Project Sellout proceeds apace

Source

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.

Comments

ofaurax wrote on 2009-01-02 12:03:
Did you consider : http://kamelos.com/la-vignette/ ?
admin wrote on 2009-01-02 16:13:
Nope, I had not heard about it. I'll have to ask Romain. Thanks!
allangen wrote on 2009-01-03 02:15:
What sellout? You may actually earn an honest buck here. Anyway, good luck and best wishes. Hope this becomes a smashing success.
SinnerBOFH wrote on 2009-01-03 14:10:
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
adamw wrote on 2009-01-04 00:39:
Thanks a ton, Sinner - that'd be great. Anything to get more traffic is the goal :)
rickst29 wrote on 2009-01-05 01:32:
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.
adamw wrote on 2009-01-05 01:41:
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...
kiaram wrote on 2009-01-09 07:39:
hi Adam, I made a donation 5 days ago. Hope it has reached you. Best wishes.