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When The Web Was Fun

December 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

As a 30 something, I remember back in college in the 1994-95 age when the Internet was fun.   I mean, REALLY fun.   One minute we had the same old small “web pages” that used form elements to link pages – which was a step up from the old gopher system, and somehow related to hypercard…   then bam!   All of a sudden we have this new way to put images onto web sites, then we could have background images… then our own domain name.   And it grew and grew.  There was always something exciting emerging, and it was fun to be a part of it.

From 1995-2001 I helped form the Internet.   I can say that with confidence and a bit of humility, but I know that somehow I had an effect on how the Internet grew – and then broke.   You see, during that time I made web pages and web sites because they were FUN.   Remember fun?

You like a certain band – put up a fan site for it.  A certain actor or actress?  I’ll do a page on them too.   TV show?  Movie?   I’ll do a web site for that too.   Hundreds of thousands of hours I spent making web sites just because I liked a particular subject.   And it was fun.

Then the dot com crash.  Suddenly, the web wasn’t fun anymore.  Oh sure, I had created web sites for the #1 online entertainment destination Warner Bros. such as Babylon 5, Third Watch, Drew Carey, Friends, Lois & Clark, La Femme Nikita, Rosie O’Donnell, and others.   But suddenly the landscape changed, and I lost that spark.

Until recently.

A few months ago I put up a fan site for a music group, well more of a show, and it currently ranks in Google higher than their official site so i get a good number of visitors a day without even doing anything.  A month or so ago I dared to put a few Google ads on it, and my earnings sky-rocketed.

It was something I enjoyed, and was a fun distraction from the sites I “have” to work on.

I resurrected a site I had started back in 1996, recoded it to css (it used tables at the time!) and it is again an OK site traffic wise, and I sprinkled a few ads in there which bring in a couple of dollars a day.

Over the past several years I have been reading ebooks after ebooks trying to find the right “pattern” for making money on the Internet via adsense.   Some say “write what you know” and some say “write what’s profitable” and some say “write a little about everything.”   After years of trying everything under the sun, I believe I have finally decided on the definitive answer:

You HAVE to write about what you enjoy or have an interest in.

Credit card consolidation or cancer lawsuits may have high click-through revenue, but you will never gain the trust of your visitors if you don’t have a sincere interest in the subject.

Now all I need is for my hero, Joel Comm, to suggest a real-live mentor for me to continue my adsense learning.   If I don’t hear from him soon, a singing gorilla telegram may just show up at his door.

From this moment on I will continue to do web sites that I need to do, but also will try and do more web sites that I “WANT” to do and that I will have fun doing.   Perhaps that is the magic I have been looking for.

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Case Closed for Adam Walsh

December 18, 2008 By 1 Comment

Being an avid Cold Case viewer, I replay the familiar scene of a detetective removing a box of evidence from “unsolved” and carrying it out of the room over and over when I heard the news that the Adam Walsh case was finally considered closed in Hollywood, Florida.

Adam was abducted and killed in 1981, and was only a year younger than me at the time.  The following year, paperboy Johnny Gosch was upducted in Des Moines, and then in 1984 another paperboy, Eugene Martin disappeared.

Needless to say, it was a very stressful time to be a paper carrier in the the Des Moines area.   The only thing the Des Moines register could do at the time, however, was issue danger letters to its carriers letting them know what to do case they were approached, as well as issue metal whistles to each carrier to use in case they felt threatened or were approached.

As far as I know, nobody ever used the whistles for the situation they were designed for.

The abduction of Adam Walsh has led his father, John on a crusade that has captured hundreds of fugitives through the television show America’s Most Wanted.  In addition it has created numerous organizations and legislation to help find missing and explooited children around the world.   John Walsh definitely turned his familie’s personal tragedy into a better world.

I met John Walsh when he was a guest on the TV game show Pictionary that I was a writer on.  He was friendly and curteous and signed a photo that you see above.

Unfortunately, the accused murderer of Adam died in prison so the case can never be 100% proven against the man they say murdered the boy, but the evidence they do have, as well as several confessions, are enough for the Hollywood, Florida police department to definitively put the case to rest.

Although I don’t think John will ever rest from tracking down the people who prety in the innocent.

[TAGS]Adam Walsh, John Walsh, kidnapping, Johnny Gosch[/TAGS]

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Adsense and Common Sense

December 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Detailed here on this blog over the past many years is an overwhelming sense of frustration trying to stake out my claim to “riches” on the world wide web.

Where many of my colleagues here in Des Moines are focused on providing services and businesses, I remain fixated and determined to create a stream of income from google adsense and affiliate programs.

I have spent countless dollars on $97 and up info products as well as adsense “engines” that promise to do most of the work for you… Nothing worked for me.

If there was one piece of advice I can give to other prospective affiliate marketers and adsense publishers out there it is this- do not buy and of the ebooks from clickbank! Why? Three reasons.

First, most of them are severely outdated and were written two or three years ago. Policies and tactics change, but ebooks generally do not.

Second, if you are going to purchase things from clickbank, get your own affiliate ID. You can earn back sometimes 75% of what you paid for the ebook. Of course you will need 5 separate credit cards buying through your ID before you can get paid.

Finally, I will reveal the secret almost almost all if the “make money online” sites hide inside their final chapters. In fact some ebooks exist only about the secret! So here it is: you plunk down $97 for the latest fast-cash ebook on clickbank, get through the fluff about setting up a website and domain name, and then you read the golden advice… The surefire way to make money on the internet is…

Write you own $97 ebook you can con others to buy on clickbank.

Sucker.

That’s it- that’s the big secret? In most cases, yep. Now there are some legit ebooks out there such as Joel Comm’s adsense secrets four (don’t buy The Adsense Code, his real book since he explained in a video it was his ebook’s third revision repackaged.)

So what do you do if you aren’t a salesman or seine wanting to dupe people into buying you latest info product?

That’s what I am still trying to figure out.

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Lessons Learned in Painting

December 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I got the idea to finally start painting from two places.   First, I had been obsessing over the Bob Ross Master Art Set at hobby lobby for a while and the b) I saw that Colin Devroe (of Viddler) was blogging about his watercolor projects, most lately his owl painting.

That’s when it hit me.

I could blog about painting, even live-stream it.

So I bought over $100 in supplies and went to work.  I started the live stream, but forgot the audio.  So, you may have to wait a few minutes (about 3 minutes in) before the painting is even started.

Free TV : Ustream

So what did I learn from this process?  Several things.

1) Brush Cleaning Fluid is NOT paint thinner
2) To do the Bob Ross method you need at least two brushes of the same kind to even start
3) Oil paint smell takes me back to the old “paint by numbers” days
4) oil paint takes forever to dry
5) You have to watch the videos over and over to learn the right techniques
6) If you try to do too much cover-up, you will get a nice brown mud (trees on the left)
7) the wet-on-wet method is fun, but may not be for everyone 8) Bob Ross really is an alien.  A nice alien, but an alien nonetheless
9) Painting is hard to do under any kind of time restraints… whether 1 hour or 10, you never have enough time
10) It really is fun!

im going to try the example painting one more time and then perhaps try something on my own… just some imaginary landscape.   I really like the Bob Ross style as used in wildlife too, so maybe I will try those someday.

What do you think?  Should I keep livestreaming these things?

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Bob Ross – Why Can't I Quit You?

December 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Most people are afraid of failing.   It makes sense really – from an early age we are taught that failing or losing hurts.   So we avoid it at all costs.

But as some of the most influential people have noticed… the people who win big have lost big.  Babe Ruth was not only the home-run king, but the strike-out king.   How many millions of dollars has Donald Trump lost?

See!

In a previous post I wrote about the power a label printer had on me.  I was convinced it was the only thing standing between success and failure… and in this case I was scared of success. (a whole other topic there!)

Recently it has been  …  Bob Ross.

You know the guy…  the big haired, soft-spoken guy who paints happy cloud, happy bushes, happy streams, happy mountains, happy cabins, etc.  Yeah, Bob Ross has been ruining my lift the past month or so.

It started on a trip to Hobby Lobby, where I saw the deluxe version of his paint set.   $89.00 – and that didn’t include some other necessary accessories.  That’s a lot of money, even more than a label printer.   I hadn’t painted anything since college, and even then, that was only for a theater class.   I had never been a “good drawer” although I enjoyed art.

So after seeing the Bob Ross set, I wondered if I had missed something.   I became fixated on Bob Ross.   What if my calling was to be an artist but I never took the first steps?    The question plagued me until last night when I finally went and took Bob Ross home with me.

It was a no-brainer really.   I was doing 2 things.

1) I could live-stream my painting, and do blog bosts about it so I can write it off as a business expense

but more importantly…

2) If I know this is definitely NOT for me, I can shut my brain down from this infatuation and move on to the next one.

In short, I could FAIL, learn it wasn’t for me, and move on.  At least it would be some closure.

So what is the verdict?

Well, I made some mistakes in techniques and materials, but overall it was kind of fun.   I think I will try it again.   The great thing is, I never have to ask “what if” about painting again.

And as for the painting itself… that is the subject of another blog post coming soon.

What about you?   Do you have something you want to try but are afraid of failing?  Or maybe there is something you think will cure all your ills if you had it… but will it really?  What is it?

[TAGS]painting,troy rutter, blog post, bob ross[/TAGS]

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