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It is sad to say that I am finally now just finding my niche. I’ve been at this a few years and I really should have known all along, my niche is in the piracy scene. The main reason I can pinpoint for not finding this sooner is a sad and simple one: self deception.
Yes, its true. I’ve always had an interest in the technical aspect of web2.0 and I thought that this would be a better subject for my blog. I think maybe I wanted to appear more altruistic, but iOno… Since first discovering the internet my primary pastime has been using it to get free shit. So it appears that I was severely limiting myself and my blog by not writing about the things that interest me (and apparently many other users) most.
Here are the facts people:
$7000.00 in ppc revenue can’t be wrong.
All my incoming traffic comes from posts concerning piracy.
I have wasted almost two years with no revenue.
The number one rule of writing is still: Write what you know.
The number one rule of effective SEO is still: Write quality content.
You see where I’m going with this right? The SEO is dependent on the writing and the writing is dependent on your interest. Don’t make my mistake, don’t lie to yourself. Knowing yourself is equivalent to knowing your niche.
Don’t take this post to mean that i condone software piracy Instead take it to mean that i think “software piracy” is a term made up by the industry to conjure up images of evil people raping and pillaging the poor workers in silicone valley.
It seems that most of the traffic to this post is coming from another post on my blog, most likely because they share the “software piracy” tag. While I’m happy to have readers for whatever reason I think it is important to note that you people are looking for something that in most cases doesn’t work anymore. The belarc advisor search returns mostly garbage these days. Go to a torrent site or a ddl site instead, you will have better luck!
I’m not certain how long it has been since I’ve had internet at home. The one post I’ve made these last few months was written at the local public library. Now however, luck has graced me with her presence. Recently a neighbor had the good graces to install a wireless connection at her house and not protect the connection. While I plan on getting internet of my own before long I don’t plan on getting bogged down in any ethical dilemmas over stealing wifi.
What concerns me now is getting back on the horse. No, not the heroin silly. My primary occupation on the internet has always been memetracking. My current estimate puts me at about 10,000 memes behind. :/ If you add this to the fact that I was never all that diligent a blogger to begin with you can see my problem; I just don’t know where to get started.
So if you are a blogger who has had to take a long break for personal reasons and had trouble getting your juices flowing again upon your return to the grand old interweb, let me know how!
While she performs average in school I know there is more in her than bored teachers can unlock. I know the genious of my own child. In addition to that she performs poorly on standardized tests and would soon be unable to graduate normally due to our state’s (Louisiana) laws.
How
We aren’t real sure. She is currently sixteen years old and conventional school has failed her in many ways. We have quite a hole to dig out of. Currently we are raiding the library for reading material for her and us both. We have purchased a G.E.D. book from McGraw Hill which we supplement with a wealth of text books I already own, being a nerd has finally paid off .
This blog posts can be seen as a cry for help to other parents out there. Please share your experiences, successes, and failures with me.
I don’t really know how to wrap this piece up but thats ok, the story isn’t over yet. Look for more in the future concerning this homeschooling.
That is what the message should say. I am not a hater. I’m quite the Twitter fanboy actually. I’ve went so far as to call people who bitch about Twitter downtime a douche on public forums. Not something I’m proud of, I’m just saying, don’t think I’m a hater.
I’m not really sure this new transparency that Twitter is trying out is helping to strengthen their public image. From what I’ve seen it mainly gives the haters ammo. Before they would just whine about Twitter being down, now they can point to parts of the architecture and sound knowledgeable.
I would prefer to know what’s going on with my favorite web app and I’m glad they make us aware. However recently the “web2.0 community” has suffered from quite a few negative memes, i.e. the “FriendFeed is better than Twitter” garbage. So I’m not sure if Twitter is really doing what’s best for Twitter by trying to fill in the end user.
You may have noticed that I called Twitter my favorite web app in my previous paragraph. That was no slip on my part. Twitter is my favorite web app. That being said, I refuse to fall into any of these silly arguments. FriendFeed is a strong contender to replace Twitter as my favorite simply because memetracking is inherent in it’s design and that’s what I look for in most of my apps. That’s what I’m interested in. While others use Twitter as a communication device, I use it as a real time memetracker. All the Twitter tools out there help quite a bit though. FriendFeed won’t need those tools.It should be noted that even if Twitter is replaced on my favorites list, I will never abandon Twitter.
I think I’ve about said all I can say for now (and I don’t really think I’ve said anything at all) so…
Insert catchy “signing out” phrase here.
I’ve been looking at a lot of referrer logs and reports lately and I’ve discovered that most of my search engine traffic comes from here. This is because of a link I once bookmarked in Del.icio.us. At the time that I did this I was using the FeedWordpress plugin from Rad Geek. At a later time when no longer using the plugin somehow the permalink for that post got b0rked and no longer pointed to the site I had bookmarked. This resulted in a page on my site being indexed by Google with the words ‘ “Windows XP Professional” “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key:’ on it.
It is at this point that I must admit that the small shallow part of me that wants to get rich with no effort began to scheme. You can’t see me, but I look shamefaced.
I spent the better part of the day searching Google for ‘ “Windows XP Professional” “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key:’ and finding only URLs that had software licenses on them. I then added those URLs to an Adsense for Search widget. I went to my old blog which I still have wordpress admin access to (but not shell access, thus the new blog) and edited the original post, with this:
Update: This site is no longer active my new site is located here. I am currently working on a custom search engine in google that weeds out all the spam sites you find when searching for “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key:. So please check there from time to time to see if I have the search engine completed yet. This may take some time as I’m going through search results by hand and filtering spam sites. Once it is completed I’ll place a link to it here. Hope to see you on the new [XILED] soon!
This post Updated on: June 03, 2008 at 10:03 PM CST
Next, I made a new Page on this site called “Custom Searches” and put my custom search code in there. If you look up at the top You can see the link to it. I then edited the local version of that post with this:
After I had completed all this the part of me that is not a complete wanker woke up and I edited Custom Searches so that it now looks like this:
On this page you will find whatever new Google hack I find interesting.
My first candidate is the “Belarc AdvisorSearch” and it would already be here if Google would just cooperate is finally here. I decided to add this one because I noticed in my referrer logs that Google was sending me some traffic via search for: “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” key. When I tried this search I found an ass load of spam sites. After several hours of removing those I had a nice list of sites left and I thought a custom search would be nifty.
Belarc AdvisorSearch (Results will open in a new window.)This search was removed because I don’t want to be EVIL. If you want to find a product key for software you don’t own then you will have to look elsewhere.
At first I was going to delete the page and both of the posts, but this way I was able to preserve (and actually enhance by fleshing out both posts a little bit and cross-linking the posts and page) the content. Also it inspired me to write this. It will also serve as pointed letter to people who find my site looking for software licenses. There is nothing to see here. This isn’t the blog you’re searching for.
I hope someone who is considering monetizing their site/blog via evil means such as this will find this post and reconsider. If you have something to say and establish a community around your site the money will come in time, be patient.
On an unrelated note, I’ve been trying to think of a phrase I can use to close a blog posts that can be a sort of personal hook. What do we think about this:
Insert catchy “signing out” phrase here.
Update: While I won’t provide you with anything illegal I will give you a list of my favorite download sites.
This entry was written @ 4:52 AM on June 03, 2008 using Notepad++
My internet connection has been up and down all evening and I’ve
given up on my usual memtracking via Google Reader, Twitter, and FriendFeed. I’ve decided instead to try to do something useful with this
time. But what?…
One is that I could shut down my computer (gasp!!) and take this
keyboard apart in hopes that I could stop the ? / key from sticking.
Problem is that I’ve never taken a keyboard apart before. I realize that
this must be a shocking admission from someone who claims to be a geek
but still, its the truth. I guess I’ve just never had a reason. Another
of course is that I could write, which is what I’m doing.
The main problem for me there is that other than technology I don’t
really have much to write about. It seems that the muse of fiction hasn’t
visited in quite some time. I suppose one has to exercise those muscles
from time to time to prevent atrophy, which is why I’ve been thinking of
giving Ficlets try. Of course that brings me back to the same problem. I
want to use Ficlets as a sort of fiction OpenCourseware. A place to jump
off from for story ideas. The strict 1024 character limit Ficlets makes
it almost like an english assignment and I feel my fiction was best when
I was forced to write daily by my wretched old english teacher. Of course
this time I would be in charge of myself and I’m a terrible boss. :/
The other problem with me using Ficlets is that its yet another
online service. I believe now that when I did away with my feed reader
that I made a mistake. My reason for doing so was sound, nobody wants to
read an rss feed twice and I need to read them in Google Reader so that i
can share and or note them. This is a vital part of building a community
around [XILED]. It’s all a part of networking. Yet at times like this,
without an offline rss reader, I am without access to the feeds at all.
The error was in not having a backup. I should have had FeedReader
archiving posts even though I wasn’t using it. Hindsight…
But how am I to backup Ficlets? Sure I can back up my Ficlets and my
favorites and my favorite ficlet authors all via rss(fail once again).
But as for using the service as an idea factory, how am I to back that up?
Screw it, time to take this keyboard apart.
Update: I haven’t worked on my keyboard yet and 12 full hours later my internet is still b0rked. Centurytel, YOU SUCK.
I was just at Plaxo editing my public profile when I thought about how many pages I’ve had to fill out that look like this:
Many of them are now incomplete because I’ve joined other sites and not updated them. How many more will I fill out before some sort of XML based profile list is universally supported? What format would be best? How do we convince these sites to adopt the idea? Answers anyone?
My main reason for adding it was that I’ve decided on this go ’round I’m going to really try to build a presence on the web. There are a few ways you can do this but I consider most of them lame, i.e. link-exchanges. For any lasting effect links are not the answer, people are. Links live in servers housed in data centers. People live in communities.
I think using Disqus will help me build a community much more easily than the standard wordpress comment system. Disqus users will have a user account on my blog already which makes it easier for them to comment. That also makes it easier for me when I do db backups because without the comments the db *should* be much smaller.
It allows users to leave video responses via Seesmic, which makes commenting even easier. No Seesmic account? No problem. You can register a Seesmic account in the comment form without ever leaving the site. That, is awesome.
Also for those of you getting ready to protest about my claim that links don’t matter I know that they are vital part of attracting visitors. Disqus helps out there too. When you install the Disqus wordpress plugin you create a community page at Disqus. Mine is here.
There are also talks of FriendFeed integration which means that the community you build using Disqus will be even larger. Any way I’ve looked at it I see nothing but advantages to Disqus integration. Only time will tell for sure, but I think I’ve made a good choice here. That’s all for now, so let me know what you think.
While I plan on getting internet of my own before long I don’t plan on getting bogged down in any ethical dilemmas over stealing wifi.