The End of the Line: when blogs die

MyMountain has reached the end of the line, and I will no longer be posting to this blog. Some of the posts get regular traffic from the search engines, so I'll keep the blog online. But please do not check back for new content.

Thanks to everyone. Its been fun. I appreciate your comments.

Out with whimper...

Scott

Asthma triggered by dirty desk fan

Tonight we went to the church auction, and everyone got something. My seven year old boy selected a nice desktop air fan. We brought it home, plugged it in, and 15 minutes later he had an asthma attack.

We gave him his medicine, shut off the fan, and turned the air filter in his room to the highest setting. Yet, even after the fan was removed, the reaction continued unabated. We suspected that the pollen and dust that the fan had blown around his room continued to trigger his attack. We removed all his sheets, pillow cushions and vacuumed the room. This seemed to remove the irritant and allow his medicine to work.

After about an hour of suffering, he overcame his reaction, and fell asleep.

Tomorrow I'll replace the fan with a new one, since he really liked having a fan and had big plans for keeping himself cool all summer long (even though we have central air conditioning).

Just something to keep in mind: keep asthmatic kids away from dirty old fans. I'm willing to bet $1000 that whoever donated the fan to the church auction had a cat or was a smoker, both major triggers for his asthma.

Geo targeting ads on small web sites

No wonder Yahoo bought RightMedia this week.

I recently dumped Yahoo Publisher Network. In large part the reason was because YPN put the onus on me to only show their ads to U.S. visitors. If too many people log on from the UK, Canada or China, or whereever, I risk losing my YPN account. Strategically, it might be handy to have a YPN account in the future, so in the short term I decided to just drop YPN and go with Google. Google lets me show ads to any visitor.

YPN other publishers such as 7Search (who I had earlier lauded in this blog) apparently lack the will or technology to do their own Geotargeting. They sluff it off on website owners. Its certainly possible, although in convenient and resource intensive, to take the hours necessary to implement OpenAds or screw around with .htaccess files to do what these companies are unwilling to do.

If you've ever tried to make money off of a website, you probably know its not that easy. But having "partners" like YPN or 7Search that force you to do their dirty work doesn't make it easy.

With the purchase of RightMedia, Yahoo acquired the technology to geo-serve ads, as well as the ability to serve unfilled inventory by showing ads from other networks. This acquisition is, by my account, an excellent move by Yahoo.

Some day, I hope to learn that YPN has started doing their own dirty work by geotargeting their own ads. That will make YPN a better partner. That's what I'm saving my YPN account for. Until that day, my YPN account will sit in mothballs, and I will make money with Google instead.

YPN versus Adsense: which is better?

Since Adsense took me back, I've been wanting to know: which is better? Yahoo Publisher's Network (YPN) or Google Adsense.

To figure this out for my website, I decided that I would replace YPN's ads with Adsense, and run Adsense for about a month. This would ensure that the ad placement on the site was comparable, and provide Adsense with a reasonable period of time to target their ads to the site.

The results are below. CPM is average revenue per 1,000 ad impressions. CTR is the average click through rate, and Avg Rev/Click is the revenue divided by the number of clicks.

Here are the results:

Rev. per CPM CTR% Avg Rev/Click
YPN $0.87 0.2% $0.53
Adsense $1.75 1.27% $0.138


Although Adsense yielded less revenue per click, this was far offset by Adsense's ability to gain a better click through rate (i/e more clicks), presumably through better ad targeting. Adsense also yielded more revenue per 1,000 impressions.

This site is a file sharing site. Your website might exprience different results. But I was very impressed with Adsense's ability gain such a high CTR.

With YPN requiring publishers to geo-target their ads to only U.S. visitors, I have to conclucde that Adsense is the more convenient, higher-yielding choice at this time.

File Hosting Sites - How to Buy and Sell

I've become addicted to SitePoint, the popular forum where people come to buy and sell websites, typically in the $50 to $50,000 price range.

I've become a bit of an expert on a the ubiquitous single-click file hosting site, the ones where you can upload big files, and then share the link.

A couple things I've learned:

If the site gets any kind of serious traffic, i/e upwards of 30k unique visitors per month, you will a dedicated server with 100mb connection (make sure its full duplex) and minimum 100mb port, preferably with dedicated bandwidth. 4 GB of memory is a must if its going to scale, and a minimum of 250 GB of disk space -- the more the better. Plan on $300/mo for a server like this.

In monetizing these sites, its important to consider where the traffic is coming from. A site that gets traffic primarily from China or Hong Kong will not presently do very well with advertisers. If the site gets at least 25% of traffic from the US, then you can probably earn $3 per 1,000 unique visitors, and possibly more if you are creative. The challenge is to monetize the site without driving away your returning visitors. Pop-ups and -unders a quick way to lose repeat visits.

Beware of sites that have just been launched, where the owner wants to earn a premium.
Here's what can happen to a file hosting site that grows too quickly and doesn't scale.
A quick rise up the Alexa ranks could precipitate a fast fall.

Here's a file hosting site that has a history of measured growth. When you see it like this, its usually "organic" growth. Organically grown sites typically take longer to build, but are more sustainable that the fast growth sites.

There are a million file hosting services on the web. Many of them use a few different scripts, such as RapidUpload, MegaFileHostingScript by yabsoft.com, or a variety of others.

I typically value such sites initially by looking at sustained traffic (last month's, never next month's), multiplying it by $3, subtracting server hosting costs, and then multiplying by 5 (10 on a good day). That will give me a sense of how long it should take to recover my initial investment. I am never interested in file hosting sites that have less than 50k visitors per month.

Other things to consider: is there any page rank, so you might be able to sell textlink ads? Has it been banned from Google? How maxed out is the server? How much porn is on the site, and how do you feel about that personally? Are there any paid users? Is the site a haven for illegal warez files? Will you have time to good make a good faith effort to purge illegal files from the system, or do you just plan to let it become a free-for-all?


This should get you started with evaluating the worth of a file hosting site. What did I miss?

Making Up with Google: How I restored my Adsense Account

I finally did. I swallowed hard, and went hat in hand to Google, and said those difficult words. "I'm sorry."

My odyssey began about 13 months ago. I had signed up for Google Adsense, that ubiquitous program that has been responsible for flooding the internet with advertising. I signed up mostly out of curiosity. I did not own any web properties that had enough traffic to make any money. I made a few cents here and there, but I didn't really care.

One day I decided I was going to promote a new website. So I went out to Adbrite, and marketing genius that I am, I purchased the cheapest ads I could find: interstitial ads that would display my site as an "intermission" on someone else's site. They were only 1 cent per "visitor," so I thought, "Hmm! I'll take 20 bucks worth."

Adbrite, no doubt wanting to give me the most money for my dollar, loaded me up, man! Instead of just sending me 2,000 visitors over the course of a day, they sent me more than 100,000 visitors in about an hour.

That flood of traffic caused my web hosting provider to shut me down for a week. But most significantly, it raised a flag at Google Adsense and caused my account to be banned for "unusual" traffic and probably about 10 other things.

I didn't care at the time, but fast forward 13 months to today: I now own a web property that has 2,000 unique visitors per day, about 130,000 page views per month, and its growing at 70% per month. I've had to move the site from a shared hosting account to a dedicated server that runs about $200 per month.

I started running Yahoo ads, thinking that they would be a good alternative to Google. And Yahoo has a good thing going, but its not Adsense. Not even close. Yahoo only wants US traffic right now, and has been banning sites that display its ads to non-US users. Although I was making good money on Yahoo, I soon realized that my traffic was becoming more and more international. US traffic is now about 40% of my site. I played around with some geo-targeting, but its not a piece of cake, and not a sure thing. With the prospect of finding myself unable to effectively monetize a fast growing part of my site's user base, and with the fear of getting banned from Yahoo, my course of action was clear: time to kiss and make up with Google.

I tried logging into my old Adsense account, and saw the cold greeting: Account closed.

I decided to enter a ticket in the Adsense support system. With my best English grammar and most polite tone, I explained that I was sorry for my past misdeeds. I tried to explain what had happened, that in my zeal to promote my website and with my inexperience with Adsense, I had caused their advertisers pain, and that it would never happen again. I sent the message, and received a canned email response.

The next day, I replied to the "response" email from Google. I had added that I had put procedures in place to educate my marketing people about Adsense. This was done to ensure that there would be no similar problems on the site.

The following day, I sent another rely to the response email: this time I reassured them that I had been successful in the Yahoo program, and offered to supply any proof of my good citizenship in YPN.

Yep. I sent one more reply, stating how important it would be to me to use Adsense again. That the program would be so valuable to me that I would never dare to let it down.

The next day I fished an email out of my "spam" box from Google. Subject: "Account Reinstated."

"Thank you for your appeal. We have reviewed your circumstances and have reinstated your account, effective immediately. Please note that there will be a delay of up to 48 hours before our servers are informed of the update and ads start running on your website again."

Adsense is up and running. I'm very excited to be back in the program. I'm looking forward to being a part of it and seeing how it measures to to Yahoo.

So if you've been banned from Adsense, take heart. There may be a way to appeal.

If you're in adsense, take care: it's a pain in the ass to get reinstated if you are banned. Take proper precautions.

Right now, I'm convinced that Adsense is just a better program than Yahoo. Adsense is where the advertisers are. Yahoo is just text, but Adsense is banners, text, even video. The ads seem to serve faster. No screwing around with geotargeting my Adsense ads.

Thanks, Google! And Yahoo, keep it up! But you've got a long ways to go, and you really need to do away with that US-traffic-only requirement.

Beware of Servage Hosting.

We had been using Servage as the back end of a hosting service that I operate. The way reselling hosting services works is pretty simple: you pay a lot of money to acquire a new customer, and then you recoup your money, typically in year 2. Servage has a very competitive hosting package, and for its affiliates, it offered a very powerful, scaleable interface.

About a week ago, Servage announced that it was ending its hosting reseller program, and oh, by the way, we will have your customers. So thats it. After spending thousands of dollars to acquire my customers, Servage will simply steal them.

I hope this post will warn others about how your company does business. You may have been with your rights, but not within your ethics.

What goes around, comes around Servage.

Surprisingly good results with 7Search

I've been experimenting with 7Search, as both an advertiser and as an "affiliate."

One of my business websites is a file sharing site with growing traffic. It currently gets about 1000 unique visitors per day, about about 2000 page views, and its growing at 50% per month.

I had been experimenting with monetizing the site using Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN). With YPN, I average about $1.25 per day. YPN, like Google, doesn't allow you to display any other advertisements that are generated by scanning content. So that means I can include static ads, but just not dynamically generated ads.

I have longed been disappointed with YPN's ability to target the users on my site. Somehow, all the ads are always for encryption products, which just doesn't fit. I've tried jiggling their settings, but still, encryption ads. So I've always felt that YPN was not letting me monetize the site in the best interests of myself and my users.

I signed up for 7Search, and decided to implement their "pay-per-text" ads. It's essentially a keyword linked to a page that displays a number of ad units. If a user clicks on an ad unit and stays on that site for at least 20 seconds, you get credit. I can configure pay-per-text so that only display the top 5 paying ad units.

I implemented 3 key words that have very high per click payouts. "Debt Refinancing," "Casinos" and "Free Ring Tones." The first two pay upwards of $1 - $2 per click. The latter still pays about .50 per click. I integrated the text ads into the website, and the results have been very good. Immediately, the Ring Tone text started receiving excellent hits and click throughs, and the others received enough traffic to make want to continue offering them.

After a week, the ads are generating an average of $5.50 per day. So I'm pleased with 7Search on the affiliate side.

On the Advertiser side, I started tracking clicks, and find that I'm actually getting some excellent results with 7Search. The keywords are much cheaper for my keywords than either Google or Overture, and I find that I'm getting a pretty good quality visitor, certainly worth the money that I'm spending. I've used other 3rd tier networks, such as Adbrite, GoClick, Miva and others, but have had very poor results with those services.

Your experience may be different, but in this age of rampant click fraud I am glad to have something positive to tell you about. If you're looking to move some money away from the Google monopoly, 7search might work well for you.

If you're interested in advertising on 7Search, click here to give me a little credit for telling you about it.

Be a 7Search.com Advertiser!

Split Personality -- Moderate Liberal is moving to ModerateLiberal.com

I don't mean to rock your world too much, but The Moderate Liberal is moving to Moderate Liberal.com. I thought it would be interesting to split my personality, from an SEO standpoint, just to see what happens to web traffic. Having a separate site will also let me do stuff that I can't or don't want to do here.

MyMountain will return to its normal human randomness, and despite the personality split you will probably still see a political rant now and again. But the idea is to bring more focus to the Moderate Liberal.

Bush wages War the Expense of America's poor and your children's future.

President Bush unveiled a $2.9 trillion budget today that gives the Pentagon a whopping $50 billion hike at the expense of basic domestic programs. While Bush can find unlimited funds to wage war, including $245 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, he touts cuts for health research and heating subsidies for the poor.

I think most Americans can agree that something needs to be done about Washington's outrageous spending under George W. I think most Americans would also be willing to tighten their belts, and be willing to bite the proverbial bullet in order to put America on a fiscally responsible track.

But what Bush is doing is absolutely outrageous! Slashing and burning America while showing absolutely no restraint on his illegal war is totally insane.

Bush touted his fiscal blueprint as "protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism, keeping the economy strong with low taxes and keeping spending under control." He said after meeting with his Cabinet, "Congress needs to listen to a budget which says no tax increase, and a budget, because of fiscal discipline, that can be balanced in five years."

Bush is absolutely insane and bent on destroying this country that I love. What he is shallowly promising is that "In five years, this'll be someone else's problem." In five years, America will be $20 trillion dollars in debt, and that's when he says we'll stop decifit spending?

What I DO NOT hear Bush promising is that in 5 years, we will have won the war on terror. The world will be a safer place. America will be a stronger country. Even Bush can not make such impossible promises, but yet he can say with a straight face that in "5 years" the budget will be balanced. Bush thinks that Americans don't know the difference between his deficit spending and the DEBT which he proposes to keep growing for another 5 years.

Bush is proposing more of the same failed policies. He is pushing America closer to the edge of destruction, while making the world a more dangerous place.

Mr. Bush, in five years America will realize that you have forced it into bankruptcy. You Sir, are a traitor.

It's up to the Democrats to stop this. This is what we voted them into office for. Show some backbone, Democrats, and stop this insanity.

Bin Laden responds to Bush: "You have succeeded where I have failed."

Congratulations my nemisis, Mr. George W. Bush.

Allah be praised. You have succeeded where I have failed.

When I ordered the Twin Towers to be hit on 9/11, I did not expect the global realignment that occurred. I felt that Europe would run from America at the terror of seeing the towers fall. But thanks to you Mr. Bush, Americas global allies have all but abandoned you.

When I knocked down the Towers, I timed the event for maximum casualties. I was disappointed that only 3,000 infidel lives were lost. But thanks to you Mr. Bush, more than 3,000 additional lives have been lost. You have sent you your people to be walking targets on the streets of Baghdad. Allah willing, 20,000 more will die when they "surge" into Iraq.

Mr. Bush, when you took office, America was paying off its National Debt. That worried me, because my plan involves destroying the source of Americas power: the U.S. Dollar. If the world loses faith in your dollar, then your society will suffer and America will not be able to exert its influence. Thanks to you Mr. Bush, America is now nearly $9 Trillion in debt, with virtually no possibility now of being able to pay off the debt without massive social upheaval in America.

Thank you Mr. Bush for proposing last night to cut taxes while spending more on your military, and more on American Health Care. I know, even though you don't, that America today has more than $50 Trillion in social benefit promises in today's dollars. These are promises made to current and future Social Security recipients, drug benefit recipients, and more. Thank you for virtually guaranteeing the destruction of America through over promising and under taxing. Some day you will pay for these commitments by printing more dollars, thereby debasing America's currency, driving up inflation, driving up taxes, and eroding the equity and dollar holdings of Americans. Of course, you personally will be fine Mr. Bush, as your family has many dollars in foreign holdings through your investments in Carlisle Group.

Thank you also, Mr. Bush, for coming into Iraq and killing that infidel Saddam Hussein and his spawn. In my wildest dreams, I did not even consider this possibility. In the process you have isolated America, driven up your debt, shown the impotence of America, shown America to be brutal, polarized the middle east, and driven countless troops to my cause. The money flows into my purse because you have made me credible, and have proven my words t be correct.

Thank you also for the Abu Ghraib prison pictures. Thank you for the anarchy after the fall of Baghdad. Thank you for the secret prison network in Europe and the "dark flights" that take prisoners to foriegn lands to be tortured. Thank you for showing how cruel America is through torture. Thank you for your brutality at Guantanamo Bay. Thank you for eroding America's civil rights by illegally wire tapping your citizens, suspending habeas corpus, and authorizing the opening of the mail. You have done more harm to America's freedoms than I could ever have done!

You are masterful, Sir. You have succeded brilliantly where I have failed. Where I thought I would knock down a couple of buildings and then throw stones at your soldiers to kill them, you have elevated me (Allah be praised) and my cause. You have almost single handedly bankrupt America. Like a family deep in debt, someday you must come to terms with it.

May that day of reconing be as painful for America as the pain you have caused the people of Iraq.

Mr. Bush, keep making your promises. Keep spending your children's future recklessly. Keep debasing your currency. I could not do better myself

Your Partner in Destroying America,

Osama B. Laden

[Note: the CIA doubts the authenticity of these comments.]

America the Bankrupt?

Do you love your country? Do you care about your children's or grandchildren's future?

Then Please read this.

Now Bush wants to know who is sending you junk mail.

Sneaky bastard is at it again.

Read about it here. http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16381095.htm

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the New York Daily News has learned.

The president asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.