18th March 2012 - Went to the Apple White City store last Friday and having avoided the long queues had a nice chat with an Apple employee and played with the new third generation iPad. You should see this device first hand because it has impact. It changes your perception of what it is like to look at things on a computer screen. This screen crackles and pops. I have never seen images and video on the internet look like this.
HD video looks like a high definition film. It makes any website look better because it makes the whole internet look better. If you spend a lot of time on the internet it makes your world look better!
Apple call it a "retina display". It has a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels (3.1 million pixels on the screen), which is higher than 1080 HD televisions. And it shows.
For me it is the quality of the display that is selling the new iPad because it really is a game changer. You have never seen stuff on the internet look like this before. Other featured improvements are faster wireless connection and a 5 megapixel camera that also allows 1080p HD video recording.
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Cons of Animal Testing
One objective of animal testing is to establish clinical procedures that are of benefit to humans. What if it was found that in the course of 20 reviews of animal testing, in general, only two of those reviews concluded that animal models (as opposed to alternative methods of testing) led to clinical procedures that met the objective.
In other words what if it was established that animal testing had a success rate of 10% in respect of this objective. If that were the case even hardened pro-animal testers would have to question the morality and ethics of the process because even people who are in favour of it must see that it is at the very least borderline acceptable from an ethical and moral standpoint.
The only justification for animal testing is that it has a substantial positive impact on the health of people.
Well, it does not. The fact is that in only 10% of the reviews did the authors of the review consider that animal testing had served its purpose and met its objectives in respect of clinical procedures beneficial to people. That information comes from the most comprehensive review by Andrew Knight in his book: The Costs and Benefits of Animal Experiments
- ISBN-10: 0230243924.
Armed with that information it is difficult to justify it on a simple cost effectiveness basis forgetting about the dubious morality. There are better ways to improve clinical procedures that are more cost effective. In respect of product testing, apparently, the differences in physiology between the animals tested upon and that of humans is sufficient to make the results less than reliable on many occasions - it is inefficient and sometimes ineffective.
If you are anti-animal testing you would not need to argue so fine a point. To us it is simply immoral and unethical to cause pain, suffering and death to animals for our benefit. After all we are human animals and we are becoming more aware that the differences between the human animal and other animals are not as great as we first thought. They can feel pain and emotion and we are discovering they might be self-conscious. Some animals show startlingly high levels of intelligence.
The testing of animals is probably still practised because it is cheaper than using, for example, computer simulations. It might be cheaper to carry out but its inefficiency makes it more expensive.
If you weighed the pain and suffering of all the 9.9 million "instances of animal use" in the countries of the European Union in 2008, would it be in balance with the health benefits to Europeans? I suspect the pain side of the scale would be much heavier.
Note: the quote is from Jane Goodhall's article in the Times of March 17th 2012.
See also cosmetics animal testing and animal testing statistics.
 |
| Animal testing. Photo: Pixabay. |
In other words what if it was established that animal testing had a success rate of 10% in respect of this objective. If that were the case even hardened pro-animal testers would have to question the morality and ethics of the process because even people who are in favour of it must see that it is at the very least borderline acceptable from an ethical and moral standpoint.
The only justification for animal testing is that it has a substantial positive impact on the health of people.
Well, it does not. The fact is that in only 10% of the reviews did the authors of the review consider that animal testing had served its purpose and met its objectives in respect of clinical procedures beneficial to people. That information comes from the most comprehensive review by Andrew Knight in his book: The Costs and Benefits of Animal Experiments
- ISBN-10: 0230243924.Armed with that information it is difficult to justify it on a simple cost effectiveness basis forgetting about the dubious morality. There are better ways to improve clinical procedures that are more cost effective. In respect of product testing, apparently, the differences in physiology between the animals tested upon and that of humans is sufficient to make the results less than reliable on many occasions - it is inefficient and sometimes ineffective.
If you are anti-animal testing you would not need to argue so fine a point. To us it is simply immoral and unethical to cause pain, suffering and death to animals for our benefit. After all we are human animals and we are becoming more aware that the differences between the human animal and other animals are not as great as we first thought. They can feel pain and emotion and we are discovering they might be self-conscious. Some animals show startlingly high levels of intelligence.
The testing of animals is probably still practised because it is cheaper than using, for example, computer simulations. It might be cheaper to carry out but its inefficiency makes it more expensive.
If you weighed the pain and suffering of all the 9.9 million "instances of animal use" in the countries of the European Union in 2008, would it be in balance with the health benefits to Europeans? I suspect the pain side of the scale would be much heavier.
Note: the quote is from Jane Goodhall's article in the Times of March 17th 2012.
See also cosmetics animal testing and animal testing statistics.
Making a living from a website
Date: March 2012: Having done it myself, I can confirm that someone totally new to website building can make a living in America (USA) from a single content website, working alone. How much do you have to earn to make living in the US? It depends what your demands are. You can live cheap and have no children or have five kids and send them to expensive schools etc.. Anyway, we are told that a living wage is about $4,000 per month. I am sure you can live off less.
Update June 2014. I earn less (about half) these days from my site because it is impossible to compete after 7 years or so. Also you run out of content. You exhaust the subject matter. You have to evolve as well which is hard. It takes money. I give away all the money earned these days or pay writers with it.
You can make $4,000 per month from a single website within about 2 years of starting from scratch without any prior knowledge of how to build a website or make money from it. As I said, I know because I did it. However, there are a number of big caveats...
It is not easy. Why should it be? In fact it is tricky and hard work. There is an element of luck as well. There are no set formulae for success either. It is no easier making money on the Internet than it is making it somewhere else. The advantages of Internet work are that you can do it whenever you like and wherever you like. And you are your own boss. A lot of people would like that.
I now earn less than $4,000 due to competition, copyright infringements, Google changing its algorithm etc.. That is the nature of the beast. I am endeavouring to come back though!
There are a lot of failures. Expectations should be realistic. It is getting harder for an individual to make money on the Internet working alone as competition grows. It has even changed substantially since I started about 4.5 years ago.
You have to continually build the site because that is what the search engines demand. I think the sort person who has a good chance of being successful making a living in America from a content site is:
Note 2: A suitable person for making a living from a website is someone who likes and is good at:
Note 3: There are other ways of making money on the internet. This article deals with building the classic content website. This is the way anyone can make money using advertising on the site such as Google AdSense.
I don't have the figures, but it is probable that about one in 100 attempts to make a living from the internet are successful (1%). However, there are some inspiring stories. One person comes to mind. She is the owner/creator of http://www.2createawebsite.com/. She is certainly one of the most successful individual internet entrepreneurs - meaning working on the site as an individual rather than a team effort. She says she developed RSI (repetitive strain injury) in her hands and now dictates some of her content. That gives a clue as to the amount of work that you need to put in. She earns big though (I often dictate my articles now too).
Website Hosting
I would recommend SiteSell, Wordpress and Google Blogger. SiteSell charge but they provide you with the chance to learn as you build so you can get off the ground quickly. This motivates as you can see results more quickly. It can be very demotivating if nothing happens for months and nothing will happen for months normally.
Important update: I now reject SiteSell. They kicked forced me to move my website. Here is the story.
You can make good money using free Google Blogger without even having a custom domain name. However, Google might not like it. You can customise the domain with Google Blogger.
Revenue
AdSense, Casale Media, Infolinks, Custom advertising. These are the simple ways I make money. There are many other ways including selling products as an affiliate. You act as an agent by advertising your partner's products on your site and get a commission. I tend to avoid these because of the management needed to control the business. That is a personal choice.
Update June 2014. I earn less (about half) these days from my site because it is impossible to compete after 7 years or so. Also you run out of content. You exhaust the subject matter. You have to evolve as well which is hard. It takes money. I give away all the money earned these days or pay writers with it.
You can make $4,000 per month from a single website within about 2 years of starting from scratch without any prior knowledge of how to build a website or make money from it. As I said, I know because I did it. However, there are a number of big caveats...
It is not easy. Why should it be? In fact it is tricky and hard work. There is an element of luck as well. There are no set formulae for success either. It is no easier making money on the Internet than it is making it somewhere else. The advantages of Internet work are that you can do it whenever you like and wherever you like. And you are your own boss. A lot of people would like that.
I now earn less than $4,000 due to competition, copyright infringements, Google changing its algorithm etc.. That is the nature of the beast. I am endeavouring to come back though!
There are a lot of failures. Expectations should be realistic. It is getting harder for an individual to make money on the Internet working alone as competition grows. It has even changed substantially since I started about 4.5 years ago.
You have to continually build the site because that is what the search engines demand. I think the sort person who has a good chance of being successful making a living in America from a content site is:
- suited to website building work - meaning he or she likes building websites and likes researching information.
- reasonably intelligent;
- hard working;
- a stayer - has stamina;
- at least proficient in writing good English and is...
- committed and
- able to take some risks and be willing to learn by mistakes.
Note 2: A suitable person for making a living from a website is someone who likes and is good at:
- science (html coding)
- art (illustrations)
- design (layout)
- writing (text)
Note 3: There are other ways of making money on the internet. This article deals with building the classic content website. This is the way anyone can make money using advertising on the site such as Google AdSense.
I don't have the figures, but it is probable that about one in 100 attempts to make a living from the internet are successful (1%). However, there are some inspiring stories. One person comes to mind. She is the owner/creator of http://www.2createawebsite.com/. She is certainly one of the most successful individual internet entrepreneurs - meaning working on the site as an individual rather than a team effort. She says she developed RSI (repetitive strain injury) in her hands and now dictates some of her content. That gives a clue as to the amount of work that you need to put in. She earns big though (I often dictate my articles now too).
Website Hosting
I would recommend SiteSell, Wordpress and Google Blogger. SiteSell charge but they provide you with the chance to learn as you build so you can get off the ground quickly. This motivates as you can see results more quickly. It can be very demotivating if nothing happens for months and nothing will happen for months normally.
Important update: I now reject SiteSell. They kicked forced me to move my website. Here is the story.
You can make good money using free Google Blogger without even having a custom domain name. However, Google might not like it. You can customise the domain with Google Blogger.
Revenue
AdSense, Casale Media, Infolinks, Custom advertising. These are the simple ways I make money. There are many other ways including selling products as an affiliate. You act as an agent by advertising your partner's products on your site and get a commission. I tend to avoid these because of the management needed to control the business. That is a personal choice.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Valuing A Website
The only true and certain way to value your website is to receive a genuine offer that you agree. The agreed price would be the market value to you at the time of the agreement. The way a website builder feels about his or her site has a major effect on its value. A valuation is not an objective process.
If you treat website building as an enjoyable hobby keeping you occupied and making some money along the way, you won't be inclined to sell it unless the price is high; higher in fact than a conventional valuation. Buyers don't pay over the odds for a site so in practice you wouldn't sell it. If you are fed up with your site you will be inclined to sell it cheaply. This is mainly because you will stop building pages and when than happens the site is not being maintained and it will lose value gradually. "Maintaining" a website it not tinkering with it from time to time but actively building it day in, day out.
You can value your website online. The range of values that valuation websites throw up is so wide as to be almost meaningless. I can only conclude that the formulae used are often inaccurate or the data used is very variable. I have just used four valuation websites to value my site: http://pictures-of-cats.org/ and the valuations ranged from $67 to $123,000. It was pretty much a pointless exercise. The major criteria for valuing a site must be the kind of data collected by Alexa: pageviews, unique views, Alexa ranking and estimated revenues. The current and projected revenue must be the key factor.Clearly, as at 2012, the valuing of websites is not that refined.
As it happens I have been approached on several occasions by buyers and they have offered prices varying between $28,000 to $100,000. Armed with that information I am able to make some sense out of the online valuations. My guess is that I could possibly get about $80,000 for the site. The valuations online don't, as far as I know, include subdomains and this subdomain has 1,500 pages and has a value in itself which should be added on.
Incidentally, I realise that people have approached me to buy my site because they believe that they can make more money from it than I am making. They are correct. In other words, they hope that they can buy it cheaply as the current market valuation is low because the revenue is lower than is should be. A site that has maximised its revenue will therefore be more valuable but less saleable.
The value of my site (and I am sure this applies to other sites) does not come near to its value as a reflection of the effort put in. For the average webmaster, if you divided the site's value by the hours put in to build it, you would shocked at the low hourly rate. Website building is not an easy or very fruitful way of making money in my experience, although there are exceptions, of course. The site makes about $2,000 per month as mentioned on the page about maximising AdSense revenue.
For me a simple way of valuing a website is to compare its revenue with invested funds. $100,000 invested at say 6% will earn $6,000 per year. A site making $6,000 per year net would be worth $100,000 less a sum to account for the work required to maintain it, say $40k. The resultant figure is $60k - too high a figure. I think the disparity between my simplistic method and the online figure or the offered figures is reflected in the poor value of websites generally (as an asset) except for the top end sites.
I have just learnt that mashable.com, a tech and social media blog said to be one the world's best and with an Alexa ranking of about 200 is said to be worth $200 million (USD). CNN wish to buy it off the person who started it. He is set to make about $100 m. He has a staff of about 40.
I think you will find that the value of websites climbs rapidly towards the top end but is relatively flat and cheap at the bottom end. As an asset, your website may have a disappointing value. However, its value is not just as an asset on the open market. For retired people it is something that keeps them occupied and brings in an income that can be much better than a financial investment (March 2012).
If you treat website building as an enjoyable hobby keeping you occupied and making some money along the way, you won't be inclined to sell it unless the price is high; higher in fact than a conventional valuation. Buyers don't pay over the odds for a site so in practice you wouldn't sell it. If you are fed up with your site you will be inclined to sell it cheaply. This is mainly because you will stop building pages and when than happens the site is not being maintained and it will lose value gradually. "Maintaining" a website it not tinkering with it from time to time but actively building it day in, day out.
You can value your website online. The range of values that valuation websites throw up is so wide as to be almost meaningless. I can only conclude that the formulae used are often inaccurate or the data used is very variable. I have just used four valuation websites to value my site: http://pictures-of-cats.org/ and the valuations ranged from $67 to $123,000. It was pretty much a pointless exercise. The major criteria for valuing a site must be the kind of data collected by Alexa: pageviews, unique views, Alexa ranking and estimated revenues. The current and projected revenue must be the key factor.Clearly, as at 2012, the valuing of websites is not that refined.
As it happens I have been approached on several occasions by buyers and they have offered prices varying between $28,000 to $100,000. Armed with that information I am able to make some sense out of the online valuations. My guess is that I could possibly get about $80,000 for the site. The valuations online don't, as far as I know, include subdomains and this subdomain has 1,500 pages and has a value in itself which should be added on.
Incidentally, I realise that people have approached me to buy my site because they believe that they can make more money from it than I am making. They are correct. In other words, they hope that they can buy it cheaply as the current market valuation is low because the revenue is lower than is should be. A site that has maximised its revenue will therefore be more valuable but less saleable.
The value of my site (and I am sure this applies to other sites) does not come near to its value as a reflection of the effort put in. For the average webmaster, if you divided the site's value by the hours put in to build it, you would shocked at the low hourly rate. Website building is not an easy or very fruitful way of making money in my experience, although there are exceptions, of course. The site makes about $2,000 per month as mentioned on the page about maximising AdSense revenue.
For me a simple way of valuing a website is to compare its revenue with invested funds. $100,000 invested at say 6% will earn $6,000 per year. A site making $6,000 per year net would be worth $100,000 less a sum to account for the work required to maintain it, say $40k. The resultant figure is $60k - too high a figure. I think the disparity between my simplistic method and the online figure or the offered figures is reflected in the poor value of websites generally (as an asset) except for the top end sites.
I have just learnt that mashable.com, a tech and social media blog said to be one the world's best and with an Alexa ranking of about 200 is said to be worth $200 million (USD). CNN wish to buy it off the person who started it. He is set to make about $100 m. He has a staff of about 40.
I think you will find that the value of websites climbs rapidly towards the top end but is relatively flat and cheap at the bottom end. As an asset, your website may have a disappointing value. However, its value is not just as an asset on the open market. For retired people it is something that keeps them occupied and brings in an income that can be much better than a financial investment (March 2012).
Thursday, 15 March 2012
New ways to present information on the internet
We need to look for new ways to present information on the internet. We needn't be stuck in the rut of simply writing about it. I am referring to mapping on this occasion. Google Maps have advanced quite dramatically, recently. We (independent website builders) owe it to ourselves to use Google's free software to our advantage as we are so painfully dependent on this internet giant that dominates us. And it might not be free indefinitely.
Almost any information can be presented on a map because almost all information can be referenced to a place. Take cats, my pet subject! I have mapped USA animal rescue, UK animal rescue sanctuaries, tiger reserves and more. A lot of information can be presented more effectively on a map and there are hidden SEO benefits as well, which I touch on below.
The map below shows animal rescue sanctuaries in the UK:
There are a lot of directory websites that list businesses and other organisations. Some of them provide directions to the listed business. And some provide a map below the address. The mapping and directions are secondary to the written information - the address etc. We can turn that upside down and make the location the primary information and the other details secondary. Where the location of a business is of primary importance this is a better way of presenting the information. Google maps allows us to do that.
An example, in the world of cats, is boarding catteries (cat hotels). The location of the cattery is very important. You need to minimise travel time to the place (to reduce stress for you and your cat) and you need to see the place beforehand. Information about boarding catteries is best presented on a map. This principle applies to many different sorts of information. You can use your own imagination.
SEO
There is an unexpected SEO benefit from web pages that contain an embedded Google map. Visitors will stay on the site longer as they explore the map, zooming in and out and clicking on the place markers to see the information contained inside the markers. The Alexa website ranking is based on a number of criteria one of which is the amount of time spent on the site. You will probably find that your Alexa ranking will improve if you have some prominent and well produced maps on your site.
Mapping as a way of presenting information is an emerging trend and I recommend that you join the trend now to get ahead.
Google Maps - ways to map
There are essentially two ways to use Google maps that I know of:
Almost any information can be presented on a map because almost all information can be referenced to a place. Take cats, my pet subject! I have mapped USA animal rescue, UK animal rescue sanctuaries, tiger reserves and more. A lot of information can be presented more effectively on a map and there are hidden SEO benefits as well, which I touch on below.
The map below shows animal rescue sanctuaries in the UK:
There are a lot of directory websites that list businesses and other organisations. Some of them provide directions to the listed business. And some provide a map below the address. The mapping and directions are secondary to the written information - the address etc. We can turn that upside down and make the location the primary information and the other details secondary. Where the location of a business is of primary importance this is a better way of presenting the information. Google maps allows us to do that.
An example, in the world of cats, is boarding catteries (cat hotels). The location of the cattery is very important. You need to minimise travel time to the place (to reduce stress for you and your cat) and you need to see the place beforehand. Information about boarding catteries is best presented on a map. This principle applies to many different sorts of information. You can use your own imagination.
SEO
There is an unexpected SEO benefit from web pages that contain an embedded Google map. Visitors will stay on the site longer as they explore the map, zooming in and out and clicking on the place markers to see the information contained inside the markers. The Alexa website ranking is based on a number of criteria one of which is the amount of time spent on the site. You will probably find that your Alexa ranking will improve if you have some prominent and well produced maps on your site.
Mapping as a way of presenting information is an emerging trend and I recommend that you join the trend now to get ahead.
Google Maps - ways to map
There are essentially two ways to use Google maps that I know of:
- Manual input. You find the location using Google maps or by yourself and then you place the marker at that location and add the details.
- Automatic input using Google fusion tables. This is a beta program in development. You create a spreadsheet containing information in columns. One column contains information that allows Google to map the organisation that you have listed. A good address can suffice. Google allows other source information to be used. Using fusion tables you have to trust Google to map accurately so it is important to provide good information so as to not mislead or confuse Google maps. Fusion tables is the only way to map large amounts of information as manual mapping of say 4,000 businesses would take about 6 months full-time!
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