Bush Mackel

Today being November 9th means that we all have two more weeks until the busyiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday!

(And maybe to mark the occasion), the biggest ads of the Black Friday season hit the net today – Best Buy and Circuit City!

GWA HA HA!

Truly for all of us Black Friday shoppers, this was a big day. Anyone else getting excited?

What I’m Really Looking For
Going into this holiday season, there weren’t many items that I was really coveting. As things are going, I think next year is going to be the big TV year for myself, but I was hoping that this year I could UP my digital camera game since mine is getting a little long in the tooth.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t readily appear to me that there are some sales on D-SLR’s but if anyone would like to correct me, I invite and encourage you to do so since my little guy is growing up faster than anyone anticipated!

What I’ll Probably End Up Getting
As has been the case the last couple of Black Fridays, I start at Best Buy and then go to Circuit City since those are usually where the bulk of “my deals” happen to be. Last year (and I think the year before) I went to local CompUSA at midnight (before the official start of Black Friday) and did some shopping there too. But as the local CompUSA has turned into a Micro Center and neither has their ads out yet, the jury is still out on that whole front.

What I do know is that Best Buy looks to have some good deals on 360 games and DVD box sets, so that may likely prove to be my first stop. I also heard through the grapevine that Circuit City has a $99 GPS so that might end up being a gift to someone. (I’m pretty sure they don’t read this blog which is why I divulge that).

On a related note, I’m pretty sure Rock Band will be out by then and I’m very surprised that the game hasn’t even been mentioned in the big retailer’s ads. Oh well.

What About You?
And of my fellow Black Friday shoppers getting excited for one thing or another? Some people are saying that BF is lookin’ kinda weak this year. Thoughts?

I don’t have the exact dates in front of me, but I know that many a webmaster has been waiting for this most recent Page Rank update, myself included.

Now, after the dust has started to settle, the whole thing seems to be a bit anticlimactic… But that’s probably due to most of us not getting the PR we expected or wanted…

And some of us losing the Page Rank that we already had…

The Crazy October 2007 Page Rank Update
Admittedly, this is coming from a guy who eagerly anticipated the update, but this last one was wild!

• Page Rank updates usually are spaced about 3 months apart…This one was about 6 (if it is truly done).
• Webmasters expected their sites to largely go up in PR, but a ton saw them go down as they were seemingly penalized for selling text links and otherwise manipulating the big G.

Do You Care About Page Rank?
I do. I wish that I could say I didn’t, especially being a young entrepreneur… One of the basic tenants of entrepreneurship and business in general is that you should limit how many people and things you’re dependent on.As far as my websites go, I do all the work on my sites myself and I own the domain names and I (to a large extent) control the servers they run on.

But as a blogger trying to earn revenue for my blogs, the easiest source of income I have to draw on is sponsored posts who largely decide how much to pay their bloggers based on Page Rank (amongst other factors). And on the surface of things, it IS as simple as a better Page Rank means more money. This is why I care about Page Rank.

But on the flip side of the ball, consider if I had a Page Rank of 5, I’d be certainly making a decent chunk of change from this site. Probably so much that I would rely on it as part of my income. And what would then become of me when I lost some of my Page Rank and dropped to a 3? My income would drop… A lot. And I’d be in trouble.

There are many ways to make money online without Page Rank! Look at Casey for example over at News Notion. Before SHE had any noticeable PR she was hard at work selling ad space on her blog and she got all of her spots sold out in a manner of days. DAYS! And however much she sold her spots for, she got to keep 100% of the profits instead of splitting down the middle (if she was so lucky) with companies like Pay Per Post and Sponsored Reviews.

Another way to make money is through affiliate marketing! If you have a blog that provides great information on products and that people are finding through search engines, why not drop some affiliate links (esp if you feel strongly about the product). Opal T regularly says how much she loves affiliate marketing and how she loves not having to be married to page rank and page rank updates.

I got tagged by Forest for this sweet little meme of his.

Now even though I don’t participate in half the memes I get tagged in (mostly due to laziness), I’m all for us bloggers getting personal on our blogs.

After all, isn’t that what blogging is all about? (Well besides all the glitz and glamour that comes from calling ourselves “bloggers”?)

This is me:

Forest Parks from The Random Forest
Bush Mackel

If you want to participate, just follow these instructions:
- Copy this post and amend the text above ‘This is me’.
- Replace the image with a nice smiley, silly, serious picture of yourself.
- Make sure your name and link is added to the participant list.
- Tag and link some fellow bloggers in the ‘Show us yourself’ area
- Let them know they have been tagged.

Ok, so I didn’t tag anyone. But I figure those who want to have some fun will join in the action!

Yesterday we had a lot of good talk about Page Rank, Google, and penalizations. And looking back in our conversation, I don’t think I really picked a side in the whole thing.

Now don’t get me wrong – I think for instance that Opal‘s tendency to look outside of Google for monetization is a smart thing.

I mean, say you rely on Google and then you get hit with a huge penalty that takes away all your PR, Adsense and traffic in the SERPS.

You’re basically screwed. And it doesn’t help matters that Google isn’t warning webmasters first before stripping them of PR. (I mean, what is the point of webmaster tools if Google isn’t going to tell us about problems they are finding with our sites).

The Penalty Situation
So here’s what is a happemin’ – I originally read about the situation on Court’s blog, and it seems that the big G is laying the smacketh down on sites that are selling text links. Now thus far I’ve been unsucessful with text link ads but I’ve still been giving it the college try.

Until now.

I read a FANtasic article about text links and google. It’s long, but it’s well worth the read. If you want the short version of how I feel now, here it goes…

• Google is first and foremost provides a search engine and is constantly trying to make that search engine the best in the world. The practice of selling text links undermines what they’re trying to accomplish and makes their search engine not as good as what it aims to be.
• My current PR and Alexa Rank is so low right now that even if I WERE to sell text links, it probably wouldn’t outweigh how much I could make with a better PR. So the threat of penalty is enough for me to stop text link ads for now.

Interesting to Note
First, I have to re-iterate how much I think you should read that article. I think it is simply one of the best articles I’ve read in quite sometime and certainly deserves your attention.

I THINK Opal tagged me on this one sometime back in the late eighties. But a lot has happened since then!

There was Milli Vanilli, Bill Clinton, and of course something that would come to be known as the world wide web.

In any event, sorry for the delay Opal, Brown and Forest (amongst others). I’m sure by this time you all have cursed my name for many days but I beg you… FORGIVENESS! PLEASE!

My Desktop

• The first column of icons in the top is what I consider my most important… Flash, Paint Shop Pro, Firefox, My Computer and the Recycling Bin.
• The next two columns are a few utilities that I use to clean up my computer, (like Ad Aware and Crap Cleaner) as well as some other apps that I use for overclocking purposes.
• The last columns up there are generally games including just about every game in the Command & Conquer series.
• At the bottom of the screen you’ll see random stuff that for the most part allows me to connect to my computer at work. (And iTunes which somehow made its way down there…)

A lot of us bloggers are serious about what we do. As such, we treat our blogs like our business and need tools to help our business run effortlessly, smoothly, and professionally.

iContact is a website (and probably more to the point) a set of tools that gives webmasters and business professionals the ability to easily take care of common marketing tasks such as newsletters and mass e-mailings.

First Impressions
As I start with most of my reviews, I had to take a look at the website. Most of the sites I’ve been reviewing lately have that “fresh and clean” look and iContact Email Marketing Software is no exception.

Everything that you want to find in regards to the product is right at the top, so finding what you need is a breeze.

Features That You’ll Smile About
Depending on your level of computer proficiency, you may find some of their tools beneath you, but for regular business folk who are still getting up to speed with computers and the net, a lot of these are sure to peak their interest. Check out a few of them:

* WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor
* Mass E-Mailings take the load off of YOUR server!
* Contact Management System and Follow-up System
* Make surveys, web signup forms and more…

Is This Right for You?
If you’re a business professional who does a lot of salesperson like tasks, I could see iContact being gold. Especially considering you can use it for as little as $9.99 per month and you have the ability to access it from any computer. For others, you may not immediately see the need for something like iContact but then again, sometimes you need a set of tools to remind you that you should be reaching out to customers (and not just the first time) but months down the line. Sure, with a little elbow grease and knno how, a few of us could create a set of tools like iContact Email Marketing Software for personal use, but as they say – “Time is Money” and it looks like iContact could’ve already put in all the time for us. *nod*

Out of nowhere, my friend Brad over at Do the Justice sent me an e-mail saying that there’s a rumble ’round the internet concerning the PR Update.

Mainly that there wouldn’t be one.

*groan*

Like just about everyone else in this web development game, I’ve been waiting on pins and needs for this update. Should you be worrying if it never comes?

The Story
From this post on Search Engine Roundtable, Matt Cutts says,

As far as the toolbar PageRank, I definitely wouldn’t expect to see it in the next few days. Probably not even in the next couple weeks, if I had to guess.

Since I really try to not rehash posts on other sites, I strongly suggest for you to go visit the post as it was pretty interesting but this begs the question…

Focusing on the Important Things
Even if the Google Page Rank Update never comes, that shouldn’t mean that you or I should stop doing the important things in regards to our websites. Think about it… Focusing on seo basics and other important web development techniques will ensure that no matter what kind of rank system comes up in the future, we’ll be all but ready to jump all over it. So while we’re all waiting, make sure you’re doing the following:

• SEO Basics – You know the deal – Making sure your titles are good, keyword and description meta tags are concise and contain your keywords, making your code neat so spiders have no problems finding content, anchor text, et.

• Incoming Links – Making sure that you have a ton of incoming links is crucial in establishing authority with search engines. And if you’re targeting certain keywords (which you should be doing), make sure you have that in the link text too!

• Content – Content is still king right? Well, give your visitors a reason to come back! And YOU KNOW there’s nothing that looks better to your readers than frequently updated content that’s interesting and useful.

We all know that coComment was once heralded as the blogger’s ultimate schmoozing tool. But since then, excitement has definitely wained as users have experienced disappointment after disappointment.

Execution with coComment has been less than stellar because of the myriad of problems the plugin has produced including comments going unrecorded, and web forms failing to execute.

coComment : “We’re Sorry!”
After Mark’s post Smackdown: co.mments vs coComment, I was thinking that’d he be the first to post this, but maybe I’m the only special one who got this e-mail. *WINK* Here’s what the e-mail said:

Dear coComment User -

Firstly, an apology. The upgrade of coComment to Version 2.0 Beta has been difficult and I know that, as users, you have been inconvenienced. We are sorry and promise not to do it to you again.

As well as the usual teething troubles and unexpected bugs, we experienced a database corruption which made coComment increasingly slow and unresponsive to requests. We believe that we do now have the bugs ironed out and that the service should be faster and more reliable than before the upgrade.
However, if your experience differs please do let us know and we will resolve it for you.

We have also had a lot of feedback on the design and its usability. We have, in response to many comments, reverted conversation display to the old ‘accordion’ style within the MyConversations framework and the client to the previous version. The ‘new’ client, which appears on websites to allow you to control coComment, is now only activated when you use the Sidebar viewing mechanism. We will give you the option as to which client to use, with the default setting being the less ‘intrusive’ version.

This is still a beta product . the final version will be released September 24th . so we are completely open to feedback on usability/functionality/design/look and feel. Please let us have your comments/concerns and we will respond.

Once again, our apologies for the difficulties. We believe very strongly in the future of the comment space and coComment 2.0 is intended to take the state of the art a long way forward. In trying to do so much, in one step, we created problems for you and ourselves. We will not, in future, shy away from developing the product to move it forward BUT we won’t try and do quite so much in one go !

Please feel free to email us personally with your feedback/comments and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Matt (CEO) – matt@cocomment.com
Nicolas (CSO) – nicolas@cocomment.com
Christophe (CTO) – christophe@cocomment.com
Kristina (VP Marketing) – kristina@cocomment.com

Giving it Another Whirl
Now I’m not gonna lie. I’ve had coComment turned off for a while now ’cause I just got sick and tired of its crappy performance. BUT, I applaud coComment for writing this very humbling e-mail and I think it’s going to have me checking out the plugin again. Here goes nothing!

Bucky was nice enough to hit me with his new Daily Blogger Award! This is really nice award in that I really try and serve up content everyday and I’m glad someone notices (even though this month hasn’t been the best). But that was due to circumstances beyond my control! So anyway, I gotta pass the love with others that give me the daily dose I’m jonsin’ for!

So without further ado…

My Picks for the Daily Blogger Award!

Casey @ News Notion
Opal T @ Vegan Momma
Danielle @ Pink Internet Marketing

I was tagged in an interesting meme by Ms. AdSense Tracker recently. I wanted to get to this one yesterday but alas…Fate would have other plans. But that’s what “work” is for right? (#);) So here’s the situation:

Ms. AdSense Tracker just gave me 1 million dollars! What in the world am I going to do with it? Hmmmm…I think I would probably put half of that in the bank, (since one of my accounts gets fantastic interest), and the other half I would put into Real Estate and buy a couple rental properties. Were you expecting that I would do something with it in regards to web development? Nahhhh. I’ve said it before, but I don’t think I’m in the place right now to spin $1M into 2 or 3.

Instructions: ***** Start Copy *****

Proposition – If you have $1 Million Dollars

Requirements – Continue above sentences.

Tag Mode – If you wanna participate, just jump in!

Link – Add your anchor and post link below.

What They Would Do With Their 1 Million Dollars

SYH will Spend on Family
Miche will Give to Needy
Montessorimum will Keepsake
Lovely Mummy will Spend and Save
MummyInVain will Fully Utilize
Babyfiona will Buy House and Open Business
MonkeyWong will Go for a long vacation
EmilaYusof will Realize her Dream
Mariuca will Open a perfume gallery
Hin will Blog to Donate for Charity
Norski will Tithe to top off 10%
AdSense Tracker will Buy a Good Blog
Bush Mackel will Save Half and Buy Real Estate with the Rest.

Instructions – **** End Copy ****