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Showing posts with label totg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label totg. Show all posts

April 25, 2013

URL Change

A few hours ago I purchased the domain "topoftexasgazette.com". Blogger will redirect to it, but if you want, you can change your bookmarks to the dot com URL.  I'm not for sure if the few reader feeds this blog has will change.

I'm going ahead with the Blogger platform because it's user-friendly (read: simple for a doofus like me) and I didn't want to pay for hosting.  I might change that in the future, but will stick with Blogger for the time being.

Some other things have changed;  the Feedjit feed quit working, even though I changed the URL after I signed into my Feedjit account.  I put in a new module, but for some reason the colors and width of the module didn't come out the way I wanted, so I will "work" on that sometime soon.  It's an interesting feature, but not necessary.

Also, the ToTG Trivia scoreboard module quit working, but it wasn't working earlier before the URL change.  I will also see if I can fix that, but if not, I will just create a link in the right-hand nav-bar for those who like to play the quiz that way.  Until then, the URL is ToTG Trivia Tournament

Other than that, I don't see many other changes.  I'm thinking of using AdSense, but OTOH, I doubt I'd see much money from it, seeing as how there's only a few dozen unique hits each day and probably isn't worth the hassle.  We'll see...I might try it for a while.  The domain cost only ten bucks, so it's not as though I have anything other than time tied up in this site. 

I've read articles about making money with a blog, but I also have read that people who make a profit off their blogs are few and far between.  I follow some food blogs/sites in my reader and one woman said she had just started turning a profit after 6+ years of blogging.  She hinted at the time she had spent and I did some quick calculations and figured she was making about a dollar an hour.  My time isn't worth much, but it's worth more than that. (one of the reasons I follow her blog in my reader instead of bookmarking it and visiting it daily is because of the multiple and obtrusive ads she has on her pages.)

The URL is longer than I wanted, but someone already had purchased "totg.com".  It's not being used, but is for sale for $8875.

Yeah, sure.  I'll get that out of my piggy bank.

April 17, 2013

StarRSS

Turn any site's RSS feed into a Star Wars style reader with StarRSS . Get the URL site feed for your favorite website and plug it in and hit "Enter".  The latest posts will appear in a Star Wars-type scroll complete with the opening theme music and each title is a valid link.

Practical?  Not really.  Fun?  Loads!

Here's what ToTG's site feed looks like:


Or you can check it out yourself!

StarRSS

March 29, 2013

Rank & Worth

ToTG is ranked #8,129,387 in the world according to Website Value. Different sites give some vastly different rankings, especially in what ToTG is "worth". ValueMyWeb says it's worth $499. I've said this before, but I'd sell it for that in a New York minute except I was taught to never cheat anyone.

webArbiter says it's worth $457. Yeah, right.

Alexa, arguably the most accurate of these types of statistics sites, globally ranks ToTG #23,066,013.

SiteWorthGet said this blog was worth $139, but after updating the information, its worth is now $109. I shouldn't have updated it, it depreciated 21 bucks with one mouse click! (the content has greatly depreciated over the years since I started it, too)

OTOH, siteworthchecker had a value of Zero, Zilch, Nada...the big ol' goose egg $0 but after an update, it is also now valued at $109. To be honest, that still seems way too a little high.

I guess "worth" means the potential for earning, but since there's no ads, that's a moot point. The numbers vary from site-to-site, but most of the estimated earnings come in at around ten bucks/month. It's worth $10 to me to NOT subject my few readers to ads and the potential for trojans/viruses many hosted ads contain not to mention the invasion of privacy and all-around annoyance of them.  I use various ad block extensions on my Firefox browser and I expect many others do as well.  If not, they should. 

urlpulse says it's ranked #28,916,047 in the world, #2,318,571 in the United States and worth $855.30, with a value per visitor of .03 cents.

Maybe that's why this blog doesn't get many visitors or many people leaving their two cents worth. I'd hate to post here too and have my worth devalued by 2/3.

March 30, 2012

About That Time Again

I was looking at this blog's Flag Counter the other day and viewing the yearly graph, I was reminded that April Fool's Day is coming up.



















For the last couple of years, I've linked to the Google blog and their annual April Fool's joke and it had a trackback and people saw the link and came here.

I'm sure they were disappointed.

This blog averages around 50 unique visitors every day, 80 on a "good" day.  Now and then the count tops 100-150, but that's rare.  They mostly arrive from search engines, looking for gay dwarfs, sister's feet or other things I'm sure they meant to find but didn't...at least not anything applicable to their original intent. 

There are quite a few hits from people searching for Duane Chapman (Dog the Bounty Hunter) or for a particular vehicle I just happened to photograph at a car show.  Some come for videos, but often YouTube has taken them down.  That's probably a visitor that will never come back here, but I can't help that.  I always wonder why they don't search YouTube, but on the other hand, sometimes the comments after the video might be what brings them in. My friends, family and regular readers are sometimes enthused by a certain video and Google or other search engines has their comments in the results.

Many come from different parts of the world when the movie Cast Away is shown, and I'd bet the other spikes in visits shown in the above graphic are from that.  ToTG is near the top in most types of searches for that movie.

My claim to fame. -sigh-

No matter the reason they arrive here, I appreciate the traffic...even though I don't have any paying ads. I don't validate my self-worth by the hits on my blog, but the interest does make it seem worthwhile.   I also appreciate my online friends, my family members and loyal readers who do stop by and laugh at an old fool just foolin' around all year long.

August 1, 2011

August Trivia Tournament Begins!

     ToTG Trivia Tournament


The previous monthly tournament for ToTG Trivia Tournament has ended and a new one starts today!

The top 5 scores from last month have been recorded in the Hall of Fame.

July 1, 2011

July Trivia Tournament

The previous monthly tournament for ToTG Trivia Tournament has ended and a new one starts today!

Play the quiz!

The top 5 scores from last month have been recorded in the Hall of Fame.

August 2, 2010

Brainstorming




is going on in the ToTG Trivia Tournament!





A new month and contest has begun!

Test your trivia knowledge against some sharp wit!

(well, in my case it's dull wit and half at that)

ToTG Trivia Tournament

June 29, 2010

ToTG Has Been Vuvuzeladized!

No, not vandalized (but with this garish "design", could anyone tell?), but infected with the Vuvuzela.

Vuvuzela

Check it out

April 30, 2010

This Blog is Regressing

Nearly a year ago I checked this blog's readability in this post and the other day found a different test. The first test said this blog had a reading level of a sophomore in h.s. ; now the new one says this:



It'd been less embarrassing if this blog had been "held back" a year, but to get kicked back six grades?

Oh well, must be the juvenile humor I publish.

At least I haven't put up any Hannah Montana vids.



Just checked again at the first site; now it says the grade level is 7.

Like I said, regressing. Maybe I'm starting to go into my second childhood.

(some call that "senility")

April 1, 2010

ToTG Sets Record!

No, not a late April Fool's joke, but this blog actually set a record for visits today. (well, a record for this blog) The increased traffic resulted from the post Google Changes Name and came from the hoax post at the official Google blog.

Here are screenshots from our Flag Counter widget:

Weekly visitors



The dark blue denotes new visitors (1,303) and the light blue is the total counter views. (1,687). I'm sure most of the total above and beyond the first-time views is from me popping back in here so many times watching the numbers climb on the Feedjit widget. I couldn't keep up with the count, but at one time I estimate there were over a hundred hits in less than a minute.

Here is the graph for monthly visitors:



The previous record for visitors was something on the order of 200+ when a post about the marquee tag was linked to from a Mozilla forum with another post about the Cast Away crossroads following close behind. (and that one wasn't about the movie, but was from an alternative energy thread in a forum and meant to illustrate how flat and suitable this area is for wind generators)

What did I learn from this? Well, if I want to increase hits, all I have to do is link to the Google blog. First, though, I'll need to load this blog up with ads.

Nah, THAT would be a joke, thinking I could make money off of this blog.



UPDATE: As I predicted, yesterday had our second largest number of visitors, with 399 first-time visitors and 515 total.

There also was an increase in hits on the "Cast Away" posts; it must have been showing on TV.

September 22, 2009

Albania! Albania!



In honor of the 103rd country to visit ToTG.

September 11, 2009

Yeah, But Kenya Reach 200?



Just now noticed that ToTG has reached a hundred countries on our Flag Counter thanks to a recent visitor from Kenya.

Please, be proud for me. I don't have much else to brag about, gimme this one.