"Congratulations, your application to the Amazon.co.uk Associates Programme has been approved."(!)
I applied last night, and by the time I'd gone up to bed, I'd been accepted :D
I wish I'd applied years ago, but my experience of being turned down over and over again by Google's Adwords scheme (because my site wasn't good enough for them), put me off and knocked my confidence.
Now I'll have to look into applying the link to my site, and also look at the .com version of their site, as I signed up to .co.uk
Thursday, 6 March 2014
Affiliation application
I've owned my web domain since late 2009...I bought it as an experiment - a test to see if I could build a simple website...something to practice on
It lay dormant for years, while I've been busy freelancing...I even stopped blogging about my website in 2011, and started blogging about freelancing instead
Yet, get this; my "dot com" blog - which I stopped adding to, over 2 years ago - has 1,255 views...yet my freelance one - which I took more seriously, and only stopped adding to about 4 months ago - only has 324 views!
Ok, fair enough, the dot com blog is a lot older (started Nov 2009) vs my freelance one (started Dec 2012), but I actually stopped adding to my old one in March 2010...and the Oct 2011 entry was a one-off...yet the traffic to it is still quite high, even though I don't promote it!
Anyway...after all these years, the site has remained pretty much untouched...I've finally decided to take the plunge and do something with it...inspired by "King Human" of YouTube fame, I've applied for an affiliate scheme with Amazon...if it works, I hope to apply it to more/most/all of my links on there, and maybe start to make a little something off of it?
I will update my blog when I hear the result of my application...wish I'd known about this in the first place! Wonder how much I might have made in the process? And how much more I would have stayed involved in my little experiment...
It lay dormant for years, while I've been busy freelancing...I even stopped blogging about my website in 2011, and started blogging about freelancing instead
Yet, get this; my "dot com" blog - which I stopped adding to, over 2 years ago - has 1,255 views...yet my freelance one - which I took more seriously, and only stopped adding to about 4 months ago - only has 324 views!
Ok, fair enough, the dot com blog is a lot older (started Nov 2009) vs my freelance one (started Dec 2012), but I actually stopped adding to my old one in March 2010...and the Oct 2011 entry was a one-off...yet the traffic to it is still quite high, even though I don't promote it!
Anyway...after all these years, the site has remained pretty much untouched...I've finally decided to take the plunge and do something with it...inspired by "King Human" of YouTube fame, I've applied for an affiliate scheme with Amazon...if it works, I hope to apply it to more/most/all of my links on there, and maybe start to make a little something off of it?
I will update my blog when I hear the result of my application...wish I'd known about this in the first place! Wonder how much I might have made in the process? And how much more I would have stayed involved in my little experiment...
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Reboot?
I created my dotcom a couple of years ago as a project to teach myself how to make a simple, yet effective website
However at the time, I was pretty unhappy at my job, so it was also a diversion to take my mind off things - I kept it up for a few months, but then I got made redundant at the end of March 2010
I haven't touched the site or my blog ever since...and here we are, a year and a half later, and my URL is up for renewal (or I could let it lapse)
So I have to come to a decision...do I keep the site up (even though I've lost interest in changing it any further), take it down, or change it???
I have another site – markcastrogarcia.co.uk – which is also about to lapse...this was my online cv/portfolio (or supposed to be) but I never finished it (I'm good at that!)
After I got made redundant, I went freelance and have been SOOOOO busy ever since, that I haven't had the time or the energy to play around with websites (barely had time to look at my portfolio, but have managed it once or twice)...after a year, I became a sole trader (trading as yewhew)...and my business bank account is in the name yewhew as well...
Maybe I should keep the yewhew.com for my professional site, and do what I never finished with my markcastrogarcia.co.uk site (far quicker for people to type yewhew.com as well!)
But I wonder if I will keep the yewhew.com site as it is, and make my personal bit a sub-site of it, or vice versa...
Either way, I don't think I'll keep blogging about it...I feel I've got the site out of my system, and beat the crisis of confidence I felt when I was an unhappy full-time employee
On the other hand, I may start blogging about my freelancing, as I am very into it (almost obsessive) as you kinda need to be, to keep the momentum going and motivate oneself
However at the time, I was pretty unhappy at my job, so it was also a diversion to take my mind off things - I kept it up for a few months, but then I got made redundant at the end of March 2010
I haven't touched the site or my blog ever since...and here we are, a year and a half later, and my URL is up for renewal (or I could let it lapse)
So I have to come to a decision...do I keep the site up (even though I've lost interest in changing it any further), take it down, or change it???
I have another site – markcastrogarcia.co.uk – which is also about to lapse...this was my online cv/portfolio (or supposed to be) but I never finished it (I'm good at that!)
After I got made redundant, I went freelance and have been SOOOOO busy ever since, that I haven't had the time or the energy to play around with websites (barely had time to look at my portfolio, but have managed it once or twice)...after a year, I became a sole trader (trading as yewhew)...and my business bank account is in the name yewhew as well...
Maybe I should keep the yewhew.com for my professional site, and do what I never finished with my markcastrogarcia.co.uk site (far quicker for people to type yewhew.com as well!)
But I wonder if I will keep the yewhew.com site as it is, and make my personal bit a sub-site of it, or vice versa...
Either way, I don't think I'll keep blogging about it...I feel I've got the site out of my system, and beat the crisis of confidence I felt when I was an unhappy full-time employee
On the other hand, I may start blogging about my freelancing, as I am very into it (almost obsessive) as you kinda need to be, to keep the momentum going and motivate oneself
Monday, 15 March 2010
Diversification
I've now gotten around to creating a UK subpage, with equivalent .co.uk links instead (where appropriate)
I've also made the core .com page more relevant, so less UK-only sites feature on there
Another important thing I've incorporated is that now, the links open in a new window, so yewhew.com is still loaded in the background...
handy for people to keep coming back and using it
One last thing I thought of was to add a section to show our newest link, under "welcome" - I've been rather proactive tonight and gotten on with things, rather than just think and plan
Friday, 12 March 2010
A makeover at last!
At last, a better thought out look and feel, as well as a twitter feed (which in turn also posts onto facebook) - maybe the site can now hold it's head up with the sites it's advertising!
The template came courtesy of http://www.freecsstemplates.org/ and now makes use of css for the first time.
I think the next thing that would add a little polish is tidying up the rounded corners of some of the icons - I think some of them look a little jagged...maybe Google Adsense will start to give me a chance now?
I've also rewritten the strapline to read "an icon-based portal to all your favourite web-based homepages" - I think it makes more sense and is a more precise description than before.
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Contact!
I wrote a review of my favourite real ale pubs in the area, which was posted on http://www.bohoboxmoor.com/boho_boxmoor/2010/03/the-best-real-ale-pubs-in-and-around-hemel-hempstead.html and a couple of people have since contacted me, asking to be linked to my site, or had nice feedback to give :)
Good exposure and unexpected! It was nice to be contacted through my official webmaster@yewhew.com address for a change, and not yahoo or facebook. As well as the requests, I keep thinking up more and more online-based sites to add! It's also nice that some people are actually starting to read my blog...even if I don't have any official "followers".
Good exposure and unexpected! It was nice to be contacted through my official webmaster@yewhew.com address for a change, and not yahoo or facebook. As well as the requests, I keep thinking up more and more online-based sites to add! It's also nice that some people are actually starting to read my blog...even if I don't have any official "followers".
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Phase 2 - progress
I managed to create all the new icons in one evening, have downloaded Cyberduck for Mac, and discovered a free, online html editor called http://www.online-html-editor.de/index_en.php
As I went to upload my new files, I discovered my FTP access wouldn't work - I put it down to my 3 months away from the site, but it turns out the hosts have implemented a lock, and you have to manually unlock it for an hour at a time!
I also decided to optimise the size of my icons, converting them to .png instead of jpegs - saving two-thirds of the filesize and therefore, increasing page load speeds :)
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