Blind Ape Seo

Description
Also known as “Project D” for the 47 day challenge, this is a small site about moleskines.

It is as good an example of a niche site as it gets.
The topic is the “moleskines” brand of notebooks, it is handcoded, took about 2 hours including content and is monetized via amazon.

One of the main reasons this works is the domain name.
All traffic is pure organic search results. I’ve done no more than link to it on some of my sites.
It brings in about 2 bucks a month and some more in Christmas season.
Last year it made about 50$ profit after subtracting hosting costs.

For those interested in ROI, it rings in at 400%.

Proven it’s worth, I want to give this little site some love and multiply its adspace.

Multiply your adspace times X using lightbox
Clicking on one of the dormant links in the wickedfire header will prompt a box to pop up, adding a dark layer on the site and shopwing a picture. Many people mistake this for a flash animation at first, but it is a small JavaScript called Lightbox.
The interesting part of lightbox is the description you can enter for the image. Turns out, you can enter HTML code to format your description.
This gives us the opportunity to enter the HTML needed for advertising.

Caution!
Javascript won’t work. So you’re out of luck with adsense, but any static HTML is fine.

For those interested in Javascript, flash, etc.. for something like lightbox, check out thickbox.

So what will I be doing?
Basically, collect a few nice moleskine pictures to display in my lightboxes. Add amazon to every lightbox. For 10 pictures, I can display 10 more ads.

Other Benefits
Lightbox has several benefits that should work well for advertising:

• It darkens the rest of the site, making the user focus on the image (and adspace)
• It does not interfere with the layout
• The user stays on the page while looking at the pretty picture
• The user is looking at something he’s interested in, you can display your ad right beside it

Setting it up
Download lightbox http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox/
Read the Tutorials. (Really easy, it is just one page)
The script weighs in at about 5K, making it a lightweight addition to your site.

So I set this up for my product page here:
Collected an image of a lined moleskine, added a button “view details” which prompts the lightbox.
Set up the amazon link in the lightbox, using the small colorcoded moleskine icon.

How to enter the HTML code?
Well, saying “any html will work” is not quite right. You need to strip and/or escape some characters from your code to prevent it from breaking the Javascript surrounding it.

These are the less than sign < and quotation marks “

Just replace them with < and single quotes, respectively.
You could also just leave out the quotation marks, but I find readability is better using single quotes.

So your amazon code looking like this:

<a href=http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0009WOZBE? ie=UTF8&tag=XXXYZ-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1638&creative=6742&creativeASIN=B0009WOZBE>Drei Amen für den Satan</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.de/e/ir?t=XXXYZ-21&l=as2&o=3&a=B0009WOZBE” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;”>

Becomes this:
<a href=”images/image-1.jpg” rel=”lightbox” title=”<a href=’http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0009WOZBE? ie=UTF8&tag=XXXYZ-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1638&creative=6742&creativeASIN=B0009WOZBE’>Drei Amen für den Satan</a><img src=’http://www.assoc-amazon.de/e/ir?t=XXXYZ-21&l=as2&o=3&a=B0009WOZBE width=’1′ height=’1′ border=’0′ style=’border:none !important; margin:0px !important;’>“><img src=”images/thumb-1.jpg” width=”100″ height=”40″/>
</a>

Rinse and repeat.

Voila, you’ve got adspace times images now.

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I will slowly take the articles that I have published to the wickedfire gay forum onto this blog.

Don’t worry, they will also stay up on wickedfire.

I chose the first one, “A clear inventory“, because again I just stumbled across the issue that prompted me to write it.

Being a webmaster often consists of a myriad of little tasks that have to be done for every domain. It is easy to loose sight of issues surrounding the development.

Read more here

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Jan has thrown the gauntlet and challenged everyone to get off our collective butts in her 47 day challenge.

So here are the goals of the simian sensei - yours truly.

Project A
Project A is  a pure moneymaking project. It is nothing illegal, just grabbing money from the dumb and dense.
Although pretty much a no brainer, it involves a lot of manual work, so I have been putting this off.
Should be finished mid to late march and start raking in $$ by end of April.

Current Status: Started design, started data collection.
Goal: Up and running.

Project B
Similar to project A this needs a lot of manual work, although considerable less.
Project B is only an idea, although the domain has been secured. Will need a design, content, advertising setup, etc..
Different from project A, this can be up and running with partial content.

Current Status: Secured domain
Goal: Up and running, 50% + of content, started marketing.

Project C
Porject C are my two funblogs. The .de has been doing fine for some time now, but needs a software change (to Wordpress) and new content. A new design would not be amiss. The .com is set up in wordpress but also needs design and definitely more content.

Current Status: .com needs design and content, .de software and design
Goal: Installed WP on C.de and design on both. 15 posts for each.

Project D
Almost forgot about project D. D is the little site that could. Essentially an amazon front for moleskine notebooks, this ugly little duckling has been consistently earning its hosting costs and then some.
Time to update.
I’ve got some nice ideas for it, that I will also spin into an article for the gay forum I frequent.

Status: Needs an update, chucgging along nicely.
Goal: Update design and content, make article.

See, there ya go.
Will keep ya updated.

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Ending a post titled “Do it fucking now” with a quote from a Shakespearian play must be a sign of class.

Anyway, hop on over and read it.

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My 9 to 5?
I work as an IT project manager in a huge international company.
As with any IT in any company, we are heavily into project and process management.

The countless hours spent in meetings, teams formed just to define processes, Quality Managers looking at projects, crueling process audits,…
Does this all work out? Does the effort pay out in the end?

Here is one example of what is happening. (Names changed to protect the guilty.)

dev: “I need to deploy this program to the test server. I’ll call Harry, he knows what he’s got to do.”
<phone call><done>

<Project Management falls from the sky>

PM: “This can’t go on, we need to document what is being done.”
dev:”Fair deal, this will make my work easier and save my butt from time to time. Done.”
PM:”You also need to write this document and fill out that form and report to this person and write to the Change Management team and enter the schedule in the scheduler control and….”
dev: “$#@% !! Alright, I’ll just write a program to do all that.”

(Actually, not a bad idea. No one says the docs have to be written by hand. And programs make it less tedious and are less error prone. Automation FTW!)

The situation now (this actually happened to me just yesterday)

me:”We need to deploy to the test server”
dev:”Sure, I’ll just call Harry, he knows what to do.”
me:”Err, the scheduling program won’t let us, until we have the docs. And there are new components, after all.”
dev:”$#@% !! Well, I can’t generate all of it, I’ll just fake it.”

<fakes it, enters some additional content by hand>

me:”Err… that might work, but what if that ain’t good enough at inspection?”
dev:”That’s 180 pages of automatically generated documentation, the stuff I entered is sloppy, but not wrong. Let them read the fucker and try to find any error.”
me:”OK, this is urgent so what do we do now?”
dev:”I’ll call Harry, he knows what to do.”
<phone call><done>

So this company basically moved from:

“I’ll call [personX], he knows what to do.”

to:

“I’ll call [personX], he knows what to do.”

In between we are now feeding an additional project manager, a quality management initiative with X teams (I really do not know, but it the head count is in the hundreds, in this city alone), wrote a documentation generator, killed a few thousand trees and annoyed countless developers and added hours to every little step along the way.

Somehow, I fail to be convinced.

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So I am writing a review for Earners Blog.

First off, I’ll have to admit that I am
doing this because of the contest you’ll find on the site here.

If you want to enter the contest as well,
feel free to join.

Putting the contest aside, I have been
reading earners for quite some time now and always find it a good and
refreshing read.

The topics covered in earners blog are
nothing new. A mix of industry news, blackhat, social marketing, SEO knowledge,
blog marketing etc..

However, the ideas presented on the site often
take a new twist on the affiliate marketing and SEO game. And new ideas are
what makes me want to read a blog. As for this, earners blog is up to par with
Eli’s bluehatseo for me, although the tone is a bit more more mellow.

Even when the topic of the day is nothing
new, earners takes its time to explain the concepts behind the idea, thus making
it a good read for noobs and intermediate marketers as well. Here the mellow
tone helps a lot. This has helped this sorry ape more times than I’d like to
admit.

Those following the path of the ape will
know that general craziness is what I am after. Although not nearly often
enough, this craving gets satisfied frequently while reading earners.

All in all, earners is a blog I’d recommend
for any “must read” list for affiliate marketing, presenting a good
mix of old and new ideas.

Read it and enjoy.

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