Archive for the ‘Daily Grind’ Category

I have been meaning to make some stylistic changes to this site for some time, unfortunately my busy schedule (the rest of the internet isn’t going to read itself) has prevented me from sitting down and really understanding how to improve the user experience here at WaPo.  Luckily, I stumbled upon knowledge from a group of internet marketing gurus (fun fact: I took zero marketing classes at business school) that really know how to make a website crackle.

One of the things that the gurus highly recommend is increasing your site’s profile on social networking sites.  Apparently a key element to creating a real sense of community amongst your readers is to seamlessly integrate the various social platforms within the readers’ interactions with your site itself.  However, as with many things in life, there must be a balance to your efforts – generally, it seems, subtlety will be rewarded.  Readers don’t necessarily want to be bombarded with reminders of their other virtual “obligations” such as foursquaring that they are at PetSmart shopping for hamster sweaters or updating their secret AshleyMadison profile.  But in this contemporary age, a gentle reminder, or “call to action” can go a long way in increasing a sites value in today’s currency of “Likes,” “Recommends” and “Not Bads.”

Implementing these concepts in a visually compelling way does not come easily to me, given my limited knowledge of HTML and really anything other than googling endlessly for answers to questions like “Why the f*ck is the spacing so f*cked up on wordpress?  why doesn’t it just put a space where i put a space?? Why???”

Couple my coding ineptitiude with being a bit of a newcomer to the concept of social media – having long preferred nonsocial media such as watching bumfights and arguing with internet strangers over whether Drive made any fucking sense whatsoever – has made revamping the site a daunting task.  However, I think I’m finally starting to understand a little bit how this whole thing works.  For example, Twitter is much more powerful platform for receiving unwanted advertisements for unneeded services than email has ever been.  It is also phenomenal for receiving unsolicited Follows from fictional females – you can even see their fictional faces, a personal touch that email subject lines only wish they could offer.

So I’m hoping that some of my small changes will impart a kind of subliminal “call to action” – where you, the reader, are so ensconsced in the thought-provoking content relating to food, feet or ugly babies, that you barely notice the hint of request in the air.  Just because this site does not have a product to sell, really – other than inane thoughts from an uninformed person – doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be some marketing going on up in here.  A careful evaluation of my traffic quality indicates there is opportunity, verified by feedback from the internet marketing gurus.

Looking at my stats last month, my traffic broke down like this:

• Human visitors: 6
• Romanian spambots: 5,207
• Comment spambots: 1,312 (thanks, Akismet!)
• People who misspelled  bakedpotato.com

With traffic like that, it’s clearly time to focus on monetization.  Sure, one way would be to sell out to a major corporation or media conglomerate, but I really want to protect the integrity of the site, and my ability to not do anything for weeks at a  time if I so desire.  Similarly, a public stock offering would subject me to the whims of shareholders, and I cannot be sure that each of my six human readers would agree to serve on my Board of Directors.  I will have to figure out an approach that is neither cumbersome nor detracts from the aesthetics of the site, but encourages readers to do things that cause me to get money, traffic, or perhaps even additional Follow requests from imaginary females on the Twitter.  Maybe another iPad giveaway?  I’ll keep thinking about it, there must be some mutually beneficial way to get things done around here and keep this place looking sweet as always.

Hard-hitting new post hopefully by Friday.  Friday of which week TBD.

Later,

Chilly17

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was working on something more substantial last week…I’m still working on it, have been kind of tied up with important stuff that popped up (watching 25 episodes of My Boys on Netflix)…maybe it will be done later today or maybe not…as penalty for my lack of punctual posting, please accept this picture of a lion eating a little kid (via tbl and retronaut):

Looks pretty happy for someone about to bleed out

I’m also gonna revamp the site’s Facebook page at some point – I just finally got the ICQ page up and running, so prepping for a traffic boom from that.  I’ve got all kinds of plans, just low on motivation to actually type sh*t into the keyboard.  Maybe I’ll just update this post on Friday if any other quick stuff comes to mind and keep toiling away on the other post that I’ve kind of lost interest in.

Later,

Chilly17

Fuck midichlorians, my version of the force is more of a three-legged stool of awesomeness.

2011 was not a great time in Chillyville; I’m hoping this is just the critically (lauded and) important second stage of my adulthood where personal crises will eventually lead to victory parades and medals and shit.  Like a Jedi-in-training, I find myself in unfamiliar environs dealing with issues (including the loss of extremities) that I’m currently ill-prepared for – I’m probably gonna find myself sleeping in the entrails of a tauntaun soon.  The key difference between my situation and Empire is that, when living with an 82 year old lady, average room temperature in the house more closely approximates the surface of the sun than the ice planet Hoth.

Anyway, the only nugget I have gleaned here is: if you ever find yourself living in such a way that you have little to no responsibility, and just get to do whatever the fuck you choose pretty much all the time, don’t put yourself in a position where you suddenly have multiple responsibilities to multiple parties.  Because, you will find that responsibility is quite a shock to the system after years of boozing/tv for like six hours a night.  Such a shock that even jugs of Yellow Tail might lose much of their morale-boosting power.

Anyway, I feel that the dawn of 2012 is gonna start melting the proverbial carbonite (I have chosen to mix my metaphor).  I have some ideas to turn that frown upside down (and maybe start generating some positive cash flow?) and might even detail my progress here for my seven faithful readers (and the thirteen other slutty ones).  I have tried to take some time and figure out what I really want to try and accomplish, as to this point my trogging effort has been haphazard and sluggish at best.  There’s still about 439 things I think I would be great at, but unfortunately, my only proven expertise remains playing foosball, giving nicknames, and getting large groups of people to walk pretty far for lunch (all difficult to monetize).  (One positive note: two buddies and I totally had the idea for a Netflix-for-ties about a year ago, an idea that Taco recently appropriated on The League (a program that has grown on me).  So there’s that – but kudos to Taco for calling it Neckflix, nice touch.)

Advances in Hospital Technology (Probably an ISRG product)

One thing that I did not know until recently – now, at select hospitals, when you go to the surgery waiting room they give you one of those vibrating polygonal light things like you get at fine restaurants like Olive Garden or Red Lobster.  I think our Pavlovian response to these buzzers is probably pretty positive since the buzzing/flashing light is usually followed by the consumption of 14 cheese biscuits.  The ones for surgeries are a little more sophisticated, of course – they have two lines of LCD text like an old school blackberry, and give updates like “surgery has started” and “surgery completed, patient did well and is in recovery room.”  Seems like there would be some drawbacks to this device, though, if shit is going downhill – does it just say “patient died” if somebody expires on the table?  Spares the doctor a trip to the waiting room?  Maybe they should let some third party narrate the events XBox 360 style?  ”Homeboy bleedin out!”?  In five years they’ll probably just text you, so you’ll be free to hang out wherever you want while sweating out the surgery.

Later – much more coming soon, including a new entry in the Cars I’ve Owned: A Visual History series,

Chilly17