Blogbuzz

I had occasion to be looking for a movie download and in the course of my search I ended up on a page on “Jaheims Blog“.

The post, titled “Download Yankee Doodle Dandy Online!” was a synopsis / description of the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy” with James Cagney. It also included a link with the anchor text “Download Yankee Doodle Dandy Online Right Now!” which misleads you to believing that by clicking that link, you can download the movie.

Not so.

In actual fact, the link was to http://loomis.ipodpsp.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=YankeeDoodleDandy, which is an affiliate link. When you click on it, you end up at http://www.satellitetvtopc.com/?hop=loomis which is a sales page for one of those “Watch tv on your pc” programs which happens to sell for $49.95.

This is deceptive marketing. Lead someone to believe that they’re going to get something that they’re looking for and in actual fact you’re going to hit them up with a sales page.

I’m not blaming the satellite tv on pc people. This is entirely the fault of the affiliate for engaging in spammy deceptive marketing and I sincerely hope that they lose their affiliate status. This is *NOT* the way to monetize a blog OR sell a product!

Technorati Tags: bullshit, movie download, bogus download, deceptive marketing

watchuonline.com has the dubious distinction of being the first blog to achieve a zero score. I was referred to it by my wife who found it while dropping Entrecards. I decided to take a look at it for myself when I saw the trouble that she was having. The full story follows.

Readability 0

Because of how the page loads and is taken over by what appears to be a full page popup ad for blinkx.com. The actual blog content is only visible for a short period of time and honestly can’t be read.

Layout 0

It’s nearly impossible to determine anything about the layout because the site is only scrollable for the first 10-15 seconds of loading, it’s then taken over by some kind of pop-over ad for blinkx.com

Load time 0

Without doubt it’s the worst I’ve seen for any website in years.. Firebug reported 285 requests that loaded 14.94MB after 2.78 minutes. The page never did finish loading, shortly after that point my browser locked up and had to be restarted.

Scrollability 0

Scrolling is only possible for the first 10-15 seconds of page load time, after that scrollbar dissapeared when the pop-over loaded and never returned.

Writing 0

The only chance I had to read any of the content was by choosing to “view source” and read it through the html, which is a lousy way to have to read a blog (or any website for that matter) and would only be wothwhile under the most extreme of circumstances. A situation that I doubt will ever apply to watchuonline.com unless whatever it’s put through some major re-design of how much and what kind of advertising to use.

Total Score 0

watchuonline.com BuzzRank 0

[it's normally my custom to include links to blogs that I review, however in this case I simply can't recommend it enough to do that. Those who wish can visit the site easily enough but remember this: you have been warned, my browser locked up and died trying to load this site. (Your Mileage May Vary)]

Technorati Tags: entrecard, popover, not viewable, blog, not scrollable, large, site to avoid, blog review, popup, slow loading

It’s a pretty important issue because more and more people are dedicating some of the space on their blogs to advertising. This can range anywhere from producing enough to offset some of the costs of hosting and domain registration to providing a full blown income.

I’ve seen bloggers and conventional webmasters writing about how they’ve got their sites to the point where they’re earning anywhere from $100 to $3,000 a month from sources such as Adsense, Kontera, Clickbank, text links in and out of posts, 125×125 button ads and so on.

While I don’t want to take away from my original intent for this blog, I also would like to see it start earning it’s keep and help around the house. Granted, it’s probably not going to make my coffee in the morning but it could very well pay for the hosting and perhaps a computer upgrade or three.

With that in mind, I’m going to start by shopping around for a new theme. Something in a three column format that combines my favorite features of easy to read text and color combinations and still have enough room in the layout for advertising blocks. Then all I need to do is design the ad blocks so that they aren’t obnoxious yet still are noticeable enough that people will occasionally click on them deliberately.

Just out of curiosity, I’d like some input on what people think of the practice of time-shifting blog posts.

Obviously, there are situations when doing so would put you in violation of the terms of service of a company that you’re working for. I’m talking about regular, plain old blog entries where the content of the post isn’t in any way “time sensitive”. Like for example this post. I’m writing it on 4/7/08 but, because I’ve not been posting on this blog much and I don’t want to allow that big of a gap to continue existing in the archives, I decided to set the date on this post to 3/21/08, eight days after the last one to fill in some of that gap.

Now I know that there’s lots of people who’ll come along and say “thou shalt not time shift”, but then I look at the option on the WordPress dashboard to edit the time stamp and think. “It’s my blog, as long as I’m not violating some agreement I don’t see why I shouldn’t fill some holes in my archives” Besides which, the post is also on-topic, in this case about time shifting.

Hmm.. that sounds good to me. In any event, This plugs a little bit of that hole in the archive. Odds are good I’ll do more of that from time to time but not to worry, they’ll always be on topic. This is still a blog about blogging and blogs.

Technorati Tags: archive, change+date, date, edit+time, time, time+shifting, timestamp