Shiatsu blogging
Building a Practise, Technology
I am still making adjustments to the design of this site. There were a couple of elements that were working before but I did not understand why. I am still enough of a geek to feel that any IT project that works without the designer knowing the reason is an accident waiting to happen. I managed to set up a test copy to play with and now know why certain elements were appearing in the way they were.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the quality of websites. This site is no masterpiece but I am happy with it. I have tested it on Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows but have no access to a Mac or browsers such as Opera and Safari. I would be grateful for any feedback from users of these systems if you find any bugs or feel the site does not look quite right.
One effect of the redesign seems to be that my FeedBurner subscriptions have increased. I publish my feed count on the page and this is the total of my RSS and email subscribers. The email numbers have shown the best increase over the month and my average is not so volatile and has settled around the 30 mark.
Advertising on a site about natural health still is an issue that I still think about. I introduced AdSense early on in my design just as another experiment. The amount of money that it generates is modest with my best month being $48. With the current exchange rates that is just £24. Google only pay revenues into an account when the total earned reaches $100 so I receive payments every three or four months. Not enough money to change my life but enough to purchase a new text book. I would welcome your opinion on my use of advertising.
My main concern was to create good content and I hope that I achieve that. When I started I simply posted whatever came into my head and published it as soon as it was written. I still write about what comes into my head but store these posts up as drafts. I then schedule the good ones to appear one at a time every weekday. The others are ideas to research, or to scrap. I find that this approach gets me through those periods when I do not have anything to say and allows time for inspiration to strike.
I have tried to add some extras with my Shiatsu Meridian Chart and Shiatsu Diagnosis Games pages. I keep promising a Yu point version of the game and I do intend to fulfil that promise. I just need to create a good sized graphic of the spine and amend the existing code. But pages like these are a feature that I hope make ShiatsuBlogger stand out from the crowd. I don’t want to teach theory but anything that I can add that makes the theory more accessible will be considered. If you have any ideas then please challenge my coding skills.
I know this site is not about blogging or web design but ShiatsuBlogger is fast approaching it’s first birthday. It just feels like a good time to share what I have learnt over the past year. My shiatsu practise has seen many ups and downs this year and so has my blogging life. Ideas are hard to come by sometimes and I have often thought about scaling back on my posting schedule and even quitting altogether.
Usually I get some inspiration from my shiatsu clients but also from the kind readers who comment on ShiatsuBlogger. Thank you to all of you who take the time not only to read but to contribute. I look forward to building a better site with your help over the next twelve months.
Tony Brown @ August 17, 2007
There’s a really good mailing list called css-d which is full of people who will a) help you with your CSS if that’s where the problem is (it usually is!) and b) will check your site in all kinds of browsers if you ask them.
Thank you Gary for the link. The CSS is fine now and valid. I could not understand how one element was appearing within my header graphic so that the swift appeared to be wrapping around it. Nice effect but I could not tell how it was happening. Now I understand that it was the div containing the graphic was smaller than the element it contained and the other floats butted up to that. Cool trick but not sure if it is valid for all browsers. I am now using a little bit of negative margin magic to move the google search within the shiatsublogger block.
I use a Macbook and Firefox to read your blog and it seems to render fine, as far as I can tell. I don’t have a problem with the ads, and I think it’s great if you generate a little income to pay for the site and textbooks. You put a lot of time and energy into making your blog, so why not?
I am viewing on Sarari. I don’t see any issues.
As for the ads, I think that is a personal preference.
Your design is just fine, Tony. I worry about my site design constantly. Haha! But your blog is older - hopefully I will have settled on something by the time my blog is a year old.
I think about advertising a lot, too. I think the best way to monetize a CM blog is through affiliate marketing, finding books and products that your audience will like and giving them information about them… but it’s hard to find good programs to be involved with. Anyway, that’s a decent Adsense income for your number of subscribers and such… Sounds like you’re off to a great start.
Good work!
Eric
Affiliate (Amazon) marketing has never worked for me. I think that is because I get hits from around the world and you have to do a lot of work to set up and display different stores for visitors from the UK, US. I am in the UK and get visitors from around the world so my affiliates received few clicks.