PalmerEk

Almost Forgot

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:38:04 -1000

I finally got an invite to Google Voice. So far I'm liking it although I haven't really had a chance to put it through its paces. Feel free to leave me a voice mail via the link below:

Also new for me this week was a beta invite to Notable. Again, haven't played around with it much yet but the concept is pretty sweet. I'm hoping to test it out with the new KindeZine site to get some feedback before I go live.

Amazon dropped the price of their Kindle to $299. Still a little pricey for the average Joe but if you're an avid reader or do any kind of traveling I think it's well worth it. I love my original series and find it helps me to read much more often than I did before I got it, although I can't justify upgrading to the newer models until mine stops working. This week I read Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow on my kindle and absolutely loved it (high on my recommend list!) I would never have picked this up in a book store and probably never would have read it had it not been for the kindle.

And while I'm on the subject, big shout out to Cory for fighting the good fight by releasing his works under Creative Commons. Some people talk about the future and some people help create it... Cory is in the later group. Thanks.

TTFN

Movin On Up

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:14:43 -1000

I switched hosting providers this week. After four years with WebHost4Life I've moved to Arvixe. It's not that WH4L was bad or anything but I've gone from a "promotional" $120/yr to $175/yr and that's just unacceptable. In addition they wanted to charge me a $10 renewal fee! I have a fundamental problem with any company that tries to reward repeat business by levying a surcharge. Add to that the fact that Arvixe charged me < $60/yr and that's all the excuse I needed to move.

The move went fairly smoothly. I had to first transfer the PalmerEk.com domain since I first set it up through WH4L, so I moved it to GoDaddy which took a day or two. I then signed up for my new hosting account and transferred the files I needed, setup my blog site and MX/CNAME records. The only problem I ran into was adding a "." to the end of my CNAME records. The Domain Zone Editor at Arvixe does that automatically so the actual record ended up with two ".." which effectively bounced all emails to the PalmerEk.com domain for the last day and a half ;-{ On the plus side their tech support was very helpful and responded quickly once I asked them for help.

I feel all clean now that I've moved since I dropped a lot of the sites I had setup over the years but rarely use anymore.... I've ditched my SharePoint, Wiki, Bug Tracking etc... sites and I'm left with only my blog for now. I'm sure I'll accumulate more crap again but for now I'm pretty bare bones and quite happy about it.

The Can of Change effort has stalled a bit this week in the wake of the move but I hope to get it up and going again with a fairly functional KindleZine.com site very soon.

TTFN

Can of Change

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:38:48 -1000

Progress continues albeit slowly. I've created some tools to help me with the article marketing aspect of things. In doing so I cam across a nice little library on CodePlex called the HTML Agility Pack which has proven very helpful when it comes to working with HTML on the server side. I've also picked up a few more clicks but still haven't generated a single penny in revenues.

I haven't done much else this week on the project because I've been balancing out family life. Spent the whole day at Idlewild with the wife and kids and now I'm too tired to do much... think I'm going to call it a day pretty soon.

Just a note on an idea I came up with that I think may be worth exploring; keyword index and trend analysis. In a nutshell I'm thinking that it would be interesting to create a set of keyword indexes which would contain the CPM, CPC and impressions of a set of keywords over time (I think I could get the info needed via Google's API). The idea is to use this data in the same way day traders use game theory to determine buy/sell recommendations. For example, when the Cost per Click of the "Flowers" keyword index drops below a certain value the system would automatically issue a buy order on "Flowers" ads. The inverse would be to suspend the ads when the CPC exceeded a particular value. The goal would be to play in a particular market only when it is statistically probable that you will make money. Of course this same data could be used by publishers as well to help decide what content currently holds the highest value.

One other side note, I've just started reading Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe and so far I'm finding it very enjoyable. I'm only a few dozen pages into it so I'll let you know if it's worth the time once I'm done but so far so good.

TTFN

Can of Change - Week 2 (Very Short Update)

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:16:29 -1000

Thought I'd pick up a few bucks with the death of the worlds most famous pedophile but still no dice. I've cut back the campaigns to a very low burn rate until I get some time to iron out the issues with conversion rates. This isn't just for fun anymore, it's personal. That's right Google, it's on now, bitch!

I've begun work on a new site in hopes of picking up some AdScense money. I started by using a soon to expire domain name I had laying around. You can check out a very incomplete working copy at KindleZine.com. (There are only 2 pages right now and neither is complete but I think it demonstrates the concept)

In an effort to keep things low cost I started to get a bit creative. To avoid the need for a server, I'm designing the site to be pure HTML. I'm planning on generating all the pages based on creative commons content. To make things even cheaper still I decided to host the entire thing on a free DropBox account. I plan on using Disqus to enable comments as well as a few other tools to handle social networks etc...

Once I iron out the look and feel of the site I'll write a couple of small apps to handle importing new content, generating pages and building site maps. The plan is to build it large enough and with enough quality SEO to pick up a million or so hits / day, at least that's the plan ;-}

If nothing else I should end up with some pretty decent content for a book "The Internet on $0.04 / Day" ;-}

TTFN

Can of Change - Week 1

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:05:29 -1000

I'm still poor. In fact poorer than I was a week ago but sooo much wiser. Here are the numbers for my first week (please don't laugh too loudly as I am a sensitive guy)

Impressions: 17,076
Clicks: 105
Cost: $5.14
Conversions: 1
Revenue: $0

Nothing to write home about that's for sure. As I started to wrap my head around how the whole adSense thing works I realized that my initial approach was very wrong. I was going way to broad on all 3 levels: campaign, keywords and ad groups. I paused that campaign and began a new one with a specific target and a number of different ad groups, fewer keywords, higher CPC bids and more ads. The idea is to compare the performance of various ads within a group to try and determine the kinds of things that trigger clicks/conversions. So far that hasn't yielded diddly since some of the ads are still under review (haven't figured out why yet). To date I am $15 off of my starting point but still have more than that available from promos so I'm not worried but I realize I have a lot to learn still before I can make this portion of my venture profitable.

Another realization that I came to was that this coin has two sides. All of these ads that people are buying need to show on sites and the owners of those sites make a few bones every time someone clicks. This is of course not news to anyone, especially me, but I sometimes get stuck with blinders on. I get stuck thinking that in order to drive enough traffic to a site I need to create compelling content and a great user experience which requires a lot of effort, hardware, software, time and the like. My recent epiphany was that all I really need is a cheap way to serve up HTML files (S3), access to some reasonably relevant content (WWW), a way to merge the two (Codegen) and a good site map. Once I get a handle on the affiliate angle (it's personal now!), I think I'll try my hand at the other side.

I still have a number of things to try. I'm no where close to done yet. My first goal is to get a CTR north of 2% and to convert another 2% of those which should put me somewhere around $8 in revenue per 100 clicks and my break even around $.08 per click, which is pretty low but would at least put me at a level where I think I could make adjustments and identify patterns quicker.

TTFN

Can of Change - Day 3

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:56:03 -1000

Not much to report today. Starting to understand the whole keyword search tweaking thing and trying to figure out how the tools are work. I think it's going to take me a few more days until I can work out a formula that works. I managed to generate a couple of hundred clicks so far but so far it hasn't amounted to anything but a big fat goose egg.

In other news, we released a new site at work: uEncode.com. It's a video encoding service. It's not really designed for the average person, the focus is more geared toward someone who needs a bit more flexibility. It still has a way to go before it's a top notch site, but in the mean time IT'S FREE! That's right, while we are in beta it's free for anyone to use so stop by and setup an account and tell all of your friends... both of them. The other interesting thing of note is that we developed the site in about two weeks! Lot's of fun.

Overall it was a pretty rough day. Had a controller blow out on 1 site, released a new site and fairly major updates to 2 others. I'm hoping for clearer skies tomorrow.

TTFN

Can of Change - Day 2

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:00:53 -1000

Day 2 went well overall. I setup an account with Commission Junction and applied for an affiliate ID with Endless.com and I'm waiting acceptance. I'm thinking that this will be the first one I attempt to put an actual site together for. I have a few ideas with some unique presentations for shoes.

I setup a Microsoft adCenter account which cost me a one time setup fee of $5 pulling my account balance down to $172. Like with Google AdWords I had a promo code sitting around from a previous purchase, this time for $50! woot! I tried to setup the same campaign that I have running on Google but it turns out that MS doesn't allow adult content. So be it. So I created an add for a general title and set the buy at $10 for the rest of the month just to get something started.

I created a new, more targeted ad on Google which I expect will take much longer to achieve its target but that I hope will lead to more conversions. If it works I'll probably go ahead and create a lot of smaller, cheaper, more targeted ads instead of throwing a lot into a high-traffic spot.

I also realized that I had a better option for my first affiliate; a custom vStore. While the partner program works just swell, my company also offers a more profitable vStore option. Lucky for me I had an unused domain sitting around doing nothing that I decided I could put to use so I setup Shop.OwnYourBone.com and started pointing traffic there instead.

One thing I didn't take into account was when I get paid. Assuming I'm able to drive traffic and get conversions that earn me some money, It looks like I'm still going to run into a cash flow problem. Turns out most places pay out monthly or quarterly which means even if I pull in enough to cover the expenses, I won't have access to the money for weeks or months! It shouldn't present a problem for at least a couple of weeks, but I may come to a point where the Can of Change will have to take out a loan from me. Guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

To recap: I've spent $15 so far, redeemed $75 in promos, activated an idle domain, created a store front backed by the #1 provider of adult DVDs. I opened a new checking account with a couple of side benefits, signed up with the largest affiliate marketing company and started testing the waters. So far so good.

TTFN

Can of Change - Day 1

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:04:21 -1000

$187.00 is what I have to work with. Stopped by the bank and opened a new checking account with many coin rolls. The associate who helped me open the account just happens to be a budding artist with a T-shirt business on the side... rest assured I'll be thinking about how to work that in to my little experiment. If there is one thing I've learned in the past 40 years is that when the universe talks, you listen! I opened the account at Citizens Bank where I have a couple of other accounts. They couldn't have been nicer! Big props to them all. As a side benefit they offer a program that gives a penny off per gallon of gas for every $50 you spend using the account. I didn't sign up for it yet but I will. A free tank of gas every now and again sure would be nice.

After considering a number of options I decided to start with something small and fairly safe. Affiliate programs fit the bill so I started looking around for a couple of programs I think I can make work. I didn't have to look far. The company I work for offers a very good program which I was already signed up for through the course of working on the site. This is another one of those win-win situations which I think could be the difference between success and failure. If I can drive an extra customer or two to the company site, the company makes a little more and I make a little more. Everyone's happy.

First order of business was to setup an AdWords account on Google. As it so happens, I had an outstanding $25 AdWords credit from a previous GoDaddy purchase which I was able to apply to my new AdWords account. Cha-Ching! In addition I seeded the account with another $10 from the Can of Change, minus $5 signup fee gives me $30 to start playing with and $277 left in reserves.

I then setup a campaign which I capped at $3/day for starters. I made a list of keywords and created an add. In an effort to keep costs low I decided to route traffic directly to the affiliate site for now. Once I get my feet a little wetter I'll register a new domain and setup a small site to help drive more traffic. It didn't take long to eat through the $3/day limit! In a matter of a few hours my ad got 6,812 impressions and 64 click through's with an average CPC of $0.05. I don't know if any of those clicks resulted in conversions yet since I won't be credited until product ships, but here's hoping! At this point I'm up $17.04 due to the GoDaddy coupon code, I've met an interesting character and gained some hands-on experience with something I only superficially understood... all-in-all a pretty good start!

Tomorrow I plan on setting up an account with Microsoft's AdWords equivalent, joining Commission Junction, creating a few more targeted ad groups and checking to see if I got any conversions. Stay tuned!

TTFN

Enter the Can of Change

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (palmerek) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:44:22 -1000

While I am waiting to get the content for the HTSFestival.com site I found myself in very unfamiliar territory, I actually had some unscheduled time on my hands! It has been a very long time since I've been in such an odd position so I decided to use the time to catch up on some reading.

I finally got around to finishing off some SciFi books I had on my Kindle. I flew through a couple Cory Doctorow titles but none that really blew me away. In fact, the only title of his I've read which left any sort of impression was Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom which I finished a few months ago. The one book I got through this week that I think is worth mentioning is Glasshouse by Charles Stross. It was an interesting read with a few new points to chew on. Worth the time if you're at all interested in the "futuristic, backup & restore yourself" genre.

The only progress I made on the HTSFestival project was to point the CName record of www.HTSFestival.com to a new S3 bucket setup for that purpose.

I also began laying the groundwork for a new endeavor I'm calling "Can of Change." The premise is this:

I have a coffee can in my truck that I throw spare change into. Previously I would empty it into a larger can which the kids would use for vacations and the like. I've been throwing change into it for the last nine months or so and decided that instead of giving it to the kids I would use it to fund a "startup" of sorts. The rules of the game are pretty minimal, I can use what is in the can and any monies generated from ventures funded by the money in the can. I can also use any existing assets I may already have (ie. accounts, coupons, software, hardware etc...). If I run out of change then the experiment is over. In the unlikely event that I generate a significant amount of cash I'm free to withdraw money from the "Can of Change" pool at my discretion. I'm also free to add whatever rules I want whenever I want.

This weekend I took the first step of rolling the change. What I have to work with is $177 in rolls plus ~$10 in loose change. Tomorrow I am going to try and open a new bank account dedicated to the Can of Change project and deposit my seed money. I'm not really sure how I'm going to make use of it yet but I suspect I will try and stretch it out by working a number of different angles. I will attempt to post regular progress updates here.

Well that's all for tonight. If you have any ideas on how to parley the Can of Change into millions of $$$, post it in the comments.

TTFN

HTSFestival.com site build -- Day 2

PalmerEk.nospam@nospam.PalmerEk.com (PalmerEk) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:10:00 -1000

So day 1 was pretty much a wash out and day 2 isn't turning out much better but at least I've made some progress.

I started by grabbing a copy of 960 and using it to define the basic layout. Since I wanted the content on each of the pages to be more free-form and less template driven I decide to create different grids for each.

For navigation I went with a very cool dock style jQuery plugin called jqDock. I found it very easy to use and with just a couple of lines of code I had a nice looking menu. A quick search turned up a nice icon pack at dryicons.com and although I'm not sure the ones I have will be the final ones I use, they offer a nice placeholder.

I used my mad Paint.Net skillz to create something resembling a section of notebook which I set as the background image with repeat. Added in some simple styling and got what you see here:

Nothing too fancy but that's just what I was trying for ;-} I did have a bit of an ah-ha moment when I realized that the only thing that was really going to be any different between pages was the content and that that was going to be fairly simplistic so I just created it all on a single page and decided to hide/show the appropriate section as needed.

The next ah-ha moment came when I realized I didn't have any server side code. With no server code there isn't a need for a real server. All I need is a way to process a simple HTTP GET request... which S3 does very nicely. To test it out I uploaded it to a bucket I have for sharing files, set the appropriate ACL's and viola, it's live on the interwebs! The only catch is not being able to specify a default page. You can check out my progress at http://fileshare.palmerek.com/Default.html

That leaves me with having to add content, Google tracking, some cleanup and setting up a bucket and pointing www.HTSFestival.com at it. All tasks for another day since I'm not really into it right now.

TTFN