I think we’ve become blind to text ads if we haven’t already hidden them. I run Adblock Plus so never really see that many ads and even if I do I never click on them. There’s just something about allowing a third party to display content on your site that may or may not be completely relevant or trustworthy. I never click on ads so I’m not sure why I would expect other people to.

I had to close my entire AdSense account to get a pay out. The regular $100 threshold wasn’t too far away, but the way things were trending I doubt I would have ever gotten there. The last 4 or 5 months saw tens of thousands of impressions with zero earnings.

I’ve had much more success with Amazon’s affiliate links during the same time period. I think a fundamental difference is that visitors are getting to my posts because they are already interested in buying something. For example, the links in my posts about replacing the stereo in my Toyota Tacoma have a very high conversion rate. I link to all the items needed at a popular online retailer with low prices and free shipping and I get a cut of their order. I could remove the affiliate links and just put ads up, but I don’t know what’s going to show up, if people will click them and how much I’ll get (probably just a couple cents).

Maybe I just got lucky with my WordPress plugins pushing my other posts up in Google’s search results. All I know is more people bought Tacoma dash kits and wiring harnesses over clicking stupid AdSense ads.

• Unique Visitors: 47,295
• Visits: 61,400
• Pageviews: 102,244

Not bad. My WordPress plugins make up the majority of my traffic, about 55% of the page views. A lot of those are single visit bounces, probably because I don’t have my sidebar up on individual pages; might be a good thing to change. A couple other interesting factoids:

• About 98% of visitors have a screen resolution larger than 800×600
• 58.5% were using Firefox vs 31% for IE

I’ve been wanting to do a redesign and it might be safe to finally push out towards 900-1000 pixel wide layouts. Still have to take into account that people don’t run their browsers maximized all the time.

I hate bad journalism and when journalists write about anything remotely scientific they sound like friggin idiots. Case in point this remarkably dumb article trying to summarize a remarkably dumb study. The attempt to present statistics supporting the conclusion that “Cell phone users tie up traffic” is laughable:

“In medium- and high-density traffic, drivers were about 20 percent less likely to change lanes. They also spent about 25 to 50 seconds longer following slow-moving vehicles before changing to an open lane. And they drove about 2 mph (3.2 kph) slower than the undistracted drivers and took 15 to 19 seconds longer to complete the 9.2 mile trip.”

Here we are presented with 4 statements that in no way support the idea being presented by the study. Drivers changing lanes less causes an increase in traffic? Spent 25 to 50 second behind slower vehicles? Drove 2 mph slower which increases a 9.2 mile trip by 15 to 19 seconds? If I did my third grade math correctly and assumed an “undistracted” speed of 65mph, that results in a increase of 27 seconds. Assuming a target of 55mph that number jumps to 38 seconds. The use of the word “about” when presenting quantifiable facts is just plain sloppy. Funny how statistics don’t make sense without standard deviations.

Here’s a bright idea, maybe the slower moving vehicles are causing more problems than the people on the cellphones. In my observations of traffic patterns lane changes, merging, and slower moving vehicles have the greatest effect on highway speeds. 605 South approaching the 5 crawls to a stop every single day for no good reason other than people having to merge. It also seems impossible for mentally deficient California drivers to maintain their speed when approaching the “time left to destination” signs. I’m just flabbergasted about people’s inability to maintain a constant speed and drive in a straight line. Am I expecting too much from people or is it small portion of the populace ruining it for everyone else?

Our own ban on hand held cell phone use here in California goes into effect later this year in the hopes of reducing accidents. Too bad that’s a bunch of you know what. Here’s a real study with real statistical analysis and a much larger sample: The Impact of Driver Cell Phone Use on Accidents. And a quote from its conclusion:

“Our models predict no statistically significant reduction in accidents from bans on usage of cell phones while driving. Our estimates of the reduction in accidents from a ban on cell phone use while driving are both lower and less certain than some previous studies indicate.”

Cell phone bans are just another example of government wasting our money and meddling where they don’t belong.

Month Unique visitors
Oct-05 76
Nov-05 165
Dec-05 331
Jan-06 329
Feb-06 1113

For the plugin itself I’ve had about 650 downloads, but a number of those might be repeats for upgrading. Hopefully I’ll have something a little more interesting to post about soon, school and work are time, motivation, and creativity killers.

And boo, the wordpress editor that comes with 2.0.1 doesn’t like tables for some reason. Have to install a more advanced one.

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