Going for broke

It would appear to be an old hackneyed phrase.  But it is quite significant in terms of this blog.  It is so significant, that I am going to make a habit of starting each day with a status report on this blog's production.  If my blog can't make it commercially, I lose credibility.  So, I am going to have to do this.  It now goes with the territory. (another apparent hackneyed expression, lol)

How will I do this?  I will use the sitemeter down below to give me some a verifiable performance metric.  I can report that here, or you can see for yourself at the bottom of the page.  I can't do that with all measurables, but I will try to report as many of these as I can.  The site meter says 4404 visitors to this page.

Is that accurate?  It is over a nearly 7 month period.  I think it is about as accurate as Blogger's own stats, which are combined with Sitemeter's contribution ( a recent addition), which is explained here.  The problem is that the two metrics are in conflict.  Blogger reports more pageviews than Sitemeter,  but sometimes it is the other way around.  I started using Sitemeter back in Feb, but it started counting more pageviews than Blogger until I figured out why.  Then, I reset Sitemeter to the Blogger number and began displaying the number on the bottom of this page.  I started that recently.

The numbers still conflict, so I may need to adjust the number in order to get back into some realistic number.

As of this writing, Sitemeter says 4404, Blogger says 4525.  I have Blogger configured not to count my pageviews, but I think it counts some of them anyway.  But Sitemeter appears to be not counting all pageviews, because its number is smaller than Blogger's.  Maybe I should report both.

Sponsors will be displayed on the front page.  I can have a featured sponsor and other sponsors that are not featured with a display on the front page, but on a dedicated page.   A featured sponsor gets a dedicated page, which are limited in availability. The Experimental Page is that page.  By the way, Blogger gives me 10 pages, including the home page.  I have already used about half of these.  Perhaps I can get rid of some of those and make room for more sponsors.  But since I have no sponsors as of this time, there is plenty of room now.  I will leave a products page, because I have already promised this to a few folks.  This will stay as it is as long as the blog is here.  I am going to keep the index for navigation page.

Candidates for removal?  Let's see 1) Little Search Engine that could  2) and the about me page.  There is room in the Profile link page that Blogger supplies, so this is a redundancy that can be eliminated.  The Little Search Engine that could can be combined with the Index page.  That leaves up to six pages for sponsors.

The pricing for Sponsors?  I can offer a featured display for a nominal fee now, with the caveat that prices will be adjusted higher if the readership grows.  The featured page can continue for a limited time in which it will have to be renewed.  Each featured Sponsor will get a dedicated page for no extra charge.  Once the time on the feature ends, the dedicated page will remain for a limited time as well and will expire later.  ( this to be determined on an ad hoc basis)  All sponsors will get on the Products page and continue for as long as the blog does.  This is free.  I have a few of these now and those can be observed by going to the products page.

One of these is Chris Laird, who I mention quite frequently on this blog.  I okayed it with Chris and everybody else on that page.

I can start pricing the sponsorships at a bid, as like an auction.  The price will start at 99 cents.  Anybody who wants to sponsor this page for a week, can make a bid for that starting now.  All bids will be displayed on the status report.  If you want to bid privately, send an me an email.  Or if you want to contribute and get a sponsorship that way, you can.

As of this writing, there are no sponsors because this is brand new.  We will see how it goes.  I will report this on a daily basis here each morning with my first post, along with the latest Blogger stats and Sitemeter stats.  If I have to make adjustments, I will report that at this time.  The navigation label will be put on the sidebar, as this will be a new label entry for the sidebar entry.

I have a video on YouTube that demonstrates how these labels work.  You can access my videos at the bottom of this page.  It is called video bar and it points to my YouTube page.  Look for the video on my YouTube Page.  I will go there and include it in a playlist, if I haven't done that already.

Update:

8:35am

I think the mechanism by which a bid may be placed could be in the form of a comment.  You can do it two ways by making a private offer, or a public bid.  If there was a private offer, it will supercede a bid if it exceeds the bid.  That means, if there was a bidder for the 99 cent minimum and somebody did better privately, that will supercede the bid.  The private offers will posted as the highest bidder, so that anyone bidding can have a shot at winning.

As I mentioned, proceeds for this auction will go to support the Space Show, not me.  This auction will end 1 week from today at the hour of my original post here, which was about an hour ago.

If you like the Space Show, and this blog, please support it by making a bid.  Payment can be by the PayPal button on this page.  I am doing a DBA business arrangement here, so I own the business and will have to pay taxes on it.  Of course, if this business ever amounts to anything, I will want to change that to a non profit corporation.  But there is no justification for that yet.

Update:

9:39am

I have made the changes indicated above, plus I moved Sitemeter's stats up toward the top of the page.

10:00 am

The example slideshow for the sponsors there have actual photos taken by yours truly.  It is in a Picasa Web Album and they are public.  I may have mentioned this before, but will do so again.  All you need is some photos and a product to sell.  These photos were made by a camera phone.  Most camera phones will allow you to email yourself so that you can get your picture out of the phone and into a computer so that it can be transmitted or uploaded to the Picasa Web Album.  All Google asks for is an email address.  It can be any email address, I would imagine.  The Web Album is divided into public and private albums.  The one you need for this application must be public.

Restrictions for the albums: use your common sense.  Porn or violence not acceptable, of course.  Saleable merchandise is.   Suggestions and feedback welcome.

Update: 11:00 approx

I said earlier that this blog hasn't earned a cent.  It has actually earned 1 dollar from an Amazon sale.  But it cannot be collected yet because the sum was too small.  As for anything else, there has been no donations.  The other revenue source, AdSense refused to pay the 180 dollars that they said the blog earned.  It is rather pricey for so few pageviews, but the blog does get pageviews.  And they paid nothing for them at all.