Since the last post was a bit of a downer I thought I'd close on an up-note for 2011.
A quick update on the spammer: We reported them to our hoster for DOS who took a look at the logs and banned him. I was very impressed with the speed this occurred: many virtual jaffas to the tech team at Hostingzoom.
So with that good news, on to the subject of this blog. I tried to switch from Google Adsense to Project Wonderful on a few of my blogs (and a couple I admin) earlier this year. I made a basic mistake and believed that each domain and sub-site had to have it's own ad, which broke the traffic down to a level where no individual site could get enough to keep the ad box active.
Project Wonderful has a solution to this: creating a networked ad. You can set your ad in an iframe and then add the iframe to the sites they have approved. This requires a few tweaks at the PW backend, including submitting the iframe URL for their robot.
As far as I can tell the process is:
1) Get your site approved
2) Create the ad. Don't activate it.
3) Create an iframe holding page on one of the approved websites.
4) On the edit screen, under Name and Location look at the box at the bottom("URL to ad box code") and out the iframe URL in it.
5) Put the ad code on the iframe, and the iframe on the websites.
6) Activate your adbox.
The only drawback using this method is that the stats only shown which of your pages called the iframe, not where a user visited from. If you have stat tracking of your own on these sites anyway (e.g. statcounter), that's not a problem. It also makes it easy to see if any sites start staying above the limit on their own, so you can customise advertising for them.
I'm testing this with a 468 banner on four sites, but might add more sites to the network if it takes off - or more adboxes to the range. Since all the sites were under by one or two unique visitors on average, this should aggregate the visitors, making bids more valuable, and keep the ad visible.
It's early stages yet, but initial indications are promising, and the agreggate traffic is over the required level. It seems like a good way to make some ad revenue from newer sites, ones with niche markets, or fluctuating traffic.
Overall I am optimistic. If it works, it will be a very good way to start the New Year!
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Friday, 30 December 2011
Pet Hatchery and spam
http://www.pethatchery.co.uk is one of our new sites.
The hatchery was live two days when it was hit by a Ukrainian auto-spammer. He got IP-blocked but hasn't taken the hint - he's still visiting every minute even though all he can see of the site is a 403 refuse page.
So after 24 hours, in which serving the fail pages was still using up our bandwidth, we decided we could put him on silent blocking. On the other hand this is a hatchery and meant to get views...
His fail page now has dragon eggs on it. Merry Christmas!
The hatchery was live two days when it was hit by a Ukrainian auto-spammer. He got IP-blocked but hasn't taken the hint - he's still visiting every minute even though all he can see of the site is a 403 refuse page.
So after 24 hours, in which serving the fail pages was still using up our bandwidth, we decided we could put him on silent blocking. On the other hand this is a hatchery and meant to get views...
His fail page now has dragon eggs on it. Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Smashwords Tools
My latest coding project:
http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools
A set of smashwords widgets to help authors promote themselves and their books. They've passed a closed alpha (with no website) a closed beta (with no website) and are now in open beta with a website and simple links. The install scripts are down to one line of code and take one piece of user supplied data (a book or author name).
No, the website isn't pretty - nor will we be wasting dev time on it until the beta is over. It's only there to hide an industrial strength datafeed production system, scrape and RSS generator with the homebrew PHP library that runs it all, and make sure that testers can a) see the things running and b) get the URLs to get their own.
Can I guarantee these work everywhere? Hell no. The applet set that are in development might, but the current javascript ones are subject to the several hundred browsers, javascript installs, user settings, even Greasemonkey and personal user scripts that people have which can break things. This is why iframes are offered...
Personal experiences? I've the javascript one on some of my blogs. One of my blogs won't run the javascript widget, so I use the iframe one - with a resulting increase in downloads. The Squidoo one works a charm and looks better than the HTML links that were there. The RSS is on one of my lenses and works fine. The fan button is blocked (like all dynamic or animated images) on one of the messageboards I use so I saved it locally and uploaded it.
Effect on downloads? Significant. There's certainly been a recordable increase in clickthrus.
All I can suggest is try them and see - but let us know if they break or what tweaks you need to make. This is after all a beta test.
Whether we roll out applets and flash which involve much more complex development will depend on whether there's any interest in these.
http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools
A set of smashwords widgets to help authors promote themselves and their books. They've passed a closed alpha (with no website) a closed beta (with no website) and are now in open beta with a website and simple links. The install scripts are down to one line of code and take one piece of user supplied data (a book or author name).
No, the website isn't pretty - nor will we be wasting dev time on it until the beta is over. It's only there to hide an industrial strength datafeed production system, scrape and RSS generator with the homebrew PHP library that runs it all, and make sure that testers can a) see the things running and b) get the URLs to get their own.
Can I guarantee these work everywhere? Hell no. The applet set that are in development might, but the current javascript ones are subject to the several hundred browsers, javascript installs, user settings, even Greasemonkey and personal user scripts that people have which can break things. This is why iframes are offered...
Personal experiences? I've the javascript one on some of my blogs. One of my blogs won't run the javascript widget, so I use the iframe one - with a resulting increase in downloads. The Squidoo one works a charm and looks better than the HTML links that were there. The RSS is on one of my lenses and works fine. The fan button is blocked (like all dynamic or animated images) on one of the messageboards I use so I saved it locally and uploaded it.
Effect on downloads? Significant. There's certainly been a recordable increase in clickthrus.
All I can suggest is try them and see - but let us know if they break or what tweaks you need to make. This is after all a beta test.
Whether we roll out applets and flash which involve much more complex development will depend on whether there's any interest in these.
Friday, 23 December 2011
Thoughts on comments
I have my guestbooks and comments on full moderation and it is just as well.
So far in 2011 I've had to moderate comments from some charming individuals. So far ones that never went live included details on where to get pirate books, some outright racist comments (on a thread about children's games? Where do these people come from) and the grand prize, a person who mistook my fan page for the official company website and tried to score free giftcards.
So why have guestbooks at all? Because sometimes the comments make it worthwhile. The Lancastria guestbook is an excellent example, where survivors and their relatives have got back in touch, or found the official organsation.
And yesterday, this went live on the Jervis Bay guestbook Dec 22nd
Merry Christmas!
So far in 2011 I've had to moderate comments from some charming individuals. So far ones that never went live included details on where to get pirate books, some outright racist comments (on a thread about children's games? Where do these people come from) and the grand prize, a person who mistook my fan page for the official company website and tried to score free giftcards.
So why have guestbooks at all? Because sometimes the comments make it worthwhile. The Lancastria guestbook is an excellent example, where survivors and their relatives have got back in touch, or found the official organsation.
And yesterday, this went live on the Jervis Bay guestbook Dec 22nd
Merry Christmas!
Sunday, 18 December 2011
A new Lens - Sample Sunday
A new lens, focusing on a hashtag. SampleSunday is a weekly hashtag focusing on authors providing samples, free downloads and exerpts from their books.
Each Sunday, the tweets can be found under #SampleSunday, and they often have a second hashtag for format e.g. #ebook, #print etc, and another for genre e.g. #thriller, #kids. and provide a few details and a link to the sample.
Since it is such a busy hashtag, a lot of samples go by too fast to read, so I've split it down by genre. I look forward to seeing how it does today.
Each Sunday, the tweets can be found under #SampleSunday, and they often have a second hashtag for format e.g. #ebook, #print etc, and another for genre e.g. #thriller, #kids. and provide a few details and a link to the sample.
Since it is such a busy hashtag, a lot of samples go by too fast to read, so I've split it down by genre. I look forward to seeing how it does today.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Smashwords widgets
I'm busy coding again. A few widgets for Smashwords to display books etc, which are now in closed beta. I'd forgotten what a pain cross-browser issues could be , but on the bright side Smashwords have been very helpful indeed.
For anyone wondering about the API issue with accessing the data, I can confirm that the API is not currently in use. However I have built my own feeds, and if you want to do any dev work of your own with them, drop me a line. For example I don't code Python or Flash, but if someone wanted to build a Google App or Flash widget using the RSS, I'll happily throw it open. Just let me know, since it is currently on a test server, so too much load is not a good idea...
There's a fan button also available, and some more tools coming shortly.
For anyone wondering about the API issue with accessing the data, I can confirm that the API is not currently in use. However I have built my own feeds, and if you want to do any dev work of your own with them, drop me a line. For example I don't code Python or Flash, but if someone wanted to build a Google App or Flash widget using the RSS, I'll happily throw it open. Just let me know, since it is currently on a test server, so too much load is not a good idea...
There's a fan button also available, and some more tools coming shortly.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Pethatchery
I got an early christmas present. It's a URL. I think that makes me a techie (certainly a happy techie!).
http://www.pethatchery.co.uk
My little pet hatchery appears to be taking off, to the extent that it used up unacceptable amounts of my test server bandwidth. This despite the fact it is still in testing.
So now there is my little test version behind a wall for me to work on, and this one live, publicly available and incubating nicely.
This also means I need to fix things for robustness, get the RSS egg feeds up and running, and have a lot of work to do before christmas. It's nice to be busy!
http://www.pethatchery.co.uk
My little pet hatchery appears to be taking off, to the extent that it used up unacceptable amounts of my test server bandwidth. This despite the fact it is still in testing.
So now there is my little test version behind a wall for me to work on, and this one live, publicly available and incubating nicely.
This also means I need to fix things for robustness, get the RSS egg feeds up and running, and have a lot of work to do before christmas. It's nice to be busy!
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Smashwords project
A fairly major project now is Smashwords. I couldn't find an API or RSS that supplied what I wanted for a widget, so I haven't yet got to the widget bits. Instead I ended up building a supporting package - three types of XML file and a lightweight PHP library to expose the data in a convenient array.
This is all still in testing, so there may be minor changes, but it is working well enough to support flat html widgets and php-generated banners.
While Smashwords offers general banners for the site, I'm working on ones specific to authors, individual books and searches.
Once I'm confident I'm not dumping broken code out there, I'll throw it open for anyone else who wants to promote their books or Smashwords in general. The RSS and PHP libraries are also going to be publicly available, since there seem to be a few people I know trying to build for them.
If you want the link, leave a comment here.
This is all still in testing, so there may be minor changes, but it is working well enough to support flat html widgets and php-generated banners.
While Smashwords offers general banners for the site, I'm working on ones specific to authors, individual books and searches.
Once I'm confident I'm not dumping broken code out there, I'll throw it open for anyone else who wants to promote their books or Smashwords in general. The RSS and PHP libraries are also going to be publicly available, since there seem to be a few people I know trying to build for them.
If you want the link, leave a comment here.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Christmas changes and teddy bears
It seems to be the week that web companies annoy me enough to do things I should have done ages ago.
The Regretsy debacle finally got me closing my Paypal account. There's been nothing in it since someone sent me money by mistake and Paypal charged me the money I'd saved in it to return the transaction to the legal owner.
I've advised a couple of businesses to look at Amazon checkout as an alternative now it's available in the UK, and I think that is now going to be a long-term policy change for me. The paypal-only accounts have been thrown in with a local business who handle transactions and disbursements.
The only good thing? Paypal just caved and gave the Regretsy charity money across (see here).
And now Gmail's new look, which is unfortunately unreadable (half the mail message disappears off the edge of my screen on a 17" monitor, and I can't tell where the mail message ends and the ads begin) has driven me to get a personal account against my own domain name - something I've planned for the last six months and never quite got round to.
On a bright note, heres a new lens. Nick Davis, former White Dwarf writer, has come out with a children's book, A Teddy Bear Tale. It is Tristan the Teddy's last night guarding his child from the monsters under the bed before the boy grows up. Unfortunately the monsters know this too and tonight they have big plans...
The Regretsy debacle finally got me closing my Paypal account. There's been nothing in it since someone sent me money by mistake and Paypal charged me the money I'd saved in it to return the transaction to the legal owner.
I've advised a couple of businesses to look at Amazon checkout as an alternative now it's available in the UK, and I think that is now going to be a long-term policy change for me. The paypal-only accounts have been thrown in with a local business who handle transactions and disbursements.
The only good thing? Paypal just caved and gave the Regretsy charity money across (see here).
And now Gmail's new look, which is unfortunately unreadable (half the mail message disappears off the edge of my screen on a 17" monitor, and I can't tell where the mail message ends and the ads begin) has driven me to get a personal account against my own domain name - something I've planned for the last six months and never quite got round to.
On a bright note, heres a new lens. Nick Davis, former White Dwarf writer, has come out with a children's book, A Teddy Bear Tale. It is Tristan the Teddy's last night guarding his child from the monsters under the bed before the boy grows up. Unfortunately the monsters know this too and tonight they have big plans...
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
A new lens: Indie Firsts
Another new lens, this one about an Indie Magazine. Indie Firsts offers first chapters from books by indie (small press and self-published) authors.
Published by an imprint of Bards and Sages publishing, this is a good place to find new authors among the huge tide of ebooks and print books coming out.
Published by an imprint of Bards and Sages publishing, this is a good place to find new authors among the huge tide of ebooks and print books coming out.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Loveblinks.com - a backlinks site
No, I haven't gone soft and fluffy on my readers despite the name. This is a very useful site.Would it make things clearer if I said Loveblincks is short for Love Backlinks?
With shetoldme going commercial, many of the major sites now being nofollow, and link directories being deprecated by search engines, Loveblinks fills a very useful gap. It's free, it is dofollow, and it is easy to use. That said, they are very new, so I don't know how much traffic they get.
LoveBlinks works by allowing users to write articles along a theme which include a number of their links. This extra unique content makes the links more valuable to search engines.
Here's my first blink, 4 Famous Steam Engines which links to four of my squidoo lenses.
There is an affiliate scheme, but as I only signed up yesterday I don't know much about that yet.
On top of all this, it also allows revenue sharing through google Adsense, so it can produce funds in its own right. About the only thing you can't do is link directly to products, so no affiliate link stuffing, but if you are just after backlinks it looks like this might be a very useful site.
Have a look at loveblinks below:
With shetoldme going commercial, many of the major sites now being nofollow, and link directories being deprecated by search engines, Loveblinks fills a very useful gap. It's free, it is dofollow, and it is easy to use. That said, they are very new, so I don't know how much traffic they get.
LoveBlinks works by allowing users to write articles along a theme which include a number of their links. This extra unique content makes the links more valuable to search engines.
Here's my first blink, 4 Famous Steam Engines which links to four of my squidoo lenses.
There is an affiliate scheme, but as I only signed up yesterday I don't know much about that yet.
On top of all this, it also allows revenue sharing through google Adsense, so it can produce funds in its own right. About the only thing you can't do is link directly to products, so no affiliate link stuffing, but if you are just after backlinks it looks like this might be a very useful site.
Have a look at loveblinks below:
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
More coding work
After the furor over users who found lenses on squidoo about how to make pipe bombs (more here) I'm stepping back from lenses to work on other projects for a few days.
The hatchery code is nearly there. Magistream is pretty much complete and I've thrown it out for an open test.
DragonCave is proving trickier, as "check all" options aren't going to be as simple as I thought. The Javascript doesn't like picking up the checkbox, due to the PHP array code linked to it, so I'm looking at work arounds. Multiple pages for the hatchery are still in development - the database can handle it but the PHP doesn't want to.
I've also had a tester ask what happens if bandwidth starts getting expensive. Well, that's when adverts start appearing in footers. Sorry, but I'm not paying to hatch other people's creatures!
Otherwise I've got several blogs, a set of articles and an ebook to update, so it isn't as if I'm not busy.
Update - 10:37. Dragon Cave: Fixed check all, added a "find by scroll", added images, and still need to fix that dratted pagination!
And all of this without counting the 5,000 words I feel I owe Nano.
The hatchery code is nearly there. Magistream is pretty much complete and I've thrown it out for an open test.
DragonCave is proving trickier, as "check all" options aren't going to be as simple as I thought. The Javascript doesn't like picking up the checkbox, due to the PHP array code linked to it, so I'm looking at work arounds. Multiple pages for the hatchery are still in development - the database can handle it but the PHP doesn't want to.
I've also had a tester ask what happens if bandwidth starts getting expensive. Well, that's when adverts start appearing in footers. Sorry, but I'm not paying to hatch other people's creatures!
Otherwise I've got several blogs, a set of articles and an ebook to update, so it isn't as if I'm not busy.
Update - 10:37. Dragon Cave: Fixed check all, added a "find by scroll", added images, and still need to fix that dratted pagination!
And all of this without counting the 5,000 words I feel I owe Nano.
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Nano...Over...?
This was not expected: apparently I just won NanoWriMo. My word count says I'm only on 40,000 words, so I think their count is off. Still, I haven't finished the story, so I will keep writing and see if I can get my count to the target level.
Monday, 28 November 2011
More coding
Some more writing done, although Nano looks like it's turning into a set of linked short stories more than a novel. Trying to code and write at the same time is really cutting into my time.
The hatchery now has a manual "remove creatures" option for both magistream and Dragon Cave, and a check for Dragon Cave's little trees. There are a few changes under the hood to give it a few more automatic admin features (validation mostly), and I have a very long list of changes and nice-to-haves to add in from my testers.
I also need to add a thank you page for them - without them it would not be at a point where I could add it to my lenses...
The hatchery now has a manual "remove creatures" option for both magistream and Dragon Cave, and a check for Dragon Cave's little trees. There are a few changes under the hood to give it a few more automatic admin features (validation mostly), and I have a very long list of changes and nice-to-haves to add in from my testers.
I also need to add a thank you page for them - without them it would not be at a point where I could add it to my lenses...
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Coding a hatchery
There are a few things to work on, like integration with lenses which will probably be handled with RSS, and badges/banners etc. Then there are advanced features, an emergency room, manually removing creatures before they are adult etc.
Still it's halfway working so hopefully I'll have some tests on the way shortly.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Should v Will
- be keeping traffic numbers up for the blogs for Project Wonderful
- be writing more squidoo lenses
- be building backlinks to promote my pages
- be writing more Wizzley pages.
Instead, since I got very little writing done recently, I will be doing Nano.
50,000 words. 5 days left. Tight deadline...
Time to type!
Updates:
10:49 am, 1,200 Words.
11:30 am, 2,130 Words
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Smashwords
A new lens, largely because I spotted a URL free that was too good to pass up.
A review of my currently preferred publishing plaform, ways to use it, what's in it for readers and more - including their affiliate scheme. I was rather stunned to find the URL available, as it had been "Under Construction" the last few times I looked.
With a search engine friendly title, a good UR, and hopefully useful original content, I'm pretty happy about this lens.
What I did find today were a few typos in the added content for Great Western Railway. Unfortunately, as I am going to be rather busy today, they won't get fixed until Friday.
The other thing I need to ask - would anyone be interested in a print version of these? It would probably have to be Lulu again since I'm not made of funds, but it is doable. What I need to know is, would it be useful?
A review of my currently preferred publishing plaform, ways to use it, what's in it for readers and more - including their affiliate scheme. I was rather stunned to find the URL available, as it had been "Under Construction" the last few times I looked.
With a search engine friendly title, a good UR, and hopefully useful original content, I'm pretty happy about this lens.
What I did find today were a few typos in the added content for Great Western Railway. Unfortunately, as I am going to be rather busy today, they won't get fixed until Friday.
The other thing I need to ask - would anyone be interested in a print version of these? It would probably have to be Lulu again since I'm not made of funds, but it is doable. What I need to know is, would it be useful?
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
A new lens, a book launch, a new ebook and a busy week
A new lens went up:
This is a reworking of the 2009 lens about Lens Companions. After I looked at the lens companions lens I realised just how out of date it was, and that the URL was no longer appropriate either. So I created a new lens for these ebooks. It has also replaced the blog as the Ciamar Price homepage on Smashwords, as squidoo has a higher pagerank so will send more visitors to the ebooks, but also because any visitors to the lens mean that I get a small share of royalties. It also has a Paypal "coffee jar", largely because a few readers get very suspicious about anything free and want to know the catch.
For the original lens I plan to write an ebook about lens creation and tips and use the lens for that, along with a few other people's titles, rather than waste the work and URL.
To celebrate the new lens, and as if I didn't have enough on with a book launch tomorrow (just in case you'd somehow managed to avoid hearing about it), I've just released another ebook.
The Great Western Railway is a rewrite of the original lulu title. It is currently working its way through Smashwords processing and distribution to flag up any formatting issues that I need to correct.
If you want an advance look, the ebook can be found here:
I'm also investigating an issue with Project Wonderful that will affect blogs that have erratic traffic, like some of mine, but I want one more piece of test data before blogging that.
This is a reworking of the 2009 lens about Lens Companions. After I looked at the lens companions lens I realised just how out of date it was, and that the URL was no longer appropriate either. So I created a new lens for these ebooks. It has also replaced the blog as the Ciamar Price homepage on Smashwords, as squidoo has a higher pagerank so will send more visitors to the ebooks, but also because any visitors to the lens mean that I get a small share of royalties. It also has a Paypal "coffee jar", largely because a few readers get very suspicious about anything free and want to know the catch.
For the original lens I plan to write an ebook about lens creation and tips and use the lens for that, along with a few other people's titles, rather than waste the work and URL.
To celebrate the new lens, and as if I didn't have enough on with a book launch tomorrow (just in case you'd somehow managed to avoid hearing about it), I've just released another ebook.
The Great Western Railway is a rewrite of the original lulu title. It is currently working its way through Smashwords processing and distribution to flag up any formatting issues that I need to correct.
If you want an advance look, the ebook can be found here:
I'm also investigating an issue with Project Wonderful that will affect blogs that have erratic traffic, like some of mine, but I want one more piece of test data before blogging that.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Squidoo referrals button in a module.
I've made a change across all the squidoo LensLove modules, adding a Join Squidoo button. Most of my lenses have no sign up button, but the ones that do get a lot of referrals, so it seemed a good (and unobtrusive) place to put one across all my titles. I also added a Digg button, although at the moment that does little more than open Digg in a new window.
I'm looking at adding a few distinct buttons to the bookmark module, including Tweet, just to make things easier for users. After all if I had to click through three times just to get to the bookmark site I want to use, I wouldn't, so why ask my users to?
Regarding ebooks, Early Railways just had its 500th Smashwords download. The story of Brunel's Atmospheric Railway, the Surrey Iron Railway and a few others it is my second most popular lens companion.
I'm still working on the Great Western re-release. Every time I get down to it, something else comes up.
I'm looking at adding a few distinct buttons to the bookmark module, including Tweet, just to make things easier for users. After all if I had to click through three times just to get to the bookmark site I want to use, I wouldn't, so why ask my users to?
Regarding ebooks, Early Railways just had its 500th Smashwords download. The story of Brunel's Atmospheric Railway, the Surrey Iron Railway and a few others it is my second most popular lens companion.
I'm still working on the Great Western re-release. Every time I get down to it, something else comes up.
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Mini sinks and Basins
That's right, a wizzley page on DIY. I'm not sure why I did this one on Wizzley rather than squidoo, except that it just seemed to fit the layout better.
Micro sinks and basins - all about tiny sinks for cloackrooms, half baths and converting waterclosets into either. These are sinks with less than 9 inches projection from the wall, but which are still useable by most people.
Micro sinks and basins - all about tiny sinks for cloackrooms, half baths and converting waterclosets into either. These are sinks with less than 9 inches projection from the wall, but which are still useable by most people.
Friday, 18 November 2011
Squidoo lenses and OpenGraph
The first thing to mention is that Squidoo have tried to tie up with Facebook's Opengraph. We are all meant to classify our lenses to make it easier for Facebook to learn about the type of people who visit out lenses. If you do classify them, you can't go back and remove the tag, and it seems this gets you no extra traffic.
It hasn't been greeted with overwhelming joy by lensmasters. There was initial scepticism followed by a disturbing update that lensmasterswho used it actually saw their traffic drop.
I haven't used it. I'm not going to. I'm not a fan of facebook.
On a brighter note, here's a revamped and newly-live lens. I do feel rather like I was conned into making this one: It had been carefully run down, lensrank around 700K, I was geting ready to delete it, when I got told it had been selected for the winter magazine. I spent two hours revamping it instead of fixing the bust "Like" module on my lenses. Then I found out it wouldn't show up anyway because it's rank was too low.
It was certainly more fun looking at cat pictures then wading through code, though!
Since there was a debate going on about how good the magazines are for promotion I also fixed up the lens below it that wasn't selected for the magazine, Madeira for Christmas. Comparing the traffic patterns for these two could be very interesting.
It hasn't been greeted with overwhelming joy by lensmasters. There was initial scepticism followed by a disturbing update that lensmasterswho used it actually saw their traffic drop.
I haven't used it. I'm not going to. I'm not a fan of facebook.
On a brighter note, here's a revamped and newly-live lens. I do feel rather like I was conned into making this one: It had been carefully run down, lensrank around 700K, I was geting ready to delete it, when I got told it had been selected for the winter magazine. I spent two hours revamping it instead of fixing the bust "Like" module on my lenses. Then I found out it wouldn't show up anyway because it's rank was too low.
It was certainly more fun looking at cat pictures then wading through code, though!
Since there was a debate going on about how good the magazines are for promotion I also fixed up the lens below it that wasn't selected for the magazine, Madeira for Christmas. Comparing the traffic patterns for these two could be very interesting.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
A new page on Wizzley - A redgage review
I wasn't exactly going to review Redgage on Redgage, and Squidoo has a lot of lenses on the social bookmarking site already, so I found another use for Wizzley. For all those articles I wanted to write on crowded topics elsewhere, as a new site it is a pretty ideal home.
I will point out that these are only my personal views, which can be summed up as great for promotion but you can have serious problems outside the US if you actually expect to get paid:
I will point out that these are only my personal views, which can be summed up as great for promotion but you can have serious problems outside the US if you actually expect to get paid:
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
One IP != One computer
Not so much a rant as an observation.
I don't know if this works differently in the UK to the US, but IP tracking on many pieces of software need to be fixed - badly.
The example I am going to use is an office building in London with six hundred people and about the same number of PCs. Because of the firewall it will display one IP (cloaked) to the outside world.
And everytime you log in, google tries to amalgamate the accounts of every user in the building. A notable vBulletin mess-up meant that if one person forgot their password and locked themselves out of their account, the forum locked the entire company out - including people who were already logged in and currently using it. Nabble was a lot of fun, if by fun you mean all posts from that address showing up as the last user from that IP...the forum certainly made it look as though there was one incredibly prolific user talking to themself a lot (we're talking six or seven simul-posts).
One competition, run by the a US individual, accused me of cheating for getting fourteen votes from one IP. When I mentioned that was the local college, they shut up. (The computer lab had 30 PCs - it was easy to prove the cookies were set by different user profiles on different machines...)
This idea that one IP equals one computer isn't true - at least for any company or individual with decent security. It might equal one gateway or one network hub, but you won't see past that.
Then you encounter the idea that one computer equals one person, and so all accounts on it can be combined, which is so wrong I am baffled. Families. Libraries. Web Cafes. Many users on each machine.
On the technical side it can also go the other way: Multiple network cards and backup ISPs mean that one machine can have multiple IP addresses. User profiles and browsers can be split down easily. It's how I finally stopped certain parties trying to combine my personal account with the ones I manage for third parties.
There used to be an option to mark a machine "shared" or "public". Many websites seem to have removed this, assuming that nowadays all the data they capture from an IP is specific to a user.
Could I suggest that they go back to the old sensible method of using what their users actually tell them? If you are logged in, then they know it's you. Otherwise it could be the janitor or the CEO at your place of work, any of a thousand college students, or anyone who uses the same webcafe. Otherwise companies are just making assumptions, and there's an old saying about people who assume...
I don't know if this works differently in the UK to the US, but IP tracking on many pieces of software need to be fixed - badly.
The example I am going to use is an office building in London with six hundred people and about the same number of PCs. Because of the firewall it will display one IP (cloaked) to the outside world.
And everytime you log in, google tries to amalgamate the accounts of every user in the building. A notable vBulletin mess-up meant that if one person forgot their password and locked themselves out of their account, the forum locked the entire company out - including people who were already logged in and currently using it. Nabble was a lot of fun, if by fun you mean all posts from that address showing up as the last user from that IP...the forum certainly made it look as though there was one incredibly prolific user talking to themself a lot (we're talking six or seven simul-posts).
One competition, run by the a US individual, accused me of cheating for getting fourteen votes from one IP. When I mentioned that was the local college, they shut up. (The computer lab had 30 PCs - it was easy to prove the cookies were set by different user profiles on different machines...)
This idea that one IP equals one computer isn't true - at least for any company or individual with decent security. It might equal one gateway or one network hub, but you won't see past that.
Then you encounter the idea that one computer equals one person, and so all accounts on it can be combined, which is so wrong I am baffled. Families. Libraries. Web Cafes. Many users on each machine.
On the technical side it can also go the other way: Multiple network cards and backup ISPs mean that one machine can have multiple IP addresses. User profiles and browsers can be split down easily. It's how I finally stopped certain parties trying to combine my personal account with the ones I manage for third parties.
There used to be an option to mark a machine "shared" or "public". Many websites seem to have removed this, assuming that nowadays all the data they capture from an IP is specific to a user.
Could I suggest that they go back to the old sensible method of using what their users actually tell them? If you are logged in, then they know it's you. Otherwise it could be the janitor or the CEO at your place of work, any of a thousand college students, or anyone who uses the same webcafe. Otherwise companies are just making assumptions, and there's an old saying about people who assume...
Saturday, 12 November 2011
The fine line between syndication and stealing
I am absolutely furious.
One of my articles is on the second page of search results of google. It hasn't had a hit in months. The first page of search results are "syndicated" versions. This shouldn't annoy me, after all it is available through creative commons.
What does annoy me is that the licence the article is available under only allows reprints if it is attributed and backlinked. Half of them don't mention I am the author. The other half do, but don't link to any of my profiles or the original - they link to their own. They copied it, pasted it, killed my links and then couldn't even follow the licence on a free article.
Filing DMCA would be difficult. People like this rely on the fact that if you file DMCA through Google your name and address will promptly be given out publicly online. All the data serious crooks actually need to make someone's life difficult, neatly up there on one downloadable form. The article thieves don't have to do anything - the identity thieves pounce in seconds. (Proof that governments are way behind on online crime)
On the other hand, the article that's been "syndicated" is under licence by the host who initially displayed it. Therefore they can take action, without this issue, and have just been kicked in that direction. Failure to defend your IP is a good way for an article site to die, since no one puts content on places that don't look after it.
And if they don't take action? I'l be rather public and very loud about the fact they don't defend their IP.
The article is here: An Evolution of Diving Games
Valid attribution links are this,
An Evolution of Diving Games written by tirial on bukisa
or this:
Written by tirial
Non valid:
"Written by Tirial" and linked to someone else's profile on your own site!
Here's an example of a site with a valid attribution:
An Evolution of Diving Games on Wizzley
Excuse the frothing. When something is free to share anyway, and you have to go out of your way to breach the licence deliberately, that's someone trying to hurt an author and deceive their readers, not someone after something for free.
So if you are one of the people hosting this, whether you removed the attribution or you didn't know where the original was from, consider this fair warning to add the backlink. One line (that was in the original) is all you have to add to be inside the licence.
But, bloody hell guys, even book pirates usually manage to get the author right!
One of my articles is on the second page of search results of google. It hasn't had a hit in months. The first page of search results are "syndicated" versions. This shouldn't annoy me, after all it is available through creative commons.
What does annoy me is that the licence the article is available under only allows reprints if it is attributed and backlinked. Half of them don't mention I am the author. The other half do, but don't link to any of my profiles or the original - they link to their own. They copied it, pasted it, killed my links and then couldn't even follow the licence on a free article.
Filing DMCA would be difficult. People like this rely on the fact that if you file DMCA through Google your name and address will promptly be given out publicly online. All the data serious crooks actually need to make someone's life difficult, neatly up there on one downloadable form. The article thieves don't have to do anything - the identity thieves pounce in seconds. (Proof that governments are way behind on online crime)
On the other hand, the article that's been "syndicated" is under licence by the host who initially displayed it. Therefore they can take action, without this issue, and have just been kicked in that direction. Failure to defend your IP is a good way for an article site to die, since no one puts content on places that don't look after it.
And if they don't take action? I'l be rather public and very loud about the fact they don't defend their IP.
The article is here: An Evolution of Diving Games
Valid attribution links are this,
An Evolution of Diving Games written by tirial on bukisa
or this:
Written by tirial
Non valid:
"Written by Tirial" and linked to someone else's profile on your own site!
Here's an example of a site with a valid attribution:
An Evolution of Diving Games on Wizzley
Excuse the frothing. When something is free to share anyway, and you have to go out of your way to breach the licence deliberately, that's someone trying to hurt an author and deceive their readers, not someone after something for free.
So if you are one of the people hosting this, whether you removed the attribution or you didn't know where the original was from, consider this fair warning to add the backlink. One line (that was in the original) is all you have to add to be inside the licence.
But, bloody hell guys, even book pirates usually manage to get the author right!
Friday, 11 November 2011
Lest we forget
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the twenty-first century.
The ninetieth anniversary of the Royal British Legion.
Wear your poppy with pride.
The ninetieth anniversary of the Royal British Legion.
Wear your poppy with pride.
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Google, Bing and a song
I am not a happy person right now, after finding one of my articles pushed to the third page of search results - by stolen copies of itself.
Now I have already had problems with the massively inappropriate ad content google have served on my blogs, so my patience was stretched. My current feelings towards Google are difficult to sum up - but after their last set of Adsense tokens arrived right after they failed to act on copyright over this, I've got MacAlmont and Butler's "Yes" playing in the background.
Yes I do feel better
After all, Google may have asked me to publicly disclose my name, address and all those details that identity thieves love so Google can put them online(?!) before they will act on copyright. This seems rather like if your wallet is stolen, the police insisting that you have to hand the thief your name and address and display them on a billboard in the town square before the authorities will take action and return your goods.
Yes I do, I feel alright
And it's not as if Bing took a look at the comparable article dates and licence, and nuked the offending sites from their search results - oh wait... Well it would have been nice if Google did the same, since they are making so much noise about their new algorhythm being able to detect content freshness, which would logically let it detect the earliest occurrance of an article and therefore a have good idea of its originating source...
Anyway excuse me, I hear a refrain.
I feel well enough to tell you what you can do with what you've got to offer...
*Lyrics from McAlmont and Butler's Yes (Full Version)
which I have on repeat right now. It's soothing.
Monday, 7 November 2011
Redgage - an update, earnings and backlinks
Anyone who follows me on redgage might have noticed that I am currently putting all my lenses up. This is because of a change of approach, because of some information I received at the weekend that does change the site's value to me.
Initially I was spacing these out to ensure I got decent earnings and exposure to each. After I got my first Redgage card (and all the fun with that) I kept doing this because I thought it was a problem that could be solved. In summary: it can't. Visa US doesn't recognise my UK address so the card can't validate, unless I want to make a fifteen minute phone call to the US at about $5 per minute, every time I withdrew money...
The earnings just became worthless. The backlinks aren't, so I'm putting all my lenses on there now to get the boost before Christmas.
Initially I was spacing these out to ensure I got decent earnings and exposure to each. After I got my first Redgage card (and all the fun with that) I kept doing this because I thought it was a problem that could be solved. In summary: it can't. Visa US doesn't recognise my UK address so the card can't validate, unless I want to make a fifteen minute phone call to the US at about $5 per minute, every time I withdrew money...
The earnings just became worthless. The backlinks aren't, so I'm putting all my lenses on there now to get the boost before Christmas.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
More thoughts on Wizzley
A second Wizzley page, this time about a certain set of free non-fiction ebooks:
My general thoughts are that the interface is easy to use. It reminds me more of hubpages than squidoo, particularly with positioning. The modules are not as flexible as the squidoo versions, but it has a better range of options than hubpages. It takes European affiliates as well as US, which is a big advantage to me since I'm UK-based.
That said, the Ciamar Price page is up mainly for backlinks. If you have a site that pays you credit for some of your affiliate sales against a site that pays 50% of all sales and a percentage for traffic, it is basic business sense to put the serious content on the latter.
The other good reason to put Wizzley pages up? There's one thing squidoo can't do: spread your risk. If Squidoo goes down or is bought out, you could lose your sites. It's as well to have an established presence on another site as a fallback.
However for now I'm back working on Squidoo. It turns out that Google no longer reads the "About me" module, which means a lot of my backlinks have vanished. I built a handcoded alternative, put it live on 70+ lenses this morning, and republished them. Now I have to do the rest. This is the problem with having a lot of lenses: the time it takes to do manual updates to all of them.
Other things done since yesterday? Added a Magistream Image-free Mine to the Cat Blog. Although the charity mine works well, some users can't deal with issues squidoo throws up so after discovering I can't really fix them, I mirrored the mine on a page where I had more control. I've got a few ideas for converting my "Translate Lens" module into a real module, which are underway.
And I'm still planning events, writing new stuff and other tings, including a new project in the planning stages since last night. The only problem with the idea is whether our servers could handle the potential load, or if we'd have to move to a larger dedicated server. The technie in me likes the idea of new hardware anyway, it's just my business sense that objects.
My general thoughts are that the interface is easy to use. It reminds me more of hubpages than squidoo, particularly with positioning. The modules are not as flexible as the squidoo versions, but it has a better range of options than hubpages. It takes European affiliates as well as US, which is a big advantage to me since I'm UK-based.
That said, the Ciamar Price page is up mainly for backlinks. If you have a site that pays you credit for some of your affiliate sales against a site that pays 50% of all sales and a percentage for traffic, it is basic business sense to put the serious content on the latter.
The other good reason to put Wizzley pages up? There's one thing squidoo can't do: spread your risk. If Squidoo goes down or is bought out, you could lose your sites. It's as well to have an established presence on another site as a fallback.
However for now I'm back working on Squidoo. It turns out that Google no longer reads the "About me" module, which means a lot of my backlinks have vanished. I built a handcoded alternative, put it live on 70+ lenses this morning, and republished them. Now I have to do the rest. This is the problem with having a lot of lenses: the time it takes to do manual updates to all of them.
Other things done since yesterday? Added a Magistream Image-free Mine to the Cat Blog. Although the charity mine works well, some users can't deal with issues squidoo throws up so after discovering I can't really fix them, I mirrored the mine on a page where I had more control. I've got a few ideas for converting my "Translate Lens" module into a real module, which are underway.
And I'm still planning events, writing new stuff and other tings, including a new project in the planning stages since last night. The only problem with the idea is whether our servers could handle the potential load, or if we'd have to move to a larger dedicated server. The technie in me likes the idea of new hardware anyway, it's just my business sense that objects.
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Wizzley - an alternative to squidoo?
I've been looking at this for a while. Squidoo provides a regular income, while Hubpages has fallen straight down the ranks and has no traffic. Bukisa no longer works for users outside the US, so I need to find an alternative. At first site, Wizzley, another "write articles and share the revenue" site looks ideal. It's easy to use, has multiple affiliate set ups and can be picked up in no time. I even have an account on there.
However there is one reason I am doubtful about Wizzley, and it is their revenue share model. You input your afiliate codes and 40-50% of the time Wizzley subsitutes their own. If, like me, probability tends to work against you you can probably understand why I won't use sites that use this model.
This isn't to say this model is a scam. However it can easily be broken in the hosting site's favour - if it's a 50% share on time and their codes are put in at periods of high traffic, if there's a glitch that means their affiliate overrides yours (e.g. if they've used a HTTP_Referrer model for an affiliate site it wouldn't matter whose code was showing, they get the sale), if it's not a random 50% and they take the customers most likely to purchase...
My main reason however is more personal. Chance does not work in my favour e.g. I don't win raffles, lotteries or even tombolas. It's something of a talking point among friends. It even stretches to affiliate marketing.
I tried this model before and, being cynical, used products where I could access click and sales records. What happened was interesting, specifically that I did not get a single clickthru in the entire 3 month period. However, there were nine clickthrus from the link and seven purchases - all credited to the site in question. With another example, the Amazon.co.uk solution I used was supposed to swap my links out 25% of the time - in practice the sales and clicks I got were credited solely to them. When I switched to my own links I suddenly got a healthy amount of traffic and sales. There was no fraud in either case, and believe me I looked!
Given all this, I will happily work with sites that split revenue 50/50. That gives us both an incentive to maximise revenue. Splitting views 50/50? I'm less keen.
Now I could put the Bukisa articles up without affiliate links, for backlinks and traffic. However there are more popular sites for both at the moment. I'm moving away from a site that offers 100% revenue to the author, and I don't think Wizzley's 60% of clicks is a reasonable alternative. Other sites I should be looking at include Helium and others, but at this point I'm more tempted to move the Bukisa articles to Associated Content with links to my other pages embedded in them. The articles might be syndicated for free, but the traffic boost and the backlinks would help, and Associated Content still gets the most hits on the web for that.
Even allowing for all this, there is one other way to use sites with this model that does work, and can provide revenue, and that is for promotion of your other sites. If it is your product you are discussing or linking to, then whoever gets the affiliate sale, you still benefit. And, of course, these articles are all worth backlinks and hopefully traffic.
This is why I've just put my first Wizzley article up, and will be watching its performance carefully. Depending on how well it does, I'll put up an assessment of how easy it was to use (definitely more like Hubpages than Squidoo), but my initial thoughts so far sum up roughly as: Squidoo for revenue, Wizzley for adverts.
However there is one reason I am doubtful about Wizzley, and it is their revenue share model. You input your afiliate codes and 40-50% of the time Wizzley subsitutes their own. If, like me, probability tends to work against you you can probably understand why I won't use sites that use this model.
This isn't to say this model is a scam. However it can easily be broken in the hosting site's favour - if it's a 50% share on time and their codes are put in at periods of high traffic, if there's a glitch that means their affiliate overrides yours (e.g. if they've used a HTTP_Referrer model for an affiliate site it wouldn't matter whose code was showing, they get the sale), if it's not a random 50% and they take the customers most likely to purchase...
My main reason however is more personal. Chance does not work in my favour e.g. I don't win raffles, lotteries or even tombolas. It's something of a talking point among friends. It even stretches to affiliate marketing.
I tried this model before and, being cynical, used products where I could access click and sales records. What happened was interesting, specifically that I did not get a single clickthru in the entire 3 month period. However, there were nine clickthrus from the link and seven purchases - all credited to the site in question. With another example, the Amazon.co.uk solution I used was supposed to swap my links out 25% of the time - in practice the sales and clicks I got were credited solely to them. When I switched to my own links I suddenly got a healthy amount of traffic and sales. There was no fraud in either case, and believe me I looked!
Given all this, I will happily work with sites that split revenue 50/50. That gives us both an incentive to maximise revenue. Splitting views 50/50? I'm less keen.
Now I could put the Bukisa articles up without affiliate links, for backlinks and traffic. However there are more popular sites for both at the moment. I'm moving away from a site that offers 100% revenue to the author, and I don't think Wizzley's 60% of clicks is a reasonable alternative. Other sites I should be looking at include Helium and others, but at this point I'm more tempted to move the Bukisa articles to Associated Content with links to my other pages embedded in them. The articles might be syndicated for free, but the traffic boost and the backlinks would help, and Associated Content still gets the most hits on the web for that.
Even allowing for all this, there is one other way to use sites with this model that does work, and can provide revenue, and that is for promotion of your other sites. If it is your product you are discussing or linking to, then whoever gets the affiliate sale, you still benefit. And, of course, these articles are all worth backlinks and hopefully traffic.
This is why I've just put my first Wizzley article up, and will be watching its performance carefully. Depending on how well it does, I'll put up an assessment of how easy it was to use (definitely more like Hubpages than Squidoo), but my initial thoughts so far sum up roughly as: Squidoo for revenue, Wizzley for adverts.
Monday, 31 October 2011
A few more lenses
Since "the work on lots and then republish everything" approach is working so well I actually have the time to create more lenses. The half-finished "make your own jewellery" series has picked up two more entries:
To complete the series I have two (possibly three) methods of gem setting to cover, a few more loose stone lenses to do, and some more pre-made jewellery lenses to create.
I did have one shock: it may have be struggling around the 190,000 in lenserank but a lens I haven't updated since 2009 was still live. Good for English Electric Lightning artwork!
(ETA: By the way, ads might be reappearing on this blog: I've submitted it to Project Wonderful, which has already done wonders for my cat blog.)
To complete the series I have two (possibly three) methods of gem setting to cover, a few more loose stone lenses to do, and some more pre-made jewellery lenses to create.
I did have one shock: it may have be struggling around the 190,000 in lenserank but a lens I haven't updated since 2009 was still live. Good for English Electric Lightning artwork!
(ETA: By the way, ads might be reappearing on this blog: I've submitted it to Project Wonderful, which has already done wonders for my cat blog.)
Saturday, 29 October 2011
A new lens
My first for a while:
- http://www.squidoo.com/setting-gems
Meant to be a lensography of my gem-making lenses it turned into a bit more than that. I might actually add a few more lenses to that series, since people are finding them useful. I'm not sure how many people need help with the wire and glue method (although if, like me, you have cats that want to help it can be surprisingly tricky!)
The worst thing about doing this lens? Finding a URL that wasn't taken. Most didn't even have live lenses attached, they had just been sitting there for years untouched (2006 in one case).
And now back to organising a book launch...
- http://www.squidoo.com/setting-gems
Meant to be a lensography of my gem-making lenses it turned into a bit more than that. I might actually add a few more lenses to that series, since people are finding them useful. I'm not sure how many people need help with the wire and glue method (although if, like me, you have cats that want to help it can be surprisingly tricky!)
The worst thing about doing this lens? Finding a URL that wasn't taken. Most didn't even have live lenses attached, they had just been sitting there for years untouched (2006 in one case).
And now back to organising a book launch...
Friday, 28 October 2011
Translating Squidoo lenses
Under the terms of the T&Cs Squidoo lenses can now only be in English. People used to create them in a variety of languages but these were harder to moderate. The problem is that this restricts your audience to english speakers only, which really limits the reach of your lens.
To get round this there have been a variety of methods, from my old clearspring translate module which is now disabled, to translating your lens in Babelfish and saving the contents off-site, which has a huge overhead on updating.
I've had another go at it. My new solution requires you to know how to use copy and paste, and a text module. That's it.
My old translate-lens lens above has been updated with details. The solution is still in beta and doesn't look very pretty, but the functionality is there and the output it generates works.
Once embedded it translates the lens on the fly, so there is no need for lensmaster to retranslate everytime they update. It uses Babelfish, so the translation quality may be a bit patchy, but will improve as Babelfish improves. And finally it's easy to use.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
If any squidoo experts out there want to convert this into a custom module it would be pretty easy using the existing BlackBox functionality, it has one $path variable and doesn't need to make a database call, and I'd love a dedicated translate module. (Give me a way to code it in Notepad and I'll build it myself, but I find squidoo's IDE unapproachable).
To get round this there have been a variety of methods, from my old clearspring translate module which is now disabled, to translating your lens in Babelfish and saving the contents off-site, which has a huge overhead on updating.
I've had another go at it. My new solution requires you to know how to use copy and paste, and a text module. That's it.
My old translate-lens lens above has been updated with details. The solution is still in beta and doesn't look very pretty, but the functionality is there and the output it generates works.
Once embedded it translates the lens on the fly, so there is no need for lensmaster to retranslate everytime they update. It uses Babelfish, so the translation quality may be a bit patchy, but will improve as Babelfish improves. And finally it's easy to use.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
If any squidoo experts out there want to convert this into a custom module it would be pretty easy using the existing BlackBox functionality, it has one $path variable and doesn't need to make a database call, and I'd love a dedicated translate module. (Give me a way to code it in Notepad and I'll build it myself, but I find squidoo's IDE unapproachable).
Monday, 24 October 2011
Squidoo Part Two
The new approach is definitely working - traffic is up slightly and I can get a lot of dead links fixed without worrying about waiting long periods for lenses to publish.
The major problem with the new approach is the republish. It's certainly faster to save everthing and then do them all in one pass, but re-publishing 250 lenses takes time. The first time I did this, it took two hours. The second time was longer since squidoo didn't want to stay up. Today, it's taken forty minutes.
I have made a few refinements. Using multiple tabs simultaneously in strict rotation mean that you don't need to wait for things to load. I also put my dashboard on a hotkey, so I have fewer mistaken clicks. A minimal browser set-up for the publish run (no images, no ads) makes it faster to publish, although I wouldn't suggest trying to build a lens in it.
The only problems left? I sometimes get out of step in the dashboard/edit/publish/close routine or hit the wrong tab, and towards the end I'm flagging from all the scrolling down. And then after I finish I have to go and do the ones I missed...
Overall, the results on traffic and search rankings are strongly positive, so I might keep on with this for a while.
The major problem with the new approach is the republish. It's certainly faster to save everthing and then do them all in one pass, but re-publishing 250 lenses takes time. The first time I did this, it took two hours. The second time was longer since squidoo didn't want to stay up. Today, it's taken forty minutes.
I have made a few refinements. Using multiple tabs simultaneously in strict rotation mean that you don't need to wait for things to load. I also put my dashboard on a hotkey, so I have fewer mistaken clicks. A minimal browser set-up for the publish run (no images, no ads) makes it faster to publish, although I wouldn't suggest trying to build a lens in it.
The only problems left? I sometimes get out of step in the dashboard/edit/publish/close routine or hit the wrong tab, and towards the end I'm flagging from all the scrolling down. And then after I finish I have to go and do the ones I missed...
Overall, the results on traffic and search rankings are strongly positive, so I might keep on with this for a while.
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Changing an approach to squidoo
Recently, with the changes to google and the changes to squidoo itself, it has felt as though I've been running a Red Queen's Race to try to keep my lenses updated.
This is partly because it now gives huge amounts of weight to new lenses (over traffic and sales), so the monthly update schedule I was using is now not enough to keep lenses high. As an example I have lenses with over 100 views/week and sales against them rating lower than lenses with less traffic and no sales that are new that week. The second problem is that publishing a lens - literally every time I click "Publish" - now takes five minutes to go through, making tweaks for things like spelling errors extremely time consuming.
I'm trying a new approach. Make a few edits, save the lenses as draft, and then republish all my lenses a couple of times a week, so I know any changes I made have gone live. That way I don't need to worry about republish for tabs, republish for typos, worry if I've got changes unpublished on a lens...
I timed myself two nights ago when I did the first republish and it takes me about two hours. I also found out that I need to do other things like blog writing at the same time. It might be slower, but it helps me avoid climbing the walls.
I'll be trying this out for a month and see if it works for me. If so, I may start doing new lenses again. To be honest, with hubpages very low on traffic and bukisa dead enough that I am migrating my content off them, I hope it works.
ETA: And the second time I try this Squidoo crashes and I lose my place... Also the delay in publishing seems to be caused by something called s.ytimg.com. Each publish, timed, is taking over a minute in total. I can't find any calls or references to that in my code, so I am wondering if it is integral to squidoo.
And a second update? Squidoo just went down.
This is partly because it now gives huge amounts of weight to new lenses (over traffic and sales), so the monthly update schedule I was using is now not enough to keep lenses high. As an example I have lenses with over 100 views/week and sales against them rating lower than lenses with less traffic and no sales that are new that week. The second problem is that publishing a lens - literally every time I click "Publish" - now takes five minutes to go through, making tweaks for things like spelling errors extremely time consuming.
I'm trying a new approach. Make a few edits, save the lenses as draft, and then republish all my lenses a couple of times a week, so I know any changes I made have gone live. That way I don't need to worry about republish for tabs, republish for typos, worry if I've got changes unpublished on a lens...
I timed myself two nights ago when I did the first republish and it takes me about two hours. I also found out that I need to do other things like blog writing at the same time. It might be slower, but it helps me avoid climbing the walls.
I'll be trying this out for a month and see if it works for me. If so, I may start doing new lenses again. To be honest, with hubpages very low on traffic and bukisa dead enough that I am migrating my content off them, I hope it works.
ETA: And the second time I try this Squidoo crashes and I lose my place... Also the delay in publishing seems to be caused by something called s.ytimg.com. Each publish, timed, is taking over a minute in total. I can't find any calls or references to that in my code, so I am wondering if it is integral to squidoo.
And a second update? Squidoo just went down.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Project Wonderful - commercial product effect
I put a button ad live for a commercial ebook to see what effect that would have. This is only the result from the first test. I need to run it a few more times to get more data.
On the page it was linked to, the number of page views went up. On Amazon, which is not connected to that page, I got a small but statistically significant number of extra sales over the duration of the trial. The button tracker says that no one clicked the ad, and referrers on the linked page bear this out.
I will try this again, but at the moment it seems that ads are raising awareness of the product and contributing to sales indirectly, but not directly.
For anyone curious about economics, the total cost of my trials so far? $5. If the extra Amazon sales can be attributed to this test, it has already paid for itself.
My next test is trying this with a static button.
On the page it was linked to, the number of page views went up. On Amazon, which is not connected to that page, I got a small but statistically significant number of extra sales over the duration of the trial. The button tracker says that no one clicked the ad, and referrers on the linked page bear this out.
I will try this again, but at the moment it seems that ads are raising awareness of the product and contributing to sales indirectly, but not directly.
For anyone curious about economics, the total cost of my trials so far? $5. If the extra Amazon sales can be attributed to this test, it has already paid for itself.
My next test is trying this with a static button.
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Project Wonderful Part 2
Assessing the effects of advertising on Project Wonderful. If you've been following the blog you might remember my odd results from last time. I've run the test for more times. Each time my page views stayed static, but the number of downloads? See for yourself:
You can click for a larger image. Yellow indicates the period an ad was live. The blue line shows the page the ad links directly to. The others show linked products.
Exactly the same number of people hit the page, but in each case they were statistically more likely to download. Also, following shortly after the main bump, there was a smaller rise in the number of people who downloaded associated products. The two middle increases are smaller. These two tests were run with button ads (117px x 30px), while the others used banners. I'd need to run a few more tests before I can see if there is a correlation between ad size and likelihood of downloads, but right now it looks like it.
This was with a free ebook on Smashwords, so the next test is to try this again with a commercial product.
The other thing I have done is to try it as a publisher. The Stephen and Matilda blog now has ads served by Project Wonderful. My assessment? It's easy to set up and editing your ad is simple. They also take Paypal. It takes a few days to get approved, unlike the signup for adsense, but then they are more selective.
A small side benefit I didn't expect is the metrics. Tracking how many people view an adbox, and where in the world they come from, also means tracking site visitors. One of its best features is that you can display your own ads in the adbox if no one else bids, making it easy to co-ordinate a campaign across multiple sites.
We've submitted a second blog to them and, if the results are promising, you might find them serving the ads on here.
You can click for a larger image. Yellow indicates the period an ad was live. The blue line shows the page the ad links directly to. The others show linked products.
Exactly the same number of people hit the page, but in each case they were statistically more likely to download. Also, following shortly after the main bump, there was a smaller rise in the number of people who downloaded associated products. The two middle increases are smaller. These two tests were run with button ads (117px x 30px), while the others used banners. I'd need to run a few more tests before I can see if there is a correlation between ad size and likelihood of downloads, but right now it looks like it.
This was with a free ebook on Smashwords, so the next test is to try this again with a commercial product.
The other thing I have done is to try it as a publisher. The Stephen and Matilda blog now has ads served by Project Wonderful. My assessment? It's easy to set up and editing your ad is simple. They also take Paypal. It takes a few days to get approved, unlike the signup for adsense, but then they are more selective.
A small side benefit I didn't expect is the metrics. Tracking how many people view an adbox, and where in the world they come from, also means tracking site visitors. One of its best features is that you can display your own ads in the adbox if no one else bids, making it easy to co-ordinate a campaign across multiple sites.
We've submitted a second blog to them and, if the results are promising, you might find them serving the ads on here.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
A lot going on
So right now I am:
- organising a book launch
- finishing a webpage
- trying to get the Great Western content together into another non-fiction ebook
- writing a follow up to Fire Season
- going back to work on mossie, a stand alone novel (or two)
- writing four more Harry stories, all currently in note form
- trying to manage promotion for all my books
- Getting a book into print-ready format...
...and down with another stinking cold.
The timing is wonderful. I promise I will get back to updating my lenses, eventually, when I get some free time, and am less likely to write absolute rubbish or delete the wrong modules.
And I've put one of my other blogs in to have its ads provided by Project Wonderful. If it is accepted and works out, this one might change over as well.
Right now I want sleep.
- organising a book launch
- finishing a webpage
- trying to get the Great Western content together into another non-fiction ebook
- writing a follow up to Fire Season
- going back to work on mossie, a stand alone novel (or two)
- writing four more Harry stories, all currently in note form
- trying to manage promotion for all my books
- Getting a book into print-ready format...
...and down with another stinking cold.
The timing is wonderful. I promise I will get back to updating my lenses, eventually, when I get some free time, and am less likely to write absolute rubbish or delete the wrong modules.
And I've put one of my other blogs in to have its ads provided by Project Wonderful. If it is accepted and works out, this one might change over as well.
Right now I want sleep.
Monday, 3 October 2011
Project Wonderful and odd results
Recently (Ok for the last couple of weeks) I've been experimenting with Project Wonderful for ads. The cost for Google ads is prohibitive for smaller advertisers, and from a content providers some sites that use ad-sharing then fail to accept Adsense codes from users outside the US. My personal feelings towards Google Ads are also not rainbows and fairies right now.
Project Wonderful offers ads on sites which apply. Advertisers bid on the sites per day and can either select the site or personally bid. First impressions from me are favourable: the tracking and reports are easy, so is setting up the ads and making bids. The cost is far lower than GoogleAds - I've sent a whole $3 for 60K views and a lot of clicks in two weeks.
However there was a very interest effect in the results of the ads. As one of my tests I put up some free advertising for free ebooks. Free adverts only have a two day run, so it was very short, but it brought a few hundred hits and no clicks. That's when I noticed the odd result and ran it again.
Both times my number of downloads went up for the second day the ad was live, and for a few days after that. It tailed off fairly quickly. The increase wasn't great, but was measurable (about triple the daily downloads I would expect). I'm not sure of the cause, since there were no clicks. Users may be googling the ad, or clicking on it to grab the URL and pasting into their own browser or a preview tool.
This is something I will be looking into, with another control test. This advert is live again for a third run, but I will be trying a different advert for another free ebook and seeing if the same thing happens.
Overall though, I'd have to say my opinions are favourable - I might sign some of my sites up as hosts. The final big point in their favour? They use paypal.
Project Wonderful offers ads on sites which apply. Advertisers bid on the sites per day and can either select the site or personally bid. First impressions from me are favourable: the tracking and reports are easy, so is setting up the ads and making bids. The cost is far lower than GoogleAds - I've sent a whole $3 for 60K views and a lot of clicks in two weeks.
However there was a very interest effect in the results of the ads. As one of my tests I put up some free advertising for free ebooks. Free adverts only have a two day run, so it was very short, but it brought a few hundred hits and no clicks. That's when I noticed the odd result and ran it again.
Both times my number of downloads went up for the second day the ad was live, and for a few days after that. It tailed off fairly quickly. The increase wasn't great, but was measurable (about triple the daily downloads I would expect). I'm not sure of the cause, since there were no clicks. Users may be googling the ad, or clicking on it to grab the URL and pasting into their own browser or a preview tool.
This is something I will be looking into, with another control test. This advert is live again for a third run, but I will be trying a different advert for another free ebook and seeing if the same thing happens.
Overall though, I'd have to say my opinions are favourable - I might sign some of my sites up as hosts. The final big point in their favour? They use paypal.
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Blogs, marketing, and misfires
With the current drive to "personalise" things - readers buying a book because they liked the author's blog/photo I suppose I should admit something:
I've never bought a book because of an author's blog. However I have not bought books because of an author's blog.
If the blog is simply life, the universe, and everything then unless they have an interesting and unusual job (and I don't mean writing) it isn't going to hold my interest. Since most people's lives are very similar, just blogging about your own life won't pull people. This is especially true if you write about something outside your normal field. It's one reason why I keep my writing and books seperate from my job/work/life/cats blog. Just as celebrities resort to desperate tactics to stay in the headlines, writers resort to more desperate tactics to gain blog readers and problems start to occur.
A few years ago I was following a blog, from someone with an extremely unusual career and a good writing style. Like many people, I followed it, gave advice and help. The writer wanted to change jobs, so they were even negotiating a publishing deal through another readers' connection. About eighteen months into this the writer came clean: they didn't have the job, they had lied about the events and had in fact done it as a creative writing exercise to prove they could write.
The result was not readers praising them as a good writer: it was the total loss of their fanbase. The blog never recovered, and the publishing deal evaporated. I, like most of their other readers, were completely stunned.
I checked recently. The blog has gone and so has the confessional post and everything before it. The person is now back to writing on their first book, and trying to get another publishing deal. Six years lost for one lie. It was one of the most spectacular marketing misfires I have ever seen.
(No I'm not naming the writer. With any luck their life is back on track and they are older and a bit wiser. Teens are meant to make mistakes - it's just that when they do them online the results don't ever really go away.)
The moral? You can lose friends and reputation a lot more quickly than you can make them.
Be honest with your readers.
You only have to check the google rankings, however, to see that a targeted and focused blog will do better in search results and click through traffic, which is why I also run those. So why do I keep this blog going, when I have targetted blogs available? Because I can be a lot more abrasive, accurate in my views, and cover a much wider range of subjects here than on other blogs where I should be worrying about marketing, trying to make everything fit a focused and targeted blog, and work with SEO.
The other reason? On a marketing blog you shouldn't say anything negative or burn bridges. As anyone who has followed this blog knows, in some areas (usually to do with fraud, criminal behaviour, or incompetency) my policy is closer to "Hand me the matches and the petrol and stand well back." Not the best marketing and sales policy in the world.
I've never bought a book because of an author's blog. However I have not bought books because of an author's blog.
If the blog is simply life, the universe, and everything then unless they have an interesting and unusual job (and I don't mean writing) it isn't going to hold my interest. Since most people's lives are very similar, just blogging about your own life won't pull people. This is especially true if you write about something outside your normal field. It's one reason why I keep my writing and books seperate from my job/work/life/cats blog. Just as celebrities resort to desperate tactics to stay in the headlines, writers resort to more desperate tactics to gain blog readers and problems start to occur.
A few years ago I was following a blog, from someone with an extremely unusual career and a good writing style. Like many people, I followed it, gave advice and help. The writer wanted to change jobs, so they were even negotiating a publishing deal through another readers' connection. About eighteen months into this the writer came clean: they didn't have the job, they had lied about the events and had in fact done it as a creative writing exercise to prove they could write.
The result was not readers praising them as a good writer: it was the total loss of their fanbase. The blog never recovered, and the publishing deal evaporated. I, like most of their other readers, were completely stunned.
I checked recently. The blog has gone and so has the confessional post and everything before it. The person is now back to writing on their first book, and trying to get another publishing deal. Six years lost for one lie. It was one of the most spectacular marketing misfires I have ever seen.
(No I'm not naming the writer. With any luck their life is back on track and they are older and a bit wiser. Teens are meant to make mistakes - it's just that when they do them online the results don't ever really go away.)
The moral? You can lose friends and reputation a lot more quickly than you can make them.
Be honest with your readers.
You only have to check the google rankings, however, to see that a targeted and focused blog will do better in search results and click through traffic, which is why I also run those. So why do I keep this blog going, when I have targetted blogs available? Because I can be a lot more abrasive, accurate in my views, and cover a much wider range of subjects here than on other blogs where I should be worrying about marketing, trying to make everything fit a focused and targeted blog, and work with SEO.
The other reason? On a marketing blog you shouldn't say anything negative or burn bridges. As anyone who has followed this blog knows, in some areas (usually to do with fraud, criminal behaviour, or incompetency) my policy is closer to "Hand me the matches and the petrol and stand well back." Not the best marketing and sales policy in the world.
Monday, 19 September 2011
An update
I haven't blogged for a while since Google's cookie set-up made it difficult to log into my account without having google try to link it to the work account I manage for an employer. (This frantic urge by certain companies to link everything up online is irritating. I hear Facebook is worse.)
Rant for the day: Tailored advertising has resulted in my finally cracking on my desire to not block ads and downloading Adblocker. After all, if I'm not interested in the ad the first time, show me something different on the next page, not the same blasted thing 600 times! I'm not going to click on it, but I may start to think your company are a) annoying and b) rude. Rant over.
Some changes here: I have split my fiction writing into another blog/Squidoo account to make it easier to manage, not least because I've got two more titles out. Currently I'm rather busy with three more books being worked on.
I'm slowing withdrawing my content from Bukisa, after finding some of it on a PLR site (now pulled) and included in a for-profit ebook with someone else's name on it (now pulled). Their switch to shared-advertising revenue has killed any earnings since they won't accept my adsense account, as I'm outside the US and don't have a zip code. It's either going in free e-books online or on lenses. Some may yet end up on Associated Content, but I'd have to check their licencing.
I'm moving my ebooks from Lulu to Smashwords, giving them a re-edit in the process. The result has been a success: The Three Great Ships of Isambard Kingdom Brunel is now their most downloaded non-fiction history title. Rather anxiously, I've turned on premium distribution, so these things should start turning up on B&N, Apple etc. over the next few months.
The cats are still cats. Some things don't change.
Rant for the day: Tailored advertising has resulted in my finally cracking on my desire to not block ads and downloading Adblocker. After all, if I'm not interested in the ad the first time, show me something different on the next page, not the same blasted thing 600 times! I'm not going to click on it, but I may start to think your company are a) annoying and b) rude. Rant over.
Some changes here: I have split my fiction writing into another blog/Squidoo account to make it easier to manage, not least because I've got two more titles out. Currently I'm rather busy with three more books being worked on.
I'm slowing withdrawing my content from Bukisa, after finding some of it on a PLR site (now pulled) and included in a for-profit ebook with someone else's name on it (now pulled). Their switch to shared-advertising revenue has killed any earnings since they won't accept my adsense account, as I'm outside the US and don't have a zip code. It's either going in free e-books online or on lenses. Some may yet end up on Associated Content, but I'd have to check their licencing.
I'm moving my ebooks from Lulu to Smashwords, giving them a re-edit in the process. The result has been a success: The Three Great Ships of Isambard Kingdom Brunel is now their most downloaded non-fiction history title. Rather anxiously, I've turned on premium distribution, so these things should start turning up on B&N, Apple etc. over the next few months.
The cats are still cats. Some things don't change.
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