Postcards from the Funny Farm

As some of you know, I am not the biggest fan of Google these days. When I considered how many services I was using of theirs, I was shocked and vowed to stop relying on them. I have been using alternatives, or what I like to call “upgrades,” now and am using nothing Google related currently. I wanted to promote these alternative services in a post so people are reminded Google “aint the only kid on the block.”

First, the Google services I used to have:

1. Search
2. Google Start Page
3. Gmail
4. Analytics
5. Adsense
6. Calendar

and a few more.

Second, the alternative I upgraded them all with (in corresponding order):

1. Yahoo!
2. My Yahoo! Start Page
3. Yahoo! Mail
4. Open Web Analytics
5. Amazon Affiliate Program
6. Yahoo! Calendar

Unlike Google, I will never tell people what services they should use. But I do recommend that you not use Google services, they are a dishonest corporation and they wield too much power in a free-enterprise system. In upgrading Google services to alternatives, you can take their control away a little. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll be useful again.

It was a fairly slow month but I learned a lot. I think February will be a lot better. Just the same, I am being realistic with my goals.Postcards from the Funny Farm
Weblog Analytics January 2008

1,877 Visits: Goal achieved.
61 Visits/Day: avg. Goal missed by 19 :(

Feb Goals:

2,000 Visits
70 Visits/Day avg.

Top Referring Sites (Thank you!)

Social Networks:
1. bumpzee.com
2. stumbleupon.com
3. Wordpress.org
4. blogcatalog.com
5. 9rules.com

Peer/Other:
1. liveslessordinary.wordpress.com
2. lorelle.wordpress.com
3. livetardy.com

Web Publishing:
1. blogcritics.org

Monetization Stats for January 2008

Ads:
Adsense $1.64
Other $0

Pay to Blog:
PayPerPost $50
LoudLaunch $20

Total earnings for January: $71.64

Monetization Goals for February 2008:

Ads:
Adsense $5
Other $5

Pay to Blog:
PayPerPost $30
LoudLaunch $20
Smorty $ 5

Total Feb earnings goal: $65

How are you making money on your blog?

I’m pleased to release my first publicly available WordPress 2-column theme entitled: “Deck Shoes.”

I chose the name due to its simplicity and reliability and I made it as a teaching start-point for CSS but it works out-of-the-box as a powerful and cool theme. Deck shoes is a culmination of all the tumblelog and specially css styled themes I have dissected over the past year along with features I have found useful to my style of “tumble-hybrid” blogging. Its features include:

Specially styled CSS options*
Rotating images in header (customizeable with your own)
Gravatars show up in comments
RSS links by category with RSS images
Customized Adsense areas under header and in posts
Chunky big blockquote graphic
CSS comments throughout as tutorials for changing options

*The specially styled CSS options add variety to your posts. To use them, simply use the div or p class calls in your post (in the code entry editor only. They will not work through the rich text input editor). e.g.,

Will look like this:

This is a test of an aside and now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party whether Democrat or Republican we all have toes so we should all wear deck shoes.

NOTE: due to Wordpress self correcting feature, once a DIV special style is inputted it will revert to a P if opened for editing after being saved. You have to change it back if you choose to re-edit. ALSO: To get the photo styling to center with a border, just add class=”center” in the img line. Questions? Leave a comment.

Here are the p, div classes included out-of-the-box:

aside, thought, code, notepad, photo

When you get the hang of it, it is fairly easy to create your own special styles. I made this theme for beginners mostly to learn css and special styling from my examples. Enjoy! I appreciate your feedback.

Demo it here

Download latest version of it here

This blog’s stats for the Month Ending December 31, 2007Traffic
Total Visits: 1,173
Average Daily Hits: 38
Average Daily RSS: 36

Ranking
Google Page Rank: 4
Technorati Authority: 92

Money
Commission Junction: $ 0
Adsense: $ 1.03
Pay Per Post: $70.00

Dollar Total: $71.03
__

Goals for January, 2007:

Traffic

1. 1500 total hits.
2. Post one or more relevant, seo friendly posts per day.
3. Daily average of 80 hits

Money

1. Continue to learn and use Adsense and PayPerPost.
2. Write a post for Smorty.
3. Break $100 in earnings for January 2008.

This is the first post in a monthly series I am calling: “Blog Traffic, Rank, and Money.” I invite you to watch the progress of my blog. I also hope you can take something from the data to help boost your traffic, ranking, and money. As far as December goes, all I want to say is this: The only way to go is up ;) As things rise, I vow to share what worked and, as Derek Semmler has pointed out to me, sometimes what didn’t!

I invite you to subscribe and keep up with the updates!

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