Dumped like I was by all those girlfriends

Posted by stuart as pagerank, google

Seems a lot of people are talking about our friends at Google doing their dance again. My SearchStatus toolbar is showing a drop from 4 to 3 here. Hmmmm

SeoTools is showing some datacenters at 3, some at 4

Fingers crossed we won’t drop in the final washup!

How do I get a proofreading job at Google?

Posted by stuart as adsense

I noticed this on the Google AdSense site about 8 hours ago, and it’s still there!

Looks like somebody got their width and height attributes ass-about in a bit of HTML.

Good to know google still uses humans to write their code!

Oops!

Sabbaticals, affiliate sales, and employing a starving writer

Posted by stuart as amazon, affiliate marketing, plr, private label rights, make money online

Well I’m back, feeling rested, recovered, and recuperated.

Might I suggest to anyone and everyone that if you’re feeling a bit jaded or running out of ideas, take a few days off. Having a short sabbatical seems to have recharged the batteries and enthusiasm for me. I actually kept a pad and pencil on the coffee table at home, and wrote down any article ideas that popped into my head over the last few days, so expect the content to come thick and fast over the next few days.

Taking a few days off from writing here doesn’t mean that I’ve been away from the computer alltogether. There are blogs to read, RSS feeds to follow, comments to leave, and ideas to come up with.

I’ve been busilly beavering away on other projects, such as:

• I’ve chosen the writer for my outsourced PLR articles, and am in communication with them at the moment. I should receive the articles in the next few days. The writer I chose was not the cheapest bid, but by no means the most expensive. They were chosen on the feedback they’d been given on the freelanceing website I used. We really have no idea if that feedback is legitimate or not, but we’ll live and learn, eh?
• I’ve chosen a template from oswd.org, and am modifying it to suit my needs for the PLR site. I’ll be setting it up on a subdirectory on this domain (pimpmypagerank.com), to try to take advantage of some of the traffic and PR that this site has.
• I have set up my digital delivery and sales of the PLR articles through payloadz.com
• Been working on my payperpost blog (not posting for money, a blog which actually follows the controversy surrounding payperpost), this seems to actually be doing quite well, it has a few feed subscribers, and is getting a little traffic and some comments for a blog so young)

I also logged into my amazon associates account this morning, to find a nice surprise, I made my first ever affiliate sale, from payperpost.blogwhore.net. It was only for $0.66 (w00t that 4%, hey!), but we’re on our way to world domination now!! MUAHAHAHHA!

All in all, an interesting few days!

The complete twits guide to creating a mobile site

Posted by stuart as web design, .mobi, ICANN, domain names, humor, telecommunications

Tim Berners Lee has (quite rightly) come out and vented his spleen over the creation of the new .mobi TLD.

So what’s this .mobi thing all about then? Well apparently, content creators are too stupid to realise that mobile content can be placed on any domain (more about this in a minute), and registrars have convinced ICANN that they’ll be able to sell a shitload of these .mobi domain names to add to the stable of .com, .net, .org, .info, .eu and whatever other TLD’s you can think of to businesses trying to protect their corporate identity.

Now, about the technology itself. It’s a little known secret amongst the web development community (and I’m probably going to get death threats for revealing this), that any TLD can host mobile content. There, I said it, and in case you missed it, I’ll say it again - Any TLD can host mobile content!! That’s right, that old .com you have lying around, hell, even the free web space your ISP gives you, will work for mobile content.

As you pick yourself up off the floor, get ready for an even bigger shock - I’m actually going to show you how to do it! Now the big media companies don’t want you to know how to do this, they want to hoarde all those PDA toting, smartphone carrying, yuppie customers to themselves, their fancy mobile content portals, and specially bought .mobi domain names.

OK, so here it is; The Pimp’s ripper guide to creating a mobile content site. Use this information carefully, and please don’t share it with others. This is powerful stuff, and may well change the mobile telecommunications landscape:

1. FTP your way to your server, and create a subdirectory on a domain (let’s call it “domain.com”) called “mobile”, or “text”, hell, call it “granny porn” if you like, it doesn’t really matter
2. Open up your HTML editor, and create a new document. Call this document “index.html”
3. In this document, create a table 160 pixels wide
4. Paste some crap in this table (preferably without too many pictures)
5. Save the document
6. FTP it to your server, in the subdirectory you created in step 1
7. Open up your wireless PDA or smartphone’s browser, point it to www.domain.com/grannyporn
8. Marvel in amazement at how you’ve just created your first mobile content site

Now, you can spend the next few days trying to work out:

1. How you can get rich now that you know this earth-shattering secret, and
2. Why anyone would care.

So there you have it, you now hold the secret to untold riches through the creation of mobile conent sites. It’s not really rocket surgery, is it?

When is blogging just not fun any more?

Posted by stuart as flame wars, blogging, blog

A former reader of this blog popped in to another of my blogs this morning, arguing the case over a subject that I thought was dead and buried between us.

This left me with an uneasy feeling. I’m a pretty emotional sort of guy (obvious to those who’ve been here a while), and the whole argument over that subject cut me pretty deep. As I said in my other blog, things that happen online do affect us in the real world, and anybody who says they don’t, is either made of stone, or lying.

As my wife and I discussed this over our morning coffee before she left for work, she asked a pretty pertinent question:

Are you still enjoying your blogging? Is it bringing as much pleasure as it did when you started?

I had to admit, the question struck me dumb. I was stumped, and had to go away and think about it for a while.

The answer I came up with after a couple of hours of pondering surprised me.

Not a whole lot at the moment.

Actually, that’s not entirely true, I am enjoying the writing, and the friends I’ve made since I started blogging, but the fights over the last couple of weeks have left me emotionally drained. (I know there are those of you who’ll say I should just “get over it and move on”, but what can I say, these things affect different people in different ways).

It’s more and more obvious (by the number of comments (not) left on posts in this blog in the last week) that I’ve upset more people than just the ones who were so vociferous about the issue. I realise that I’ve created an environment where people are going to be reticent to comment. I see the mistake I’ve made, and apologised to the person concerned. Whether that person chooses to accept that apology is to be seen. (I hope so). I also apologise unreservedly to anybody else I  have upset with my abrasive attitude.

As those of you who’ve been around these parts for a while already know, I have some health issues which are taking a lot longer than anticipated to come to a close. This is not an excuse for my behaviour, rather an explanation for the decision I’ve taken.

It’s time for me to take a step back for a while, and re-assess my priorities. I won’t be posting for a few days, and I’ll then decide whether it’s worth the emotional investment to continue this blog.

If I do decide to continue, I envisage taking a different direction around here. I imagine this becoming more of a personal blog. I’ll still document my efforts to make a buck online, but it will be interspersed with personal thoughts on all aspects of my life, from sport, to politics, family, and my health. But who knows? The next few days will decide which direction I take.

If I do choose to take this direction, I know it will cost me readers, that’s something I’ll have to decide in the next few days whether I’m happy with.

To those friends I’ve made - keep on blogging! To those people I’ve pissed off - I’m sorry, and I hope one day you can forgive me.