In a little more than month from now The Thin Red Line will be Two Years Old and in preparation for that milestone I am going to take a hiatus from publishing libdrone.info from April 29 to May 26th. When my hiatus begins I will have written and published 351 posts, an average of 3.36 or so posts per week. (Under promise, over deliver. That's why I changed my announced post frequency from "almost daily" to thrice weekly. The daily posting target was frankly too much work. And I spend a great deal of time selecting and reading the books that I review (it actually got me in trouble, at least to the degree of a Warning for reading on duty last week; oops) and I definitely want some time to reflect, review, revise and re-launch the site into my third year. This is my tentative plan for the hiatus and relaunch:
TRL on hiatus 4/29--5/26 4/29--migration post goes up. post is closed to comments.
1) JD creates mirror
On mirror site:
2) change theme to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/whiteplus
substitue existing header graphic for theme included graphic in new theme. re-size rather than crop the header image. make sure the barcode scanner's line shows
3) Consolidate all of the About pages under one About Page that has links to About Me And About This Blog, About The Links, About The Bookstore, About Books and Libraries, About My Audience, About Libdrone.com,
Add widgets and privacy policy page-- this page may go under About or under something else but definitely buried. another buried page??
4) Change dotCom page title to Blogroll. continue to promote the libdrone.com URL but get rid of the too cutesy dotCOM page name
5) Review and Revise Suggestions and Guest Reviews page
6) Add bookstore page using powell's partner bookshelves
7) Experiment and work with widgets and widget placements to get a very well designed and professional looking layout
8) check and test EVERYTHING three times
9) Write and schedule May 26th post about Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow
May 24th-- JD points the URL to the new site a full day plus before the Resuming post goes live.
The plan probably isn't complete in that I also need to plan policies and procedures to deal with advertisers. My post announcing the hiatus that will be up (but Not commentable on) the entire time I am offline is written and assumes an openly celebratory tone and announces a very special book selection for the come back. This is my first experience doing a written plan for a blot or website transition. Have you given your site a major makeover? If you did, please leave a comment and let me know any tips or suggestions you have.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
I have removed the Entrecard widget
from this site. The fact that the Only way to not have paid ads appearing here was to manually decline them, one by one, every day, no matter what my ad settings were was the straw that finally broke my long suffering back. This particular blog exists Only as my personal little soap box and I quite honestly don't care if anyone reads here or not. I kept the widget because I have so many friends who are still using Entrecard that I wanted to be able to continue to drop when I visit them, but it appears to me that Entrecard itself no longer welcomes this more limited use of their service so I am finally out, after being one of the ones who Really promoted this service at the beginning and more lately one of the growing chorus of critics.
Like watching a train wreck, where it's so gory but you just Can't look away, I suspect that I will continue to be an Entrecard observer and critic. And for sure, I will do a post celebrating its demise when Graham finally manages to drive all the way off the cliff. See you at the CMFads forum.
Like watching a train wreck, where it's so gory but you just Can't look away, I suspect that I will continue to be an Entrecard observer and critic. And for sure, I will do a post celebrating its demise when Graham finally manages to drive all the way off the cliff. See you at the CMFads forum.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Mailbox Monday
It's an exciting day over at the books blog. Lyndi at Nice2All gave The Thin Red Line a Rave Review, and I am aglow at the wonderful compliments. Meanwhile, my ad for the dot com page is running right alongside the review (Thank You CMFads) and I am feeling a great deal of satisfaction in Lyndi's advice (don't change a thing). It appears to me that I get about 100--150 regular readers per day and I definitely get feedback that these people like what they see. I am starting to feel like a successful blogger again, more so than at any time since my Entrecard-ending traffic drop.
I am really, Really, REALLY homping that CMFads will grow into what Entrecard _could_ have become, had it been managed by people I know and trust, like Ben, Stan and Turnip. A place where thoughtful and quality bloggers will feel genuinely at home and can gain meaningful notice, as opposed to a system that sadly has become largely a meaningless link exchange, where the most Popular blog , in All of Entrecard, for TWO YEARS IN A ROW (as Turnip recently broke) is a splog, run by the same scraper who maintains 5 blogs (each of which drop the required 300 per day) with all the credits gained used to advertise the "main" site. Monkey Tales? More like horseshit, imho.
I suppose it is disingenuous to keep the EC widget on this personal site, even while deploring what Entrecard has become, but some of my real blog friends still use that site and I Do like being able to leave a card and it seems only fair to have a place where they can leave cards for me. Like most serious bloggers, I am Not eager to choose sides in some kind of power struggle. I just want solutions that Work. And CMFads is delivering that in spades.
Oh, and since this is a Mailbox Monday I will note that this week's mail brough an advanced reading copy of Afraid by Jack Kilborn, a thriller that was previously published in the UK that is being released in the US in paperback in April by Hachette's Grand Central Publishing unit (Thank You Miriam Parker!) and a published copy of Lord of Corruption by Kyle Mills, which I will be giving away, probably to my one thousandth commenter on the The Thin Red Line im association with an April review date.
One final thought, today. I have been thinking of trying to organize some kind of South Puget Sound bloggers group where we could meet up face to face, like at the library meeting room maybe once a month just to talk and get to know each other and look at ways we can work together to butter All of our bread. If you are a blogger in the South Sound area and would be interested in attending a get together, please shoot an e-mail to me at drone AT libdrone DOT info.
I am really, Really, REALLY homping that CMFads will grow into what Entrecard _could_ have become, had it been managed by people I know and trust, like Ben, Stan and Turnip. A place where thoughtful and quality bloggers will feel genuinely at home and can gain meaningful notice, as opposed to a system that sadly has become largely a meaningless link exchange, where the most Popular blog , in All of Entrecard, for TWO YEARS IN A ROW (as Turnip recently broke) is a splog, run by the same scraper who maintains 5 blogs (each of which drop the required 300 per day) with all the credits gained used to advertise the "main" site. Monkey Tales? More like horseshit, imho.
I suppose it is disingenuous to keep the EC widget on this personal site, even while deploring what Entrecard has become, but some of my real blog friends still use that site and I Do like being able to leave a card and it seems only fair to have a place where they can leave cards for me. Like most serious bloggers, I am Not eager to choose sides in some kind of power struggle. I just want solutions that Work. And CMFads is delivering that in spades.
Oh, and since this is a Mailbox Monday I will note that this week's mail brough an advanced reading copy of Afraid by Jack Kilborn, a thriller that was previously published in the UK that is being released in the US in paperback in April by Hachette's Grand Central Publishing unit (Thank You Miriam Parker!) and a published copy of Lord of Corruption by Kyle Mills, which I will be giving away, probably to my one thousandth commenter on the The Thin Red Line im association with an April review date.
One final thought, today. I have been thinking of trying to organize some kind of South Puget Sound bloggers group where we could meet up face to face, like at the library meeting room maybe once a month just to talk and get to know each other and look at ways we can work together to butter All of our bread. If you are a blogger in the South Sound area and would be interested in attending a get together, please shoot an e-mail to me at drone AT libdrone DOT info.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
I honestly don't know
how those bloggers with multiple blogs do it. I had been thinking of trying to make Purely Personal a weekly updated blog, though it is Friday night and tomorrow morning at 8am I am back to work another week and I just never did get around to coming up with a post to go here. On the books blog, I have posted today's and pre-posted Monday's entries and have read Wednesday's book and just need to write the review, when I can find the time.
I am getting some traffic from the ads I have placed on CMF, but my unique count is just down in the toilet and I don't know what to do about it. So many people have come in and said "wow, this place is great" but they just don't seem to generate much traffic. I have greatly expanded the number of books blogs in my RSS feeds page, libdrone.com but have not yet figured out how to promote this page. I also haven't taken any steps towards signing up for the affiliate programs and setting up special sites designed just to drive traffic to affiliate links. I seem to be somewhat ambivalent about the whole project.
Meanwhile another week has gone by. I did finally e-mail my mother, but expect she is still peeved with me for putting it off for so long. (she didn't write back as yet). Ron and I both had shrink appts on Tuesday. My meds are working and I just got another 6 months renewal, but Ron's meds were completely changed and so far he seems to be doing well on Wellbutrin and Librium. Fingers crossed. Need to go ahead and publish this and get to bed so I can be bright eyed at work tomorrow. Here's hoping your week has gone well.
a
I am getting some traffic from the ads I have placed on CMF, but my unique count is just down in the toilet and I don't know what to do about it. So many people have come in and said "wow, this place is great" but they just don't seem to generate much traffic. I have greatly expanded the number of books blogs in my RSS feeds page, libdrone.com but have not yet figured out how to promote this page. I also haven't taken any steps towards signing up for the affiliate programs and setting up special sites designed just to drive traffic to affiliate links. I seem to be somewhat ambivalent about the whole project.
Meanwhile another week has gone by. I did finally e-mail my mother, but expect she is still peeved with me for putting it off for so long. (she didn't write back as yet). Ron and I both had shrink appts on Tuesday. My meds are working and I just got another 6 months renewal, but Ron's meds were completely changed and so far he seems to be doing well on Wellbutrin and Librium. Fingers crossed. Need to go ahead and publish this and get to bed so I can be bright eyed at work tomorrow. Here's hoping your week has gone well.
a
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
rambling insomniac thoughts
My sleep schedule is getting out of whack again. Yesterday I worked 1:30pm to 9pm. Came home. Had a medium intensity fight with my spouse. Then made up and had some excellent make up whoopie. Then, around midnight, I got on the puter and started looking at my e-mails, my Tweet Deck, etc. Proof-read a post I have scheduled to go live at 12:01 am EST tomorrow. And then I got involved in the Blog Catalog forums, the CMF forums. Ended up reading lots and lots of older posts. And next thing I know, now it is 6am and I am faced with the equally disagreeable choices of going to bed and sleeping all day or staying up and trying to accomplish what I'd planned on for today, despite running on empty. (sighs)
Several weeks ago, I decided I'd had enough of the Entrecard "drop 300 cards every day" treadmill and cut Way way back on my dropping. My traffic went down significantly, as I knew it would. (Just btw, this in reference to my primary blog The Thin Red Line, rather than the blog you are reading just now.) But I noticed something odd when I checked my stats last night. While I have gone down from an average of 300--500 unique visitors per day to about 125--150 uniques/day, my page views are way up. Where my 300--500 uniques with all the EC junk traffic (those who remember this thread on Blog Catalog will note the large serving of crow I am eating) generally produced a very similar number of page views, yesterday's 135 unique visitors racked up more than 500 page views. This suggests to me, that while I am not getting as many visitors as before, the visitors I do get are taking the time to read more than one post and explore the site. Which suggests to me that even as my Alexa has gone back up (14x,000 at the moment), I am getting more readers who are genuinely interested in the site content.
I'm also feeling just a little bit of a need to eat still More crow for this thread in which I stated emphatically that I had a plan and expected my site to produce meaningful income within two to three years. Now that we are about to that point I've cleared a total of 10 dollars on the site last year and am earning a small amount of money from my new favorite place, CMFads. Glad I didn't quit the day job. But I do genuinely enjoy writing my book reviews and I have learned so much over the past two and a half years. It remains to be seen if I will find my way into earning a real income from my writing and blogging. But I have to say that despite having learned just how hard it is to honestly earn a buck online, that I have no regrets and would do it all again in a heartbeat. I continue to meet and make new friends on CMFads and on Twitter (which Turnip bless his heart suddenly made Really useful to me by helping to understand the right way to use TweetDeck).
If you'd like to learn about CMFads and how it stacks up against other blog advertising services, be sure to visit The Thin Red Line tomorrow.
Several weeks ago, I decided I'd had enough of the Entrecard "drop 300 cards every day" treadmill and cut Way way back on my dropping. My traffic went down significantly, as I knew it would. (Just btw, this in reference to my primary blog The Thin Red Line, rather than the blog you are reading just now.) But I noticed something odd when I checked my stats last night. While I have gone down from an average of 300--500 unique visitors per day to about 125--150 uniques/day, my page views are way up. Where my 300--500 uniques with all the EC junk traffic (those who remember this thread on Blog Catalog will note the large serving of crow I am eating) generally produced a very similar number of page views, yesterday's 135 unique visitors racked up more than 500 page views. This suggests to me, that while I am not getting as many visitors as before, the visitors I do get are taking the time to read more than one post and explore the site. Which suggests to me that even as my Alexa has gone back up (14x,000 at the moment), I am getting more readers who are genuinely interested in the site content.
I'm also feeling just a little bit of a need to eat still More crow for this thread in which I stated emphatically that I had a plan and expected my site to produce meaningful income within two to three years. Now that we are about to that point I've cleared a total of 10 dollars on the site last year and am earning a small amount of money from my new favorite place, CMFads. Glad I didn't quit the day job. But I do genuinely enjoy writing my book reviews and I have learned so much over the past two and a half years. It remains to be seen if I will find my way into earning a real income from my writing and blogging. But I have to say that despite having learned just how hard it is to honestly earn a buck online, that I have no regrets and would do it all again in a heartbeat. I continue to meet and make new friends on CMFads and on Twitter (which Turnip bless his heart suddenly made Really useful to me by helping to understand the right way to use TweetDeck).
If you'd like to learn about CMFads and how it stacks up against other blog advertising services, be sure to visit The Thin Red Line tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
it seems as though
I am never going to be a consistent regular poster on this blog. Watching the new Obama administration with a bit of hope and the crumbling economy with a bit of fear, though down here at the bottom I honestly don't think things will get much worse for us. My work schedule has switched from Monday mornings to Monday evenings, so now Friday and every other Saturday are our only get up early days. That is nice, since we both prefer to sleep late. No news to report from these parts.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
somehow
we've made it through another year. I don't really Do resolutions but I am planning on learning more about making money online and increasing my extremely modest online living. I think I have finally figured out how to make some real money, but I am going to go slow and work at setting up some highly targeted very special interest weekly blogs that are geared to affiliate programs. I am doing a lot of research about affiliate programs and products and online marketing. Around September or October of last year I announced that I expected my site to have meaningful cash flow and I accomplished that. This coming year I am going to start actually making money. And I Promise NEVER to do a MMO blog.
Have you resolved anything to accomplish or avoid in 2009?
Have you resolved anything to accomplish or avoid in 2009?
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