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You know, I think I've decided that Thursdays are about the most boring day of the week. The dramas and challenges of the week are just about over on Thursdays but you've still got one whole day to go before the excitement and anticipation of the weekend arrives ... yep Thursdays are dull and boring and much worse than a wet Monday..

Perhaps that's why I tend to sleep in on Thursdays ... if you can call getting up at 5.30am sleeping in. Steve and I linger longer over our morning coffees on a Thursday ... it's much more interesting to sit there at the cafe looking out at the bay than it is to jump up and rush down to the office. And I sit here and look out the window and wish I was out there in the sunshine more on a Thursday.

Meta tags and keywords
Even the news that involves online marketing isn't all that exciting on a Thursday. I see that one of the may search engine boards is warning that we shouldn't be tempted to use competitor's branded keywords in the meta tags on our site and it might not even be safe to bid on keywords that include words trademarked by competitors.

That's not news, that's just plain common sense and if you've been around the adult industry for more than a year or two you would know that. Those of us who have been around for a while will remember a lot of discussion about the words some people used in their meta tags some years back. You could always tell the desperate webmasters by the irrelevant words that they included in those tags in some faint hope that the words would bring them better search engine placement for totally irrelevant terms.

Words like Disney, the names of popular singers and actors and the dreaded 'L' word were something that only seemed to show how desperate people were for traffic. It was always one of the things that link list owners checked for in the sites that were submitted to them for listing ... and it was sad to see some reputable webmasters get so desperate for traffic that they would begin to include those words.

I don't see those words appearing so much anymore ... probably because the keyword meta tag is not quite so important as it once was.

Note my wording in that last sentence; many people suggest these days that the keyword meta tag is of no importance anymore ... but is that really the case? I saw a veiled comment by a well-known search engine optimisation specialist that perhaps one major search engine still places some importance in that meta tag.

Steve and I have done no tests on that so I can't agree or disagree but I did notice the other day that Steve has begun to include that keyword meta tag in the sites he's working on so it will be interesting to see what happens with those sites. Of course we were never big on stuffing that keyword meta tag with hundreds of irrelevant words even when we first started building websites and when that tag was important. Now Steve seems to be even more focused and lists just a few important words.

Being a Webmaster is a health hazard
Something else that has surfaced today that's not really stunning news is a story from the New York Times that suggests that being a blogger can be a serious health hazard. Long hours at the computer, poor diet, lots of stimulants and no exercise can kill you and just to support their argument the NYT mentions the recent demise of two well-known bloggers. I suppose that would be news if we didn't know it already.

Adult webmasters have known for years that a lifestyle that includes the things I mentioned above is just not sustainable. Sure, when you start out you think that you must work 24 hours a day and it even seems cool to work that hard but the fact is that you're just plain crazy if you work like that. Working 24 hours a day will kill you ... it's a known fact ... and if you continue to inflict that sort of workload on your body you could be the next one to go.

Coolness and the desire to make money disappear in a flash the moment the first twinge of pain that comes with a heart attack hits your chest and what's the point of being cool if you're so dead that you can't enjoy it?

Free isn't worth a cent
I also see today that the respected author of 'The Long Tail' has declared that 'free is the future of business' and he's even written a soon to be released book about it. I certainly will be interested to read that book because I still subscribe to the theory that people see absolutely no value in anything they get for free.

Even if they're flat-busted-broke and can't afford to buy something that they really need they still see no value in that something if someone gives it to them for free.

And that's it for this boring Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday and Friday's are always exciting so I'll see you then.