Blogging Design.
I have been building websites for around 10 years. Yet, day in and day out, I see new designers coming out with beautiful websites. Often, they’re virtual newbies to the web design world. I certainly haven’t studied the art of designing websites and have never taken a graphic design course, so I always wonder how much some of these people truly study and experiment on a design before they go out and reveal it. If I can’t build a website that I’m happy with in a night, I’ve failed myself. I suspect most people work much longer on a design, especially if it involves graphic design or even drop shadow and curved corners. But it frustrates me that I am self-taught so many years ago, and have been doing it this long, but do not feel competent enough to make a living off of it. I don’t mind building for other people. I’ve been paid twice (by the same person) to build a website from scratch. I was also paid to maintain an already built website (and as a side project I turned the table design into a CSS-only design). I have also built several websites for college organizations I was involved in, but I have never been thrilled, or felt that my work appeared to be done by a professional. Yet, at least two of those college organizations still have those designs live (4 years later?), and one organization actively updates the content within the design. A graduate school organization I have involvement with is currently hoping I will design something for them. (I did, but just wasn’t that happy with the results.)
I get stuck within the confines of a grid and figuring out how to make a text-only website stick out and appear interesting. It’s difficult for me, and I frequently end up borrowing heavy inspiration (though rarely do I borrow code) in order to come up with something. Then, I sometimes try to spruce it up with graphics…only I have very little skills in that respect. When I’m building for myself, it’s even harder to accept that a design is good enough to post. Up to this point, I have had too much pride to hire a designer to build something for me. And of course, I’m saying all of this on a Wordpress template!
If anyone has any thoughts on becoming more competent in web design, and getting over my inferiority complex when it comes to my design abilities, I’d appreciate it. And if you want to get me started on how the heck people learn PHP, Perl, C++, C#, Java(script), XML, and write scripts and databases and blogging platforms, that’s another can of worms, as I’ve never had much programming skill or understanding of it.
And then, on the other hand, is the question of: How much does design truly matter if the content is quality? Should I feel awful for using a default template or *gasp* purchasing a template? (I think I’d rather pay a designer to build something custom than purchase a template that may be used on another website.) I always thought it was funny when people sell “exclusive” templates; meaning they only sell it once. I suppose that’s an easy way of designers not having to deal with people and their visions as it’s truly WYSIWYG for both sides of the deal. I might not be opposed to that as much, but I find templates are always flashy and doo-daddy and beep and do things that I wouldn’t want the vast majority of my websites to do.
So, there’s a rant on design. I have so much more I could say…don’t get me started on XSitePro.
2005 Revenue Roundup.
I was taking a look at my earnings from all sources, and revisiting the goals I had set. I most certainly broke the $500 goal by January 1, 2006. While I may not see the checks for all money earned in 2005 until February or even March of 2006, the total for all revenue sources, as far as I can tell, is hovering at $750 plus or minus a dollar or two. That uncertainty comes as a result of unknown auditing at Chitika. (Note that this includes 2004 AdSense earnings, about $7.)
After running Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads for a couple of weeks, I became a bit excited at the earnings, to say the least. I even said that making 5-digits in 2006 was “quite achievable.”
The next day, Dec. 6, 2005, when revisiting my goals, I said that if I earned $500 in January 2006, that I would be setting a new goal of $1000/month by May 2006. That $500 statement was on the assumption that my YPN earnings would continue at 4 times that of AdSense. They did not. As the advertisements became contextual in nature, as opposed to run of the mill, the earnings plummeted. And just as hastily as I had removed AdSense in favor of YPN, I yanked YPN and went back to AdSense. I do not anticipate earning anywhere near $500 in January.
I’d still like to aim at the lofty goal of $1000/month by May, but prior to the wonderful YPN earnings, I was aiming for $5/day in advertising. I don’t think I’ve indicated that here, but it was in the back of my mind as a short term goal. Now that things have calmed down (no crazy YPN earnings), I’m looking at the numbers and I think I’m still short of that $5/day goal.
Now, you may be asking why it appears I have goals that are measured by different time periods. I have the 4-figure 2006, 5-figure 2006, $1000/month by May 2006, $500 by January 1, 2006, $500 in January 2006, and now I’m telling you about $5/day. Why don’t I just make and measure my goals in the same way? Because it’s more fun to have lots of goals and make some of them more achievable than others.
A little secret that I’m just starting to reveal to people around me? $274. It’s no secret online, but most people don’t realize that earning $274/day for 365 days is $100,010. (The magic six-figure earnings number.) How can I earn $274/day in 2006? That’s what I’ll be trying to figure out all year long…
Earning money is a slow process that requires work. This is not a get-rich-quick blog. And maybe January 1, 2007, I’ll be saying I hit $274 in a day. Who knows what the future holds?
Getting Ready for 2006.
I’m not doing enough to get ready for 2006. And I recognize that I need to do more. But what I’d like you to take out of this, is that a date like New Year’s is arbitrary. It seems like a natural new beginning, but wouldn’t the most natural beginning be when you’re good and ready? Even if it’s February? Or on a day other than the 1st?
I will do more when I’m ready. Today is not the day to stress myself out with too many resolutions and projects. But I think I will do one thing today, and that is cut down my RSS feed reading. I have certainly gotten better in the past year in realizing that I don’t need to read every new post that pops up in the feeds I read. I have over 100 feeds, but review 88 daily right now. Reviewing them does not mean that I read all 88 each day. Some I let sit for days depending on the title, the excerpt, the topic, my mood, and a whole lot of factors.
There are times when I think I could read more, because I get through them and only a small portion post every day, but there are also times when I think 88 feeds is too many for me.
As an example, John Batelle’s Searchblog is one of the 88 feeds I review each day. He posted 84 times in the month of December. Now, I think it’s very difficult to gauge when you are posting too frequently or infrequently to your blog(s) for your audience. I suspect that Mr. Batelle’s rate is right. Besides, he’s promoting a book, which requires lots of marketing. Posting quality content about search somewhere around 84 times in a month certainly makes me think he has quality content in his book, “The Search”. At the very least, it shows he has his pulse on the field he’s writing about. So what’s the problem? Well, it’s not that his posts aren’t interesting. In fact, he doesn’t tend to post something that’s already been posted a million times (at least in the blogs I read), unless he’s adding something to the conversation. (Reblogging is something that really bothers me, as you can read here and here.) The problem is that the search field is interesting to me, but doesn’t change anything about my life or work. I can do basic SEO, and could be a consultant in that area to many people, so keeping my pulse on the field seems like a good idea. But, I am not an SEO consultant right now, and reading his site is just one of many things that takes minutes out of my day. Besides, would his site actually help me be a better SEO consultant? Not enough that I must review and/or read it each day. As a law student, I don’t read every single case that comes out on contracts, torts, property, IP, employment discrimination, medical malpractice, etc. Reading website feeds is keeping up on every single thing that comes out in a certain field. I’m going to read feeds more like an attorney should. I’m thinking that this probably entails keeping up with the field I’m in, and researching fields when an issue comes up. It’s a bit more complicated than that, obviously, but cut me some slack as this post is already becoming verbose.
The idea here, is that I don’t need to be reading about search all the time, even if it’s an interest of mine, because it’s taking away time from doing things that are of interest. On occasion, in downtime, I may go back and read what I’ve missed, but I just can’t have that feed looking at me every day, so it’s getting cut.
Other blogs getting cut? Blogpire, Weblog Empire, Webby Media, About Weblogs, Creative Weblogging, Weblogs, Inc., and b5media corporate/headquarter blogs. Why? I’m also reading Performancing, ProBlogger, Blog Herald, and Blog Network Watch, which generally cover anything newsworthy. If I was really smart, I’d cut all of those too, because they generally keep me reading and not writing. When was the last time I actually got something out of those sites that I printed out or made sure I wrote down or remembered? Not in a long while. I just need to write more at this point before I can take some of the advice at ProBlogger and Performancing, at the very least. Even after writing more, I suspect I’ve gotten all I can get out of those sites. We’re generally dealing with information that is based on opinion and experimentation, which I can do myself. And I’m generally smart enough to know and/or write the stuff that I am reading. (Arrogant statement? Perhaps. If this post wasn’t so long already, I’d give an example of what I mean.)
In 2006, I’m going to try and cut some of the clutter of feed reading so I can get to doing things faster.
