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Narrow Escapes - Sites And Ideas I Let Drop
I have to admit to being a serial website maker. I get ideas and bounce from one thing to the next. I'm not sure why I've worked that way, I think it comes from my background in Fine Art, the idea being you're always working on a number of new 'creations' at a time.
Unfortunately, for the first few years of working on web sites, my ideas around monetising them were pretty crude. I've been running affiliate links (with little success) since around 2000. The first money I made was at the original MP3.com site as a musician, but that didn't last as a business model. Then I tried Amazon links and some complete crap I put on my sites like banner exchanges, simply because I didn't know any better - given the way my sites were, they didn't earn me much.
Then came AdSense, and for a good few years AdSense was for me the key to my financial success. My notion was that I would make sites until I created one that drove so much traffic that the sheer volume of AdSense clicks would pay my way. I didn't really change from this model of working until I was thrown into my self-employment and needed to do something that made me more than a couple of pound a day.
So, I got a lot smarter with the sorts of sites I was making and moved away from AdSense as the primary income for them, concentrating much more on affiliate focused sites. It's all been a big learning curve, I don't naturally consider myself a retail driven sort of person, which explains why until recently, many of my sites were more non-niche and slightly esoteric.
It's a good job I was able to change the way I worked and immerse myself in affiliate marketing rather than AdSense. I had concentrated on more AdSense (and arbitrage) sites the first few months of my working self employed, and as a result my business came close to failing. At one point I'd sold most of my record collection to fund myself, and was within a few days of returning to work for the BBC in a less than ideal role.
Luckily I saw the potential in the way I had been working exploring Adwords and bingo niches that quickly made returns, so I took the chance, turned the job down and carried on with my business with increasing levels of success. Now I'm trying to concentrate on a much more niche focused ideal, as well as continuing to develop existing sites and keep them ticking over.
I thought it would be fun to look at some of the domains I've recently let drop, and the ideas that never quite happened. These sites and ideas had AdSense as their main monetary element, with the potential for additional affiliate links and stuff. A couple are sites that still exist but will never really be developed, and I'll give a quick insight into the ideas behind each one, and the pitfalls, problems encountered.
Media Scum
The plan had been shortly after leaving my last job, I would start a Holy Moly style bitch and gossip site about the media in Wales focusing on its ongoing ineptness, lack of vision, wasting of public money, etcetera. It was going to feature a lot of user generated content alongside my own stories. I never got around to it, and I'm glad I didn't, probably would have cost me money in legal fees in the long run and I doubt there would have been much interest either. Domain's just dropped, so if you fancy doing something with it yourself, feel free.
Chav News
Another in my long line of Chav related sites. It would have aggregated new stories featuring famous Chavs and their escapades. However, like in the real world, Chavs don't make a lot of money, they ain't got much to spend online either. AdSense would have been the most viable money maker for the site, that and pay as you go mobile offers. Domain dropped ages ago should you be bothered.
Moanr And Lazybloggr
More AdSense nonsense, this time the idea was to get people to write blogs for me. Be it moaning web 2.0 style with moanr.com or playing at blogging without actually having a blog with lazybloggr.com. Both sites took only a couple of days to set up, then failed to capture mine or anyone else's imagination and have since been dumped. Kind domain parkers have since taken of moanr.com, and will no doubt soon also take care of Lazybloggr.com to make a few pence more than I ever did with them.
P2P Lawyers
A quiz and arbitrage site hybrid that aimed to get lots of high value AdSense clicks on the back of a fun viral quiz aimed at file sharers. It's still live until I can be arsed to arrange to sell it.
JunkTrove
I had it in my mind that I could do something fun along the lines of turning my waste products into online AdSense gold. Basically I was going to put together a site of all my junk, years of old email, stuff I've thrown out, stuff I've sold on eBay. Logistically it would have been a nightmare, and luckily I never did any more with it, although I do quite fancy one day turning it into a blog about interesting junk. A lot easier to manage, I'd still be cutting and pasting email now if I'd have gone with it, though I do have a local visual junk trove that one day may see the light of webspace.
PAS-78
PAS 78 was a web usability guideline document put out by some government body a couple of years back. I felt quite chuffed at picking up the uk and com domains of the hyphenated version of its title, but to stingy to pay the £30 for document to read it and put a related site online. It would have bored me to tears, just like renewing them both would have done. I think both are available if someone more worthy than me wants to do something with the domains.
I Am Robot
Another AdSense site, the idea had been to see how many Myspace users would befriend someone who was claiming to be a robot joining them for spam purposes. I also stuck in some early landing page / Adwords stuff on a robot theme that fell flat on its arse. I got 300+ friends with my swanky robot adder software in a week, and then they put a load of restrictions on the amount of friend requests you could put out in a day. Just as well, Myspace traffic sucks.
Your Space My Friend
Carrying on with brief and ultimately pointless flirtation with MySpace is this hopefully non-copyright infringing site. Never one to do things the easy way, I eschewed the quick route to a MySpace resources site of just buying a ready made one, I set out to hand build one of my own, with all my own graphics, hand made by me. Time consuming, pointless and still live (just about) it's set to remind me never to waste time on this sort of crap. Yes it's plastered in AdSense, but do the ads pay anything more than a penny or two a click? What do you think?
Tips For Info
This was first an arbitrage site, then it was going to be an all singing and dancing affiliate offer site, then it was a back up bingo landing page thing for bending the rules on Adwords, then it was a chore and now it's waiting for someone else to have a better idea than me. Not a bad little domain name if you want it - I don't think tipsfor.info is registered any more.
Dumped.us
A great domain I picked up with the idea of adding subdomains for humorous effect, as in he.dumped.us, they.dumped.us, ibm.dumped.us etcetera. Not quite sure what I was going to do with it, but I'm sure it would have taken ages to do and made me no money. I think I gave the domain away for next to nothing as some rule change about owning .us domains freaked me out enough to not want to keep it.
The Problem With A Lot Of These Is...
Looking back at the list, a lot of these came from me being diverted from my main goals. I'd often see something a bit shady at a website and try something out or get the idea to try them out. A lot of these sites which didn't make it, as well as many others that I still have online don't really do anything for me other than serve to remind me of a couple of things. Firstly, I'm prone to being easily distracted and making a site as the result of some whim. Secondly they remind me of what not to do in future.
In many cases I've made a rod for my back with the mish mash of sites I have out there not really doing much. At some point I'm going to need to consolidate and weed out all the crap. The crap still makes money though, all be it a few pounds of AdSense revenues every month. I'm trying to concentrate on building quality in existing brands and sites I own. But every so often I still get the urge to do something silly and time consuming. Maybe next time that urge comes on me I can come back here to remind myself not too.
Cheap Caravans Site Upgraded And Relaunched
As a part of the ongoing eBay partner network upgrade, I've finally got my new and improved caravan site uploaded and running. There were some heart attacks along the way, like when the hosting company decided to make my account extra secure without telling me and render the BANS CMS inoperable. But that aside, I'm quite pleased with the work done as it's pretty much trebled the size of the original site and added a lot more focused affiliate click-through opportunities as well as fresh, self updating content.
I decided the new domain I'd bought for the site (and to help quality score issues when I got a new Google Adwords account set up) would be more search engine friendly than the old one, so I've put a permanent redirect on the old domain to the new one. Hopefully the newly found rankings and page rank the old site had picked up will transfer in time to the new domain. And if it doesn't thanks to it's new domain and improved content, Adwords likes the site again.
All this and no mention of the domain, well, here it is - Cheap Caravan Holidays And Hire. Ok, so it's not the best looking site out there, but it does what it says on the tin, and so far the old one has made some nice sales to swell the coffers. I'm hoping this new incarnation will improve on that vastly. I was quiet pleased as I've pretty much got to grips with templates for the CMS, and of course, I can use them again for other projects. The old version of the site was very table heavy, but I've been able to do this version table free. It's almost done, I've just got a few more Adwords campaigns to set up for it to tide it over the next few months.
Next up, I will be working on upgrading a smaller site of mine about vintage guitars, but as of yet I can't decide whether to stick it on a new domain or to just shut the site down for a day and do a complete overhaul and upgrade that way. I should probably get a new domain, as Adwords fell out of love with the site previously, and I wouldn't want that to happen again with my shiny new site.
Some Things That P*** Me Off About Gaming Webmasters
One thing I've learnt the last couple of years working in the online gambling and gaming industry is it can be a pretty seedy place. I was spoilt working at the BBC, I realise this. No commercial concerns, an inclusive culture that embraced the internet and working to a certain level of editorial accurateness and balance. I've carried a lot of that ethos into what I do know, but as I've found in time, there's very few out there who'd concern themselves with such things in the furtherance of their own personal agendas.
Away from the warm and comfy world of public service web site and content creation, it's a cut throat world. The area is rife with dirty tricks, shady techniques and questionable practices, and coming up against them on a daily basis both serves to anger me and further entrench my view that I should avoid such techniques in my own day to day work. Here's some of the things that really succeed in hacking me off when it comes to gaming and gambling related websites, and an explanation of why they piss me off.
The main focus of these techniques is to try and massage the search engines and gain preferentially rankings in the results for highly lucrative gambling related terms. I'm assuming a certain level of understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) with this post, but if you don't consider yourself interested in SEO, it's worth a read as it will help raise your awareness levels.
It's also worth noting that not only are these things annoying to me as a webmaster, they are also annoying to me as a web user. I think many out there not only like to underestimate the visitor, they do it on purpose. A lot of the things that I've listed also create real usability issues and frustrations that in the end could be counter-productive to what you aim to achieve, which should always be the trust and respect of your visitor.
Content Splogs And Link Building Reviews
I'm increasingly seeing splogs (spammy blogs) around the web, with really obscure domain names and posts on everything from bingo to pay day loans and viagra. Obviously some people out there are picking up expired domains with some backlinks and PR and putting auto-generated / scraped content on them. What's worse is I've seen a number of big bingo companies (let alone affiliates) using these sort of blogs to gain backlinks with paid for reviews. I'm naming no names, but you know who you are.
Content Usage With Backlinks Stripped Or Omitted
Oh, now this one really pisses me off. Now, I do like to get backlinks, I do want my sites to rank well after all. Given the difficulty of getting quality links for gambling related sites on authority sites, I will sometimes put a press release out about a new section or video or whatever. The aim is that someone will pick it up and supply quality backlinks for your trouble.
However, gambling webmasters are a pretty selfish bunch. They like to use your content, or your press release, or even report on your press release to make content for their site. But will they provide a link back for it? Will they flip, because if they do that, they might just give your site a little boost above theirs in the rankings. Don't worry that users may want to follow up or find it interesting, linking out is a bad, bad thing.
There are some sites out there who will also say what site they got their 'story' from, even going as far to name it or print the URL, but link to it? No! Some pretty big online bingo sites do this routinely. It's my belief that actually, this practice could cost you rankings rather than actually improve them. Why, well, Google looks at things like outgoing links, and if it sees your site has no external links to anything else in the field, what's to say they don't flag it as a sign of a lack of quality?
Content Theft That Isn't Content Theft
This one is a bit more difficult to prove, but it's a common problem for sites that thrive on creating their own voice and standpoint. What I mean is that sites will take a topic, or standpoint, or viewpoint that you've taken, and emulate it on their own site. They don't so much copy the content you've written, but copy the general editorial standpoint and spin their own content from that standpoint. I suppose it's flattering in a way, but annoying none the less.
Posts That You Can't Comment On
I've already said that most gambling related webmasters are a fairly selfish bunch, and this is no better illustrated by the number of gaming blogs that don't feature comments from their users. Worse still, they give the option of allowing users to make posts whilst never letting them go live. I've seen it on hundreds of blogs in the field, some from big companies that should know better.
Why does this one piss me off so much? Well, being the pedantic sort of chap I am, if I see an inaccuracy, or just want to comment and add my own opinion on a post I will do it (at great personal time expenditure.) Nothing gets my goat up more than submitting a lengthy comment to a blog only to never see it published. I could point to several major sites in the field that allow comments to be posted but don't actually have any user comments on any of their posts, but I won't.
Review Sites That Don't Publish Bad Reviews
I've also tested this out on some sites that claim to take user reviews of online bingo sites. I've submitted a range of reviews from good to bad, and guess which ones didn't see the light of day? That's right, reviews saying 0 out of 5, poor site, etc. Why? Well, if you're searching for a review on a site and end up on an affiliate site, are you more likely to click on their affiliate link to the said site if it's surrounded by bad reviews? I think not. This takes us neatly on to this next point.
It's All Good
I see this one all the time, you'll see a list of mini-reviews of online bingo sites, and they all have five or four stars next to them. All of them. Without fail. It tells me this:
We've Never Actually Visited These Sites
But we're more than happy to recommend them to you to go try. Some of the sites I've played at have been horrendous. When I've reviewed them I've gone into this in detail, and marked sites down to really low ratings as a result. The surprising thing is, people will still go and play at the sites even if you give them a bad write-up. One site I described as a polished turd has continued to get lots of traffic from my less than favourable review, and I've at least been able to sleep easy knowing I'm not misleading everyone.
But, as well as being a selfish bunch, many gaming webmasters are lazy as well. They'd sooner take the review copy provided by the actual online bingo site itself. Can you imagine such things? Would you think such a review would be balanced, accurate and less than positive? Of course not and guess what, many web users are pretty clever and able to figure out when a review isn't a review - so why waste everyone's time?
We're The Best Because We Say So
Oh, now this one really, really gets me hot under the collar. Sites that proclaim themselves 'The Best' or 'The Biggest' or the 'Most Popular.' You've seen it, you land on a three page affiliate spam site with a page full of colourful reviews, less than accurate information and a cut and pasted article on bingo from Wikipedia. And there it is, in the opening sentence or emblazoned across the banner, those very same epithets 'The Best' or 'The Biggest' etcetera, and are they? Not in the slightest, but if you tell everyone you are, they may just believe you.
And it's not just the little sites that do this, there are quite a few gaming providers that believe people fall for such flannel and do such things, when in fact they're anything but. I would never call any of my sites biggest or best, it's not up to me to decide. I'd like to think that they are, but then the wise and rational person in me says, 'they're not really, they could be so much bigger and better than they are,' and I end up all feeling like I've deluded myself.
News Sections That Don't Feature News
A number of sites have news sections that are anything but. I consider my news sections more blogs than official news, I only ever really react to stories I see in the wider press and I freely admit this limitation at the sites involved. That said, I see a number of sites featuring regularly in the Google News results that don't actually carry any news, they merely report on stories already featured in the wider press with little or no extra value.
Some never link out to other content and some do little better than regurgitate winners news from the likes of The National Bingo Game, with no additional value added content to merit them. It's understandable that a lot of us will be writing about the same events and news stories on our sites and their are times I'm guilty of doing the same, but my hope is that some of my personality and interest in the game comes out in my posts. Others seem content just to report on stuff that isn't really important or relevant, merely as a means of bulking out their content.
Sites Fronted By Fake Females / Fictional Characters
It's worth remembering that many sites about bingo in particular are run by men, yet seem to have some mystical female front person with an exotic sounding name or cartoon like character picture as their spokesperson. I wonder why that is and more importantly how many of them do you actually believe have an actual real woman behind them? Personally, I think it's fake, it's not necessary and frankly insulting to your users, like many of the things I've highlighted here today.
I've put my name to everything I've done at my websites as I believe it helps establish a relationship with my visitors. I wish some others out there would be that transparent about what they're doing. It can only help to increase trust in the long run.
And Finally...
Wow, you still here? That went on way longer than I was intending, but it cheers me up to get it off my chest. You might be wondering what my goal is for complaining about this stuff. In the end, it's because I believe if you don't mention it, no one will realise it's a problem. There's also an element of frustrated web user that wants a voice. I spend a lot of time visiting these sites and at times, my blood pressure goes through the roof at the rot I see.
For me I'd rather see the space filled with 10 or 20 quality sites about the game than a 1000 rubbish sites that don't add any value other than lining affiliates pockets. There are very few sites out there that I think offer great content around gaming, and that's a real downer. Like most things in life (TV for instance) this low grade filler makes it difficult to spot the real gems in the big bubble of stuff out there. Personally, I find that real shame and hope that one day things get better.
Easy Way To Change Editor Kit Javascript To Update It For The Ebay Partner Network
I set about updating my editor kit javascript snippets on one site today, ready for the end of the month switch off of the eBay affiliate programme at Commission Junction. Rather unhelpfully the documentation at the eBay Partners site simply suggests that the best way to update your tracking codes is to completely generate a new code at the Editor Kit.
That's all well and good if you've only used one or two of the things, but I must have 40 or 50 of them on different sites. I've got some sites with one on each page, each with unique searches and customisations. It's not going to be practical to try and do each one again. Luckily the code for the new javascript is 90% the same as the old CJ javascript. So, being a lazy type I sat down to figure out some nice and easy find and replaces, just to edit the parts of the code that need fixing.
If you're looking for a quick fix you can run these find and replaces on a site wide basis using something like Dreamweaver or Textpad, without them messing with the rest of the formatting, custom ids and search terms in the sniplet. Nice and quick and easy. I sat down and compared the new output with the old, and these are the changes that need to be made. They shouldn't interfere with other code on your site, but just have a think about what you got on there just in case there are similar terms.
These worked for the javascript for both the UK and the USA generated sniplets. I haven't looked at anything else as I don't have any others set up myself.
- Find: encode=ISO-8859-1
Replace with: encode=UTF-8
I'm not sure if this can be changed to suit your site, so I'm sticking with it for now. - Find: &prvd=1
Replace with: &prvd=9
I think this is the number for parameter for the provider - where 1 was for Commission Junction. - Find: &track=*******
******* is your old CJ PID number, a seven digit number that you entered when you set up the sniplet.
Replace with: &toolid=10004&track=**********
********** is your new eBay partner campaign number - a 10 digit figure you get from your ebay partner control panel. Note the &toolid= parameter as well - this is completely new to the sniplet and luckily sits next to the tracking ID so you change them both in one go.
I did a quick search earlier and couldn't find this info on making these edits to the sniplet. Hopefully that will save a few people wading through the forms at the Editor Kit page at ebay. When you copy and paste to do your find and replaces, make sure you don't copy spaces at either end of the terms.
Affiliate Managers - A Small Rant And Please Stop Pestering
One of the best things about getting out of a typical office set-up and 9 to 5 job is the fact you don't have to deal with constant pestering from line managers, colleagues, etc. In fact, not having to deal with people like this was one of the main reasons I took a voluntary redundancy from the BBC and took the gamble in starting my own business. It's been bliss, but unfortunately I'm fast getting a new breed of irritant in the form of a number of affiliate managers for online bingo sites.
I know that many of them want the best for their sites, the best features, the best placement, the best write ups and so on. I understand this totally, but, I've been getting loads of email recently from the affiliate managers (10+) at number of different online bingo properties asking me to do this, feature that here, get that on the homepage there, etc. It's getting to the point were I'm wasting a lot of time dealing with these constant requests, simply pointing out some things about the sites they want their brands featured on and why their requests are not likely to happen.
So, to make thing simple, I thought I would put together some bullet points about both my sites and the way I work in the hope that affiliate managers may take the hint, understand where I'm coming from or at least realise what they're asking is at times counter-productive to their ends.
David At Day Trip Media Says...
- Your site is not the only one I deal with, and I have more than one site on my portfolio. Times this by the 200+ affiliate programmes I deal with, and you'll soon realise how much work I have to do and how intrusive constant email and requests are.
- They are my sites. I will say what I want, put things where I want and generally do what my experience tells me works best.
- If your brand works for me and my visitors, it will get top billing - you don't have to do anything for this top class promotion.
- If it doesn't work with my visitors, it will get little or no exposure - no amount of complaining and pestering me will change that.
- I am the best judge of what works and doesn't work for my visitors. I have access to a wide range of data about conversions across brands that you don't. It's all very well telling me this will work, this will convert and I can earn lots. If it's not stacking up in comparison to the sites and offers that do make me money - I know this, you don't.
- A number of my main sites are blogs. This means you won't be featured on the front page indefinitely. You can tell they are blogs by looking at the signs. RSS buttons, post dates, blog archives, etc. I shouldn't need to explain this and the mechanics of this.
- I never accept your copy or content - I write my own, this way my users can trust what I say and I can say what I believe is the case. You're welcome to use any criticisms to improve your service for your customers. That's why I make criticisms.
- If my reply to your email is short and snappy, there's a good chance I'm busy.
- In fact, before you send any email, there's a good chance that I'm busy.
- Please alert me if there are any major changes, or I have broken links and the like - it cost us both money.
- Please don't alert me that you'll be at x y and z conference, event, etc, or similar
Now, I've wasted more time because of the barrage of requests I've had this morning has vexed me enough to spend 10 minutes doing this. Leave me to it as I must get on.
Updating eBay Powered Links And New Sports Sites
News came of the changeover at the beginning of March, with the EPN being available for sign-up from the 1st of April. Basically everyone has a month to get their links changed over from the Commission Junction format to the new EPN format. I've basically got two types of site I need to be changing. The one lot are general Javascript links set up with the Editors Kit at eBay, the other are mini theme sites put together using the amazing Build A Niche Store (BANS) software. All in all, it's a lot of work for me to get done.
I'm going to have to leave some of the older sites be, as I just don't have time to go through and manually update all the on page Javascripts I created. As most of them don't convert to actual sales very often, I can get away with leaving them be if I need to. As for the BANS sites, only one of them was on the latest version of the software, which was easy to update. The rest however will need to be built again from the ground-up as they used the much simplified 1st version of the software. Still, redoing them will give me the chance to fix one or two things that need fixing.
Unfortunately, this clashes with my end of year accounts and my first VAT return, so I'll be putting these upgrades off as well. I've done one of my busiest sites, and will be working on one of the other busiest sites as well this month. I'm not sure I'll hit the deadline but hell, I'll give it a go.
Anyway, the newest version of the BANS software [v3.0 EPN] is pretty hot and easy to set up, so really it shouldn't be to much work to sort out, it's just sitting down and doing it. I've managed two new sites on the platform the last month, both of them related to recent local sporting events.
Then it dropped out of the SERPs for a week or so, missing the peak of the traffic, but then it came back and is going strong. Obviously traffic has fallen given the event was a while back, but it should come back into effect come next Six Nations and hopefully any time Wales are on tour or playing.
I used the same principle (and templates) again Sunday night to do my second sporty BANS site. Sunday night I picked up the domain for my newest site, Cardiff City Final, the site was in place by Monday afternoon, and I'm currently sat here waiting for it to pop into the SERPs. There should be some good traffic off it the next 6 weeks. I was planning on getting the words FA Cup in the domain, but as it's a trademark, I held off doing that. I hope it can pop in as fast as the last one, but time will tell.
So, it's back to the paperwork once this post is done, it is the end of year after all. Then I've got a site to put together that I had the content written for a month ago, and have put off doing, then it's back to changing eBay links. that should keep me busy. My to do list is getting longer.
New Look Site - Day Trip Media V2.0
I initially set this site up as a public face for my new business that I started on taking a voluntary redundancy in June 2006. I quickly threw up a one page site with the intention of adding a load of galleries and pages about the work I'd done. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the cut and thrust of having to work at my business quickly put paid to the big project I'd had planned for this site.
Instead, it languished, a footnote on my large to do list, my time and effort taken to set up the projects that make me money. I've wanted to create a simple site here with a blog as the place I can mention what I'm working on and the arena in which I work as an affiliate marketer, so, with the 2 year anniversary of when I first bought this site looming, I thought it was about time I bit off the bullet and got it set up.
So here it is, much stripped down from what I originally intended, but the plan is in time I will add more value with posts and information on what I'm doing rather than creating a mausoleum for the work I once did. I will add stuff as time goes on, but at the very least it's a simple blog about what Day Trip Media is up to, for those that may be interested.
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