Clear Digital Media

Beef Jerky Blogs

2008-10-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

I launched a couple of blogs focused on the world of beef jerky...

Best Beef Jerky - reviews of beef jerky brands. The only blog on the 'net like it. Beef jerky is a favorite snack of mine.

Beef Jerky Diet - And since eating so much beef jerky, why not lose some weight with it too? Low in carbs, low in fat, and consuming red meat will boost your metabolism.

How to Make Money With AdSense

2007-08-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

I launched a new blog entitled, "Money With AdSense"...

http://www.moneywithadsense.com/

It's pretty clear on what it's about: how to make money using AdSense.

I know there's already glut of these websites around. But I figured, "why not", since I already have a lot of knowledge about this in my noodle. Even if it doesn't make a ton of money for me, it'll still make some money.

The biggest reason why I wanted to get into this is because there's just a lot of people out there still looking to make money from their websites, and they still don't know how to help themselves. I've two people already, who created a website to promote their business, but want to leverage ads to help make a little bit more money.

I've run across several people who make pretty good money teaching people how make money on the Internet. These people are not even experts on AdSense or affiliate marketing. They're just experts at making people think they're experts. It's just insane, and I kept thinking how terribly late for lunch I am.

New Website Launched: Free On Ancestry

2006-12-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

Free On Ancestry is a new website-weblog hybrid we launched.

For the most part, it's a website that doesn't need to be updated all that much once everything is complete. The site itself is largely complete, with a few more static HTML pages I need to finish.

The site is centered around a blog, found here.

The blog features all of the free content offered by Ancestry.com, our largest affiliate partner. Each free-content page on Ancestry.com is represented as a blog-post on Free On Ancestry. But instead of activating Blogger's built-in archiving system, I created static HTML pages that link to each blog post.

While Free On Ancestry uses affiliate links to link to Ancestry.com's content, it's not expected to earn much affiliate revenue for us. Rather, the site is being built to create buzz and search engine food, with the goal of highlighting our flagship website, Interment.net

Even if Free On Ancestry doesn't live up to its expectations, the site will require almost no on-going maintenance, so we can just let it run forever.

Visitor Stats for November

2006-11-30T23:39:00.000-08:00

Blog Network Watch posted visitor stats for Shiny Media, saying the network boasted a total of 2.3 million people visiting its websites in the month of November.

Our network of websites hosted a total of 2.56 million people for the same period. Keep in mind that our network includes both blogs and non-blog sites. And this figure only includes visitors downloading our webpages. It doesn't include people who subscribe to our RSS feeds.

But kudos to Shiny Media for growing that quickly in just a span of more than 3 years. By comparison, our oldest website was launched nearly 10 years ago. The people at Shiny Media have figured it out!

I'm an A-List Blogger, So Now What?

2006-11-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

According to Kineda's blogebrity calculator, I'm an A-list blogger, by virtue of our Strange New Products blog.

Though, I'm a B-list blogger on some other of our blogs, and a C-list blogger on yet others.

I'm still listed as a C-list blogger on Blogebrity.com (Johnson, Steve), but for DoggieNews.

Kineda's blogebrity calculator is simply a measurement of how many other blogs have linked to your blog within a specific time frame. Blogebrity.com's list is human-edited based on gut-feel, though I'm not sure they're still maintaining it.

But the truth is that if I were to show up at a blog convention, or a blog party, no one would recognize me. In fact, no one really blogs about me by name, rather they refer to me by my blog, "Strange New Products". I'm not really sure that makes me an A-list blogger.

Real Estate and How Gets Refocused

2006-11-27T16:31:00.000-08:00

We're changing the focus of our real estate blog from general real estate news, to real estate technology, more specifically, as it relates to using the Internet.

A few reasons caused us to make this change...

1. There are already several blogs on the real estate industry, and all of them excruciatingly boring. We think all people love high-tech, and we're guessing that real estate professionals love high-tech real estate stuff.

2. Real estate agents and brokers using blogs to market their services and properties is really hot right now. We want to use our real estate blog to help them blog better.

3. We need a specific angle to brand ourselves with. As it is now, our real estate blog was not much different than the other hundreds of real estate blogs. So, this will help differentiate us from the rest.

Connecting Bubblicious to Clear Digital Media

2006-11-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

The past few days I became involved in an e-mail thread with an elementary school teacher.

The teacher contacted me via e-mail because he was appalled with a Marvel comic book that was distributed to students, and claimed that we had someting to do with it.

He said that the comic book contained some very questionable content that he felt was not suitable to children. I explained that we don't have anything to do with comic books. We don't publish them, or contribute to them, or partner with them, or anything.

He replied back that we had a large advertisement on the back page of this comic book.

I replied back that we never bought advertising on any comic book. I asked him to verify that the ad has our company name on it, "Clear Digital Media, Inc.".

He responded back that it did not. It was actually an ad for Bubblicious bubble gum. He said that he had searched for "bubblicious" on Google, and found their website and contacted them to complain. Somehow, he got me.

The only thing I can think of is that last January we published an article on Junk Food Blog, one of our websites, about a new product called, "Bubblicious Bursts". On that site, we mostly write about new candies and snack foods. What I think happened is that this teacher found our article, and though he found Bubblicious' corporate website.

If that's the case, it's not anything unfamiliar. We are often contacted by small stores wanting to purchase products from us. We tell them that we don't sell or produce these products. We simply publish product announcements.

It goes to show that there are still a lot of people who don't spend much time online, and don't even know what blogs are.

New Client Website Completed

2006-10-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

Our company today launched the official website of the Menifee Valley Incorporation Committee (MVIC). http://www.mvic.org

It marks the first time we built a website for a client.

We're not normally in the business of building websites for clients, rather, we build them for ourselves. We're in the publishing business after all, not the design and hosting business. But we saw a unique opportunity here.

For starters, MVIC is an organization that's been in the local newspapers around the south-west portion of Riverside County, CA. They used to have a website, and they're website used to get mentioned in the papers, as well as linked from several other websites focusing on local issues.

But in the past year, they're website went down. I don't have the specifics on why it went down, most likely because the website design company that built it and hosted it probably didn't receive a renewed contract from MVIC.

I got to know one of the chairmen of MVIC and recommended he get the website back online. I offered to help him out by designing a new website, getting it online, and even incorporating a blog on the homepage to help them generate some local interest. To make it sound even better, I offered to do all this for free. The only consideration was that I could promote our "Menifee 24/7" blog from their website.

I met with MVIC's committee and gave them a proposal, along with a mock-up of the website design. While I offered to do all this work for them for free, I'd still have to charge them for the domain name renewal, which was to expire in a couple of months. I made it clear to them that I'd build a "simple" website designed solely to provide necessary and useful information to the public. They agreed, and our company became their newest webmaster on the spot.

Building the new website was easy, considering I've built many over the past 10 years I've been in this business. The only challenge was getting the previous website design company to transfer the domain name to our registrar. They required a letter from MVIC authorizing them to do so. After that, I received great cooperation from the other design company.

The advantage for doing all this for free is mainly to boost traffic to our Menifee 24/7 site...

The Google Page Rank value that our Menifee 24/7 site stands to receive from this could be significant over the next several months, mainly because many other websites in our local area had linked to MVIC, and many still do.

The Menifee cityhood effort should generate interest in our community finally reaching a pinnacle in the next couple of years when a ballot initiative reaches voters. The amount of "trickle down" traffic into Menifee 24/7 could double or triple our current audience.

Creating a positive image with the members of MVIC should help our efforts to publish quality content on Menifee 24/7, providing us with more avenues for insider information.

Our company is located in Menifee, and I own a home in Menifee, and hence doing all this work for MVIC, pro-bono, is our way of giving something to the cityhood effort.

One thing I was very cautious about was creating more work for our company. That is, when you build a website for a client, you expect the client to call you regularly for changes and updates. However, when I met with the committee, I explained my rationale, that I wanted to design a website that would require very little of my time...

I made heavy use of CSS, opting to put much of the design elements into a linked stylesheet.

I kept the number of pages small, stressing my point that the free service I offered applied to a "simple" website only.

I incorporated a blog on the homepage of the website, and taught their Publicity Chairman how to use Blogger. This way the Chairman can post announcements, news, meetings, etc., and not require my time.

This perhaps opens up a new business strategy for other website and blog publishers, building, designing, and hosting websites for free, in exchange for self-promotion. The word "free" is very powerful, to small organizations on tight budgets.

In Your Web Redesigned

2006-07-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

We redesigned In Your Web. It's using the same blog design as Junk Food Blog. I'm thinking this is going to be our new design for all of our blogs. I still need to do some monitoring of Google AdSense to see what results come out of it.

The AdSense unit was changed from the 160x600 creative to the 120x600 one. AdSense did very poorly on both IYW and JFB, so there wasn't much to lose with the change.

Once again, we've changed the focus of IYW. It's just thoughts and news on the world of home-based website publishing. I was trying to focus it solely on running a home-based business. But, my expertise is in website publishing, and I seem to have more to say about that.

Oh well.

Rising Son - An Autobiography

2006-07-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Rising Son is the name of my personal blog.

I call it an autobiography, or even better, an "auto-blog-ography". For the most part, it's me talking about my memoirs, and my thoughts of current events, with a reflection into my past. The name "Rising Son" is a reference to my Japanese heritage.

This actually got started back in 1990, when I became interested in family history. I learned a lot about my mother's side of the family, which made me look at myself in a whole new way. Some years later, I felt compelled to put my thoughts down in an autobiography. I used Microsoft Word.

But after a few chapters, it seemed like a waste of time, because who would read it? No book publisher was going to make any money publishing my life. So, I opted to put it online, in blog form, so that I could quickly and easily write stuff as the thought came to me.

But I'm not going to write about my birth, and trace the history. That's boring. I'll instead talk about my opinions, with my rants and tirades, and maybe trace it to something in my past. Probably still boring, but at least it's more blog-like.

You'll find this linked from the side of Clear Digital Media's website.

Sex Offender Registry

2006-03-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

Sex Offender Registry was relaunched today as a weblog.

This website had been an affiliate marketing site since 2003, promoting the services offered by National Alert Registry, a subscription-based website that hosts a nationwide database of registered sex offenders.

The old SOR site is still actually there, since those pages are still getting traffic from search engines. However, the homepage was replaced with a blog.

The reason for this is because Harris Digital Publishing, which owns National Alert Registry, offered to increase our commissions substantially. So to take advantage of that, we decided to give SOR a makeover, and use the blog format to help increase traffic, increase click-throughs, and improve search engine optimization.

The last part about improving search engine optimization is something we had success with on Death Records, a website owned by our sister network, Smoking Dogs Media.

Alexa Is Highly Inaccurate

2006-03-10T00:05:00.000-08:00

It's probably no surprise that Alexa's website rankings are highly inaccurate. Perhaps grossly inaccurate.

I compared two of our websites: Interment and Strange New Products.

Interment - Alexa Ranking 65,192

Strange New Products - Alexa Ranking 52,837

This would indicate that Strange New Products is experiencing a higher traffic volume than Interment. But the fact is that Interment has four to five times more traffic than Strange New Products, based on our server logs as presented through Analog.

How can that be?

Demographics.

Interment's demographics are mostly older people. The last poll I took showed that 50% of its users are aged 50+. Meanwhile, Strange New Products is a website popular with younger folks, or tech-savvy folks.

Now consider that Alexa compiles its statistics from people who have installed its tool bar. Thus, folks aged 50+ are less likely to install tool bars, because most of these people don't even know what a tool bar is!

Heck about 50% of people who use Interment still have their screens set to 800x600 resolution. That alone tells you something about Alexa's statistics.

I'm Giving Up On Technorati

2006-03-09T23:12:00.000-08:00

I've been using Technorati to monitor the link stats on our weblogs, like most other bloggers out there. But I'm giving up on them.

Recently, they erased all profile data from some of my blogs (doggienews.com, bikernewsonline.com, realestatehow.com, and junkfoodblog.com) and have stopped tracking them. I deleted claim from these blogs, and tried to reclaim them, but Technorati said these blogs were not claimable. They said I need to contact their customer support.

These weren't spam blogs, we don't publish any of those. These were legitimate weblogs with real content, and with groups of loyal readers. If that's how they're going to treat me, then I can take my ad impressions and give them to some other weblog tracking site.

They can't seem to figure out who their customers are. Me and all the other bloggers and blog users are their customers. If I'm not monitoring my blog stats through them, then I'm not using their services nor clicking their ads.

If it was a technical glitch that caused this to happen, well it seems they didn't give much thought as to how many loyal users they'd lose if they inconvenienced them.

They need to get their act together, and figure out who's serving who.

Bio-Performance Gasoline Pill

2006-03-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

We blogged this little gasoline pill called Bio-Performance on Strange New Products last December, and since then it seems to have become a stage for debate.

As of this writing, there are 49 comments posted in what seems to be a debate over the efficacy of this gas mileage boosting product.

The pill is sold through an MLM (multi-level marketing) hierarchy. So, some of the commenters are marketers themselves claiming the pill has done wonders for their car's gas mileage.

Some of the other comments are folks who are "poo-pooing" this pill as being a fraud.

Others still are trying to take a neutral stance and evaluate this objectively.

What's driving this comment frenzy is the fact that Google lists our blog post at the top of the search results for "gas pill" and "gas mileage pill". We also rank #6 for the term, "gasoline pill".

It doesn't help to search for "bio-performance" because that's also the name of a beauty product.

So, this is the reason why MLM'ers keep posting positive comments, and why others keep countering them.

I just enjoy reading the comments!

The Future of Blogging

2006-03-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

Chris Garrett at Performancing asks the question, "Does Blogging Have a Future"?

My short answer is "yes".

This question gets blogged a hundred times a day on a hundred blogs, so it's a very OLD question.

But my long answer is as follows:

The truth is that the web constantly evolves, and blogging is an evolution up from personal websites (GeoCities) and hosting your own forum (EZBoard). Perhaps blogging will progress into another form.

What often causes these changes are innovations in hardware and software. Remember that Windows 95 integrated the web browser into the operating system, and brought web browsing to the masses. The fact that everybody's buying up iPods is what made it feasible to do podcasting. And it's said that Windows Vista will incorporate RSS, perhaps laying the groundwork for more innovations in RSS technology.

Why not blogging via text-messaging? Devices like the Treo 700 combined with broadband via EVDO can make that happen. However, one problem is that most folks still don't know what RSS is. Enter Windows Vista to bring RSS to the masses.

As a commercial medium, RSS definitely has its place. I'm not interested in any products from Kraft Foods or Proctor and Gamble, but I am interested in knowing what Harley Davidson is up to (being a biker). I'll definitely subscribe to their RSS feed, even if every other post is a commercial plug.

Or how about this. Imagine watching American Idol, and getting live feeds from the judges, being able to read their notes as some schmuck from Corntown, Nebraska wails out his best Marty Robbins. Then the show could bring in some comedian like Dennis Miller or Jerry Seinfeld to do live off-camera podcasts as the contestant wails away. Wouldn't you subscribe to that?

Blogging definitely has a future, but not like anything you see today.

In Your Web Relaunched Yet Again

2006-03-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

We relaunched our weblog In Your Web, yet again.

Fresh with a new design, it was relaunched with a new focus, on running a home-based business.

It's somewhat ironic that we relaunch with this focus, as another home-based business blog, Home Office Voice, recently closed its doors. We'd like to extend an invitation to all those HOV'ers to come check us out.

In Your Web was originally launched in February 2004, two years ago, as an archive of articles pertaining to running a successful website publishing business. It was more about web design, affiliate programs, SEO, etc.

Since then it relaunched several times over covering topics such as "successful blogging", "profitable website publishing", and the like. But because these topics are being covered ad nauseum, it was almost stupid to write about the same stuff. Over the past several months I've had some great tips and ideas on how I was able to find success as a website publisher, but figured these things had already been said a hundred times elsewhere, and just decided not to bother out of concern for sounding like an echo.

But In Your Web is not going to be just about home-based business blogging, rather, it's supposed to follow my day-to-day dealings with running my own home-based business, Clear Digital Media, Inc. In some cases, it will be almost diary-like. It's more of a peek into what I'm doing and thinking while running my business.

We're going to stay away from such topics as "Better Blogging" and "How To Get More Out of AdSense". It's strictly about running a business.

Strange New Products Doubles Traffic Overnight

2006-02-23T01:33:00.000-08:00

All of a sudden Google went nuts with Strange New Products.

It turns out after its most recent index update, there's about an extra 3,000 visitors coming in after running a search for "Security Feel Better". The article we wrote about this product is showing up tops on the SERPs.

Security Feel Better is the name of a beverage designed to eliminate all traces of alcohol in your body. It first started selling in France, and it appears be marketing all over Europe, and I guess has become all the rage there.

Funny, the official website for Security Feel Better doesn't even show up on Google. Instead, our website is responsible for driving 100% of their online marketing. And damn it! I can't find an affiliate program selling this stuff.

But I can say that AdSense earnings are up on Strange New Products, though not by any huge percentage. Most of these new visitors are in Europe.

Also, this spike in traffic is spilling over to some of our other blogs, thanks to the Javascript rotator that randomly promotes them at the top of the page.

Spent a Week in the Hospital

2006-01-30T14:52:00.000-08:00

Last night I got back home after spending eight days in the hospital recovering from a motorcycle accident.

On Saturday, Jan 21, I was out riding my motorcycle with some friends. We were out near Pioneer Town, just outside Yucca Valley, in the California Mojave Desert. The road was meandering up and down some of the hills out there, and was full of dips. One of the dips had running water across it, and none of us could see the water until we came too close.

I had to hit the brakes because it was a lot of water, and it was running pretty fast. Unfortunately, I locked up the tires, and the bike fishtailed out of control and threw me off. I hit the asphalt and tumbled around quite a bit, finally banging my head against a rock before coming to rest. I didn't feel any pain, because I don't remember any of it. My friends described the whole thing to me.

I had road-rash all over one side of my face, and a sore wrist. Otherwise, I was up walking around upset over the wreck of my bike. Someone called the paramedics, and they arrived. They asked if I wanted them to take me to a hospital. I debated it, but my friends convinced me it was a good idea to go. So, I went.

The hospital found I had a "bruised kidney". It had swelled up with water, and there was some blood in the urine, but no bleeding into the body cavity. That was the worst injury. The sore wrist turned out to be a fracture, and I had a black & blue left-big-toe. For a motorcycle accident victim, I came out requiring no surgeries, awfully lucky for me, but an awful disappointment for the hospital.

So, they transferred me to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs. They have a trauma center, and justified the transfer by means of the kidney contusion. I think Desert Regional was salivating at the mouth over receiving a motorcycle accident victim, but was probably just as disappointed when they learned I required no surgery, just care.

But to make up for it, they kept me there under observation. They actually put me in ICU the following day, Sunday. I really didn't belong in ICU. All the other patients were unconscious. I was the only one cracking jokes with the nurses. In fact, that was the day of the NFL Conference Finals. I watched both games, and the nurses and techs would stand in my room and watch the game with me. I think they had a pool going.

Funny thing about hospitals is that they won't give you any kind of medication without doctor's orders. I was getting a headache in ICU that night, and asked the nurse for some Tylenol. She came back and said that the doctor didn't write Tylenol on my chart, but could offer me some Morphine instead. I couldn't believe it! Tylenol is not ok, but Morphine, you can have all you want.

Monday, they transferred me to their trauma recovery floor dubbed "5 Sinatra", where every room is a private room. By the time Wednesday came around, I put up an argument with the doctor to discharge me, since they weren't really treating me, only laying down and watching television all day. The doctor said I was lucky, because in some other places, and in past decades, they would've just resected my kidney out and sent me home. They were actually trying to save my kidney with careful watch and rest. I guess I couldn't argue. They sent a psychiatrist in to talk to me because they thought I was threatening to leave against medical advice.

However, a really nice nurse named Lindsay who worked in that area spent a some more time with me, cheered me up and made me feel a lot better. Another nurse who changed shifts with her named Luanne was also really nice, made the stay a lot better. I really want to thank them for their attention and patience. Really great nurses like them make the biggest difference in hospital stays.

Friday came along, and the doctor was actually going to discharge me. However, I had developed a nasty rash on my right arm. This was the arm where I suffered the fractured wrist. They had put a fiberglass cast on it. The rash was REALLY nasty, with large bubbly welts covering the entire forearm and parts of the upperarm. These welts were full of puss, and they would fill up until they bursted. My arm was in a constant state of puss drip. My bed and sheets were stained with crusty yellow puss residue.

They took the cast off, and were dumbfounded as to what it was and how to treat it. They kept me another night until Saturday to get a dermatologist in for a consultation. In the meantime, they had Luanne, one of the nice nurses, put some Silvadene Cream on it and dress it up. She must have had fun popping all the fat juicy welts. She got puss all over the floor until she finally put a towel under my arm, and even squirted some on the wall. It didn't hurt at all to pop them.

The dermatologist finally arrived at 9:00pm that evening and diagnosed it as an allergic reaction, probably from the cast. I've never known myself to be allergic to fiberglass, but then again, they had to put some kind of resin on it to harden it. Maybe that's what I was allergic to.

The dermatologist prescribed a course of treatment and kept me over yet another night to Sunday just to make sure the treatment was working. Sunday morning came, and yes, the treatment was working. The puss had subsided and my dressings were staying clean. As I write this today, the next day after, most of the bubbly welts have died down, but my arm is still pretty ugly.

I'm back home now, but will have a long road to recovery. The doctor said it'll take a year for the kidney to heal, but I can't wait a year to get back on my motorcycle, and I can't spend a year not being allowed to exert any energy or having to walk like my bones are made of Tiffany glass. So, I'm going to have a talk with my regular physician tomorrow and see what I can do get myself back into health expediciously.

If you're wondering how I'm typing all this, I can use both hands, but my right hand (which is my strong hand) is rather immobilized. I can't stretch my fingers out to reach the furthest keys, I have to either move my hand over, or use my left hand. I'm learning how to use my left-hand an awful lot now.

Behold the Power of Strange New Products!

2006-01-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

Back on December 12, we blogged a strange new product called "SenSlip", an artificial piece of foreskin, designed for circumcised guys. We blogged on the same day it was unveiled by the manufacturer.

We expected to fetch some comments due to the nature of this thing, but we never expected 103 comments thus far. The comments centered around a very emotional debate between the pros and cons of circumcision, even some being critical of Jews. Note that I deleted several inappropriate comments that attacked Jews with nasty four-letter words.

Today, the maker of SenSlip issued a press release saying that in the weeks since the product launched, their offices have been flooded with thousands of letters expressing concern about the detriments of circumcision. I imagine they also they also received thousands more in jest or in defiance of the product as well.

Anyways, the company said they sent letters to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, in an effort to cease the practice of circumcision.

Was our Strange New Products blog the driving media force that drove people to these letters? I think so, considering the amount of comments our article fetched, the fiery debate that took place within the comments, the number of blogs linking to us, and perhaps many other blogs who saw our piece and wrote about it as well.

This viral form of grass-roots marketing that we call "blogging" is very powerful towards publicizing a product, and generating its sales. We certainly didn't receive any compensation for this company's early success, and we didn't ask for it either. But the symbiosis is evident, they got their publicity, and we picked up backlinks and bookmarks.

However, I can't help but concede that today's existing PR firms will launch their own line of blog networks (with no stated connection to the PR firms) that will consist of all the consumer niche groups, just for the purpose of generating this kind of buzz. Heck, AOL now owns Weblogs Inc., and who here thinks that AOL is not a PR firm?

Year End Recap & 2006 Goals

2006-01-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

To recap the entire 2005 year, I think 2005 will go down as a very special year for our company.

First, 2005 is the year we incorporated this business. The process of incorporation itself was busy, meetings with our attorney, meetings with the CPA, getting stationery created, keeping meticulous records on finances, etc.

2005 is also the year we struck success with one of our blogs, Strange New Products. That success gave us a winning business model for publishing blogs, and led us into redesigning and refocusing several other of our blogs.

It's hard to say at this point if our 2005 income has grown compared to 2004. I'll need to visit with our CPA to get everything in order to file for taxes. It's looking like we made less this year compared to last. This is mainly due to decreased earnings from MyFamily.com, an affiliate merchant, our largest revenue source.

The good news is that our blog income is starting ramp up. The last few days of December saw heavy increases in visitors to our blogs, translating to more income. Thus far this month, the traffic increases continue. DoggieNews.com, for example, is seeing nearly triple the amount of traffic compared to December. Junk Food Blog is seeing a doubling of traffic compared to December. Real Estate and How and Biker News Online are also seeing similar increases.

As for new blogs, we launched Bottle Watch in the beginning of December, and Slot Machine Blog at the end of December. Bottle Watch simply reports on the newest alcholic beverage products hitting the market, while Slot Machine Blog is a question & answer blog, with a real slot machine technician answering the question. Bottle Watch is building up traffic quickly and could within a year become the most popular liquor blog in the world, while Slot Machine Blog is taking its sweet time.

As for new blogs on the drawing board, you probably won't see much from us in 2006. I think we're going to sit on what we've got and spend the year building them up. If anything we're going to get some of our dead blogs going this year, such as OCThen and Erection News.

As for me personally, I'd like to make an effort getting out of this home office, and find other places where I can do my work. I have a T-Mobile account, so there's no reason why I can't go to a Starbucks and work there. Or spend an evening in Vegas during mid-week and do some blogging there. I think having a change of scenery energizes my spirits and gets me doing more work.

Google Roller Coaster

2006-01-04T00:04:00.000-08:00

On December 27, 2005, Google must have released a new index, because all of a sudden referrals spiked up 10 fold to Interment.net, our largest property.

Back in October, Google referrals dropped a ton of bricks, about 10 fold. And now, it's back up 10 fold.

This has actually been the case going back by nearly three years. It used to be that Google referrals gradually increased with every new index they released. Then in May of 2003, referrals gradually went down over the next several months. Then it started going back up, and then down, and then up, and it's been roller coaster ever since.

In November, we did make a significant change to Interment, in that our "What's New" page was converted to a blog. Did that do anything to boost our Google referrals? We've also been slowly converting our index pages to the new format. Did that do anything to boost Google referrals?

Who knows!

I'm basically throwing my hands up in defeat in that you can't count on Google being consistent. Interment is very much the kind of website that Google ought to love: full of original content, content you can't find anywhere else, content that's high in demand from our audience, real content that's actually consumed and appreciated by real human beings. Yet, in their zest to punish the spam sites and link farms, we get caught up in their nets, and are punished for part of the year.

Obviously, Google ought to do their best to remove the spam sites and link farms from their index. But it's odd that seemingly every index either punishes us, or rewards us, without us really doing anything different.

Caught the Flu

2005-12-28T16:46:00.000-08:00

I've been sick with the flu since Dec 23, and haven't blogged anything since. For a few days, I didn't even check e-mail as I just had no strength. Only yesterday and today have I felt coherent enough to read and write e-mail.

I hoped today I would get back into doing some blogging, but it's still difficult to concentrate with all the coughing.

Thanks Google

2005-12-16T16:44:00.000-08:00

Google sent Christmas gifts to several of its AdSense publishers, as it does every year. This year it's a collection of USB powered accessories. There's a 4-port USB hub, a 64mb thumb drive, a tiny optical mouse, a USB flashlight, some cords, all in a maroon-colored carrying case.

Thanks Google.

Biker News Online Redesign

2005-12-13T16:08:00.000-08:00

I redesigned the template for Biker News Online, giving it a more interesting look, adding more color, and putting it into a traditional two-column blog format.

I also implemented several Editor Kit creatives from eBay's affiliate program trying to get traffic monetization. All of the editor kits I set up display motorcycles for sale. So, one sale could yield a four-figure earning. We'll see how well it works.

Here is what the old template looked like.

New Blogs Launched

2005-12-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

We're announcing the launch of two new blogs...

Bottle Watch
Slot Machine Blog

Bottle Watch is a report of the newest wines, beers, cocktails and spirits entering the marketplace. It's not meant to provide expert analysis on taste or quality, but just simply showing you what's new in the world of liquor. There will be no stuff on liquor gear, legislation, or weird news, just the juice.

One thing of note is that I managed to implement a system of categories. It's our only blog with category links. This blog is powered by Blogger, which doesn't support categories, but I managed to work something out using Microsoft's Indexing Services. Thus far it seems to hold up well, and is as automated as Word Press or TypePad.

Slot Machine Blog was supposed to have launched last September, but was delayed due to the other partner having some personal set backs. It looks like things have cleared up, and so I'm going to go ahead and announce it now.

The other partner is a slot machine technician, who has been working on slot machines professionally for much of his career. He's repaired all types of machines from the century-old machines to the newest computerized bandits. He's worked for slot machine manufacturers as well as casinos in Las Vegas. He currently works for a well known indian casino here in Southern California. He also knows how they pay out, how casinos adjust the odds, and he can debunk just about any myth floating out in the public.

The format of SMB is in a question/answer format. Visitors submit questions ranging anywhere from which machines pay the best, how best to spend $20.00, to players' cards, or whatever. I forward them to my slot machine tech, he sends me back the answer, and I post it.