Bush Mackel

I’ve once again hit a patch of pretty busy things for myself, and thankfully this time around it looks like those things are definitely of the positive sort.

And I’m beginning to come out of them now so I think it’s time to throw some updates up on here. Well actually… Now that I write that, I don’t know if I’m really coming out of them as much as I’m starting to see the proverbial light at the end of tunnel.

The big things on the hit list are of course the impending house purchase, finally finishing up that pesky website I’ve mentioned on here, Little Mac’s 1st birthday party, getting more business for my design company, and learning ColdFusion *bleh* at work. Why don’t we go in order of stress shall we?

Getting More Business for BWD 0 stress
Right now, my business Bethesda Web Design is doing just the right amount of business for me right now which isn’t too much. (#):) As I’ll point out in a hot minute, I’m putting the finishing touches of the company’s first real client site and I’ve had another person inquire about a new website too which I have a good feeling on. But probably the biggest thumbs up for the company in the past month was getting an old client back on board which means my hosting costs are no longer dragging me down to nearly the extent as they were before.

Finishing Up That Pesky Website 2 stress
This used to rank much higher on the stressful scale but I’ve recently put a lot of work into it addressing the harder parts of the service, and finishing up some nagging issues that I personally had a problem with. NOW the only thing I’m really waiting on is the “client” to get back to me with the rest of the text so I can put the seal of completeness on this one. And don’t worry, I’ll be talking a lot more about this project next week in a Postmordem of sorts.

Little Mac’s 1st Birthday Party 3 stress
I’ll admit it that from jump, I didn’t want to have a birthday party for the little guy. He’s not going to remember it and it’s just going to mean a lot of time commitment from me along with the whole catering thing *rolling eyes*. BUT the wife really wanted to have it so here I am, having to fire up the BarBQ (which NEVER goes smoothly) and having to figure out what food I’m going to make to feed all these people that are allegedly coming. bleh

Learning ColdFusion 4 stress
It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m more familiar with PHP for database manipulation than anything else. (See wordpress). But when I was originally propositioned at work to learn this technology I of course agreed and now I really wish I was doing something else. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m basically learning as I’m going through the joy that is the Internet Tutorial, but it really feels like ColdFusion is forcing me to learn a new scripting language that is just different enough from most standards that I have to stop and look everything up every 5 seconds. And as there’s basically only one other guy in the office with CF experience, I bet I’m gonna have to start doing this a lot more in the future.

Impending House Purchase ? stress
And finally on the pain train is the impending house purchase for which I have settlement on Monday. For some reason, it’s really not stressing me out as much as it should be. Maybe it’s the fact that I probably won’t be moving in ’till Sept or that I’m ok paying copious amounts in the way of bills. One thing is for certain though and that’s that I have very limited time to renew my real estate license if I’m going to be able to get a referral fee off the purchase. Busy weekend for sure coming up. (#):)

Anyone out there doing anything of interest?

A week ago today, I told you about a relaunch of sorts for me and my projects…

The short of it is, they’re not where I need them to be and so today will be the first day of the rest of their lives.

And because you guys are coming along for the journey, you’ll first need to become aware of all the projects I currently have on the slate so we’re all on the same page Some projects I’ve told you about, and some may be quite new to you.

Bush Mackel

This is of course, this site. I’ve given a LOT of thought lately about the direction I want it to go in… Both revenue wise and more importantly content wise. Later on, we’ll look at this site more in depth and see where it’s both succeeding and failing.

Learn Stuff Online

As far as my online endeavors go, this was my first and remains the one nearest and dearest to my heart. It was originally slated to be a replacement to about.com, which I felt (and still believe) is a horrible site with bad content. In any event, while I learned a lot with my first go at it - Up ’till now it has been a big disappointment in a variety of places and I hope to turn it around.

Bethesda Web Design

Amongst all my projects, this one (imo) has the greatest potential to generate the most money in the shortest period of time. Unfortunately, around the time I started this, I also fell in love with blogging. And I’m sure you know how that ended.

Conclusion
So there you have it. Those are the big projects that I “currently have in the works” and the ones that I need to revamp and get rolling. I undoubtedly have more projects that I want to get going, but these are the big ones I want to focus on now. In the next week or so I’ll go into more detail with these projects so we can really start the fun. (#):)

I don’t remember exactly when, but sometime recently I said that one of things I wanted to do was get myself from point A to point B with my online endeavors.

Obviously, most of us want to do the same in that we all start with projects at point A, and we want them to succeed (get them to point B).

Up until now I’ve been talking a good game on here, but I think it’s high time to take things to the next level.

“What in the Devil Are You Talking About?”
Like most of us out there, I have my hands in a couple different pots. And also like most of us, I’m not doing enough to get myself and these projects to where I want them and need them to be so that I can declare them successful. So what I’m proposing here and now is a magical mystery tour of sorts… You, me and my projects. From point A to point B.

I want to share with you everything that I’m thinking with all of them, set some concrete goals, and work hard as sin to get my sites/projects to “that point” as quickly and intelligently as I can.

Coming Up
In the next couple of days, I’m hoping to share with you all the projects that I have and furthermore discuss them all in detail in terms of :

• What they are : Currently and My Original Vision
• Where they are now : Stats/Income
• Where I want them to be : Income
• How I see them getting there : Plans

And of course since I’m hoping you’ll all come along for the ride, I hope you will also take this whole thing as an opportunity to discuss in detail all the things that go into these kinds of online businesses… Web development, marketing, seo, link building, affiliate marketing, and anything else that comes up. I’ve never claimed that I was an expert on any of this, but hopefully at the “end” we’ll all be much more knowledgeable in these kinds of things.

So will you join me?

Even though a lot of you said that you really wanted me to bring back the previous theme I had up, I’ve decided to start crafting out something new using this current theme as a template. I know for some of you that leaves you screaming, “Why Bush why?!” So I’ll tell you.

My Design Issues
Even though I occasionally design sites for myself and others, I really don’t fancy myself a designer and especially not an artist. I do however try to notice good design when it presents itself and I also try and take the time to look at my own design techniques. What I know about myself is the following:

• I like red and black. If I let myself just do what I wanted to do, they’d probably find their way into everything I made. While that’s good for me (well it might be good for me) it’s not good to design client’s sites in nothing but red and black.
• I like boxes. That means I like elements to be placed in very defined spaces which design wise really limits what solutions I come up with.

That said, I don’t care too much about my overuse of red and black. They’re good colors and can often be used effectively. However, the whole box thing is something that I’ve become aware of recently (in the last two years) and know that I need to change if I want to grow as a designer. Now I know that most site themes are box like because it makes content presentation easier, but it really seems like everything on my old site had its own box that it lived in. So while admittedly you’ll see some boxes in my new design, I don’t think they’ll be freakin’ everywhere as in the past.

Ads
*sigh* I wasted so much time yesterday starting to design my new theme because of ad incorporation. I wasn’t really having a problem trying to find places to put ads on the site, but moreso I was having a problem justifying the whole thing to myself. Here were my issues:

• CPM Ad - I didn’t have an alotted space for CPM ads before, so I wanted to include them on this one. After much hemming and hawing I was able to toss this ad out because I don’t think I’m getting enough pageviews to justify mucking up my design.
• 125×125 Ads - These are the little guys that are sweeping the blogosphere. The problem with this is, I’m pretty confident I could fill the spots every month, but then I think that spot would look like everyone else’s… Ay yi yi yi. I think I’ll end up incorporating them in the end, but I still can’t shake that Blogsolid article.

Computer Programmer vs Graphic Designer
See? It’s for reasons like this that I got into the field that I did. We only have to ask, “Does it work or not?” Designers on the other hand usually start with one thing, (and if money is involved), end up getting it perverted into something else entirely. Well stay tuned true believers. I’m really hoping to have the new design up by Monday.

Hey everyone! I really appreciate all the feedback I received yesterday on my How Am I Doing post!

It’s really interesting for me to hear from all of you what brings you to my site and obviously what brings you back.

So thanks again! It’s always nice to receive such lofty compliments, and I’m going to continue to do what I do in order to bring a bigger and better site to your doorstep.

What Does All This Mean?
As far as content, I hope it means that I’ll start delivering some really good posts and series again that will help us all out in our web and blogging endeavors. As far as everything else, I really think I need to get more proactive with this site…

Gettin’ it Done
As it relates to blogging, I always keep the following notion in the back of my mind, “What’s the point of writing super content for your site, if there’s no one around to read it?” Now relative to when I first started this thing, I’ve come along way. But if I’m going to get the “next level”, I really need to push the envelope.

And I’m not talking about any black hat seo, but I’m talking about

• increasing readership
• increasing revenue
• increasing traffic

Now a lot of things go into upping the preceding and I’m not going to go into that now, but in the next month or so I really want to start doing the things that I need to to elevate this site to the position it ought to be. And if you hadn’t already figured out, I want to take you along for the ride!

Other Projects
Recently, I’ve been doing a ton of thought into my Learn Stuff Online site. It’s a project I started a while back but never quite got my footing with. But I think through things I’ve learned here with my blog, I’m ready to dive back into it and finally knock it out of the park.

Stay Tuned!
I think up ’till now with my site we’ve all said “this is how you do this, and this is how you do that”, but now it’s time to put my money where I mouth is and really step up to the bat. I’m going to post a lot of details on this site about those projects and hopefully in the process get them to where they need to be plus share with you all how we go about doing it.

Sound good? As we go forward, I hope you’ll all chime in with any questions about things going forward. We’re all on different pages which means we can all give and take a lot from each other. Are you as excited as I am?

No matter what I’m doing, be it personal or professional, I’ve always thought that occassionally asking “How Am I Doing” can’t be a bad thing.

And so I’m thinking that this is a pretty good time to do the same.

“Recently” with my blog, I have really been trying to provide blogging posts in the “morning” and video games in the “evening” with a sponsored post or review in the middle.

Now I’m wondering how it’s working out.

So Let Me Know!
Believe it or not, I actually care what you guys have to think! I mean, just as long as I’m talking about technology and blogging, I’m fine whatever the particulars are. And I hope this conversation of ours doesn’t just stop with topics necessarily. It could be talk about my design, sponsored posts, my replies to comments… It doesn’t matter. I just want to know!

If you need some help to get you thinking on the subject, here’s a little list…

• Beginner’s - If you’re a beginner, what do you wish I talked about more? What could help you out the most?
• Blogging Ethics - Should I talk about this more?
• Contests - Do I have enough? Do I have too many? Do I have too few? Prizes you’d be interested in…
• Design - Do you like my design? Do I have too much crap in my sidebar? Too many categories?
• Money - Do I write too many sponsored posts? Could I write more? Would you like me to explore other ways to make money?
• Content - Is my content something that actually interests you or do you come by because my personality invites you in? What do you want me to talk about more? What do you want me to talk about less? Any posts that I should add like “Wordless Wednesday’s”?
• Personal - Do you want me to be more personal on here? Am I too personal for you already?

Thanks everyone and I hope you’ll help me make this place the best that I can!

I was up pretty late last night having fun with the new server. Well, having fun may not really be accurate. I mean, it’s basically the same thing as what I have now except a lot more responsive.

Which I guess is more fun. At least to me. (#):)

Now this blog isn’t on the new server yet, but I’ve begun to transfer other sites and blogs over. As I write this, I’m transferring 3 sites over

…And it’s going a lot better than I thought it would.

What I’m Learning
I have three blogs now, and when I started them, I uploaded the latest version of Wordpress. Outside of that, I never really updated them and I’ve obviously never moved my blogs to new servers before. Gotta say, the moving process isn’t that bad and if I had thought about things for 3 seconds before I started, I would’ve been able to save a ton of time.

Learn From My Mistakes:

• Domain propagation takes time, so don’t tell yourself you can have your site up and running in an hour when it’ll take X times that hour for your domain to find your new server.
• Once your domain is pointed at your new server, you may find it difficult to get files you left behind. So make sure you take your images, themes and posts with you BEFORE propagation!
• Copy your databases and take note of your e-mail addresses and how they’re setup before you go.
• Check out dnsstuff.com after you get your new server up so you can a heads up on anything that might be amiss with your new server/setup.

More to come soon after I start transferring my Galleries over. That will be great fun I’m sure.

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.

Google and Text Link Penalties
Now if you haven’t heard, the whole penalization for selling text links has gotten a lot of people in web development up in arms. Google has basically asserted that if you sell a text link ad on your site w/o the nofollow tag, you are essentially manipulating their search engine algorithm by unnaturally inflating the “importance” of sites making them appear higher in Google’s search engine results page. Google of course prides itself on being the biggest and best search engine on the web, so they can’t condone behavior like this.

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.

Making Money Without Page Rank
It can be done! And in fact many people are doing it everyday. Us bloggers just need to get out of our box for a second. As I said, sponsored posts are the easiest way for us to make money… We don’t have to search for advertisers ourselves, and we can signup for a program when our site is just starting out. But when we do this, we loose control of our income by depending on our site’s rankings which are largely given to us by other companies like Google and Alexa.So what can we do?

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.

Conclusion
While Page Rank is something that can immediately help your site’s revenue, depending on it to fuel your revenue can cause some massive damage to you if it suddenly taken away from you. Do yourself a favor and plan for long time success by gaining control of your site again!(Parts of this post inspired by Opal T and all the lovely comments she drops on here!)

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.

But besides that, we all know about iWEBTOOL’s Page Rank Predictor right? Well try typing in those sites that have allegedly gotten penalized and it doesn’t return data. Other sites which haven’t been reporting penalties are doing ok per the tool though. Now I’m not saying this means one thing or the other, but I just thought it was interesting.

Once again, it seems like Page Rank is making its way back into our daily conversations.

Lots of my readers have been saying lately that they’re seeing some changing values for their PR, with most saying that their PR has actually dropped.

Does this mean that the heralded PR update is finally making its way through the blogosphere or are people just getting penalized?

Is An Update Happening?
It would seem as if an update of SOME kind is happening. Just comparing the PRs I recorded for sites in this month’s Blog Earnings Report compared to the month before, you can see at least one change - Apexad’s site dropping from PR5 to 4. And others like Opal T have also said that they’re seeing some change on their sites too.

Hopefully I also will be saying soon that I see a change. (And I’m thinking that when since I’m already a PR1 - the big G wouldn’t be so cruel as to drop me to PR 0).

Updating or Penalizing?
If I had noticed or heard of anyone’s PR going up, I’d probably be able to chalk the changing PR to that elusive update we’ve all been waiting for. But all I keep hearing is that PRs are going down.The other day I even received an e-mail from a fellow blogger saying that it appears Google has manually (I say “personally”) penalized his site for selling links by dropping his PR from 3 to a 2! How much does that suck?! I really hope it’s a fluctuation before his real PR hits because I know he has been really making some headway on his blog and this undoubtedly will stunt his marketing efforts.

Have you guys been seeing changing PR on your sites?

Setting the World on Fire
Did you hear that Google is getting rid of Page Rank for their new system called Page Rate!? I hadn’t either until I stumbled onto Ad Tracker’s post about the whole thing.Oops, did I forget to mention that the post was not true?

That’s right kids and it seems to be causing quite a ruckus in web development circles, but I’m sure it’s doing wonders for Ad Tracker’s site and certainly falls in line with what we talked about here on my They Cry Outrage (and Then They Comment) post where you challenge readers beliefs or something they hold dear, and watch everyone come out of the woodworks to say something.

BUT GET THIS!

On the same They Cry Outrage… post, Ad Tracker herself made comments about the subject which now strikes me as hilarious given her current situation!

LOL!!

“what if I were to one day to talk about bringing troops home from Iraq or why the US shouldn’t have an official language…”

That sounds like evil on a John Chow level! I love it!

I have actually considered setting aside one day a week for controversial topics, I just haven’t had the guts yet.

Isn’t it fun to draw the lurkers out of hiding though? :)

Bush - That’s called “Provoking Thoughtful Interaction” and there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact I think it’s smart.

I try to do it on my blog. The difference is I try to use thoughtful introspection to promote reactions. That’s about the only method I could think of to stir the pot on my blog. I’ve kind of set the mold for a “nice-nice, feel-good” kind of place. If I made a post about politics or global warming (same thing?) I’m afraid the place would suffer a melt down. (A big pink, cotton-candy meltdown. That’s not a pretty image.)

So What do YOU Think?
Well it would seem that Ad Tracker has seen quite the opposite of “a big pink, cotton-candy meltdown”, but instead an explosion of traffic and links! Now in fairness, Ad Tracker put her post into a “Humor” category, but I think the tiny text was missed by most that linked to her. So is this post on par with “John Chow evilness”? I’m not sure how people view Ad Tracker’s website (in terms of seriousness), but if say ProBlogger or John Chow had a post like this, how would you view it? Ethical and Humorous? Or just a ploy for more links and traffic?

What do you think? PR Updates and that Ad Tracker post make me think that you guys will have a lot to say! Let’s hear it!