Postcards from the Funny Farm

After much thought, I’ve decided to reinvent my mission statement.  The CAN page has changed and you’ll find the following(below) if you go there.

From the revised CAN page:

It has been said: “If you aim at nothing, you will surely hit it.”

That’s why I rate my own blogs monthly.

It’s also been said that if you do the right thing consistently, then the right things will happen to you.

I’m listing my mission statement here so you will better understand my what I do.  It is:

To create and innovate value for others.

These are my monthly “CAN” goals defined:

C- Circulation is measured by the number of posts and guestblogs I do each month.
A - Association is commenting I do on other blogs.
N - “Nods” are my Blog Safaris, or “link love” posts.

Each month I set new goals and record the results publicly.

Each category gets a percentage score then I add them together and divide by 300 to get the final rating.

I assign my blog a monthly rank value according to this scale:

• 90-100%=
• 75-89%=
• 51-74%=
• 30-50%=
• 11-30%=
• 0-10%=

Current and past monthly CAN. updates can be found here. I enjoy and welcome your comments on this topic.  Setting goals and achieving them must feel better than the best colon cleanser ;)

I post these monthly in case readers find them entertaining, interesting, or useful. I’ve compared it to a diet pill, something that keeps the unwanted out and the good stuff in. For a detailed explanation on the CAN Blog Self Rating System click here. Otherwise, it is fairly self-explanatory.

Goals for July 2008 were:
Circulation: 3
Analytics: 2700 visitors for the month
Net: 200 bucks

Actuals for July were:
Circulation: 3

• Playing During Difficulty at Beplayful.org
• My Take on the Happening at BlogCritics
• Can You Define the Value of a Blog? at The Fuel my...

Analytics: 4504 visitors for the month (blew my goal out of the water!)
Net: $217.50

Overall Rating: 5/5

Goals for August are:
Circulation: 4 incoming links from guest blog posts. (at time of writing this, 2 are already submitted and not yet published)
Analytics: 5000 uniques
Net: $250 (Ideally I should get more jobs now because my Google PR4 is restored … we’ll see).

This post is another (I hope the last) rant about Google so feel free to jump ship before you go one. I don’t usually like to whine about stuff, I like to change things or shut up generally. After this post I plan to pretty much shut up about Google PageRank but I will respond to comments of course ;)

I’ve been setting goals for my blog and recording them here since December of 2007. It has been gratifying in almost every respect but I still am not where I’d like to be in other ranking systems such as Google and Technorati. Instead of getting frustrated or trying to game the system, I’ve decided to make my own ranking system based on the things that I value in my blog. I’m calling it the CAN. system My hope is that you, the regular reader, and anyone else who wants to will follow my progress and learn that serious writers can make legitimate money on their blogs without PageRank. My goal since December of 2006 has been to create, innovate, and intergrate quality content. I haven’t lost this goal, I’ve simply defined it more clearly and added “money” as a goal element. This blog does NOT deserve to have a zero PageRank.

Google seems to be highly puritanical when it comes to paid-links on a blog. It’s actually worse than “highly puritanical ” it’s near obscenely puritanical … it makes no rational sense. Who are they serving really? Do you care if a helpful blog post was paid or not? I know I don’t.

I have examined Google’s criteria for PageRank and frankly, I don’t think they even know what they are doing with it. Nonetheless, we have to suck it up as bloggers. It’s the industry guideline that advertisers and publishers use when hiring and taking blogs seriously. Thank goodness many influential bloggers are starting to come out against Google. IZEA is leading an effort against PageRank “.... As for me, watch for my first CAN. update in August. You can see my goals for July here. Maybe it will give you something you’ll find engaging to read by your espresso machines.

One thing, I will give away right now as I close: To make my logo and button for the CAN, Rank System was to use a tutorial for Photoshop. If you’d like to try something similar, it’s a lot of fun. The Google logo itself contains a font that costs $99. But this tutorial shows you how to make it with Ti.... It is cool. There are also tutorials there for companies like Hooters and O’Reilly … a lot more fun stuff. Enjoy and remember in whatever it is you blog about you CAN.

How did I do in June of 2008?

Didn’t quite meet my goals in traffic and money, but publishing was a slam dunk. I think Social Media will save me in July.
Traffic
Goal: Traffic: 3,000 uniques
Actual: 2,554 uniques

I spent time playing and exploring ways “outside the box” to blog and you see the consequences here. At the same time, I feel my exploration was worth it. You’ll notice I now have all my top referring social media sites linked in my layout. I am investing more in them: ie; Chawlk, Blog Catalog, etc. We’ll see how that works for July’s numbers. I invite you to join my community at MyBlogLog and some of the other sites through the links at the top and in the sidebar. Networking is cool because the increased traffic works both ways!

Publishing
Goal: 3
Actual: 4

• Create Through Necessity a guest blog at Katelynjane’s Notebook.
• The Upside of Recession: Consciousness published at Blogcritics Magazine.
• Love Homework a guest blog at It Might be Love
• Playing through Diffucult Times a guest blog at Be Playful (Scheduled for an early July publishing)

Money
Goal: 200 bucks.
Actual: 115 bucks.

Due to not having PR, IZEA doesn’t give me the options I used to have as a PR4. This is very ironic since doing paid posts is likely why my PR was taken away, but I am not complaining. I feel like PR is going to change it’s ranking algorithm eventually and I intend to keep writing for hire when it makes sense. I’ll never publish what I consider a boring post. You have my word on that. And hey … 115 bucks is a lot of money! Incidentally, I just thought I’d throw in here that despite the recession, if you live in the area, the Boston jobs are flourishing. Thought I’d send the site out if anyone needs it.

Goals for July 2008 are:
Traffic: 2700 uniques
Publishing: 3
Money: 200 bucks

Final thought:

This month you will see me a lot in social media. I intend to use that more to try and meet my July goal of 2700 uniques. I think it is an untapped resource here at the Farm. I will report the results of this strategy next month. Maybe I’ll see you at the social media sites?

Thanks for following this series! Watch how I do in July 2008. -Damien