Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Welcome to my Blog

One nice thing about having a blog is that you can do pretty much whatever you want with it - as long as you aren't trying to make a living off it, you don't need to get too hung up on how often you post, whether you're rambling, or how much traffic you get.

I've been pondering posting more, with a corresponding increase in the randomness of what I post about... (I know, hard to believe that's possible). If past trends bear relevance, this little experiment should last until about Christmas, when I can finally open the nifty new Rock Band game, and start my own virtual band.

So, what's on my head as I ponder my blog? According to Google Analytics, this blog has had about 243 visits over the last month, which doesn't include any RSS syndication, just people visiting the page directly. The average user spends a whopping 90 seconds on my blog before seeking greener pastures (I bet I've lost most of you by now...)

Something I've also found fascinating about blogs, is the fact that some people actually make money from their blogs. Some people disparage those people making money as selling out, or being inauthentic. To those people, I say... how about spending a little money at Amazon this Black Friday? (Yes, that's an affiliate link.) In fact, I stuck an Amazon tag cloud widget over to the right - it's fascinating to see what comes up. As I write this, it's busy selling Zunes and Cookbooks. The former, I suppose, because I've talking about them on occasion (although not generally favorably, alas), and the latter no doubt because of my fondness for cocoa. If I get bored of the widget it will come down - I doubt it will make me any money, but I certainly won't complain if it does.

And here's one other tidbit to experiment with... if you find my writing entertaining, and you want to drop a dime in the hat, feel free to use this spiffy little PayPal widget:

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Huh... the "donate" widget leaves a nasty little grey box to the right. Wonder what that's all about...

Carl said...

I think most visitors would use RSS, don't you? I track a large number of blogs, and RSS subscriptions is the only sensible way to keep up with them all.

Unknown said...

Indeed, I expect it's mostly RSS. The only "deep" pages which seem to continually get activity are some of the ones talking about Scorched Earth.

Anonymous said...

Could a Scorched fan donate & pay $20 for the Scorched Earth CD advertised over on classic gaming? paper check and snail mail seems so... 1997. ;)

Unknown said...

Yes, you can order the Scorch CD's from Paypal, just make sure to include the complete shipping information. I'm planning on adding this info to the site next time I get the chance.

Note that Scorch seems to have a variety of issues running under Vista if that's relevant.

Anonymous said...

Sweet! Appreciate the warning. Coincidentally, I have a variety of issues running under Vista too!
I knew I was on the same wavelength with that game so many years ago.

Joshua said...

I hope this still works because I just used it last week. (with my other ID, not this one.)

Unknown said...

Should work fine - if you have any problems, you can use my email address at gmail dot com (username same as the title of the blog).

Joshua said...

In that case, I'll be waiting for it. Thanks for the info.

Joshua said...

Got it today, thanks.

Have you ever thought about including "1.0B" on the CD?

Unknown said...

That's the first time anyone's asked for it - I'm not sure it's different enough to matter. (Or how easy it would be to track it down. :) )

Joshua said...

I've got it. I found it on the internet while downloading a shareware version a long time ago (at least 10 years ago).

That's why I was asking: If you were interested, I could send it to you if you don't have a copy anymore.