SOME RANDOM DUDE

This post will have been the 8th blog entry in two months. To put that into perspective, in the month of March 2007 this blog had 34 posts alone. Frankly, this is not surprising - updates have slowly trickled downward for the past 3 or 4 months now. There are a few reasons for this - which I can get into in a later post. However, it has been clear that the current model of how I have blogging up to this point on Some Random Dude is not sustainable, nor is it smart. The effort/reward ratio is just not high enough - and while I was willing and able to a year ago, I am no longer.

The thing that has gotten to me the most is the amount of manual labor it takes to publish frequently. I would post 3 or 4 times a week and the traffic would frankly not reflect what I think it should have. Make no mistake, I am not in the camp that believes traffic is the sole measure of success and value - however, it is important. About one year ago, I started setting goals for what I would like to achieve with this blog - goals that I concluded would only be possible with a relatively high frequency of postings. That notion then put me into the pattern of regular weekly posts which became more of a chore than it should have been. I do not think that there’s no coincidence between the fact that some of my most popular posts were written before I started posting weekly content. In retrospect, I sold-out quality for quantity and I am kicking myself now for that.
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I have been holding off posting this for a while for a few reasons, but considering how lack-luster the frequency of posts have been on this blog, I thought it may be a good thing to write about. While my blogging has gone down, I have found I have been publishing in short format much more frequently. My Twitter account is updated pretty frequently thanks to some good tools. I found that the short I-only-want-to-spend-10-to-15-seconds-to-post-something format is something I can handle even when I am busy as hell. Why? Because it is completely valid to write “Busy as hell” as a Twitter post.

This very reason is why I got interested in Tumblr. I feel as though Tumblr can be just like Twitter except with the additional media aspects. Luckily, Tumblr has a couple nice tools for posting as well. I find that Tumblr is the best balance of ease/speed and features that I have found up to this point. As free time diminishes, I see Tumblr (or a Tumblr-esque format) becoming a bigger part of my daily postings as time goes by.

Up to this point, my Tumblr is pretty low-brow and is all over the place in terms of content. Additionally, the site is still rockin’ the default style (which I hope to change soon). However, if you can forgive the above shortcomings, I think you may find it entertaining.

somerandomdude.tumblr.com

blog, blogging, free time, good tools, lack luster, low brow, postings, some random dude, tumbling, tumblr, tumbr twitter

Recently, Kevin suggested on a recent post that subscribing to posts would be a helpful feature. It took some time, but I finally got to this feature. I would love to get feedback on how it works and if anyone has any troubles with it. My time has been extremely minimal as of late, so any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated.blogging, comments, some random dude, subscribe to comments subscription

As discussed recently, I posed the question to the community whether it would be beneficial to integrate advertising into Some Random Dude. Soon afterward, I read the article, How Ads Really Work: Superfans and Noobs and I became instantly intruiged by the idea of advertising by types of users based on refferals. I feel very staunchly about not penalizing this community (or any for that matter) for the sake of ad revenue. However, for visitors of tag pages which are primarily one-time visitors coming from Google searches, AdSense advertising is actually a good fit. Through studying my logs, I know that Google referred users that visit tag pages tend to leave after on visit - meaning they most likely did not find what they were looking for (unfortunately). AdSense, with its contextual advertising could actually benefit a large segment of this segment sense one or more of the ads may end up being more relevant towards what they were seeking. In addition, these pages are basically never viewed by the frequent readers/visitors, so their experience has been left pristine. This, from my view, seems like the best of both worlds.

I have plans for different areas of Some Random Dude to include non-Some-Random-Dude-content, but I refrain from calling it advertising at this moment. While I would love to go into that, it is a completely different discussion for a later date (hopefully soon). This AdSense integration will most likely generate very little revenue, but it is an interesting experiment that is worth trying. At the very least, if I am going to write about online advertising, I better be participating in it as well…

If you are interested in seeing what the AdSense advertising looks like, just have a look at this tag page. As you will see, the main content is unblemished while still offering the opportunity to generate some revenue. Please let me know you thoughts on this. I personally think it works very well with the goals of this site, but I really want to hear how you feel about it.ad revenue, adsense, advertsing, beneficial, benefit, contextual advertising, frequent readers, google searches, noobs, one time, online advertising some random dude

I think by now many folks that frequent this site know that I am putting a lot of time into clever ways of giving back through this blog. Comment Love has been a lot of fun to keep up, but I really do not want to stop there. A few months ago, I subscribed to GOOD Magazine and have absolutely loved it. For those of you that personally know me, to think that I would actually read a magazine, let alone enjoy it is more than a slight surprise. However, GOOD’s content hits a area of deep passion for myself and I would like to share it with the readers of this site.
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