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One down, many to go

July 9, 2009 by John Dilbeck
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Blogs, Websites 

It’s been a busy week around here.

In addition to working to bring a new site online (that won’t have any affiliate ads and very few Adsense ads), I’ve been busy rebuilding one of my oldest websites, JohnDilbeck.com.

That’s the site where I really started to learn affiliate marketing and online marketing, in general. It’s where I sold my steel roses and started making real money with Amazon.com.

Sadly, however, it had suffered years of neglect and looked like an abandoned flower garden that once was beautiful, but eventually became clogged with weeds and overgrown bushes.

I’ve been intending to rebuild JohnDilbeck.com for some time, but — at over 1,500 pages — the task was daunting and I never seemed to find the time to tackle it.

Over the years, I’ve tested lots of things on that site, and some of the pages looked horrible, when I looked at them with fresh eyes.

Mitch and I talked about that on a previous post where we were talking about Site Build It and I mentioned JohnDilbeck.com as an example of a site that more than earned its way. He mistakenly thought it was powered by SBI, but it isn’t. It’s just a standard Linux-hosted static website. Most pages are plain HTML, but a few are PHP so I can do some things that could not be done on a standard HTML page.

Well over 600 pages of the site were built specifically to bring in Amazon.com commissions. Now that Amazon has terminated my association because I live in North Carolina, I didn’t want to be sending anyone their way at my expense with no hope of generating any revenue from it.

That was the incentive to tackle the project.

Fortunately, I build my large static sites using a programmable database, and each major section has a template through which I process each page. That means that it’s probably easier than it sounds at first. Still it was a big task.

Part of the task was made easier when I would look at a major section and decide that it just wasn’t worth updating everything. As a result, instead of rebuilding hundreds of pages, I deleted them.

This will probably play havoc with my rankings in the search engines, but it will probably be easier on anyone who happens to visit the site.

I had Amazon.com ads on just about every page on the site, and now I think there are none, or only a few. There may still be pages where I recommended a specific book using a text link.

Eventually, I want to get back to that site and try to build it back to its former place of importance in my marketing efforts.

At least, now, it’s prettier and maybe easier to use.

I’m prejudiced, because I love that site. I don’t think I can really see it with fresh eyes after editing it for about 10 years.

I lost a lot of good information in the process, and killed what was one of my longest-running blogs. I did save lots of information in the database, so some of the information I didn’t have time to update now may make its way back onto the site in the future.

We’ll see.

So, that’s one site (mostly) cleaned up, and many more to go.

Sigh.

Act on your dream!

JD

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6 Comments on One down, many to go

  1. Mitch on Fri, 10th Jul 2009 11:29 pm

    2. I need to figure out what PHP actually is if I’m going to stay relevant on the web.

    I went to take a look at your site, and I remember all the other stuff that was on there. If I may, I think your front page would benefit from making it much wider than it is. I’m betting you originally created it in the days when most of us had 13″ monitors, but in today’s world, you’ve got lots of real estate at your disposal, and your page wouldn’t be so long.

    Keep up the good work, my man!

    Of course, I’d say something about the green, but it wouldn’t be fair because I hate green. LOL
    Mitch´s last blog ..WordPress 2.8.1; This Is More Like It My ComLuv Profile

  2. John Dilbeck on Sat, 11th Jul 2009 8:05 am

    3. Good morning, Mitch.

    Thanks for taking a look at my old site with a fresh coat of green paint. ;)

    I’m getting about as many comments in email about the green as I used to get about the blue. My daughter, for instance, hates the blue color that I used to have on JohnDilbeck.com and still have on most of my blogs.

    When she saw the new site I’m working on, she said she liked the way it looked – better than that old blue I like.

    PHP is just a scripting language that is designed to work well with databases such as MySQL. It can also be used for other types of scripting that don’t interact with a database.

    On JohnDilbeck.com, I use it on some pages to run a program called CaRP that makes it easy to syndicate RSS files so that they show up as text to the search engines rather than using something like Feedburner’s javascripts to show a feed.

    That way, Google and others consider it fresh content.

    If Google ever starts reading RSS files from javascript, it will remove one of the last reasons for using PHP on that site.

    I put all my most important RSS feeds on the front page of JohnDilbeck.com so I can load one page when I start my work day to see what’s current on my communities and forums.

    Since WordPress is coded in PHP, learning at least something about it would probably be helpful, but not as helpful as it once was. Before WordPress became so adept at modifying the appearance of a blog using the Appearance tab and widgets, it was almost required to know how to modify and/or program PHP to do what you wanted to accomplish. It’s much easier now.

    Those days of 13 inch monitors aren’t that far gone for some of us. I still use a 15-inch monitor on my primary computer and main backup computer.

    But, that wasn’t my main reasoning when I created that site and GeorgiaDragRacing.com. I designed them to that width so they would print properly on paper.

    Web browsers have made big improvements in their ability to print over the last decade, so maybe it isn’t necessary, now.

    Still, I’d prefer a long, rather narrow page to a wide, shorter one. I find the narrower columns much easier to read. In fact, I think a 500 pixel text column is about the maximum I’d want for reading comfort.

    Apparently, you don’t. ;)

    As far as the green color, at least I’m not using some low-contrast, artist-designed color scheme that is impossible for anyone to read if they’re over 20 years old.

    My tired old eyes just can’t read some pages that I come across, and one of the worst is an all black page with small white text and blue links. Even if I increase the text size several times, I can barely see it well enough to read.

    I quit going to one of my favorite sites, because it hurt too much to try to read it.

    These tired old eyes have spent too many years working too many hours reading text off a screen searching for bugs to stomp.

    Having said all that, I think you’d agree that JohnDilbeck.com looks better than it did a few weeks ago.

    And, more importantly to me, I no longer have ads promoting Amazon.com on every page.

    Thanks for looking, my friend.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  3. Mitch on Sat, 11th Jul 2009 8:18 am

    4. I know what you mean about tired, old eyes. My wife said she’d like a small notebook, and I said “You’re going smaller, while I need bigger!”

    I was just thinking, though, that your JD.com site doesn’t seem as big as this one does. Maybe it’s because it’s not centered, or maybe I just forgot to increase it’s size like I normally do; I’ll have to check again.
    Mitch´s last blog ..Michael Jackson – The Follow Up My ComLuv Profile

  4. John Dilbeck on Sat, 11th Jul 2009 10:56 am

    5. Good morning, Mitch.

    I know what you mean. My next major purchase will be a MacBook with a larger screen. Working outside my home with local business owners means that I’m going to find it much easier to bring my work with me. Like you, I intend to get bigger, not smaller.

    (Well, at least my computer monitor – I’m still trying to lose more weight.)

    The center column on JohnDilbeck.com is just a few pixels narrower than this one. The difference is that both the left and right columns are a good bit narrower than they are on this blog.

    I pulled up both sites in different windows and put one over the other. This blog does look quite a bit larger, but it’s not all that much.

    I think one of the reasons I don’t see what you do is that I normally work with multiple apps open with multiple windows and usually quite a few tabs in my main browser window. Because of that, I have the windows smaller and overlapping so I can pick one to bring to the front easily.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  5. odchudzanie on Thu, 16th Jul 2009 4:07 am

    6. You guys seem to be advanced in website contruction topic. I am not as advanced… So I will only say that I took a look at Your old website and it looks allright, but in my opinion ;) You could use better palette of colours. I mean that this kind of green with blue writings look a little bit unconfortable for me. I would also think of letting in another fond. That one is ok, but too slim to read comfortable.
    These are some of my thoughts ;)
    odchudzanie´s last blog ..Jak? diet? wybra?? My ComLuv Profile

  6. John Dilbeck on Thu, 16th Jul 2009 2:21 pm

    7. Good afternoon, Odchudzanie.

    You may be right about JohnDilbeck.com needing a better palette of colors. You’re not the first one to suggest that.

    That’s a good point about changing the font. I’ll look into that the next time I update the site.

    I appreciate your comments.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

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