hectorhector.com

So, it’s been over a year since i’ve last graced you guys with my blogging =) .

I definitely dropped the ball on that one and thanks to one of our old contributers, i was reminded of my dereliction of duty. One of the reasons i haven’t felt like blogging recently was i just couldn’t stand my old design. The white text on black was an eyesore and i was having a hard time getting excited about blogging. The second reason reason i haven’t been blogging is that i didn’t really have the time. i was previously inclined to making longish, highly edited blog posts instead of the short, quick posts that this medium requires. So, i’m gonna try to ease up on that and let the blog posts fly. I’ve got a good rhythm going with school and stuff so i should have some extra time to get my blog on.

I’ll be blogging about the regular pop culture/politics/zombie stuff along with some cool computer stuff that that probably only i find interesting. Plus, i’ll make sure there is something for the Boston-haters out there who to this day continue to comment on this blog even though the posts are over two years old.  The new layout isn’t completley finished yet either, so they’ll be some minor updates to that too look out for.

Do you run a mildly successful blog and want to get a bit more cash out of your ads? Have you written a couple blog posts that became popular in the blogosphere but have had a hard time turning those successes into a large, steady stream of regualr visitors (and ad viewers)?

I had the same dilemma a couple weeks ago. I thought about putting ads in between my posts for some extra revenue, but I thought it was too obtrusive, ruined the look of my site, and would turn off readers. Then I had a brilliant idea. I have a couple of posts that get a steady stream of visitors to my site from search engines and digg. My Aqua Teen Hunger Force post was the top story on digg a while back and I still get a lot of traffic and comments on the post. Also, our posts on Boston (especially part 2) get a lot of traffic from anti-Boston queries from different search engines. I’m not sure why those posts are ranked so high on google, but I’m not complaining! Since most of the people who visit those posts don’t stick around and check out the rest of the site, I figured why not take advantage of the traffic? I put ads in the middle of the posts and created new channels in google adsense so I could track their performance.

I’m pretty sure the google adsense terms of service prohibit me from talking about specifics, but I will say I was pleased with the results. The Aqua Teen Hunger ads are struggling, but are providing me a bit of extra money. The Boston ad, while having a lower total of page views, have a higher CTR (click through rate) and eCPM (effective cost-per-thousand impressions) than the ads I have at the top of the blog and on the sidebar, giving me a decent chunk of change.

While this simple tip won’t have you rolling in the dough like the monopoly man, it is an effective way of utilizing your blog’s greatest hits and a way of making money off of your blog you otherwise would of missed out on. All without being intrusive to your loyal readers who hit the main page!

In the future, I plan on adding a list of my favorite blog posts on the sidebar that include these posts. It should help drive even more traffic to those posts, and you might want try the same thing if you have a similar set up on your blog.

So, if you lookover at the the right of the page, you can see the handy dandy hectorhector.com sidebar. There have been 3 updates to the sidebar recently:

• My Facebook Status is now updated there autmatically. I think it’s neat, Natty thought it was lame. What do you guys think?
• The Newest Comments now shows the last FOUR comments instead of three! That’s a whole one (1) more comment!
• The Categories are now in a drop down menu to save space. It also shows the amount of posts in each one.

With these updates, I’m pretty sure hectorhector.com is the best blog ever.

So, I was messing around with the blog and broke it =(

I’m fixing it right now, but the blog may look weird for a bit.

UPDATE: ok, weirdness over, regular scheduled blogging will commence.

If for some reason this website gets shut down it will probably be because of a cease and desist order or even an all-out lawsuit. Good thing Long Hair Dont Care is going to be a lawyer soon.

Check it out.

Feel free to barrage them with emails. J/K

Until next time; onward and upward…

As you can see, things look a lot different around here at hectorhector.com. I had the last theme for a while, but in the end I wasn’t happy with it anymore. The link colors were hard to see, the dates didn’t display the way I wanted them to, it wasn’t as customizable as I would of liked, and I was bored with the header image. By my count, this is the third major redesign of the site. Instead of preparing everything ahead of time and loading it up like a professional, I’ll be tweaking the design over then next couple days. So far, I like it. All I have to do now is fix the archive tab up top so it actually displays the archive, get rid of the about tab thats next to it, put the ads back up, and change the colors. This blog started out as a ucf blog and even though we don’t post about ucf too much anymore (two of the roomates have graduated!) I still consider hectorhector.com’s colors to be black and gold. So tell me how you like the design so far in the comments and keep checking the blog for updates.

PS: If the other writers were confused on how to log in now: scroll down and look on the right for Sign In. Then click Site Admin.

The blog was acting pretty funny the last couple of days but I upgraded my Wordpress to version 2.5 and it’s fixed now.  Everything is back to normal on the front end, but there are a lot of changes here on the back end that should help us write better posts.  So sorry for the inconvenience and stop by soon, we should have a blog post up by a new writer tomorrow.

Time.com recently came out with it’s “first annual blog index” which listed the top 25 blogs, with one glaring omission. Among the notable blogs that made the list were The Huffington Post (#1), Freakonomics (#8), Andrew Sullivan (#13), and The Consumerist (#20). But I ask you, which of these blogs brought you the first screen shots of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, an entry which reached the top spot on digg.com? Which of these blogs erupted into a war of words over a classic timepiece? Which of these blogs laid out the rules to the Super Tuesday drinking game? Which of these blogs gave you a vlog on a broken bass pedal? None. The answer is, quite simply, hectorhector.com

Now, the latest accomplishment of this fine blog. I will correct Time’s grammar. They say this is the “first annual blog index,” but something in its first year can not be deemed annual. The correct title for this grossly incorrect list should be “first inaugural blog index.” So put that in your pipe and smoke it Time.com.

I wonder what the odds are that hectorhector.com will be on Time.com’s “second annual blog index”?

A bit of house cleaning: When I was trying to categorize The Sixf Man’s post on Title IX I originally put it in basketball. We also had a football category that I was going to put it in and I even thought for a second that I should make a new category for baseball and put it in there too. But then I realized that was dumb and did the obvious. Since football and basketball only had a few posts each, I combined them into a new category, sports. Then I deleted some of the categories that I thought were not very useful either, including some that had no posts at all. Hopefully this makes the categories a little more handy.

Just a quick update from your blogger-in-chief:

I’ve been in kind of a blogging lull these last couple weeks, my last post, An Ode to Television, was kind of a write-in because I promised some friends I would blog. I do have some things I want to talk about though:

• TV
  • I am watching Cheerleader U on WE channel and want to give some thoughts/updates on that.
  • Expect more heated discussion on Lost (sorry for the readers out there who don’t watch it).
  • The Road Rules/Real World Gauntlet Reunion was the lamest hour of TV… EVER. Stop taking it so serious guys – YOU ARE ON A GLORIFIED GAME SHOW.
  • The last episode of South Park one the the best in a while. I keep thinking Matt and Trey are going to lose their touch but they surprise me every season.
    • All episodes are now available for free online… legally!
  • Real quick – the professional dancers on Dancing with the Stars are HOT.
• Politics
  • I want to talk about Obama and the presidential race a bit more .
  • Joe Klein’s article on a possible Gore-Obama ticket reads like a journey through my wet dreams.
  • Look for a new contributer to hectorhector.com to make his debut post in a couple days about the race.
• Music
  • There have been some good records coming out/leaked recently so I want to talk about them and write up some reviews.

So thats what you should be looking forward to on hectorhector in the next month or so. Also, you guys probably didn’t notice but I fixed the categories on the blog so clicking on them will send you to similar posts. Hopefully I will be able to convince Natty to post in the correct categories so I don’t have to fix them for him anymore but I doubt I will be successful.