Web Blog of Greg Mathews

A few days ago I posted Do it yourself or get someone else to do it well today I was really disappointed when the programmer I selected showed me what he has done so far. He has taken two weeks so far to basically create a registration and log in routine. Once logged in nothing is working yet, the links are there for various functions but they are all inactive.

There is no design for the site, nothing. He has asked for a few more days to complete the project but based on what he has completed in two weeks I could imagine this taking at least another month.

I sure wish now I had done this myself in Perl, it would have been completed by now.

I do hope this is just a one off, and using Scriptlance really isn’t this bad normally. I am going to post another project on Scriptlance this week for a site design project with some integration to existing scripts, I will post here to let you know how it goes.

As many of you know I have been wanting to learn PHP but as of yet I have not managed to get myself motivated enough to do it.

Anyway two weeks ago  I thought I would post a project on Scriptlance to get someone to develop aPHP script for me. It was for a site clone and I thought if I get someone two write it in PHP it should be completed quicker and I could look at the code and learn from it.

Well the programmer I chose said it would take him 14 days, I thought OK, I could do it in perl quicker but I want to learn PHP so that is good for me. Read the rest of this entry »

A colleague of mine has just launched Plug a Blog where you can add a link to your blog for free, although you are free to add a link to your or someone elses blog the site is still going through some refinement.

At the time of writing, Plug a Blog does not specify that a recipricol link is required although I would expect this to come soon, even though it hasn’t it would be appreciated I am sure if bloggers did mention/link to it in their blogs.

This may sound strange but I do have to wonder if Google do have some kind of limit set for a site. Let me explain.

Over the past year I have seen traffic to Yzoo.co.uk go up and down, and this in turn effects the amount of income it brings in. The problem is that the traffic appears to peak and then suddenly drops to nothing in a matter of days, and every time this has happened I have notted that the position of Yzoo in the Google results has dropped drastically.

Here are a few examples:

December 21st 2006 the site was getting 30,000+ page impressions a day, this dropped to 7,000 a day by 26th December, I put this down to the holiday season and did little about it.

In January I did some mods and the site picked up again and by March 8th 2007 I was getting 80,000+ page impressions a day. But again out of the blue this traffic vanished and from 10th March I was down to less than 10,000 impressions a day and this time it remained like that for a few weeks. At the end of April I made some more changes and eventually by June I was getting in excess of 200,000 page impressions a day.

On July 24th there was another peak of 620,000 page impressions for the day, but by the August 1st 2007 it had dropped massively down to less than 100,000 impressions/day and falling as low as 24,000 on 10th September.

Now this panicked me and again changes where made, some minor some a bit more serious and by Monday of this week,8th October, I was exceeding 300,000 impressions a day. Now I may be jumping the gun here but it looks like another slumps has arrived, since Monday the traffic has dropped, yesturday was 160,000 impressions and today it looks like it could be as low as about 70,0000 impressions for the day.

Read the rest of this entry »

At last, my blogs has been reviewed by payperpost.com, it has taken them two weeks to review my small blog and then they rejected it as not meeting their requirements.

The strange thing is, although the blog is not good enough for them, they are still sending me emails of new ‘offers’ that I can’t actually accept or even see. Slight case of hippocracy me thinks.

Greg

Someone give me a kick up the ass.

Many of you will have read about the meta search engine I created last year. Well apart from a few glitches along the way generally the site is doing well, currently getting 300,000 page impressions each day.

The problem is now I can’t get motivated to do anything else, over the past year I have started a few projects and they have never been completed, I purchased some PHP books and apart from a quick glance I have done no more in my attempt to learn PHP.

To highlight how bad I have got, I had another idea for a project last week and rather do it myself I posted a project on Scriptlance and now have another programmer developing it for me. A year or so ago I would have never paid someone to do something I can do but now I am taking the attitude that if I pay someone else to do it then I know it will (should) get completed.

This is just not me and I need to get my self motivated again.

Greg

Well eventually 123reg.co.uk have admitted taking to much money from me and not renewing my two domains. It took a whole week for them to admit it but they have.

Their support desk have told me that they have credited my card for the amount in full but what about the phone calls at 10p a minute? the amount of time I was on the phone to them they have probably got most of that back in profit from the calls.

Oh well lets wait to see how long it is before I actually get the money back into my account.

After posting yesterday about Payperpost I decided to sign up at Blogitive which appears to be a similar sort of thing.

Last evening I then received a bulk email from Payperpost giving details of an ‘offer’, an offer being an advertiser wanting their site/product/service blogged about. I thought this must be a good sign so followed the link but hey I was wrong. my blog has still NOT been reviewed and accepted so I couldn’t look at the offer. Well, if this is how it’s meant to work then obviously it’s a scam, take bloggers email addresses and spam them with advertisers junk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Tuesday I registered with Pay Per Post which allows bloggers to write an independent review of a website, product or service etc and earn a few dollars in the process.

The idea is simple, bloggers register their blog which is then reviewed to ensure it meets with their criteria. If your blog doesn’t you can still use the service but only when an ‘Advertiser’ specifically requests you to blog about what they are offering, if you blog does meet the Pay Per Post criteria then you can also select reviews from the ‘Market Place’. Once you have blogged a review that is first reviewed when posted to your blog and then reviewed again 30 days later and then at this point you are paid.

Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled accross this site yesterday which listed 43ads.com as the ‘Site of the month’ for October 2006.

As most of you know, I did get involved with the pixel ad sites a couple of years ago but this was something I hadn’t seen before and I liked it. Basically there are 43 advertising spots and you bid to advertise, the higher your bid the better the position of your ad. Nothing unusual about that but the interesting part is when it is full.

Once all spots are taken you can still get on the page. The ads shown on the page are the ones from the people who paid the most. If you are thrown off of the page, because 43 people paid more than you did, you will get a full refund of your payment plus the difference between the amount you paid and the amount number 43 on the list paid. Let me show you how this works with some numbers:

Lets say you bought your link for $1 and you now have your link on spot number 43. The link on spot number 42 was sold for $3 and now someone else is buying a link for $5. Since the $5 is more then you paid, you will be pushed off the list and the $3 link is now at number 43. You get back your $1 plus $2 profit!

Now you  aren’t guarenteed to make a profit, if both you and the 42nd spot had paid $1 each then as there is ‘difference between the amount you paid and the amount number 43 on the list paid’ so you just get your money back, but even that is not a bad result.

Obviously you need 43 other advertisers to bid higher than you for you to get any cash back.  I thought I would give it a go, I have stuck an ad for Yzoo on 43ads.com to see how it works out.

Greg