McNicholl Holdings

I just came across an article on Wired that lead me to ‘The Big Word Project‘ - which has been created by fellow Northern Ireland-ers. Keen to explore - I dived in.

Basically - you buy a word in the English dictionary and pay $1 for each letter in that word. The word, on the big word project’s website, then has a permanent link to any website/page of your choice.

I flicked through the site, nicely designed, and blog for a while and then started to think…. Isn’t this a massive case of text-link-ads?

Text-Link-Ads is about buying a text link on someones website. When someone clicks on the link - you are taken to your website. Sweet. Prices vary depending on the popularity of the site you advertise on.

The Big Word Project seems very little different. You buy a word which links to your website.

The value of buying a word that links to your website needs a little thought :

1. How much does the word cost
2. How many visitors will click through to my website
3. What additional benefits will I get from buying

How much does the word cost

The cost of the word is simple. Count up the number of letters in your word and that is how many dollars it will cost.

How many visitors will click through to my website

This question has a positive and negative aspect. Since the site is so new and the self proclaimed ‘Viral Guy’ , co-owner, is pushing all the right buttons to publicise it - you can be guaranteed some early traffic as website owners scramble to pick up the shoddy remains of the English dictionary (after all the good words are gone).

The problem comes when the initial clamour of interest wanes - the novelty wears off and site traffic deminishes - that your investment seems short lived.

What additional benefits will I get from buying

The pagerank and link text are key here. You talk about money on your site and a page with good pagerank links to you with the keyword ‘money’ and you are quids in. Google will like you a little more.

Roundup

Buy a word, link it to your site and watch the traffic flow in - but it will mostly be novelty and short lived traffic.

The fact that most companies have names and not English dictionary words causes concern for me. I would want my word to be ‘McNicholl’ - but its not a word in the dictionary so its not allowed.

Google hammered blogs not so long ago for their irrelevant links - which posed to similarity to the content of the site that they were linking from. Bloggers the world over cried and called the end to Text-Link Ads as a revenue model. Their Pageranks crumbled. So how will ‘The Big Word Project’ give you good pagerank when Google wont pass the Pagerank love through to your site?

One way the guys over at ‘The Big Word Project’ could help out would be to have an individual page for each word that is text customizable by the person buying the word. That way they could make it seem a lot more relevant and the Pagerank would be passed through.

Fair play to the guys for the idea as it seems to be bringing in the money. It’s the simplest ideas that pay the biggest dividends.

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I never thought I’d see an opportunity for someone to outright beg when their website went down - but low and behold Tyler Cruz has managed it.

Posted on his site today is this :

Hello everyone, I apologize profusely for the site downtime (4 days now!). Unfortunately, one of my servers crashed and the data was wiped. I did have many backup solutions in place, but a series of unfortunate events occured (Murphy's Law). To make matters worse, the server crash occured right before I went on vacation - I am currently writing this on my laptop in he hotel room. We have recovered most of the data now, but there is one particular file that didn't get backed up which is vital. Unfortunately, it is on my home computer. Please be patient as I am working hard on getting my sites back up and running, and again, I apologize for the downtime. I have spent a lot of money on server upgrades and 911 emergency server administration costs, so if you'd like to donate something to help cover all the fees, I'd certainly appreciate it - any amount would be helpful. But please don't feel obligated to as I do make decent money from my websites. If you'd like to donate something, my PayPal address is: twcruz@hotmail.com - please put in the subject line "Server Donation". Thank you, and I hope to get everything back up and running ASAP! Cheers, Tyler Cruz Merendi Networks Inc.

(see attached image)

This plea comes from a man that supposedly, by his own admission, makes nearly $100, 000 per year. I find extra hillarity in the the sentence “But please don’t feel obligated to as I do make decent money from my websites.”. Who is he expecting will donate? I donate to charity but this is just pathetic idiocracy from a John Chow lap dog.

Get a backbone man.

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Are you one of the people who is trying desperately to outgrow your corporate shackles and run your own business? Are you trying to do this by doing both at the same time?

If so - then you are just like me. If you are in this situation - you’ll find that it is extremely difficult to get enough time to do all the things you want or need to do between getting home from work and getting into bed - exhausted.

How do you manage your time? How do you manage your friends, family and significant other?

Starting a business is as difficult as you make it and having a full time job while developing a business on the side is possibly one of the most difficult ways you can approach it. Your own situation essentially dictates the choices you have. I personnally have been saving to get married for a long time (getting married is expensive these days ;-)) and therefore have no option but to continue working a full-time job.

I cannot leave my job cold turkey and wait for the business to start generating enough revenue to cover day to day costs as people want to eat when they arrive at your wedding reception and the hotel doesnt do credit.

Other situations you could be facing include :

• children (they gotta eat)
• mortgage payments
• car payments
• anything else that requires money

These are the sorts of things that require a full time steady income.

Are you in this situation? If so - please take the time to explain how you manage to invest enough time in your fledgling upstart…

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As a blogger one needs to maximize their exposure as much as possible. One way that I have found a little useful is to time my posts to the times of the work day when people get a little more “internet browsing” friendly. These are times when their minds start to drift of what is needed done at work and towards what they want to do when they get home. As I work full time at the moment I know for sure that when I get into the office in the morning I’ll do a burst of work to clear things up and then around 10:30 - 11am I do a bit of surfing.  This will happen again after lunch as well. I am sure I’m not the only one that does this.

I’ve taken my own “slacker” times and tried to shift them to the American timezone i.e +5 to 7hours (I am GMT so I need to ensure that I cover the Americans in the morning) in and attempt to gain maximum exposure. People have all sorts of ways to get their news these days, whether it be through Reddit/Digg type voting sites, or RSS aggregators, or Technorati / MyBlogLog type community sites as well as browsing their favourite URLs. You can attempt to get in front of more eyes by timing your blog posts to just the right time in the day.

This post is going out at 22:40 GMT - which will effectively mean its EOD for those in America. That means this is badly timed. I could easily set Wordpress to release the post at the correct time tomorrow though - but I won’t.

Do you do this with your posts? If so - do you notice any improvement in your traffic?

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Eight years into the new millenium and all the new year resolutions are set. The fun this year will be trying to accomplish them all. Its always been said that the most productive people have diaries and little lists of “things to do”. These little lists are like mini contracts with yourself that states what must be done before the end of the day/week/month/year. The buzz of fulfillment when all the items have been checked of is quite powerful.

This year I have decided to write my new years resolutions on a piece of paper and carry them with me everywhere in my wallet. I want to ensure that I am constantly reminded of what should be achieved this year.

Its very easy to just shrug your shoulders and say “ah well” when you look back on a year and wander where all the time went. I dont want 2008 to be like that. I am hoping that the resolutions in my wallet will be a poke in the right direction and a focus that will enable me to take major steps forward in the progression of McNicholl Holdings.

To think one year ago I was Buying the Domain. It seems so primitive now. Since then I have been programming frantically, in the evenings after work - trying to build a business and a future.

I find the festive time a very good chance to reflect and review on what the year has delivered and to prepare for what is to come.

I think now is a good time to reflect on my best blog posts of 2007 (listed in no particular order):

• Programmatical Database Optimisation
• sfGuard and Implementing Security in Symfony…
• RSS: How to integrate feeds into your website with AJAX…
• Learning AJAX with the Prototype Framework…

Heres hoping 2008 will be the start of something great.

May all of you have a happy and prosperous new year!

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Crackers are the mainstay of any Christmas dinner and no matter how expensive they are they are still a source for the worst jokes. I thought a few jokes on the blog might brighten your day, but I appologise in advance for these :

• Why did the boy throw his toast out of the window?
  • Because he wanted to see the butterfly.
• What do you call a train loaded with toffee?
  • A Chew Chew Train

I hear you cry “Please stop, oh please please stop” - but no. Here are a few others :

• Why do cats have furry coats?
  • Because they’d look silly in plastic macs.
• How do you keep cool at a football match?
  • Stand next to a fan.
• Where do cows go on holiday?
  • Moo York.

Ok! I’ll stop now.

I just want to know if they actually hire people to write these jokes or if a room full of monkeys with typewriters slap at keys until a few ledgible sentences are formed.

Does anyone else out there remember some cracker jokes?

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