These are some of the questions I was curious about during my blogging sabbatical:
What happens when a website goes cold?
Which archived entries will become the most popular?
How will idleness affect search engine algorithms?
What will the daily traffic be on this cobweb?
I never formally gave up blogging here. Instead, I simply added the text “i’m currently on daily blogging sabbatical, but i’ll be back very soon.” to the top of the page in the spring of 2011.
I essentially created a digital snapshot-in-time. Looking back at the chronological edit archive, I added a few entries in the spring 2012 & backdated them to the summer 2011, but from then on, it’s been intentionally silent on this website. I was curious about what would happen when this website was paused.
Most websites go offline, but few go on pause. It’s much easier to start a free blog on Tumblr than it is to have your own domain name, purchase a website hosting package, install the content management system, and keep everything running smoothly. Pause also costs money, and in my case, to the tune of hundreds of dollars a year. From dozens of domain names to the hosting package that keeps all the websites running, keeping my small stake of land on the World Wide Web has been both time-consuming and expensive. But it has also been quite rewarding to have this digital time capsule alive and online, albeit collecting dust.
Over the last few years much of my attention has gone to updating different websites that I was paid to manage. This made the intentional neglect of this website much easier to handle. I also never set a specific date that I would return because I didn’t want to be arbitrarily pressured to end my blogging sabbatical.
In lieu of posting new content here, I’ve also kept a secondary scrapbook during these silent years that includes some of my more memorable accomplishments, creations, and endeavors. Over the coming days & weeks I plan to regularly add new entries to the archives in order reflect what has transpired over the last few years. Concurrently, I also plan on recoding the layout of this website because it’s in desperate need of a makeover.
Welcome back! Pardon the dust.
Removal of the Competitive Ad Filter [Selling Out Part Two]
|| 9/17/2009 || 11:34 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||
Since I added Google AdSense earlier this year, every time I found an advertisement that I didn’t want showing on my website, I would log on to Google AdSense, and add the URL to my Competitive Ad Filter. But who was I competing against? Were the ads merely competing against my own ideology?
Was I saying, “Hey Nikolas, you don’t want your visitors to think you tacitly support [insert company]?” or “Do I want some organization that advocates beliefs contrary to my own showing up here?” And I came to a two-fold realization….
First, by limiting the competition for ads on my website, I was earning less money each time someone clicked on an ad. The way Google AdSense works is that companies bid on keywords and these keywords are triggered by content on my website. When there is less competition for these keywords, other companies pay less for the ads to show up on my website. So why earn less, when I could just as easily remove ALL the ads entirely? Why continue to log into AdSense and add to the Competitive Ad Filter each time I found an ad contrary to my ideology? I began to view this practice as a futile effort, akin to swimming in quicksand.
Second, I actually enjoy seeing something different each time I view my blog. As someone who has spent years compiling this content, I know exactly what I am going to see (within a certain degree) every time I visit. But the ads are somewhat random and this makes the experience more engaging on my end (and maybe yours as well?). I can’t say the same for those people who happen to stumble upon my website for the first time and think they look tacky (sorry!). But I can say that they bring a certain amount of personal entertainment that goes beyond the authorship of this content. They show who is paying for words— and words retain a certain degree of power. Thus I can see who was fighting and winning the war of words right on the top of my website– in real time.
Earlier today I removed all of the websites that I was blocking in my Competitive Ad Filter. As the title of this entry suggests, I have, to some degree, completely sold out. The Part One related to the title of this entry is about the removal of the robots exclusion protocol that blocked web crawlers from accessing the content of my website a year & a half ago. By selling out then, I began a radically new direction (paradoxically, a direction most people automatically start at) and this entry highlights a subtle change of course. The moment I opened the floodgates to web crawlers, every personal opinion, every word, every image, every map, EVERYTHING that I had spent years creating and documenting was placed within reach of a simple google query. Before that moment, it was reserved only to those who knew me or knew of me. While this might seam contrary to the nature of the internet, I did it all on purpose and I have zero regret.
Nonetheless, as Part Two begins manifests itself, I expect to see more ads that go against my ideology, but now I fully welcome them. I welcome these contrasting viewpoints in order to strengthen my own. And maybe, just maybe, earn a few bucks to pay for my hosting and domain names.