I have been without internet access since January 2010.  In that time my emails (not that I get many, well not so much) has accumulated to 54,000 in the one mail server.  The other mail server was relatively quiet at 42,000…

Needless to say, there was quite a bit of spam and scam amongst them, and it would come as no surprise if there weren’t a few trojans in there just to make life interesting!  As always, have virus protecting programs ready…  There was also recycling of old favourites which has probably circled the cyber world a hundred-and-one times already.

One of those is this very, very beautiful email of the Parrot Flower.

This particular email has sentiment value to me, as it was the first one which I posted on “Is it Real”.  The “Is it Real” blog was lost when bundublog’s server crashed last year.  However, I see that I still get a lot of traffic from people looking for the Parrot Flower.

The email reads This is a flower from Thailand . It is also a protected species and is not allowed to be exported. This will be the only way we will be able to view this flower. Prepare to be amazed:

Who else but God could have done this?

According to the text of a widely circulated email, attached photographs depict a very rare flower that grows in the shape of a parrot. The message claims that the “Parrot Flower” grows in Thailand and is a protected species. According to information on ExoticRainforest.com, the plants grow in Thailand, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and portions of east India and are rare members of the genus Impatiens, “Impatiens psittacina”. The word “psittacina” translates as “parrot like”. Steve Lucas of ExoticRainforest.com has published comprehensive information about the species and the history of the above email forward and photographs. Scans of Hooker’s original description of the plant along with additional photographs of Parrot Flowers are also available on the website 

What do you think “Is It Real?”

Marc’s comment on my last post ,“I have to say it sounded like a piece of PR when it hit the news but I wasn’t sure what somebody would gain by sending people to that website.” Got me thinking on the value of website promotion, which I did intensively, as well as extensively for a year. What is traffic worth to your piece of cyber real estate?

 The top ten look like this.

 1   google.com                                                 $29,474,299,422

2   yahoo.com                                                  $18,551,630,085

3   amazon.com                                                $11,501,285,068

4   myspace.com                                              $7,122,577,773

5   ebay.com                                                     $5,622,551,932

6   facebook.com                                              $4,013,132,251

7   msn.com                                                      $3,590,841,842

8   aol.com                                                        $2,801,871,716

9   youtube.com                                                $2,743,146,950

10 cnn.com                                                       $1,057,698,410

 To put these numbers into perspective I once saw an illustration of a billion dollar notes in a pile. The top ten figures work out to be 87 odd billion dollars, put it into a pile, and you could comfortably park two Boeing 737-200 jets nose to tail, and still have space for your Lear.

 As matter of interest a Boeing 737-200 jet is 30.48 meters long.

They could also easily absorb the South African annual budget without feeling it.

 Those are the sites at the top, lets get back down to earth, and take our sample case which was the guy playing a prank on his best friend, and look at what could be the value of sending traffic to his site.

 The site itself is a good site, minimal ads, as in adsense or any of the other pay per click ads. The ads which are there are selected; the ads or promotions in the different categories are again selected and well presented the “shop” is affiliate based. So there is plenty of opportunity to earn money from clicks and deals: in order to get clicks and deals you need traffic. One of the reports I read put his daily page view just over 2000, with just over 2 page views per visitor; means almost a thousand visitors a day (Not hits: Visitors) A rough gauge for sales 3 in every 100 will buy, 30 sales a day; £10 per sale = £300 over thirty days £9000.00.

All the above is pure conjecture on my part to illustrate the value of traffic.

If you use one of the many, better to use a few of these sites on line: which claim they can tell you how much your site is worth. Is it real? I personally don’t believe them. Why? You can try three different sites, and get three different answers. I tried it with my own site;

http://www.hibiscuscoastvibes.co.za

it went from $6.00, – my hosting fees per month is more than that- to $3000.00, ( I should be so lucky!) having said that, I used them as a basis for this blog post. Is it real? I don’t know, is the value of having traffic real? You tell me.

In “Forget Big Brother Do you know Who else is watching You” I wrote about newlywedsontjob on twitter. When he opened the account there wasnt website link to his name, after he reached twenty thousand plus followers, a link was inserted. All this leads me to wonder if this wasnt a well orchestrated marketing strategy.
The website wasnt just thrown together: It was registered at the begining of the year, Since the twitter account opened his traffic has gone up by more than 135% 22% of his traffic coming from twitter, all this action has also helped his traffic from google almost 30%. What do you think is it real or a marketing gimmick?
http://www.iamstaggered.com/about