All right! My first attempt at blog exposure!

First, I snazzified my header (a process that took more time than I would have liked). I finally found the tutorial I needed (note to self: doing an image search for “bum” won’t exactly bring up homeless people). Then I got an account on Technorati, since I heard it’s pretty big in the “blogging community” (if such a thing exists). Alas, I found out that blogger tags weren’t compatible with technorati tags, so I would have completely given up, if it hadn’t been for this website. Apparently I was just a Firefox plugin (greasemonkey) away from making it all work.

Now I’m going to test it out, to see if these tags help me out at all… So far my counter has been telling me that I’m mostly the only one visiting my site, and the hits are because I’ve been going to the site from different computers.

P.S. I learned that blog entries are much more interesting if you slap a picture of something on it.

Yep. $0.00…

heres a cool blog I found.

So– My dream of having a website has been realized! woop-dee-doo.

Here’s what I’ve done so far, in some more detail.

First, I thought of a cool name. I went to godaddy.com to see the availability of the website name (there’s also a myriad of other websites, like internick.com, and 1and1.com)
After I saw that all of the cool names were taken, I settled on capitalistbum.com

I paid 9 dollars to register that domain name for the year. Of course, Godaddy offers a bunch of (higher priced) options, like private domain name registration, and automatic renewal. I stuck with my 9 dollar option.

After that, I looked for some hosting… I googled “best hosting sites” and “cheapest hosting sites” and “best web hosting”, but they all gave me biased results (go figure!) I settled on 2mhost.com, since it looked like it had a good ratio of “cheap to professional”. I’m looking at it now, and i’m noticing some spelling errors that suggest that this is a foreign website (“Submit enquiry”). They say that they have live, 24 hour support, but since I haven’t had any problems yet, I really wouldn’t know. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

After that, I pointed the domain name to 2mhost’s servers, and started thinking about what the heck I was going to do with the website. Since I don’t have much HTML experience, I decided to go for a blog. I’m using blogger, since it works with my gmail account. And that’s good.

I got the blog running… Time for ads. I used google’s adsense, since it’s an option with Blogger… I really don’t think I’m going to get much from the ads, since Adsense is what EVERYONE and their brother uses. We’ll see.
Someone told me something about banner exchanges, or something like that… I’ll have to google that someday.

Speaking of Google, I learned that google’s web crawlers take about a month to pick up on a website… Which is probably why I can’t find my site when I google myself (yes, I google myself).

I went into the template settings to put my pretty little banner picture of the Chrysler building and a mouse. For some reason, I can’t get it to ignore the page wrapping… frustration.

My next project is to remove that drab title that I have, and replace it with something nice and photoshoppy. After that, I’ll concentrate on getting my website noticed.

I’ve always had an interest in bums. Real bums, I mean… or panhandlers, as some call them. The people who stand out in the sun, day in and day out, asking for money. Today I was able to have a taste of what that’s like. I was raising money for an extra credit project, and a few of my classmates and I decided that sitting at a table asking for money wasn’t cutting it, so we hit the streets. In about an hour and a half we had about 60 dollars between the four of us. I made about 60 cents. Everyone besides me was a good looking girl, and looking back, I think being a guy really hurt my fund-raising chances.

If you really dedicate yourself, it could be a lucrative opportunity.

Step three of experiment: Get some ads. I used google’s ad-sense, and apparently, there’ll be some revenue from the number of clicks made. Signing up was really easy, as it was integrated with Blogger. Something interesting about their terms of service:

Publishers participating in the AdSense program:

• May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as “click the ads,” “support us,” “visit these links,” or other similar language
• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads
• May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
• May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
• May not place misleading labels above Google ad units – for instance, ads may be labeled “Sponsored Links” but not “Favorite Sites”

So apparently I can’t even MENTION them… Isn’t that defeating the purpose of advertising itself? Unfortunately, by actually talking about these ads, i’ve probably put my adsense account at risk. Let me put out my disclaimer:

“I am in no way, shape or form trying to get anyone to click on the links above. The clicks should be made because of the genuine interest of the person.”

Go ahead and check if they’re genuinely interesting.

Next experiment: Getting placed on Google.

I saw an interesting set of articles on working from home. I might read them later.

I have a lot of talented friends that have jobs that don’t exploit their talent. For example, my graphic designer friend works in as a math tutor, and my artist/musician friend works at a aviation-parts repair shop. What i’d like to do is form a Coalition of Talented Individuals. (CoTaI?), and have people refer to us when they need to do an art project or a gig or a video or whatever. I just don’t know how to start.

hmm…

Hello internet world-

As the name implies, I am a bum. But I am a bum with a vision. A vision of a world where one can exploit the back allies of capitalism to sustain himself.

Now, how am I going to do this?

First of all, I’ll make a blog. Famous people on the internet say that blogs are good ways to get famous. This may be true, so I’m going to explore that possibility. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• I went to Godaddy.com and registered this website (capitalistbum.com)
• I typed the website wrong, and accidentally registered www.captalistbum.com ($9)
• I registered the correct one. (another $9)
• I let the domain name sit for about 2 months
• I got website hosting from 2mhost.com for a year ($33)

So In my money making experiment, I’m already in the red by $50.

Next, i have to figure out how ads work, and see if I can get my money back.

More to come later.