I’m just having a break from my work for a few minutes, so thought I would spend some time posting an entry to my somewhat neglected (of late) blog.
It’s finally Friday. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster (or whichever icon or icons that are central to your faith or belief system). And yes, before you ask, I am in a stupid mood.
I’ve had one hell of a week at work - flat out for most of it. I won’t go into too much detail because I’m always aware these days that I could get into trouble for discussing my “professional life” on the blog, which is a “public forum”…
Last night I did some work on the “PluggedOut Writers” writing site that I started making a while ago (image below). It has unexpectedly become the main income stream from the adsense banners that I have around the place.
The reason for having the Google Adsense banners in the first place is they pay for my website hosting. It usually comes out at breakeven - if the site makes more money than it costs I end up spending it on stuff to do with the web anyway, so the taxman has no reason to start poking around (it makes so little profit it’s not worth bothering with).
I used to run a writing site many moons ago called ThoughtCafe. It became one of the most popular amateur writing destinations on the web at it’s height - but that was the result of a couple of years of continual effort to drag new visitors in. As much as the various spams describe companies who will get you ranked highly in Google, the best way for a website to increase it’s standing is word of mouth. The best thing about “word of mouth” is that it doesn’t cost anything. The worst thing about it is that it takes time - and lots of it.
Lots of friends said I was mad to start running a website again. Once a site reaches a kind of critical mass, it starts to generate it’s own popularity, and you don’t have to work at getting new visitors any more - your problem changes to one of management and support. This is what happened at ThoughtCafe, and it took up most of my free time. Looking back I have nothing but fond memories of it, but I know that one of the contributing factors that led to ThoughtCafe being shut down was in-fighting among the members - and there was a simple reason for it; ThoughtCafe had forums.
Public forums on websites are akin to storing matches and petrol in the same room. All it needs is one spark, and we suddenly see evidence of the Penny Arcade “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” (image below if you’ve not seen it).
I cannot urge enough - if you ever run a website, do not put a forum on it. You have no idea how much spare time some people have, and how much of that time they will spend writing viscious, nasty messages to each other. Of course the Americans in the crowd will threaten to sue their friends, enemies and the website at the drop of a hat too, throwing class action lawsuits all over the place, and claiming brilliant attorneys as family members. I know. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve cleared up the wreckage.
On that note, I’ll finish my tea break and urge everybody and their dog to visit PluggedOut Writers. Oh, and while you’re there, go click on the Adsense Banner and help fund the site