January 1st, 2009
Project Sellout proceeds apace
Well, as you can see if you’re reading this, I was clearly lying when I said I wouldn’t change much about the site for a couple of days.
Edit: you’ll notice the site also now has a donate button (and page). I figured some of you guys might be nice enough to just give me some money for being so generally damn handsome and marginally useful. If you like me working on Mandriva and on this site and you’d like me to be able to carry on devoting all of my working hours to it in future – please consider making a donation. Thanks!
The AdSense approval came through faster than I expected, and I did a site re-design. I liked the previous theme, but it’s been dead for a long time (so doesn’t support newer WordPress features like Widgets), and it’s a bit slow. This new theme is a modified version of the Revolution theme Elements (that’s an affiliate link, if you click on it and buy a support pack, I get a cut), so big thanks to their designers. Despite the fact I know absolutely nothing about CSS, I decided to forego any paid or unpaid support and just hack the damn thing up myself – removing the background images and thumbnails for each post, changing the colors, and shoehorning ads into it. As the theme is GPL I’ll stick my modified version up for download soon – not yet as it’s probably still a bit buggy, I still need to change a few colours and check it with all browsers. If you’d really like a copy of my modifications RIGHT NOW, just drop me a line. It’s not as pretty as the original, but it’s not ugly (I don’t think), it won’t look exactly like anyone else’s site, and it’s quite easy to read, so I’m good with it. If you have any comments or complaints about the appearance do let me know.
And yes, the ads are here now. If you have NoScript or AdBlock you’re probably not seeing them – the site should just look like a site that doesn’t have any ads. If you want to see what it looks like with ads, turn off NoScript and AdBlock for this domain. There’s one graphical banner ad space in the header next to the blog title, and a box of text ads at the bottom of each post. That’s the lot.
To continue Project Sellout, I’m going for affiliate programs. I tend to mention bits of hardware, books, CDs and the like occasionally on here; from now on, these will be (when I remember, and when possible) done as affiliate links, so that you can go buy one easily and I get a bit of money for it. I’ll use NewEgg (as I know it’s a good site) for U.S. hardware stuff and NCIX (as it’s where I shop) for Canadian, and probably Amazon for the other stuff.
Farewell, dignity! You were nice while you lasted.

8 Responses to “Project Sellout proceeds apace”
Did you consider : http://kamelos.com/la-vignette/ ?
By ofaurax January 2nd, 2009 at 4:03 am
Nope, I had not heard about it. I’ll have to ask Romain. Thanks!
By admin January 2nd, 2009 at 8:13 am
What sellout? You may actually earn an honest buck here. Anyway, good luck and best wishes. Hope this becomes a smashing success.
By allangen January 2nd, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Adam,
Do you want to show up in BlogDrake’s “blogroll”?
We have a link to all new blog articles created by BogDrake members on their own blogs.
You might get a few more visits. You could even hit the jackpot and get 10 pence!
Note: you will be getting some sinning bananas
Salut,
SinnerBOFH
By SinnerBOFH January 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 am
Thanks a ton, Sinner – that’d be great. Anything to get more traffic is the goal
By adamw January 3rd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Hey Adam- as promised on the forum, I clicked your PayPal contribution link and chipped in (not much, but I might be able to nickel-and-dime myself a second time this year, too.) I’ve got Adblock and RIP and NoScript disabled, and clicked-through on the couple ads which are already present. When you get a NewEgg affiliation, I’ll be sure to always go there THROUGH here.
By rickst29 January 4th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Thanks a lot, Rick. I do actually have the NewEgg affiliation set up already, but didn’t put any links using it on the site yet. I’ll probably put direct links to affiliate sites using my code on the Donate page, if that’s possible, so people can just go there to do their shopping and give me money. Yay money!
Right now I’m busy trying to make KDE 4 suck less. Fun task…
By adamw January 4th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
hi Adam, I made a donation 5 days ago. Hope it has reached you. Best wishes.
By kiaram January 8th, 2009 at 11:39 pm