We’re Back
// January 3rd, 2009 // Comments // other
from OZ, safe and sound. Happy new year to you all!
Archive for other
The English Condition
// November 29th, 2008 // Comments // other
I know its been a long time since I posted properly, but its been really busy of late. I finally got around to writing a new rad-ish article. It’s called English Man arrested at German Lake – you can find it here http://www.rad-ish.com/
Now its 2:41am and I should go to bed.
So what happened to the 30 posts in 30 days?
// November 21st, 2008 // Comments // other
I made it, actually I smashed it, no that’s still an understatement I annihilated it. I did two posts just today alone. I wrote six new posts in one day a week or so ago. Its just not on the zig or hiphipuk. So what happened?
Well I was moaning to Pete that my formerly second best affiliate site winemoneysaver had stopped converting, not slightly, but totally, like no commissions in one month totally. When I check the traffic it had plummeted from 500 a day to 5! I probably should have noticed sooner, but I’m shit at running affiliate sites and they are all neglected and rubbish. What was the cause? Google decided that winemoney saver was neglected and rubbish and refused to index it anymore (no longer shows in the search results). Fair enough, can’t complain it was shit. So Greg and I have been scrambling to clean up all the sites so they dont suffer a similar fate, cleaning, optimising, content updating, backlink driving boring webmaster tasks which sucked all my time.
The bad news is that it can take three months to get out of the google sinbin, assuming you deserved to, and we don’t, so the golden pre-christmas wine and champagne rush is going to pass right by winemoneysaver, we’re probably not going to make a penny, even with all this hard-work. But we might save the other sites and have something slightly sellable.
But this taught me a lesson…..
You can only expect to get out what you put in. An obvious lesson sure, but a lesson for me none the less. I’ve completely over-stretched myself with too many websites (I’m up to 10 now). The result is that all 10 are rubbish. There’s just not enough of me to go around, not enough hours in the day. I’m watching Pete who runs spendless and just spendless until recently - http://spendlessonline.co.uk/ go from strength to strength after two years solid graft, focused on one project.
I planning a proper post about this at some point when I’m back in a writing mode, the curse of being a Gen Y, at least thats what I get mocked with a lot at work being “Gen Y” a term I didn’t really realize applied to me, but whatever, if the hat fits and all that.
So what did I also do after this great revelation? What would be an Adam classic response to my new found insight? I stuck my tongue out at it, and open a new site - freecouponcodes.co.nz
Number 11.
Going forward I’m going to wind down or sell wine, beds, tv’s and supermarkets after Christmas. That will leave me just two affiliate sites. I’ve taken on 4 writers for those two, so I don’t have to do so much work (nothing but a bit of editing) and I’m going to plow my energy into them. I’ll keep a strict 5 site rule, which will be the zig, hiphip (although I might merge those two), rad-ish, tee-junction and freecouponcodes (I have one or two more but they are just little things, like one for my football team where players can sign up for the upcoming game etc, nothing that takes any upkeep). No sites come in, unless one gets retired.
I have no real idea why I’m telling you all this, as you have no interest in my affiliate sites and probably only read this blog to see what goofy post I’ve put up next about a monkey or a segway or something. But I feel I should share why I ended up scrapping my 30 posts in 30 days challenge and why I’ve not written anything proper for ages, which might also be because the backpacking china series took it out of me and I’ve not managed to get back into writing mode.
The weekend is here, long live the weekend. Just under four weeks until our Australia holiday, so I’m glad the hardwork is over and another lesson has been learnt.
30/30 Day 15
// October 28th, 2008 // Comments // other
Just got back from the weekend away, as tomorrow is likely to be a frantic catching up affair, I’m putting up a sneaky post now. Had a great weekend, some sight seeing (finally got to see the south island) some biking, some boating. Christchurch is unbelievably like Cambridge, so didn’t excite me too much as my parents live in Cambridge, so it’s not exactly new in concept this pretty cobbled streets, King’s Colleges or punting malarkey, but anyway.
Quiet still on the affiliate front which is frustrating, got some more work to put in this week to get things ready for what will hopefully be a strong Christmas. Just 6 weeks now until our Australia tip, new year in Sydney should be great.
Anyway, not much else going on, final part of Backpacking China went up on HipHipUK at some point over the weekend, you can read it here http://www.hiphipuk.co.uk/2008/10/25/backpacking-china-pt-4-the-final-part/ ]
Now to pack some stuff for tomorrow, do some sorting out and see what else has been going on (4 days no internet, well just a tiny bit, I did cheat for 15mins as I had to move some money to pay rent). But still, good effort.
Night all….
30/30 Day 11, 12, 13 and 14
// October 23rd, 2008 // Comments // other
It’s 12pm now, I’ve just finished doing another affiliate session, and uploading the last two parts of Backpacking China to HipHipUK. We’re away this week, heading out to Christchurch for our first look at the South Island. Everyone raves about how beautiful the south island is, how much more so than the total knock-out North Island where we call home. So lets see. Anyway, the post for today is
- http://www.hiphipuk.co.uk/2008/10/23/backpacking-china-pt-3/
Tomorrow I’m playing my ‘I did affiliate deals’ get out of jail card. The 6 deals I did today will be spread out amongst Friday, Saturday is the final part of Backpacking China, Sunday is the other three deals, Monday I have no idea about and Tuesday is looking doubtful as we don’t fly back until late in the evening. Still I’m doing quite well on the 30/30 challenge if I do say so myself, which I just did.
See you (well online) Tuesday or Wednesday.
30/30 Day 10
// October 22nd, 2008 // Comments // other
I was going to post pt.3 of Backpacking China, but I just stumbled upon something even better. Something freakishly good. A sandwich jam packed with all that is right and wholesome in my little world. It contains four of my favourite things, no wait make that five:
a) Monkeys, not just monkeys but monkeys dressed like humans, in dungarees wearing a cycle helmet
b) Segways, stupid, rubbish, pointless, a fuck you to rational sensible management of your money. When I’m rich, they’ll be the first purchase I make, then I’ll ride it straight into the fletchycorp pool, where I’ll electricute myself and die in an awesome rock star, tombstone worthy way
c) Japanese people. How would I get through my day without reading about the latest stupid, comical, weird, technologically wonderful thing thats come out of Japan. Japan will be my next home.
d) Weirdness (see a, b and c)
e) Humour (see, a, b and c and d)
You won’t enjoy this as much as I do, but maybe you’ll enjoy the mental image of me enjoying this as much as I do, and somehow that makes it worth posting.
30/30 Day 9
// October 21st, 2008 // Comments // other
Another computer virus? You’ve got to be kidding me, my laptop is cursed, its accident and virus prone. So that wasted three hours of my evening. Anyway, yay for pre-written content, pt.2 of the china trip is online, this part is all new for you guys. If reading it in parts is really annoying wait and i’ll just put up the whole thing in one post here when I’m done. If not then you can read it here http://www.hiphipuk.co.uk/2008/10/21/backpacking-china-pt-2/
30/30 Day 8
// October 20th, 2008 // Comments // other
So guess who went away for the weekend and forgot to queue up any new posts? That would be me. Darn, I was already excited about that “I’ve completed a challenge feeling”, however unlikely it was going to be. So things are crazy busy at work, the affiliate sites are in need of some TLC, there’s only one free night a week and we’re heading to Christchurch on the south island for a long weekend this weekend, so much going on this is the perfect time to put up some pre-written posts.
A while back I extended out my nightbus to wuhan post that was on here back when we were travelling. So now you can read a proper intro and what happened from where I left it before (which I think was just 3hrs into the trip). It’s all been re-written but some of the paragraphs will feel familiar.
I’ve posted the first part on HipHipUK as that never gets any good content. It’s over here – http://www.hiphipuk.co.uk/2008/10/20/backpacking-china-pt-1/
Mid-night is fast approaching, time for bed again, not feeling even slightly tired though. The internet is the ultimate, never ending stimulus. I usually have a one hour, no internet downtime period to help me wind-down so I can sleep, but that didn’t work out too well tonight. This is not even remotely interesting so I’m going to stop here. Good Night/Morning!
30/30 Day 4 & 5
// October 16th, 2008 // Comments // other
Expecting a post yesterday huh? Bit excited were you? Me too, me too….. Unfortunately the internet had other ideas and decided just to crap out on me. At least I thought it was the Internet, but it wasn’t I think its my laptop which seems to have some kind of virus/malware/spyware, which is no great surprise considering I’m perpetually downloading crap.
Anyway I didn’t fail my task as I had set a side the whole evening to update SupermarketCoupons and WineMoneySaver. I got one deal up before the internet died, so that is one post done. Really a technicality post, but oh well, I’m the judge here.
Today’s post? Well its 11:51pm and I’ve just finished updating those two sites, which means I just added 8 blog posts, which is 7 more than the challenge requires. Again, cheating a bit I know. I’ll try and put up a proper blog post tomorrow.
This weekend Annett and I will be at the Bay of Islands with our friends Steve and Bron. We’ll be staying in his folks holiday home, should be great, I’m going to try fishing for the first time.
That’s all. See ya.
30/30 – Day 3
// October 14th, 2008 // Comments // other
Just back from the New Pornographers gig, the day is just about to end and I’ve no post prepared 
Damn, but to save me failing my challenge on just lowly old day 3, I’ve put up a not particularly finished rad-ish post. It’s called “New Zealands Immigration Timebomb ticking loudly”.
