My first post in almost four years. Yes, years.
My main website, PopStarsPlus.com has gone from consistently over 1 million Unique users a months to only 100,000 in that time span. Sad, I know. However, because of the good content and well-designed site (I know the aesthetics were never much to look at), I am lucky that I am still getting so many visitors even after almost no updates during the past one and a half, almost two years.
Two months ago, the number of uniques slipped to under 100,000 (according to my Traffic Facts), and that got me worried. Also doing a little research, looks like the Panda updates by Google really killed me (I still had almost 300,000 uniques in January 2011). Last week I have begun to update the site, and it needs a lot of TLC between updating info on old celebrities, adding new ones, and dealing with the destruction of FrontPage extensions by the latest browsers (you can go to a page, but not see any content there).
So, a lot of work ahead of me, but I am up for the task. I will try to keep you abreast of how I am doing, and give some hints to those of you that read this blog (I doubt that any of you are still there -- unless you happen to come to this page through a search for something else.
So, until next time . . . .
Friday, January 13, 2012
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Some of the latest websites
I have been helping out my partner a little bit with some extra websites. I think I have been getting burned out on the sites I have been working on. To relieve this feeling I and my partner begin to create new websites to have fun with (that is how www.PopStarsPlus.com began). Some of these websites include:
www.SignaturesForCharity.com - A website promoting athletes that sing autographs through the mail - but donate (all or part) of their signing fees towards charities. It is a cool idea and I am glad I am helping out with it (although I have only been more of a consultant on it).
www.FrankThomasTheOriginalOne.com - My buddy became freindly with Frank Thomas, the 3x All-Star that played in the 1950s and 1960s (and on the original 1962 Mets team). I helped him design the website, but he can take most of the credit for it.
Celebrity T&A - This is my adult website. Although not really pornographic, it does link to many adult websites. It is starting to gain some steam, but still needs a bunch of work.
www.BusinessForMyself.com - Not really a new website, but I have been spending some making a few additions to it lately.
Now I need to get my head back into the game and help out my partner with Pop Stars Plus -- I know he is falling behind (he is just as busy as me in his non-web life), but needs my help.
Until next time . . . Ian
www.SignaturesForCharity.com - A website promoting athletes that sing autographs through the mail - but donate (all or part) of their signing fees towards charities. It is a cool idea and I am glad I am helping out with it (although I have only been more of a consultant on it).
www.FrankThomasTheOriginalOne.com - My buddy became freindly with Frank Thomas, the 3x All-Star that played in the 1950s and 1960s (and on the original 1962 Mets team). I helped him design the website, but he can take most of the credit for it.
Celebrity T&A - This is my adult website. Although not really pornographic, it does link to many adult websites. It is starting to gain some steam, but still needs a bunch of work.
www.BusinessForMyself.com - Not really a new website, but I have been spending some making a few additions to it lately.
Now I need to get my head back into the game and help out my partner with Pop Stars Plus -- I know he is falling behind (he is just as busy as me in his non-web life), but needs my help.
Until next time . . . Ian
Saturday, May 24, 2008
A year has gone by
Almost a whole year has gone by since my last post. Wow, a lot of stuff has happened to me over the past year. It has been a really, really, really busy for me the past 12 months. Between work (my regular 9 to 5), family (my first priority) and taking care of other misc. issues, I basically have not had a lot of time to put into my websites.
I reached a high of OVER 1.2 MILLION UNIQUES in one moth last summer on www.PopStarsPlus.com. Then I had to take care of other business and it drifted down to about 850,000. Not bad, but a huge drop. Over the past few months I have been trying to keep up with updating my sites when I can, but it has NOT been very consistent. Right now I am really behind with a few of my partners. I hope to catch up this week.
The biggest roadblock for me now is the eBay linking debacle. eBay decided to pull out of Commission Junction, which means that the hundreds of links I have to them will no longer be good after May 31st. I understand the business reasons behind it, but I have to go through and change all of those links. Most of these links are created with key words associated for each banner for each individual page. Unfortunately, the link creation system is extremely slow (even with my high speed), and it is going to take a long, long time to get everything updated, even with the extention they gave -- they should have done something to automatically make our links go in-line with their new system. I will be out of some money as of next month due to this (as will eBay).
Even though I have been extremely busy and have not had time to spend on my main sites, I have had time to play around and create some new websites - - - have to go, I'll write about the new sites tomorrow.
I reached a high of OVER 1.2 MILLION UNIQUES in one moth last summer on www.PopStarsPlus.com. Then I had to take care of other business and it drifted down to about 850,000. Not bad, but a huge drop. Over the past few months I have been trying to keep up with updating my sites when I can, but it has NOT been very consistent. Right now I am really behind with a few of my partners. I hope to catch up this week.
The biggest roadblock for me now is the eBay linking debacle. eBay decided to pull out of Commission Junction, which means that the hundreds of links I have to them will no longer be good after May 31st. I understand the business reasons behind it, but I have to go through and change all of those links. Most of these links are created with key words associated for each banner for each individual page. Unfortunately, the link creation system is extremely slow (even with my high speed), and it is going to take a long, long time to get everything updated, even with the extention they gave -- they should have done something to automatically make our links go in-line with their new system. I will be out of some money as of next month due to this (as will eBay).
Even though I have been extremely busy and have not had time to spend on my main sites, I have had time to play around and create some new websites - - - have to go, I'll write about the new sites tomorrow.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Diversification of your websites
June is almost over, so I think it is time for me to make at least one post on this blog. It has been a very busy month for me, however, I have not been spending much time on web work. My partner is really upset at me, but since he is such a nice guy, really has bothered me very much about it -- YET.
Anyway -- Things are going good with www.PopStarsPlus.com. We had way over 1.1 MILLION UNIQUE visitors for two months straight. This month looks like we may hit 1.25 million, but it is going to be close. However, the eCPM for our Google banners is still way down from last year (less than half), which means that we need to increase our traffic about 110% in order to make the revenues we should be doing. Some of the updates to the site are also going a bit slow because I am not there and unfortunately, he has had to cut out on most of the celebrity news updates. If anyone reading this wants to send us celebrity news summaries, email us at info@popstarsplus.com. Sorry, but we are not paying for submissions.
I have not had much of a chance to update www.BiographyPlus.com, but hope to have some time this summer. It just takes so much time to get things right.
My partner, although he is wearing himself thin doing his updating and mine has also decided to diversify a little bit. He has created a website for a new trading card game coming out called Chaotic. To visit the site, go to www.ChaoticGamePlus.com. I do not think he is going to be making much money from it, but he is enjoying it, and that is the reason why we got into making these websites in the first place.
In total contrast to that, I have also been consulting on an adult site called Celebrity T & A [*for mature viewers only*. Please do not mock me, but a freind of mine wants to try his hand at website development, so I am helping him out. This is the topic he picked since he thinks he can make a lot of money and I think he likes doing it just a little too much.
Celebrity sites - Remember to update your sites for the award ceremonies this month (which we have to do on Pop Stars Plus).
If no one reads this blog, then did I really write it?
Until next time . . . .
Ian Ripley
Anyway -- Things are going good with www.PopStarsPlus.com. We had way over 1.1 MILLION UNIQUE visitors for two months straight. This month looks like we may hit 1.25 million, but it is going to be close. However, the eCPM for our Google banners is still way down from last year (less than half), which means that we need to increase our traffic about 110% in order to make the revenues we should be doing. Some of the updates to the site are also going a bit slow because I am not there and unfortunately, he has had to cut out on most of the celebrity news updates. If anyone reading this wants to send us celebrity news summaries, email us at info@popstarsplus.com. Sorry, but we are not paying for submissions.
I have not had much of a chance to update www.BiographyPlus.com, but hope to have some time this summer. It just takes so much time to get things right.
My partner, although he is wearing himself thin doing his updating and mine has also decided to diversify a little bit. He has created a website for a new trading card game coming out called Chaotic. To visit the site, go to www.ChaoticGamePlus.com. I do not think he is going to be making much money from it, but he is enjoying it, and that is the reason why we got into making these websites in the first place.
In total contrast to that, I have also been consulting on an adult site called Celebrity T & A [*for mature viewers only*. Please do not mock me, but a freind of mine wants to try his hand at website development, so I am helping him out. This is the topic he picked since he thinks he can make a lot of money and I think he likes doing it just a little too much.
Celebrity sites - Remember to update your sites for the award ceremonies this month (which we have to do on Pop Stars Plus).
If no one reads this blog, then did I really write it?
Until next time . . . .
Ian Ripley
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Maxim's 100 Hottest Women List
If you have a celebrity website, Maxim's list of the hottest 100 women should be of interest to you. Basically, you should check their list and make sure that you have all of these women on your site. Regardless of whether you think that they are sexy or not, these are the women you need to include.
I was dissapointed with Maxim's list of the 100 hottest women. I mean, Lindsay Lohan came in #1? She's cute and could be pretty foxy at times, but she does not have most of the curves and moves to even be in the top 50. To me, hot is hot. Another one that does not belong there is Cameron Diaz - there are times when she is absolutely beautiful, but does not exactly make it in the body department. Maybe they do not understand what hot or sexy means. Jessica Alba is up there and deservingly so -- she's got the look, got the bod and if you ever saw her dance, she's got the moves.
Most of these women are "popular" which is great, but this is not a popularity poll. It seems like the major corporate players for movies & music got together to create this list -- it plays very well well for them, but is just not reality. The dissapointing thing is that Maxim has all kinds of real hotties on their pages - not just the popular celebrities and should know the difference. AskMen.com has a more realistic list.
The important thing is, use this list of women to include on your site.
Until next time . . .
Ian Ripley
I was dissapointed with Maxim's list of the 100 hottest women. I mean, Lindsay Lohan came in #1? She's cute and could be pretty foxy at times, but she does not have most of the curves and moves to even be in the top 50. To me, hot is hot. Another one that does not belong there is Cameron Diaz - there are times when she is absolutely beautiful, but does not exactly make it in the body department. Maybe they do not understand what hot or sexy means. Jessica Alba is up there and deservingly so -- she's got the look, got the bod and if you ever saw her dance, she's got the moves.
Most of these women are "popular" which is great, but this is not a popularity poll. It seems like the major corporate players for movies & music got together to create this list -- it plays very well well for them, but is just not reality. The dissapointing thing is that Maxim has all kinds of real hotties on their pages - not just the popular celebrities and should know the difference. AskMen.com has a more realistic list.
The important thing is, use this list of women to include on your site.
Until next time . . .
Ian Ripley
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Traffic Up, CPM Down
Traffic Up -- Google Adsense eCPM is Down
First, the traffic to www.popstarsplus.com is back up to pre-950 levels and I hope it is going to stay that way.
On the other hand, the eCPM levels for Google Adsense have been reduced to more than half of my "normal" average. It may be partly due to "smart pricing" since the numbers were up in March, but it may also be due to the time of year. March had a number of Award ceremonies - which meanth that celebrity related stuff was hot. Nothing is happening in April, so advertisers are not spending as much on celebritiy related advertising.
It hurts me in the pocket book, but overall, it if something is going to be down, I would rather it be the CPM. With the higher traffic my other revenue streams compensate somewhat. It is also nicer to give prospective advertisers higher monthly numbers.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Out of the Google Doghouse
Ta da!!!!!
www.popstarsplus.com is finally out of the Google SERP doghouse -- at least for now. Our numbers are not up to our all time high levels, but we are coming back gradually. Hooray for us!!!! Hopefully this celebration will not be short lived.
Anyway, using Alexa.com as my guide, I went checking other celebrity websites to see if their numbers were affected as well. Although not all were affected, there were a bunch that did see some type of traffic drop in January. There were a few that actually saw their numbers rise during this time period as well. I still have no clue what triggered Google's new algos to kill my site or to restore it to health, but for now we are happy!!!!
As I have stated in the past that we really dislike exchanging links with other sites, I am going to be adding sites this weekend for recipricols for a large site that I recently communicated with and another smaller site that I have been putting off for a few weeks, most because of the issues relating to Google. Google likes relevant links to your site, so, that is what I am going to give them.
For those of you that have celbrity sites that are kid freindly, do not forget about the upcoming Nickelodeon Awards. Its the biggest awards show for the tween and teen crowd. Justin Timberlake is hosting, and a a lot of the young stars will be honored, performing and in the crowd.
Speaking about sites for young people, if you like role playing card games and animated TV shows, check out the new Chaotic game by 4Kids. We created a sister site www.ChaoticGamePlus.com specially for this game/program. The TV show is now airing, but the game is forthcoming in May.
Until next time . . . .
Ian Ripley
www.popstarsplus.com is finally out of the Google SERP doghouse -- at least for now. Our numbers are not up to our all time high levels, but we are coming back gradually. Hooray for us!!!! Hopefully this celebration will not be short lived.
Anyway, using Alexa.com as my guide, I went checking other celebrity websites to see if their numbers were affected as well. Although not all were affected, there were a bunch that did see some type of traffic drop in January. There were a few that actually saw their numbers rise during this time period as well. I still have no clue what triggered Google's new algos to kill my site or to restore it to health, but for now we are happy!!!!
As I have stated in the past that we really dislike exchanging links with other sites, I am going to be adding sites this weekend for recipricols for a large site that I recently communicated with and another smaller site that I have been putting off for a few weeks, most because of the issues relating to Google. Google likes relevant links to your site, so, that is what I am going to give them.
For those of you that have celbrity sites that are kid freindly, do not forget about the upcoming Nickelodeon Awards. Its the biggest awards show for the tween and teen crowd. Justin Timberlake is hosting, and a a lot of the young stars will be honored, performing and in the crowd.
Speaking about sites for young people, if you like role playing card games and animated TV shows, check out the new Chaotic game by 4Kids. We created a sister site www.ChaoticGamePlus.com specially for this game/program. The TV show is now airing, but the game is forthcoming in May.
Until next time . . . .
Ian Ripley
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