The Poddyland News

The weekend here in South Florida was quite a washout, especially on the East Coast, but as planned yesterday we set off for the West Coast and the Islands of Sanibel and Captiva, taking a risk that there was a 60% chance it would be cloudy and a 40% chance of rain.

We got up early, and were out of the door just after 7am, grabbing bagels and coffee before heading southwest to Alligator Alley and the 100 mile drive across Florida. Alligator Alley is one of the few roads that cross the Everglades in South Florida, and in the canals at the side of the road you can frequently see alligators sunning themselves. Not sure whether it was because it was cloudy and also early in the day, but Debbie only saw 2. The only other time I had been the full length of Alligator Alley I saw over 100! Reaching Naples on the West Coast we headed north to Fort Myers, and then across a pretty causeway to Sanibel Island.

I have to give Debbie 5***** for her navigating. We only had a printout from Google plus a tourist leaflet that we picked up from a tourist information place when we hit Naples, and she did amazingly well. We did get lost on Sanibel, but as it’s only a small island (5 miles long) you can’t get too lost. Still, we saw some very nice houses with very interesting mailboxes, which gave us some ideas for another lens maybe, so we stopped and took photographs as we tried to find the main road again. There are lots of great holiday homes there, it’s very quiet, and although most of the beaches are private or for residents, there are 3 public beaches.

Debbie thought that Bowmans Beach, about halfway along Sanibel would be a good place, and it was a perfect choice. The parking was good, plenty of space, good facilities, and a wonderful beach. Sanibel and Captiva are world famous for their shells, the beaches being covered in them. Unlike most beaches, these have dunes and mangroves at the back of them rather than buildings, so it seems really remote, and there are just thousands of shells. I found several hermit crabs in nice shells (put them back though), and also a puffer fish that was about the size of my finger nail. I managed to pick that up and Debbie filmed it swimming in my cupped hands. We got great pictures of Blue Herons and Ibis’s fishing, and one Blue Heron let me get within 20 feet of it too. Didn’t manage to get any spectacular shells, but we did find lots of pretty smaller ones to bring home.

The weather turned out to be practically perfect, and we had a wonderful time. However we hadn’t got more than 20 miles on the way home before it started raining - hard - and it rained most of the way home too. Whereas we had a wonderful day, back on the East Coast it had rained most of the day and was gloomy, so we were again incredibly lucky, just like when we were in New York a month ago.

Got home around 8:30pm, having driven just under 400 miles. The rain had stopped, The Amazing Race was running 35 minutes late so I didn’t miss any of that, and the whole day was just another perfect example of how wonderful life is with the two of us together.

And then we looked at the lens stats for yesterday…

I think I should call yesterday Black Sunday as far as the Lens Rankings go. I now have only 3 lenses left in Tier One, and 9 in Tier 2, despite higher traffic. I have had over 2,200 visits in the last 7 days, the highest ever by far, and yet the worst ranking status in almost 6 months.

Despite having updated lenses and got more traffic, several of my lenses as well as Debnet’s have just dropped thousands of places yet again. It’s not got to the point where I want to give up, but it’s almost to the point where both of us feel that we are putting in an awful lot of effort for precious little return.

I haven’t managed to check Squidu yet to see if anyone else commented on the rankings, but I know that several of our lenses got more traffic in the last few days, yet still dropped heavily. It doesn’t give you a lot of confidence when that happens.

The only thing that is going in the right direction financially is Adsense. A record for September with $74, and based on the daily average, including today, we should be set to earn close to $100 this month. I hope so, since nothing else is working.

Thanks very much to Mulberry for giving some good advice on how to potentially make more money with my lenses. This is very much appreciated, and I aim to do something to try and turn our earnings around by re-focusing lenses. Hopefully by next month we can see some positive changes.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Religious Jokes
Bournemouth
The Daily Joke Lensography

Hope you all had a good weekend.

Mine wasn’t bad, it wasn’t wonderful, but not bad overall. Both Saturday and Sunday it was mostly overcast, with rain showers Saturday morning, and a Monsoon Sunday evening. Still, we managed to spend Sunday afternoon at the beach, and it was nice to not get fried for a change. The sun did peek through on occasions, but the cloud cover was probably 80% most of the time. Still, when the temperature is in the mid-80’s you don’t worry too much…

Both Debbie and I were busy working on our joint New York lens. It’s coming along, zooming up the rankings, but traffic is still very light. We hope that with New York being a popular topic and with putting everything we have into this that we can get it up to the top, keep it at the top and maybe even get a Lens Of The Day to share between us.

I do admit to getting jealous at times, not having had any of my lenses get Lens Of The Day yet, and some picks recently haven’t (IMHO) been lenses that took a lot of effort to create. I would rather see the award go to lenses where the lensmaster has obviously put a lot of effort into making the lens something special, and there are a lot of exceptional lenses out there, rather than seeing one of the ordinary lenses get this coverted award.

So since the shake-up in the lens rank formula last week my lenses continue to slide down the ratings, despite editing and in some cases an increase in traffic. I am getting despondant at the thought of having a much lower earning for this month, with my affiliate income being trivial, with the exception of Adsense, where I expect a record $50. I wish I could figure out where my earnings were coming from on Adsense, since in the last 2 weeks I keep getting clicks that are worth almost $1 each. I’m only getting 4 or 5 of them a day, but if I could figure out which ones, I would promote the heck out of the pages the adverts were displayed on. CJ isn’t bringing much in, Amazon nothing, but Adsense is starting to work. I need a lot more than $50 a month for it to make a difference to my lifestyle though…

One other affiliate program that you might like to try is Opinion Outpost. It’s a survey company that does actually pay you in REAL MONEY! As always you earn more by referring people, but the surveys are genuine, and the earnings are coming in, slowly but surely. There is a banner at the bottom of this message if you would like to take a look at them.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 6
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Bournemouth
My Lensography
Poddys Lensography

Several days ago I was starting to panic that with Hurricane Hanna headed towards South Florida, that the airports would be closed and I wouldn’t be able to head off to New York for the weekend. Now with Hanna fizzling out and having slowed down, it shouldn’t affect us here, so I am pretty sure the flight will leave ok tonight - however…

By the time we are set to come back on Monday afternoon, the monster storm of the season, Hurricane Ike, already a Category 4 while way out in the Atlantic, could either be here or close to being here. I am hoping it misses Florida completely, but if it does hit, it would be nice to be able to get home first. I don’t trust the bedroom windows, and I would prefer to be at home if only to take plenty of video as things blow around - if it does hit us. I would really not want to get stuck in New York with the airports closed - that has to be a really miserable experience.

Nothing much has changed with my lens traffic this week, up slightly, but what has changed is the traffic to one of the jokes on my main web site (So You Think You Had A Bad Day) that has been picked up by Stumbleupon. I had 11,000 visitors to my site yesterday, from 87 Countries, and from all 50 States in the USA. That’s the good news… The bad news - hardly a click on the rotating CJ banner on the main joke page that got hit, and under $3 on Adsense. What a shame - if only I could find a way to capitalize on the traffic…

I’m struggling to keep up with the things that I want to do, just not enough hours in the day unfortunately. For those of you with lenses that I have promised to visit, I have close to 100 lenses marked that I will get around to as soon as I can. The list is growing, but unless I have actually visited a lens, the link isn’t going to go away.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 9
Top 10,000: 4
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES
Poddys Lensography
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke - April 2008
The Daily Joke Lensography
My Pet Peeves