Illyria: Wesley's dead. I'm feeling grief for him. I can't seem to control it. I wish to do more violence. Spike: Well, wishes just happen to be horses today.

'Not Fade Away'


Buffista Business Talk: I wanted simple, I wanted in-and-out, I wanted easy money.

A virtual watercooler where Buffistas in business can talk, share, exchange, bemoan, exult and assorted other power verbs associated with all areas of running/starting up a business. For existing or potential Buffista business owners of all types. Spamming is NOT ON. A list of our Buffista owned businesses is on our links page.


Typo Boy - Sep 18, 2012 10:00:46 am PDT #990 of 1416
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.

Yup. Even if the like your page; they won't see all updates.Cause facebook wants you to pay.

To maximize the chane of people who like your page seeing updates, post all updates on a blog. Then make your updates sharing the blog posts. And ask some of the people who likes your page to like the updates. Maximizes the chances of those who like your page seeing the updates.


JenP - Sep 18, 2012 1:58:55 pm PDT #991 of 1416

Thanks, Typo.


§ ita § - Sep 23, 2012 7:54:19 pm PDT #992 of 1416
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Okay, I need grade school level help here. Y'all know I have the provocateuse websites. They do pretty decently in terms of clicks. Between that and hotlinking, I was over my limits every month, and just a cool thing to do was suddenly costing me $300 extra! I put up solicitation buttons, but it felt weird (I don't interact with the visitors), and was obviously not something you can budget on.

Unsettling, not really a solution.

So I went with adsense. I can do that. All the sites have ads (not here! not here!). People are used to that, and apparently some click? Well, good! So I drop one in at the top and bottom of each ten image page, and the top and bottom of each index page. There's not really much more there.

In terms of drawing attention to the site, there is an RSS feed, but not publicised outside the pages of the site itself (and who casually uses it anymore?). And it's not broken down by interest at this time (of coding). And I post a picture, with ref links back to the source...well, I attempt once a day, but I also suck, so there's that.

I need to monetize, yo. When your web host comes back you and says "I'm surprised your back end page ever worked--you've had 1.2 million visitors so far this morning" there's a two pronged approach--get more invisible money off them (i.e. through showing them ads, and then if they like it and click--value provided--good luck with that...) and to fix the damned back end page so it doesn't crumble under a paltry million (hopefully not concurrent users).

I'm not asking about the latter so much as the former. Without even going into improving the site via program changes (I mean, don't not discuss it just because there are spaceships, but let's not get bogged down in hyperspace v. wormholes debates)

I'm looking at the automated suggestions and they suggest moving ads closer to the content. So this is a kinda typical short page: [link] . I can move a banner ad below or under the person's name, and below, it could come before the links to other sites of the same person. For varying reasons I don't like, but I like the last least.

The sides aren't that open on all the sites, though--my current min wiidth for pics was 600px, but now it's 800px, and sometimes a bigger one slides in.

Anyway. That's my thing. I've already started some SEO based on recommendations here--there's more name in the HTML, and as I collect pictures I try and work out a caption for each one, which definitely should help.

But now what?

Aidez-moi? S'il vous plait?


Laura - Sep 25, 2012 3:28:29 pm PDT #993 of 1416
Our wings are not tired.

So, excuse the delay as I was distracted by the yummy. I claim no expertise on the placement of ads, but as far as the placement goes, I believe the frequent web user has acquired the ability to ignore them wherever they are placed.

So my uneducated suggestion would be to experiment with various options and see what works best for you. In your spare time, of course.


Liese S. - Sep 25, 2012 4:13:14 pm PDT #994 of 1416
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

I would think the SEO would help.

I'd be okay with the ad under the category but above the name, although I don't know how much "closer" to the content that is. I'm actually okay with your least happy option, too. I think. Maybe I would have to see it. I wouldn't like the ad right on top of or between the pictures.


§ ita § - Sep 25, 2012 9:54:12 pm PDT #995 of 1416
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

I'm gonna look at both of those, Liease and Laura--the idea that they might not care, because they're blind (or adblocking, sadly) means I might get away with what I consider intrusive, even. And I'll try with your placement recs, Liese.

I'm thinking of paid User Acceptance Testing (UAT). What do you think of the idea of asking 5 people here and five elsewhere (maybe on the Provocateuse tumblr) who have some tenuous link to the site and then 5 people who have none to spend 30-45 minutes going through as much of all and any of the sites they can, and reporting back to me their responses.

I'm not sure how much I should guide them with preparing a form. At work UAT is really specific. Here is a use case you need to complete to do your job. Here are the new steps. Could you work out how to do step #4? Was the documentation specific...that sort of shit that doesn't apply here.

Is $10 a person reasonable? I can't afford more than that...that's currently too much of one months ad money, but I want to put some of my rapidly decreasing brain cells into this while I can.


Liese S. - Sep 26, 2012 4:32:28 am PDT #996 of 1416
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

I'd do it for free, but I'm a clicky kind of person, and hey, provocateuse. But I think you would need to give at least some guidance to get back the info you're after.


beekaytee - Sep 26, 2012 4:47:43 am PDT #997 of 1416
Compassionately intolerant

I'd be happy to help as well. Gratis. But, like Liese, I'd need a bit of guidance. The times that I've gotten lost in your sites...which, admittedly, were quite a while ago, my progress was super random. I don't know that I could have produced any useful documentation.


§ ita § - Sep 26, 2012 5:19:48 am PDT #998 of 1416
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Yeah, that's the thing. I don't want to give "here's how to use the site" instructions, because if that's not apparent--big flaw. And I don't have particularly suspected weaknesses (as in, I know definite bugs and issues, and those are on my list--this is to discover new stuff) so I can't guide people with that knowledge.

I'm going to have to think that one through more deeply. I'll have to work out various categories for ranking ease of use, etc, and then maybe ask for suggestions....

Thanks, guys.


§ ita § - Sep 26, 2012 7:24:01 pm PDT #999 of 1416
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Ah...I'm having a thought that I'm half hating because it sure feels like work, but...

You know how blogs and stuff have those buttons that say "Tweet this" "Stumble upon this" etc?

I don't use most of those platforms--in fact, I want to Tumblr stuff, and that button rarely appears, and if it does, it never generates an actual post I'd submit (links to the image that caught my eye? What's the point? That doesn't make my Tumblr look cool!). In terms of popularity, if I had to put three buttons, which three are the ones--FB? Twitter? And then what?

eta: Let me not take 1000

Also--people don't really go through to the individual pages, although there is one for each photo. But if I put the share buttons (I'm leaning towards making the third Tumblr) on the 10 photo page, that's nuts. I'll need to work the divs and shit so they're alongside the photos--I will be crying in Buffistechnology for help there...will that kill the page, or what?

I mean, each individual page will definitely have them, but it will be almost for naught if you can't share from those pages by impulse too...