I’ve posted the ads I’ve noticed in the rotation so far - if you see some I have missed, let me know, and I will update this post with the new photos.

If I were Linux.com, I would be starting to think about removing the DoubleClick ads, and perhaps begin direct selling advertisements to companies that provide enterprise consulting and support in Linux. One of the main misconceptions about Linux is there is a lack of support available to corporate customers were they to make the switch. Providing advertisement to companies offering these services would immediately go some ways to alleviating these concerns. Additionally, Microsoft’s FUD campaign would have one less outlet.

On another note, this reminds me of the time when OpenOffice.org plastered Redmond transit routes frequented by Microsoft employees with ads promoting the OpenOffice.org software.

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Name: Anikrichard | E-mail: anlikivanna.80@mail.ru | URI: *spamlink* | IP: 72.9.235.218 | Date: September 5, 2007

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 454528835 or write me tedirectory@yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

This is one of the more appealing spam emails I’ve seen - in return for him doing you a favour, and asking the nasty spammers to stop, all he wants is a link to his site.

I don’t have the time myself, but someone should talk to this guy and get his URL to ‘add a link’, then send him off the the Google Webspam team. Would be fun to see what happens. If anyone wants to take it on, let me know - I would love to see how it turns out / how quickly the guy is banned.

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The concept is very solid. The deal is they share 50% of their daily revenue with their authors. An author gets paid based on the share of ‘Current Goodness’ his articles and comments generate on a given day. ‘Current Goodness’ is determined by a simple formula give over 24 hours:

Current Goodness is based on views and votes received in the last 24 hours. Current Goodness is equal to (1+Views received in the last 24 Hours)*Votes received in the last 24 Hours.

It is a good system - it is much fairer than other sites such as Digital Journal who pay by the vote alone, regardless of the page views. this system rewards writers who cover controversial topics which generate a lot of reads; under other systems, the writer may not receive any votes, since many of his readers will disagree with him or her.

To test it out, I created a generic content piece titled, ‘The 5 Worst Types of Drivers‘. Once the piece was published on the site, I submitted it to Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us and Netscape.

My article rapidly rose in the daily ranks on the site, and is currently sitting as the #2 article in the last 24 hours with 1072 views, 14 votes, and a ‘Current Goodness’ score of 15,022 current goodness at the time of this writing.

So, as the second most popular article, one would think I would walk away with a decent share of the site’s daily rewards. Think again.

The #1 article on the site for the last 24 hours is ‘Tempur-Pedic Beds and Sex Do Not Mix‘. This article has gone successful on Reddit & Digg, and is currently at a Current Goodness score of over 800,000.

So it will be getting the lion’s share of the profits from today. Not that I am bitter - I am not doing this for the monetary gain! Rather, I was curious how well the concept worked.

Having looked at the sites advertising, it appears that the site makes ~$150 / day from Blogads, and probably another $100 or so from CPM advertising. So, assuming a $250 daily budget, $125 of the goes to the authors. Assuming that the site authors get ~845,000 total ‘Goodness’ cumulative today, the #1 author is on track to get ~95% of the day’s earnings, about $118. Me, at #2, am on track for ~1.75% of the earnings, about $2.20. The remainder (~$4.80) will be split up among the site’s countless other authors.

The best conclusion to take from this is if anybody is writing articles on a site like this for the monetary aspect, you better hope your article becomes successful on a social network. If anyone else does, you will not make anything.

On the positive side, it quickly became apparent that the site has a rather vibrant community. People are very free with commenting and discussions. While there is criticism within the users, it is generally of a constructive sort, especially within the ‘fiction’ area.

If you enjoy writing, I would strongly recommend checking out Thisisby.us. It’s a very friendly, writer-oriented site with a helpful, accessible community. Don’t go with the intention of making money unless you think you can make it on a social network; you won’t make much, and you would likely be better off running your own site anyways.

Edit: Just to confirm what I said above about it not being for the money… well.. I just got back the results for this article, and I have made $0.48, far less than the $1.20 I estimated. C’ est la vie.

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Now I’ve also been dugg in the last few weeks for a post I wrote about Dreamhost leaking 3500 passwords, so I thought I would quickly examine how the traffic from each spike. Sphinn is on the left, Digg is on the right:

So as you can see, the spike from Digg is much larger than that from Sphinn, approximately 400X as large. However, I find that I am much happier with the 40-visitor Sphinn than the 17,000-person Digg.

The 40-person Sphinn holds more value to me due to the demographics of the site. While Digg has a very general, mixed demographic, Sphinn is browsed by some of the top people in the search industry - the direct demographic this blog is meant for. Since this blog is about branding (and venting!) more than trying to make a sale, I value it being read by Sphinners more than by Diggers. In my mind, each Sphinner is a potential contact, contract, or partner. Each Digger is just another person, sucking my bandwidth for 20 seconds.

Also, I noticed that each digger spent an average of only 17 seconds on this site. Each Sphinner spent an average of a minute and a half. I will leave you to your own conclusions over which group is more valuable.

So there you have it - I think being Sphunn is great. I guess I have to start blogging regularly again. And yes, I know I’ve said that before…

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I just came across the ‘Leadership Matters’ campaign which Ontario PC Candidate John Tory has launched in preparation for the 2007 Ontario General Election. Although there has been a lot of focus on the use of social media by the 2008 Presidential Candidates, I think they could learn a bit from what Tory is doing here!

Check out the site, I am curious what your impressions of it are!

Also, keep your eyes on the blog for a mega-post on Ask.com and its new features in the next couple of days!

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I rank #3 for ‘Kill People for Money‘. Now - fess up!

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Of course, I’m not one of those blogging super-nerds who approach 100%. You know, the type that whip out a camera during a wedding because they wanted to blog about the salad…

72%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

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Why, you ask? Yes, I know, such a thing has been done before. However, I wanted to try for myself!

Enjoy!

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One thing I’ve already noted - the SERPS returned for an Ask.com query on my name are much less relevant than those of Google. Well, we’ll see how it goes…

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