Random Questions and Thoughts

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Random Questions and Thoughts

Social networking/bookmarking

Is it just me or does it seems like almost everyday a new social networking or social bookmarking site pops up?

• Over 200 social bookmarking sites
• Over 300 Digg clones
• 233 social networking sites

I doubt any of those lists are fully up to date either. Chances are there are quite of few more of these things out there. Is there such a thing as overkill when it comes to this Web 2.0 “social” stuff??

What is offensive?

A recent post over at John Cow admonished their readers not to be… well it rhymes with runts… and an apparently former reader of the blog had some pretty strong words to say in reaction to it. My question is it truly as offensive as this person makes it out to be? That might seem like a no-brainer to some, but I’ve got many friends here in the good ol’ US of A who run around using that word all the time. Mothers to daughters, daughters to mothers, girlfriends to other girlfriends, boyfriends to girlfriends, etc. I guess I’m wondering if it isn’t losing some of its sting due to familiarity. The “F” word for example is quite common whereas not all that long ago it was considered the granddaddy of all offensive words.

Page rank madness

Is it just me or is this whole pagerank madness just that, madness? A show of “hands” for those who are truly concerned about their pagerank. All in all I guess I’m wondering -

• If your pagerank fell will you put a concerted effort into raising it?
• If your pagerank rose do you plan on exploiting it?
• If you don’t have a pagerank do you believe you need one to succeed?
• If you have a pagerank do you believe it is the appropriate one?

And since you’re all wondering yes even I have received a pagerank from almighty Google.

Comment Luv

Yeah, yeah I know everyone else probably knows about it already, but help me out here and pretend like it is something new to you, please?

What is Comment Luv?

Glad you asked! It’s a plugin that parses the latest RSS feed from a commenters blog and puts a link to it in the comment they leave on your site.

Is it nofollow?

I’ve seen it in action in three places and all of them have “nofollow” tags set in the Comment Luv link. Don’t know if that is by choice or force at this point.

Why should I care?

You should care because it gives your readers a reason to comment. You should care because it helps build community. There are lots of reasons you should care enough to consider this plugin.

Ok, I’m convinced. Where do I get it?

You can download it from right here. Not to mention you can also read up on it as well.

Blog Rush phase 2

I blogged about it last night so I won’t get into much detail here. I’ll just echo what was said over at Problogger about Blog Rush and that it is “underwhelming” to say the least. Perhaps it was a case of too big too fast, or something? Whatever the cause I personally think it is nearly safe to say the program has been a flop. From all the hype I guess I expected more. After all John Reese headed the thing up… Who is John Reese by the way and why does everyone care?

Speaking of John Cow…

I don’t know how long it’ll be up so I’m going to steal his Halloween themed header/banner for all to see and simply say, “That’s bad ass!”

Posted in Potpourri | 8 Comments »

Weekly Goals week 2

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Weekly Goals week 2

Last week I decided that I would list out a few goals I have and see what happened over the course of the week. My results are as follows.

Increase average visitors

Failed. Miserably. In fact I went down significantly. Why? Who knows, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact I’ve made no concerted efforts over the past week to keep things moving along.

Accomplish two link-baits

Didn’t manage that one. To be honest I totally forgot about it.

Increase adsense revenue by 35%

I managed to decrease it by almost 35% over the past week

150 RSS subscribers

No where near that, but I seem to be stabilizing my RSS subscribers even when I miss a day or so of posting.

As you can see I’m nowhere near the goal so once again this week I will be taking on those same goals. Since you’re no doubt wondering how you can help me out I’ll leave you with the following suggestions.

• Sign up for my RSS feed
• Link back to this post (or the main page if you like)
• Recommend A Blog about Nothing as a low fat alternative to all of your friends and family
• Revenue was rather disappointing this past week so I would request people… never mind I can’t request that

Will I make my goals this week or have I bitten off more than I can chew?

Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »

Deal killers: 8 reasons I won’t link to you

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Deal killers: 8 reasons I won’t link to you

From time to time I get an email asking me to link to a particular blog. More often than not I decline the request. As you might suspect I am asked why. So I thought I could make a quick post explaining “why”.

You didn’t give me a specific page to link to

Don’t ask me to link to your blogs front page. Give me a specific article to link with. Remember, by my putting a link from my site to yours I am effectively endorsing your blog. Show me what you’ve got and give me an article with some meat to it!

You are spamming me

One email is enough. I will respond back with either yes or no. There is no need to send me 15 in one day. I’m just a little nobody with a little nobody blog. I dread to think how badly you hassle people who aren’t little nobodies.

You’re content is offensive

It doesn’t get any easier than that. If I find your content to be offensive I WILL NOT link to you. Not even when you try to hide the offensive content within your archives.

Your blog sucks

Sometimes blogs just suck. Why would I link to something that sucks? But here’s the good news. Just because I hold the opinion that it sucks doesn’t mean there’s not 100,000 people out there who think it is great. Go talk to them and see if they won’t link to you. If worse comes to worse try submitting your blog to awfulblogs.com and see if you can’t get a link that way. Or you could submit your blog as the worst in Oklamhoma and try to win next years competition.

I have nothing that relates to your blog

If I can’t weave the link into the body of a post I’m not going to link to you. More than that I’m not going to make a special paragraph within the body of my blog to link to your posting. Sorry, I love you and all, but not that much.

My readers won’t benefit from it

That’s probably the single greatest reason I won’t link to you. If your blog doesn’t hold value for my reades I’m not going to waste their time and squander their loyalty. Sorry, but that just doesn’t make any sense.

Your site is down

I understand that sometimes the internet “breaks”, but if I can’t reach your page after 3 tries all of which are 1-2 hours apart I’m not going to keep trying. If you’d like me to reconsider just send a message and let me know.

You don’t link out

If you’re asking for a link from me to you consider linking to me, first. The likelihood of me linking to your blog grows exponentially if you link to me. In fact if you just link to one of my articles there’s a pretty good chance I’ll have an urge at some point to talk about the fact you linked to me. Unless of course…

• You spam me with links
• Your content is offensive, not critical offensive
• Your blog sucks
• My readers won’t benefit
• Your site is down

Posted in Blogging | No Comments »

I’m the proud “pappa” of a bouncing baby Page Rank!

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Ok that was a dirty lie. Yes, like so many others I have a pagerank, but I don’t recall asking for one. So to say I’m proud of it would be nothing short of absurd. But since I have it I’m going to do my best to exploit it. Now I just need to figure out how exactly to do that. In the meanwhile I’ve come up with a few things I can do with my newfound page rank.

I could sell text links

Should be able to pull in a few dollars a month per link with my new page rank

I could write articles about increasing pagerank

The fact of the matter is that in less than 3 months I managed to raise my pagerank signficantly (compared to what it was) so obviously I must know something, right?

I could work on increasing my pagerank

I didn’t do any work before and it increased. Why the hell should I start now?

I could write a post about my page rank going up

Check!

I could try to sell my blog

Now that I’m sporting this shiny new pagerank I have no doubt that I can get rich off my blog…

I could actually tell everyone what my pagerank

Yup, that’s right. I’m the proud owner of a pagerank of 4.

I suppose I could go on for hours about what I can do with my pagerank, but I won’t bore you any longer.

Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »

Blog Rush phase 2 is finally here!

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Blog Rush phase 2 is finally here!

It seems like a really long time has passed since I posted an article about Blog Rush phase 2. Well, after much anticipation phase 2 has finally made its debut. I just learned of it a few moments ago when I check my email and received the following.

Here are a few screen shots of what phase 2 looks like.

This one depicts my syndication credits which is the credits I have earned from my own blog. In other words the credit I am given based upon my daily traffic.

This one shows my referal traffic against my own traffic. The traffic that has been refered to me in other words.

There are several other features in phase 2 not to mention the new reporting tools that allow you to see how things are trending over time. For a more complete listing visit your Blog Rush account and login. Also don’t forget to watch the video and see how things work! Sorry but I can’t get the video to embed in my blog and I’m too tired to worry about it anymore.

Posted in Blogging | No Comments »