I’ve had a lot of fun updating this blog since I started it nearly three years ago, but the time has come (at least, for now) to move on.
I started this blog back in January 2007 after returning from my first ever trip to CES. As lame as it sounds, that trip literally changed my life and ultimately the direction I wanted to take it. I met some amazing people during and shortly after that trip that showed me anything was possible and I could make one of my dreams a reality.
This blog has been online and active for 2 1/2 years which is an eternity in the blogsphere. So why am I deciding to end it now?
The first reason is time, or lack of. I don’t seem to have as much free time as I did when I started this adventure. I have since moved backed closer to all of my friends and have taken on additional review opportunities online. This gives me less time to devote to the blog, which needs a lot of attention and dedication to be successful. Not only do you have to update your blog frequently, it is also important that you read other blogs and comment there as well. Stuff like this helps to drive traffic to your own site.
In what seems to make very little sense, now that I have moved closer to my friends, I tend to do less “exciting” things and thus, there really isn’t as much interesting stuff for me to post here. Blog posts used to come naturally and I always had something to talk about or an opinion to voice, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I guess you can say I got boring!
When I started this site, social networking was still relatively new. Now that Twitter and Facebook have changed the way we communicate and share information online, I can simply share my experiences through these mediums instead. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or add me as a friend on Facebook and I will do the same.
I still have a lot of things I want to accomplish and unfortunately this blog is at the bottom of the list. I toyed with the idea of monetizing this blog and changing its focus or even starting a new niche blog altogether, but as I have said in the past, that just didn’t feel right. There are a lot of things about blog marketing and such that I would have to research beforehand and again, I don’t have the time for that right now.
For now, however, I am just going to keep on keeping on and doing the things I love. I still love photography and will continue to post pictures on Facebook and Flickr. I’m still a big Dave Ramsey fan and hard at working paying off all of my old debt. Heck, I might even change my outlook on being single LOL.
All kidding aside, I want to thank everyone who has stopped by, read a post and commented on something here. I am certain the site wouldn’t have lasted this long had it not been for the reader participation during some of the blog’s more active times. I will be leaving the site online as I feel there are some valuable posts that others could learn from.
Last month I was selected as the winner in Michael Kwan’sE3 Expo Swag Contest! Normally I don’t enter very many contests as my luck is less than stellar, but entry in this contest was very easy so I went ahead and threw my name in the hat. I had actually forgot all about the contest when I got the news that I had won heh.
Thanks again to Michael for hosting this contest. Now I just need to find some time to check out Battlefield 1943
Last night Adam, Kiwi, Lexie and I went to the Collective Soul concert at Snowden Grove. They were originally scheduled to play last year but ended up canceling for some reason.
This was the first time I had been to the amphitheater and honestly I kinda expected it to be a little larger. We arrived just as Green River Ordinance was wrapping up their set. Surprisingly enough, Collective Soul went on before Gavin DeGraw. I would have guessed CS to be a larger draw than DeGraw, but I guess not. It ended up being for the better, as we all came to see Collective Soul anyway which meant less waiting and we got to leave early!
We found some pretty decent seats on the main concourse level, so nothing to complain about there. The seats directly in front of us were box seats and nobody claimed them, which meant there wasn’t a bunch of people blocking our view. I recorded a couple of my favorite songs which are posted below.
Overall their set was really good. There was maybe 1-2 songs that I wish they had played but other than that, it was very enjoyable. The lead singer Ed really puts some effort into his stage presence which can seem a bit odd at times lol. It was definitely worth the ticket price to see one of my favorite band play some of my favorite songs!
Each 4th of July, it seems we always end up watching a fireworks display somewhere. In 2007 and 2008 we ended up in downtown Memphis. This year, Adam, Kiwi and myself decided to try the Olive Branch City Park. It is much closer than downtown Memphis, much nicer, less crowded and has virtually no crime. It was rumored that the city spent 30 grand on the show, so it was expected to be entertaining.
We got to the park plenty early and found a nice spot to view the display. Seeing as I love photography, I was pretty excited to get some good photos, but that didn’t really happen. The park staff decided to leave the street lights on, so fail there. Also, it was pretty windy so 99% of the over 200 pictures I snapped turned out blurry and unusable. I managed to get a small handful that turned out semi-decent which I have posted below. You can click each photo for a larger version.
You would think that my fireworks pics would progressively get better over the years with experience but that hasn’t been the case. My 2007 set is by far the best and my favorite.
Either way, I had fun at the park and look forward to trying again next year.
After months of being out of commission (one of this friend’s drove it into a telephone pole), Adam’s Montero is finally alive and running again. Adam did some pretty extensive body work a while back but never got around to fixing the engine until this past week. Somehow the only thing busted was the radiator, which is a pretty simple fix.
He was having some issues with the transmission but it just turned out that it was very flow on fluid. 3.5 quarts later and everything was golden. Below is a short video of the test run.
As you can see, it still isn’t quiet street legal just yet so it may be a bit before he can take it down to the woods for some fun. A front bumper, windshield, tags and insurance are all needed. A temporary bumper and windshield should be somewhat easy to come by at a junk yard and the other things are just a matter of money. Some big boy tires would also help to get through the mud but what he has now should be enough to at least make it to the sand bar.
… although the title of this post SHOULD have been “Tunica Sand Bar Riding”.
Keith owns a ton of land in Tunica near the casinos. This was to be the perfect spot to take the go karts on their maiden voyage, but things didn’t go as planned (when do they ever?).
We initially planned to hit the sand bar on the banks of the Mississippi River, but a virtual swamp of mud and water was blocking the truck so we couldn’t get there. This, of course, after a fallen tree had to be removed without the aid of a chainsaw. We ended up hanging out in an open area then went back to the mud / water hole for some more fun. Below are some photos from Adam riding through the mud with his 4-wheeler (click the photo for a larger size).
Below is a short video that Matt recorded. I thought we had a lot more footage recorded but it seemed nobody could figure out how to operate the camera. Technology fail.
As mentioned earlier, the main purpose of the trip was to test out the two go karts. Keith was even brave enough to back his into the mud hole a few times…
And a video below…
Keith and Matt made a nice course to race on, but just as I was getting set up to record some video, disaster struck.
At the end of the video, you can see Keith stopped moving. This was because his entire steering assembly broke at the welds. Sad boosh.
His kart has since been fixed and we are hoping to take another trip down to the woods in a week or so.
A few weeks ago, Keith and Matt got the crazy idea that they wanted to build go karts. Matt already had most of the tools necessary for the build, but having never welded before, it was certainly going to be an interesting project.
The plan was for Matt to build his first as the prototype then they would likely have all of the kinks worked out when it came time to build Keith’s kart.
Here we have the frame already assembled and on jack stands.
These are some pretty decent welds for being a total n00b.
Matt drilling some holes for the back axle mounts.
LOL, yes that is a school desk. He found an old desk and hacked off the seat and welded it in place. No point in spending money for a seat if you can find one for free.
And finally, the finished product! Well sort of, it still needs a floor pan but that should be coming in the next week or so.
The steering shaft and support bars are hacked pieces from old bicycles and the “wheel” consists of two vertically-mounted handle bars. It might look funny, but it works!
The motor is only 6.5 HP but as you can see in the video below, it’s pretty quick. This wasn’t full throttle either.
Besides the floor pan, Matt is going to add a torque converter which will give it a lot more pep off the line. As is, its a little slow until the clutch locks and full power is put down. Either way, it’s pretty sweet and very cool for a built-from-scratch project.
Work started on Keith’s kart today and hopefully should be finished Saturday. The frame was built today and it’s already looking awesome!
Once you have built a quality website and have a decent amount of content, it’s time to drive traffic to it. I put this post together to share some tips that I have learned over the years in regards to how to analyze traffic trends, find what works and what doesn’t, when to post new content and how to generate a solid and reliable traffic source.
Looking at the general scope of traffic trends, websites tend to generate more visitors in the winter months. Because it is so cold outside, most people stay indoors and thus, get on the computer more than they might in the spring, summer and fall seasons when the weather is nicer and it is more appealing to do outdoor activities. Advertising firms are well aware of this trend as well and some tend to only start new campaigns at the onset of these cooler months.
Moving in closer, there are also some weekly, daily and even hourly trends that you should be aware of to maximize the potential of your articles / reviews. I have noticed that traffic is the strongest on Monday and remains pretty steady throughout the traditional work week. Monday is a high traffic day because people are coming back to work from the weekend and are catching up on everything they may have missed over the weekend.
Traffic remains pretty constant throughout the week, again, simply because people are at work surfing the web rather than doing their jobs. This theory is further solidified by looking at the hourly traffic stats. Without fail, there is a sharp curve around 10:00 a.m. which remains elevated until 5:00 p.m which is roughly the time that most people are at work.
One would think that weekends would bring more traffic since people are off work and free to play on the computer, but that is not true. Weekends tend to be reserved for family time, gaming or other activities not associated with the computer and the Internet. Also, holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are other times when traffic tends to dip down for the same reasons - people simply aren’t spending time at the computer.
How To Generate More Traffic To Your Site
The tips listed here are just a few that I recommend based on my findings with my product review website, but many of these same techniques can be applied to blogging as well.
Before trying to generate some serious traffic, you need to have a solid foundation. This means a well-designed and easy to navigate website and more importantly, some solid content. I will leave it up to you to decide how much content to start with before trying to drive traffic, but I would recommend at least a full month’s worth. This will give new readers something to keep them busy on their first visit and hopefully entice them enough to return.
Depending on the type of website you are running, you will want to check out other similar websites and see if they have a news e-mail address. This is extremely valuable for me, as every time I publish a new review / article, I send out a press release to my news contact list, which has close to 150 addresses on it. These sites receive my press release and then post a news blurb about it in their daily news section. This drives a lot of traffic to the review and can easily double or triple the amount of traffic I would get on a normal day so it is important to build your contact list with as many sites as you can.
This leads me into my next pointer, which is to have some type of daily news update in addition to your original content. Many sites on my contact list will only post news if you return the favor. Also, having a news section gives your readers a reason to check back daily, and sometimes multiple times a day depending on how many times per day you update this news list. For bloggers, the news listed here could be links to posts from some of your favorite blogs.
For bloggers specifically, one of the keys to generating traffic and participation on your blog is to visit and comment on as many other sites as you can make time for. Most sites provide a spot for you to post your site address which will certainly generate traffic from the site owner as well as other readers of said site. Participation and community involvement is absolutely key for bloggers.
Another good idea to generate traffic and more participation is to host a contest or giveaway. I have found that it is best to have a few prizes to give away, as this gives each reader a better chance at winning something. Cold hard cash works well, but if you don’t have any extra money to spend, you can try getting sponsors to donate some prizes in exchange for advertising. If this isn’t an option, perhaps you could give away a service like designing a logo or doing some HTML coding for free. The options here are pretty limitless, just make sure you are actually giving away something with value that your target audience would be interested in. If you do a giveaway, one idea is to have participants submit their e-mail address for inclusion in a newsletter. A weekly newsletter is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site.
A newer but very important marketing tool that you should be taking advantage of is social networking sites, the “Big 3″ as I call them: FacebookMySpace and Twitter. Amass as many friends / followers as you can on each of these networks then use it to your advantage. Create a fan page for your site on Facebook and post updates to it each time you release a new post / article / review. Do the same with MySpace and Twitter, creating a bulletin post / Tweet with each new post. The possibilities here are only limited to how many friends you have, so the more the better!
It is important to remember that offline marketing can be just as lucrative as online promotion. Ideas here can range from promotional pens to custom t-shirts. I probably have close to 10 company promotional t-shirts in my closet that I wear on a regular basis. This is free advertising for the company and a free shirt for me; a win-win situation!
The last bit of information I will offer here today is to print up some business cards. This is vital, especially if you offer some type of service on your site. Business cards are great for networking at trade shows and other social gatherings of like-minded people. Often they are a requirement for admission as well.
These are just a few tips for analyzing traffic sources and generating some more traffic to your site. Let me know if you have any others that I should add to the list!
Even after I swore I never would, I gave Twitter an honest try, I really did. In the short 24 days that I have been a member, it has pretty much been a disaster from the start.
My first day with Twitter was frustrating, as it appeared their service was having technical issues and I couldn’t do simple tasks like update my profile picture… or at times, even refresh my page. Then a few days later, I had a very strange problem where it seemed my account had been taken over… sorta. Some of my updates were still visible, and some of my followers and those I am following were listed, but most weren’t. It seemed they just disappeared.
I created a brand new profile but again, the same problems started popping up almost immediately. After some help from a friend, I changed my password and magically everything was back to normal. Odd.
Another week or so passed and again, the same thing happened, but this time, it was showing a different user’s name on my page. What? I reverted back to changing my password and again, was up and running as if nothing had happened.
The final nail in the coffin occurred late last week, when again, the same thing happened. In the above screenshot, you can see MY page on the right (my URL in the address bar), with “cracker_mandi” as the user name. The funny thing here is that those are MY updates listed below, although only a fraction of them. Now on the left side is what i found on Google as her cached page. It appears this is a real person… very strange.
But this time, I was unable to change my password, as I never received the password change notification email from Twitter. I did some research on Twitter’s page and it seems this is a known issue. I tried contacting Twitter about this but their customer service is a total joke, so no help there. It appears I am now permanently locked out of my account.
I really wanted Twitter to work as I think it could be a powerful marketing tool if used correctly, but after having so many problems in less than a month, is it really worth starting ALL over again?
Have you had any problems with Twitter like this or anything else that went unresolved?
UPDATE - Not five minutes after this post, I was FINALLY able to reset my password and everything is back to normal. Don’t know if I should even fool with it anymore…
