This and That on a Friday
Posted On: 2007-11-16
Woo hoo it's Friday! Yep it's that day of the week when the rest of the world goes into wind-down mode but most adult webmasters keep on plugging away at building their empire. I think we'll be going into wind-down mode today because we deserve a break.
We've worked hard and we need a break to make sure we're fresh for next week. Plus we've got other things to distract us this weekend too.
One of our daughters is staying with us for a week - she's part of a team that manages over four thousand servers so there's been lots of interesting technical talk around the dinner table - and we're going to take her jet skiing on the weekend just to help her unwind - her work days are even more hectic than ours.
Holiday Sales
Over this last week I've noticed a few more experienced affiliate marketers in this industry begin to complain that sales are just not happening for them. In lots of ways that's not very surprising because people are worried about their jobs and their home loans and foreclosures are happening everywhere. So naturally people are going to be cautious about spending money.
You might think that over in mainstream there would be a lot of gloom and doom as we approach the Christmas season too but that doesn't seem to be the case. Over there it seems that some people are actually optimistic that online sales will be well up on last year's figures so if you've got some established mainstream sites out there that get some traffic it might be time to add in some advertising for holiday-related items.
It will also be interesting to see what happens on Black Friday this year. I guess that will be the first real indicator of what Christmas might be like for us.
New 'Internationalized' Domain Names
It seems that ICANN is looking at ways it can speed up the development of domain names written in characters other than what we're accustomed to. Think of domain names written and displayed in Chinese or Arabic and you'll have a good understanding of what ICANN is aiming for.
There doesn't appear to be any date set for the introduction of these domain names but it seems unlikely to be something that's going to happen in the short term. Undoubtedly when these domain names are introduced we're going to see another rush by domainers to get control of the best domain names. It will certainly be something worth watching.
Where's the Love Gone?
If you don't know who Matt Cutts is then I guess you haven't been trying to get good search engine placement for very long. Mr. Cutts is the mouthpiece for Google and you will often find interesting little morsels of misinformation on his blog ... misinformation that Google wants you to believe.
You'll also find a lot of sycophants who drool over every one of his posts and can't wait to kiss his ass. I guess that's never going to change but what does seem to be changing is the way Mr Cutts is dealt with by some of the big names in Search Engine Optimisation. I see that one - Aaron Wall - even went so far recently as to suggest that Matt Cutts is 'blindingly hypocritical' about Google.
My my ... what is the world coming to? Up until now Matt's been loved and adored by just about everyone but now it seems that, as Google becomes more and more greedy, the halo that hovers over Matt's head is seen to be slipping and the love is fading away.
Suffering the Page Rank Blues
As you're no doubt aware a few weeks ago Google decided to get tough on some sites that were selling links recently. Of course Google sells links too and it can't handle competition so the best way to deal with it is to destroy it ... but that's ok because Google does no evil. Just remember that the next time Google trashes your sites and you'll understand why Google needs to do what it does.
Anyway, Google's idea of getting tough was to reduce the page rank on those sites that it considered to be the worst offenders and that led to some interesting advertising appearing around the place.
One instance that I saw appeared at the top of my Gmail account. There in a paid ad spot was an Australian directory advertising lifetime links on a PR5 directory site for just $4.95. The only problem was that after Google had finished boning their competition this PR5 directory site was only a PR3.
At first I laughed ... then I felt rather sad ... and then I realized that Google couldn't care less about it's advertisers ... all they care about is screwing them for money while screwing them in every other way they possibly can because some of them want to compete with Google. But of course I must be wrong ... Google does no evil.
I would love to see Google's definition of just what is 'evil'
Have a great weekend!