To keep better track of revenue, I made a little database of the advertisers on the site. It really is a just a formula. I add all of the web sites I can find for a town. If a site has an affiliate program I join it. That means I've joined about 500 such programs. The main problem is that I am not doing a good job sending traffic to the advertisers.
On an unrelated note. Yellow Echo is a well designed travel photo site. Here is his Antelope Island Page. It does a great job capturing the Great Salt Lake. I especially like the USA Map.
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