Things are going rather spectacular with business lately and I haven’t had the time to pay any attention to the blog.  I intend to post more often again after the new year - until then, most likely there will be no other posts.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone, a safe and fun New Year . . . talk to you soon,

Mat

Joe does customized images for gifts, gags, spoofs, or jokes. He is doing it just for fun for now (READ: FREE) so get over there while you have a chance! As you can see, he does great work.

-Mat

I found this new portal called Read Latest News that compiles RSS feeds from many of the top news sources and puts them all onto one site.  So instead of having to sift through a dozen or more sites, I can visit just one and get the info I am after.  They cover just about anything from politics, sports, entertainment, technology, world news, and more.  You can also pick from several different languages if you are so inclined (though I would recommend being able to understand a different language).  One very important aspect of the site (as far as I am concerned) is that it gives an international perspective as well as the news I would expect from American sources - its good to get a story from multiple viewpoints.

He was so excited to get outside and check things out, I decided to let him play on the deck for a minute - a few pictures follow, notice the lack of shoes There are some other pics after the snow pics - just some funny stuff that I wanted you all to see.

I shouldn’t let him drink so much :O)

First, the URL will temporarily change to vinsdad.blogspot.com . This will be just long enough to move wordpress onto the Vinsdad server and import all of the posts.

After all the posts are transferred, I can delete my blogger account - of course it will be a while before the dust settles as there are plenty of house keeping issues I will have to deal with.

Just as a funny aside . . . I was changing Simon and Vin came into the room. He climbed into the stroller and faked like he was going to sleep. He asked for his lion, pacifier, and a blanket. I was done with simon and said “Goodnight Vin” and left the room. That was 1/2 hour ago - he is snoring away in the stroller. In the meantime, Simon decided it was naptime too! Yippee!

One of the toughest things in the transfer is settling on a theme - the looks are so different compared to Blogger and seem to be more flexible which is nice. Setting up WordPress is a bit more technical than Blogger but the differences in the platforms are huge - the themes, plugins, and spam fighting capabilities are huge.

I have been dropped from a 3 to a 2 - apparently for selling links on my site that pass Page Rank from my site to the linked site. What I didn’t realize was that this was against Big Brother’s . . I mean Google’s rules. What is ridiculous is that in the last 4 months since the last page rank update, my incoming links (all non-paid, natural links) have increased over 1000%. Yes, I now have 10 times more links than I did 4 months ago. In addition, my Alexa traffic has increased 400%. Even still, Google felt the need to punish me for making a few bucks from my blog. The way I see it is that they are mad at many bloggers for the simple fact that we are going through other advertising outlets to make our money. Instead of getting paid (at best) $0.15 per click from Google AdSense, I prefer making anywhere from $5 to $50+ for a single blog post.

Lets do the math here - I get an average of $15 for a paid post on this blog. If I were to try to make that same money using AdSense, it would take no less than 100 clicks on those annoying context ads that you see on most websites. So lets hear it from some of you that use AdSense. . . how many visitors do you need to actually get 100 clicks? 1000? 2000? Try about 10,000 visitors. To get a 1% click through rate (CTR) on your AdSense context ads, you will need 10,000 visitors. Even if you got 2% CTR, you would still need 5000 visitors and that is assuming you get $0.15 per click. I think its much more common to get under $0.10 per click.

Oh, and what about all that traffic? Well, if you are good enough to get 10,000 or more visitors, would you want to send them all away to some other site? Thats what I would be doing if I put AdSense on my blog - every click brings the visitor to another site. I don’t know about you, but I worked hard on this blog and I want every visitor to spend as much time as possible right here - why would I want them to go to some other site? You might ask why I sell blog posts that include a link to another site . . . isn’t that the same thing? Well, No. First, I get to approve every offer I take from an advertiser before I post about it on my blog. I also get to dictate the context in which the product or service being advertised is portrayed to my readers. I don’t take on blatant advertising in blog posts - I work them into some story to make them more genuine and provide value to both the advertiser and the reader. What do you get with Google AdSense? A bunch of ad blocks strewn across the page that both detracts from the aesthetics and, in some cases, the validity of the site.

Like many bloggers, I go through Pay Per Post (PPP) to find advertisers that will pay me to write about their product or service. Currently, PPP uses both Alexa score and Page Rank as the primary metrics by which advertisers can find the appropriate bloggers to write about their company and how much to pay the blogger for a post. With the recent slap from Google, many bloggers that use PPP have had their PR reduced to a point where advertising revenue (i.e. how much you get paid for a blog post) has dropped 50% or more. I think Izea/PPP CEO Ted Murphy may have seen this move from Google coming a mile away with their upcoming release of Argus which is to be their in house metrics tool. The way I understand it, Argus will provide all of the site information that a potential advertiser will need - taking the place of Alexa and Google. This seems like a great way to provide tremendous value to the advertiser by providing solid and reliable site data on which to establish a blog advertising campaign. In addition, this would be a way to protect bloggers from the wrath of Google. Its kind of a big FU to Google. We will see . . .

Nearly two weeks ago, Mary was in a car accident. Nothing horrible happened to her or the other driver, however, our Jeep was totaled. The other driver had a Subaru that, judging from the pictures (I will put them up later), was likely totaled as well.

The REALLY annoying part: She (the other driver that caused the accident) doesn’t have car insurance. We live in a state where car insurance is OPTIONAL. I don’t really begrudge her for not having it - I actually went a few years without insurance, however, I drove cautiously and never had an accident since I started driving. We have great insurance that will be covering everything on our end . . . except one important thing: a rental car. The Jeep was our only vehicle but we did not think much about getting rental coverage on our insurance - I sort of thought it was included. A rental would have been covered for by the other driver’s insurance, if she had it of course. So, since the 26th, we have been using her parents extra car.

The cool part in this is that we are getting a decent check to pay for things. We owed a little bit on the Jeep - so that is getting paid off - and we will have some money left over to go towards a “new” car. Of course I mean a “new for us” car. I will definitely be looking for something that gets better than 19 mpg like the Jeep which means something along the lines of a previously enjoyed Accord, Subaru, Toyota, or Ferrari F430. Do you think the Ferrari comes with LATCH?

I found this free Adwords resource written by PPC Professional Steve Baker. It is a UK site but the information is applicable independent of geography. Anyways the site is a thorough online guide to Google Adwords and is available completely free. In addition, you can buy the AdWords Agency Secrets Revealed! ebook. Just knowing how great the site is, I can only imagine the great information in the paid for book.

My favorite article was on “Optimising Your Adwords Bids.” A common problem of mine was trying to balance what I paid for each click against where I wanted my ads to show up for relevant search terms. This article takes into account your keyword bids, click through rate, and conversion rate and describes how each one is affected by the other so that your campaign is in harmony with your budget.