July 4, 2008
I heard an opinion today, and I was quite interested by it. The title of the post is a summary of it, but in case the title isn’t clear, I will restate it more fully.
Religious songs that are ambiguous by using generic words or generic names for God (such as “God”) can be used equally by any religion that calls their god “God”, and therefore such songs do not promote the faith they may have been written for.
A good example is the (Christian) song “Our God is an awesome God”. The title alone could be equally used by Jews, Muslims, Catholics or Christians, and it would seem as true to each group. One thinks of the Muslim phrase “Allah Akbar” (don’t know if I have the spelling right) and its translation “God is Great!” and it is certainly a very similar concept.
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Posted in Christianity 
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July 4, 2008
Blogs evolve, or die. And I had nothing further to say on this blog. So I was letting it die.
However, I have recently thought that rather than do that, I would like to use it as a place to put my thoughts about my faith in Jesus as a Christian.
You see, on my about page, I have identified as a Christian, but it isn’t something I have given an important place in my self-description. But in reality, it is an important part of my life. In fact, it is the most important part. I also know that there are some Christian readers of this blog.
So by writing some of those thoughts, perhaps those readers can get something out of it. And also, perhaps those readers who don’t identify as Christians can get an idea of what my faith means to me. I don’t know, but God does, and in time we shall see…
So before I start writing Christian topics on this blog, I thought I would clarify what my faith means to me. Being a Christian does not just mean going to church on Sunday or reading the Bible. I do those things too, but the core of my faith is my personal relationship with my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. In fact, the word “Christian” means a follower of Christ.
Now, I can’t guarantee that having a good, specific topic to write about and around will make this blog a frequently updated affair, but as a Christian seeking to serve God, I am sure I will be able to write more interesting, thought provoking articles than ever before.
Posted in Christianity No Comments »
June 3, 2008
Okay, the experiment is not over, but I have noticed a few things through the course of running an experiment for nearly three months.
- Becoming PageRanked is not impossible
- People are scared of linking schemes, or anything that looks like one
- Bloggers who use free blogging systems do not get scared of the above point because they don’t know any better
- Advertising helps
- Progress is slow
- A fair (or would that be unfair) proportion of the results collected thus far are influenced by web spiders (robots)
Let me explain more fully:
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Posted in SEM SEO SMO 1 Comment »
April 30, 2008
Okay, before you get too excited, I am not going to be handing out links willy-nilly. I don’t want to be penalized for participating in linking schemes. But if you can provide my blog with something of benefit, such as a guest post, or a comment or something like that, you will receive a link back to your site. And according to my Google Toolbar, AndrewMesser.com is now PageRank 3!
This came as a surprise to me for two reasons. One, I haven’t been doing much blogging lately. Two, until tonight, the Google Toolbar has always read as 0/10 .
The interesting thing is that my Traffic Experiment has also achieved a PageRank of 1. This is an extra incentive to start participating in the Traffic Experiment, and in my opinion it is “proof of concept“. This has proved that such an experiment can achieve a PageRank (it did so much quicker than this blog which has been online for 5 months). It also proves to me that my justification of the Traffic Experiment as NOT being a link exchange scheme is quite valid.
(It is not a link exchange scheme for two reasons:
- I do not provide any guarantee that participating will result in a link back; and,
- Participants are not required to put a link to Traffic Experiment on their site (though not doing so will significantly reduce the chance of a link back).
So, not being a link exchange scheme, it should never be penalised.)
Anyway, if you have suggestions for this blog, I’d love to hear them. If you would like to do a guest post that somewhat ties into the theme of the blog, I am ready to read it! And if you want to get in on the Traffic Experiment while it is still young, then don’t delay, go and register!
Finally, if your Google Toolbar gives you a different PageRank (that is, not 3/10) when viewing AndrewMesser.com, please let me know, because I would love to know if it is completely consistent or not…
Posted in SEM SEO SMO 3 Comments »
April 21, 2008
I have been so busy since becoming engaged to be married! I am glad there is a year before the wedding, because I don’t seem to have any free time left!
That has made it hard to provide any kind of content for this blog, or to work on my other site Ah, Mr Bond! or to work on the Traffic Experiment.
However, despite the neglect, I have noticed an improvement in the registrations for Traffic Experiment. I have previously noted that Traffic Experiment is now number two on google for the search term “traffic experiment”. And for a little while, it earned some cents from Project Wonderful as well.
I can see a definite correlation between my small ad campaigns with Project Wonderful and the new registrations in the Traffic Experiment.
For that reason, I can suggest to you that Project Wonderful can indeed be a workable advertising medium - people really do click through the ads. In fact, a side benefit of putting a new ad box on your website is that you get a bit of traffic from PW itself - which might also help you.
The reason this happens is that new ad boxes are listed in Project Wonderful, which creates a quick startup spike of interest in the box.
So I now have 10 sites registered in Traffic Experiment (which is up from 5 at the end of last month) so maybe next month it will go to twenty or more… I hope it will.
To all my readers who operate websites - don’t be shy about getting into the Traffic Experiment! It is not a link exchange scheme, and I don’t see any reason why it will ever be penalised by Google. The fact that it is number two on Google (america) for a search, and has been for some weeks, indicates to me that Google is happy with it. So give it a go!
Posted in SEM SEO SMO No Comments »
April 11, 2008
The best, most effective, quickest, way to KILL your blog is quite simple. (Apart from deleting your hosting account 
)
STOP POSTING!
But the funny thing is, not posting for a little while probably WON’T have a devastating effect on your blog. In fact, it may have no effect.
I used to post three posts every night. I spent all my spare time trying to grow and nurture this blog. It didn’t grow very much at the time, and I found this disheartening. More disheartening was the fact that it makes (essentially) no money.
Okay, I’ll wrap it up…
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Posted in Blogging 2 Comments »
April 8, 2008
After about 29 days online, my Traffic Experiment has found its way to number 2 on Google.com!
I must say that I am very pleased with that. With a bit of luck, and a few more participants, I believe that the Traffic Experiment will start building PageRank, and that will make the links very attractive to the participants.
As with most things of this nature, you can benefit greatly by getting in early. For example, if you were a blogger, with perhaps a readership of 50 readers, and you posted about the experiment (using the referral link you can get from the site), you would probably refer enough traffic to get to the top of the list straight away.
That would give you a FREE, permanent link back to your site. That is something that will grow in value as the experiment snowballs, and more traffic sees your link and potentially uses it to access your site, and also as more participants link to the experiment and its PageRank increases.
In its first month of operation, it has been slow to generate participants, but I do believe that it will snowball gradually. The main advantage of joining now is the relative ease of getting that prize of a free, permanent link to your website.
Have a go, sign up as a participant, and write a blog post, if you are a blogger. You could get some permanent Internet exposure from a growing site, for free!
Posted in SEM SEO SMO 4 Comments »
April 4, 2008
Yes, that is right, the big announcement - we are getting married!
I proposed to her on Friday the 4th of April and obviously she said yes. We are so happy!
Anyway, that’s all the news at the moment, except to say I’ll probably get pretty busy with planning things so that will keep me from posting any more frequently than I already do.
Posted in Asides 5 Comments »
March 31, 2008
It is that end of month time again. The Internet moves in minutes and hours, but the blogging world seems segregated into months, because most blogs are archived by months.
The time frame that defines an important characteristic of a medium really becomes the benchmark of that medium. Months are a common unit in sales as well as in blogging, because they break time up into managable, usable, comparable chunks. Very few places compare sales performance week by week or day by day. To contrast that, a day-trading investor would use days as their chunks of time.
Anyway, as I said blogs flow in months, and this month has been disjointed. I took a holiday, and grew very disillusioned with blogging, because it was taking a lot of time while bringing limited success. So I came back and decided to scale it back. But even after saying that several times, I haven’t lost subscribers. It seems people are still interested, or have too much apathy to unsubscribe.
So anyway, I should give a monthly report and tell you how it has gone financially…
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Posted in Monetizing 2 Comments »
March 28, 2008
Well hello everybody. Through some strange error, the last post I wrote before my holiday got saved as a draft and wasn’t posted. Sorry!
But now I am back from Melbourne - so I’ll be back online. Probably not as frequently as before, but I am still here.
I keep talking about my little traffic experiment - and it is going well, considering that I haven’t had the time to market it (I’ve been away, I haven’t touched the Internet in over a week!)
I have had my first registration over there on the experiment site since starting it up. Now all I need is some of you readers to register and get involved and it will have a chance to take off! It just needs a bit of healthy competition (competitiveness I mean ) between the participants…
Anyway, you will be hearing more from me, and about more different things, in the weeks to come. It is good to be back (and thanks for sticking around while I’ve been gone!!)
Posted in Blogging No Comments »
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