the weblog of m.kelley

Did I mention I finally “get” all of the talk about MySpace? I signed up and looked around about 5 minutes, then spent months thinking about how it was useless. It’s not. Look at all of the bands on there….now that’s marketing. And we’re not talking about local bands either, Tori Amos, Margaret Cho (not a band), and others. What a great way to communicate to your fans.

Granted their interface isn’t great, not bad, but I could easily see how something like LinkedIn does it better, while MSp is still using almost the same format as the adult Passion.com.

Ok, I’m on MySpace now. I’ve been signed up for a while and I know a few people on there, but I just couldn’t do it. And damn, if I didn’t find my sister(*) on there within 4 minutes.

*not really my biological sister, but we’re born two weeks and two houses apart, moms were good friends. might as well be my sister.

Other MySpace things that are fucked up. My best friend in high school was this beautiful, wonderful little girl who is now married to a graphic designer. A graphic designer for the very same company I have an interview with on Tuesday in the very same department. Small world. I might have to call her tomorrow.

{Oh, what a year (kottke.org)} – “I’m not going to be asking for contributions again. Part of it has to do with the reasons outlined at the bottom of this post. I haven’t grown traffic enough or developed a sufficient cult of personality to make the subscription model a sustainable one for kottke.org…those things just aren’t interesting to me.”

Jason ends his micropatron experiment, after one year. Interesting stats at the bottom of the post. Basicially the average donation was about $27. Not bad and very sustainable over time. I was really interested in that fact, not really the total amount, but what would the average contribution be.

Let’s take it back -$2. I think most of us would be happy with the couple of hundred of dollars $25-per-reader would give us. My friend Eric has a wonderful (non-porn) private website/messageboard where even $20 a year has made it very lucrative.

I think most of us would be very lucky to even get a fraction of what Jason received. While a lot of us look at AdSense or affiliate programs, he took it to his readers and it was actually successful. Hell, I was in a room full of people at BlogNashville and they were all (except for some people from non-profits who shouldn’t have been in there) wanting to know how to make some money from a blog. I equate it to being into arts & crafts: we handmake something and we’d like to make a little money from our hobbies. There are people making a little income from craft fairs, so why shouldn’t people make money from websites.

My best friend is building a website where she will invest a lot of her time in trying to make it successful. Both financially and in PR efforts. Putting music up, giving tutorials, and just writing in her own way. These are the type of websites where you can make a decent income from. Drumblog, if my current job wasn’t so demanding, would have been making a few hundred a month. When I stopped working on it, we were making about $100 a month between AdSense and a majority from affiliate programs. To be able to write on a few websites and be able to make a living is a dream that can be possible.

Jason did it on one, why can’t the rest of us do it on 2,3 or 5?

Tattoo Photos Part Four

I have to admit, I think the work Don Ed Hardy did on Margaret Cho, looks fabuluous. Just lovely on her body, great imagery. See also The Hardy Brand

gapingvoid: top ten reasons why nobody reads your blog

Yeah, it’s almost a month old. I agree with #8 and on #7, I’d suggest it being Yahoo instead of AOL. Yahoo has been more on the “buy em young” bandwagon again.

{US plans massive data sweep | csmonitor.com} – “The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

The system – parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development – is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government’s latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens’ privacy.”

And OF COURSE, we can trust this administration to not use this against people NOT involved in terrorism.

{Bokardo � Blog Archive � In the Blogging World You Don%u2019t Have Sex on the First Date} – “Scott Karp is having trouble getting linked. The other day the proprietor of Publishing 2.0 and managing director of research and strategy for Atlantic Media admitted that despite emailing influential bloggers (Dave Winer, Jeff Jarvis, and Steve Rubel), he%u2019s been unable to get them to link to his site.”

I would suggest, I don’t know, writing and linking to people you like reading instead of trying to be a shill and demand links from the A+ list. Comment on blogs, send emails, but don’t ever expect anyone to link or comment about you. Hell, I’ve had links on BoingBoing and Evhead but I never expected anyone to link to me.

Today I announce: Miscellany.It’s not a quick link blog, but a blog of “Random Facts, Quotes & Useless Knowledge”…as our tag line says. It will have a least one post a weekday, related to that day…mine or someone else’s.

The design is just a basic Movable Type template….for now. That’s changing, but I’ve been way to busy to get a design together.

Take a look, link to it. Enjoy!

Archimedes Death Ray: Idea Feasibility Testing. | MetaFilter

When I see things like this, I immediately scoff at the idea that Digg is worth $30 million. On Slashdot you had a lot of the same people commenting and on MeFi, you have the actual TV host making a comment. I think Digg is trying so hard to be something Slashdot was back in the .comboom. It’s basically trying to be a tech site for the newer generation, the 2.0 type of people. It’s doing nothing innovative aside from some trendy AJAX tricks, It’s running the same news that everyone else is blogging about.

ok on topic

I really love the idea of Adam going onto a site, even before the show was finished to talk about the Archimedes Death Ray. That’s just cool.

I’m gonna post this to my fellow Chattanooga-area bloggers…. So when are we getting together again? We had a small meet/greet in the summer, so we definitely need one now.