Thursday, May 12, 2005

Blog tops site

I find it very funny that this blog now is the top listing in a Google search for LOPICO. Where is the actual LOPICO? On page 3 without a description. It is because of this that I am actually thinking about joining a link exchange. If you've read my past posts (which you haven't) you know that I am very against link exchanges, but seeing as 1) Google is the wal-mart of search 2) I have very little money and 3) I'm tired of being in the basement, I've decided to give a link exchange a try. Google is not wal-mart in the sense that it's a parasite that is ruining the lives of many Americans (in fact from what I can tell it is seems to be a rather pleaseant company), but more in the sense that if you're dealing with them it's their way or no way, and you want to deal with them because everyone uses their site. My second point, I'm entirely self funded, so a free link exchange is worth a try. And finally I'm really trying to up the promotion of LOPICO, and given point 2, this seems to be a good way to do it. But like my experience with mamma.com, my plan is to give it only a month and see how it fits. I'm pretty sure I'm going to cut mamma before the month is out, but we'll see. The good thing about mamma, is it uses cpm, which means people don't have to click on the ads for me to get paid, the bad thing is they're annoying irrelevant ads. And I'm not making more this way, I have a pretty high CTR (rate at which people click on my ads) so I make more money from people clicking than I do from the ads that don't need clicked.
The other day I checked out LOPICO on my cell phone, it looked pretty bad, I'm going to be designing a mobile web version pretty soon, but I have so much in front of me as is, that it may be a few weeks.
My Blog is now linked to on allaboutmesothelioma.com, which again strikes me as a reason not to join a link exchange (I hate irrelevant links), but this is actually somewhat relevant, because in one of my posts I do mention that click fraud is probably at its worst for mesothelioma sites. But overall I'm not relevant to mesothelioma, many people are sick from the cancer, and it is sad that people are taking advantage of that.
Also I think I may be able to reduce my click fraud problem if I lower my advertising bids, if my ad is not as prominently placed the frauders will suspect I haven't paid much and will probably leave my ads alone. Unfortunately this will mean less publicity, but the trade-off may be worth it, we'll see.
If you're interested you can check out what the redesign looks like in the shopping-clothing categories in Naperville, IL, it's just a quick peak and not finalized, but I wanted to try it out, so feel free to check it out. (It should be fairly obvious that it's not final from the different versions of the Google ad that I use on different pages)
Much more going, which is why I need to stop blogging. As always I appreciate any additions to the site, the more you add the better the site gets.

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