Blogging

Oct 02

Entrepreneurs Will Save America

My friend Will O’Brien just started a blog, and it already looks like a winner. I recommend his first post: “Entrepreneurs Will Save America“.

Sep 02

Google Dropped My Blog, Why?

Blogging Comments

So about a month ago this site, breckyunits.com, dropped precipitiously in Google rankings. I have no idea why. I started this site about one year ago and never has the search engine traffic dropped like this. Daily traffic from Google has fallen over 90%. What used to be about 30-35 visitors from Google per day has dropped to about 3.Boo. I don’t really care, but am curious as to what caused the fallout. Here’s the stats:

Jul 10

AdSense on the Blog

Blogging Comments

About a month ago I threw some Google Adsense ads on the right sidebar of this blog on individual post pages. I didn’t expect to earn any money but I figured why not give it a shot.

One month later the results are in. I earned a whopping $3.19 in direct revenue from BreckYunits.com….To celebrate, I’m taking everyone out to Dunkin Donuts and buying everyone half a munchkin. I also took down the ads, because well, I need some time to figure out what to do with this new found wealth before I earn more.

Date Channel Page impressions Clicks Page CTR Page eCPM [ ? ] Earnings
Thursday, July 10, 2008 byvert 19 0 0.00% $0 $0
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 byvert 136 1 0.74% $0 $0
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 byvert 122 2 1.64% $0.56 $0.07
Monday, July 7, 2008 byvert 139 0 0.00% $0 $0
Sunday, July 6, 2008 byvert 114 0 0.00% $0.01 $0
Saturday, July 5, 2008 byvert 48 0 0.00% $0 $0
Friday, July 4, 2008 byvert 50 0 0.00% $0 $0
Thursday, July 3, 2008 byvert 94 2 2.13% $0.72 $0.07
Wednesday, July 2, 2008 byvert 84 0 0.00% $0 $0
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 byvert 106 0 0.00% $0 $0
Monday, June 30, 2008 byvert 126 0 0.00% $0 $0
Sunday, June 29, 2008 byvert 58 0 0.00% $0 $0
Saturday, June 28, 2008 byvert 44 1 2.27% $0.77 $0.03
Friday, June 27, 2008 byvert 67 0 0.00% $0 $0
Thursday, June 26, 2008 byvert 100 0 0.00% $0 $0
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 byvert 90 0 0.00% $0 $0
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 byvert 166 1 0.60% $1.80 $0.30
Monday, June 23, 2008 byvert 173 0 0.00% $0 $0
Sunday, June 22, 2008 byvert 106 0 0.00% $0 $0
Saturday, June 21, 2008 byvert 92 4 4.35% $18.03 $1.66
Friday, June 20, 2008 byvert 185 0 0.00% $0 $0
Thursday, June 19, 2008 byvert 106 0 0.00% $0 $0
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 byvert 180 1 0.56% $0.34 $0.06
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 byvert 156 3 1.92% $4.49 $0.70
Monday, June 16, 2008 byvert 151 0 0.00% $0 $0
Sunday, June 15, 2008 byvert 62 0 0.00% $0 $0
Saturday, June 14, 2008 byvert 86 0 0.00% $0 $0
Friday, June 13, 2008 byvert 225 0 0.00% $0 $0
Thursday, June 12, 2008 byvert 129 1 0.78% $2.32 $0.30
Totals 3214 16 $3.19

Jul 09

Response to Seth’s Data Ideas

Blogging, Ideas Comments

Seth Godin wrote a post yesterday with a bunch of brainstormed ideas. They were somewhat related to the concept that passively collecting behavior data would allow for very useful decision support. Here are some my thoughts on these ideas.

Let me see the percentage of people who have bought a book and actually finished reading it. (The Kindle knows, right?) Even better, let me see Kindle books that are finished by people who finish books that I finish!

First of all, this measurement would only be worthwhile for novels. If you want a measurement of the usefulness of a book, a better statistic would be the number of times a book is reopened. Sometimes I don’t finish a non-fiction book precisely because it is good–I’ll take my time to get through it because each chapter could have a month’s worth of great ideas to absorb. But if you are talking about reading for entertainment, this would be a pretty good measure. This would alert you to the types of books that you “can’t put down”. But even then there are problems. What do you mean “finished reading it”. Would someone who read the first 490 out of 500 pages finished? What about someone who read only the last 10 out of 500 pages? What about someone who “read” all 500 pages, but did so in 5 minutes?

2. Let me see a map of my town with the location of pedestrian accidents highlighted by color.

This way, I can be on my guard in Spot A, where pedestrian accidents are common, and let my guard down in Spot B, where there’s never been an accident. The beauty of this is that I’ll have to return to the website every month, because everyone became so careful in Spot A and so reckless in Spot B that there’s a new pattern to learn.

3. Give me a listing of all the houses in my city sorted by (value of house/taxes paid). That would go a long way to bringing equity to the assessment system.

I thought you lived in a town? (See idea #2).

4. Sort restaurants on Open Table by the percentage of reservations booked by returning diners.

A lot of people have consistently bad tastes. I know many people that frequently go to chain restaurants. There also are people who are afraid to try new things. And even if some people would rather go to restaurant A, restaurant B could cost half as much and see many returners.

5. Sort Facebook invitations in order of how many times someone has been unfriended.

Let’s also find a way in real life to stop being friends with somebody just because other people do.

6. Sort credit card offers based on data from Mint or Wesabe… show me the credit cards with the fewest bankruptcies/financial troubles among recipients first.

Delete all credit card offers period. Show me one independent study, that proves a net benefit to the cardholder from using a credit card. (Debit cards excluded).

7. Sort corporate email by how many people in my company have indicated that a sender is important.

Thus ensuring the even slightest difference in initial popularity level can send someone to the top or the bottom of the corporate ladder even faster.

8. Let me see stocks ranked in order of recent purchases by successful investors.

That way simply by virtue of being known as a “successful investor”, you can become an “even more successful investor”, simply because people will watch and follow your every purchase decision. You can then dump stocks after the price bump(which your purchase caused) and handle a nice profit.

9. Let me review bids from builders ranked in order of complaints filed or the length of time between first application for a building permit and finished building.

Make sure to account for difficulty of the project.

10. Let me see potential online dates sorted by how frequently (or infrequently) the person goes on first dates.

This would only help those looking for a casual hookup to find each other. If someone says “i date a lot of people”, you can be pretty sure that they mean it. If someone says the opposite, you can’t be so sure. Unless there was a 3rd party monitoring tool, but if 1984 were to ever arrive, I don’t think this tool would be a top priority.

11. Sort car models by crash and repair data.

I think Consumer Reports/Kelly’s Blue Book do something like this.

12. Let me see my salesforce ranked by closing rate or cold call rate or customer satisfaction.

Why can’t you do this already?

13. Let me see my inbound call data by hour, sorted by number of rings before answer, or by percentage of calls unanswered.

This would be revolutionary. I bet my income would take off if I could decrease my “rings before answer” average. But seriously, phones should have better APIs for extracting usage data.

14. Let me sort my customer service requests by customer value. (Including loyalty, purchases and referrals).

Many companies do this already.

15. Let me choose a doctor by malpractice suit rate.

Just look for an attractive, friendly doctor. They are much less likely to be sued than an ugly, gruff one, irregardless of medical competence. Studies have been done on this.

16 .When I watch TV online, recognize the pundit and flash historical accuracy rates on the screen while she talks.

Just flashing “No better than than a coin flip” for every pundit would do the trick.

17. Blank out comments on posts that agree with my point of view.

This is a bad, bad idea. I hope you never implement this idea. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to disagree with every comment I made on each idea. I often intentionally tried to disagree with Seth(see #17), although for some ideas I believe my comments were better.

Jul 07

Bloggers Who Turned Pro and Their Famous Last Words

Blogging, Web Startups, Web 2.0 Comments

After months of deliberation, I’ve decided to quit my day job and work on my blog full time.

Well not really. But I thought that would serve as a nice segue into listing these bloggers who started making enough money to say that (and mean it):

Site: Macrumors.com
Famous last words: “Yesterday was my last day at my full time job as a physician. I plan to work on MacRumors.com and other web projects full time.”

Site: kottke.org
Famous last words: “I recently quit my web design gig and — as of today — will be working on kottke.org as my full-time job. And I need your help. ”

Site: zenhabits.net
Famous last words: “I’m officially a ProBlogger now. Yesterday morning, I turned in my resignation from my day job”

Site: getrichslowly.org
Famous last words: “After months of deliberation, I’ve decided to quit my job at the family business…. GRS currently has 35,000 subscribers and generates $5,000 in monthly revenue.”

Site: techcrunch.com
Famous last words: “I started writing TechCrunch one year ago, on June 11, 2005. Looking back, it’s been the best year of my life…TechCrunch serves 1-2 million page views per month. TechCrunch is now my full time job, and then some.”

Site: readwriteweb.com
Famous last words: “it took 3 whole years for Read/WriteWeb to go from ‘hobby’ to full-time job.”

Site: GreatDay.com
Famous last words: “Although it didn’t start out that way, The Daily Motivator is now my full-time job. Back in 1995 I started writing the messages as part of another website. Within a few months, the response was so positive that The Daily Motivator took on a life of its own. After five years or so, subscription sales and book sales were providing a modest income, and since that time the website has grown to the point where I am able to devote all my working hours to it.”

Site: PlentyofFish.com
Famous last words: “I was making around 4k a month off the site and i quit my job to do it full time.”

Site: Craftster.com
Famous last words: “When I was working a regular full-time day job I constantly dreamed of working for myself at something craft-related. And Craftster, much to my surprise, made this possible.”

Site: PopSugar.com
Famous last words: Though a propensity for gossip typically motivates gossip bloggers, many are learning to cash in on their hobby. That’s what Lisa Sugar, 28, wants to do with her new blog, popsugar, which has grown from 200 to 13,000 unique visitors a week since it appeared in March, according to the site. The self-described “media junkie” and Maryland native spends at least 40 hours a week researching and writing the blog on top of her full-time job as a media planner in San Francisco.

May 14

How much time do I spend per post?

Blogging Comments

Someone asked me today what’s on my blog. I told them when I started it I intended to write quality posts. That didn’t last too long. Now I kind of write short little blurbs on a whim. I don’t generally edit them much. For instance, my first post on how much gas Americans consume in a day actually had a typo in the title(consumer instead of consume). I didn’t notice that until just now. So if you subscribe to this blog, I apologize. My traffic has been growing more than I expected, and if it continues to build I’ll put more thought into what I write. Really the primary reason I’ve even kept this blog going is because I love seeing the type of traffic the search engines bring in.

May 14

Just turned on Akismet

Blogging Comments

Blog spam is out of control. Instead of trying to moderate comments myself or disabling them altogether, I just activated Akismet. I expect that it will solve the problem.

Aug 24

I guess the time has come

Blogging Comments

For a few years, GoDaddy kept alerting me that BreckYunits.com was available and I should buy fast before someone else does! Lucky for me, all the other Breck Yunits’ out there weren’t getting the same alerts. Enjoy BreckYunits.info, suckers!!!

Anyway, I finally realized that I had close to four billion email addresses and changing the forwarding for them all would get really time consuming if I ever had to change my main Gmail address. I hope I don’t have to change my Gmail address ever, but with the recent GrandCentral fiasco, I realized hoping is not the best strategy. So what I decided to do was setup breck@breckyunits.com and have all my mail forwarded to that address, and then on to my Gmail. I don’t ever plan on changing my name, so I think I should be set for life. Nice.

But since now I’ll be giving out an email address with BreckYunits.com, it’s pretty much required I put something up here. So welcome to my blog. I plan to post excerpts from that big novel I’ve been working on, you know, the one with the protagonist and antagonist, friends become enemies, enemies become friends, everyone’s better for the experience book? Or maybe just random thoughts on startups, hacking, and life that I think are interesting.

-Breck

PS, Be the first to email me at my new address: breck@breckyunits.com . See if you can do it before my first botnet spam email arrives!

Breck’s Homepage

Entrepreneurs Will Save America

Google Dropped My Blog, Why?

AdSense on the Blog

Response to Seth’s Data Ideas

Bloggers Who Turned Pro and Their Famous Last Words

After months of deliberation, I’ve decided to quit my day job and work on my blog full time.

How much time do I spend per post?

Just turned on Akismet

I guess the time has come

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Recommended Books

Links

Archives

Categories