Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

Well 2007 is off to a good start for my company Site Sift Media, Inc. but I wanted to take a little time to reflect on 2006. One of our goals this last year was to diversify our income and I would have to say we did a great job in doing so.

Here is how 2006 broke down for us:

Sales/Services - 47%
Contextual Advertising - 10%
Affiliate Income - 43%

In 2005 the numbers were like this:

Sales/Services - 92%
Contextual Advertising - 8%
Affiliate Income - 0%

I’m very pleased in the direction we have grown and 2007 is off to a great start already. One of our main goals for 2007 is to increase brand awareness for our three main sites.

Site Sift Listings V1.30

I’m happy to announce we are releasing Site Sift Listing V1.30. Some of the upgrades to this script are the spam fighting measures. We took the feedback form the current users and added a multiple link approval/delete/renew with one click. This is by far the most anticipated feature with V1.30.

Here are the new features:

-Link scan that will check for broken links
-Security Image (help prevent spam)
-Integrated for paypal subscriptions
-Ready to use for 2CheckOut payments
-Coupons
-Domain banning
-E-mail templates for approval/deny emails
-Paid listings can be set to expire after a certain number of days
-Multiple link approval/delete/renew with one click

If you are not familiar with Site Sift Listings directory script below are all the features of this powerful script. If anyone has any question please feel free to stop by our support forum.

-Unlimited categories
-Unlimited subcategories (multi way tree design structure)
-Edit (sub)categories
-Change category from drop down menu
-Move categories around (subcategories will be changed as well)
-Change title
-Change description
-Delete (sub)categories
-Edit listings
-Change title
-Change description
-Change category
-Change URL
-Sort listings by alphabetical or date submitted
-Search both listings and categories
-Easily customize colors
-Change site meta title tag
-Change site meta keyword tag
-Change site meta description tag
-Change site default email address
-Change default currency
-Change default domain name
-One click SEO friendly URL’s
-Reciprocal links can be required (on/off switch)
-Automatic reciprocal link checking, easliy turn on/off
-Require reciprocal link to be from same domain, easliy turn on/off
-Integrated for Paypal with Instant Payment Notification
-Offer sponsored, paid, reciprocal, and free listings, easily turn any on/off
-Easily set price for paid/sponsor links
-Sponsored listings can be set to expire after a set # of days or to never expire
-Easily change links from sponsor to regular and set expiration date of sponsor links
-Google sitemap integration
-Set min/max length for site description
-Adjust the number of listings shown per page
-Database backup
-Smart meta tags every category & subcategory page has its own meta tags (keywords,title,description) all dynamic
-Link details page has its own meta tags (keywords,title,description) all dynamic
-Link scan that will check for broken links
-Ready to use for 2CheckOut payments
-Coupons
-Domain banning
-E-mail templates for approval/deny emails
-Paid listings can be set to expire after a certain number of days
-Multiple link approval/delete/renew with one click

So I finally recorded my Christmas lights. The recording is poor quality but you can get an idea of how it looks. Please ensure your speakers are turned on and the volume is up… so you can hear the music.

My Christmas Lights:

Click Here to watch them

It’s not often I like sequels but a few nights ago we watch Clerks II and I could not stop laughing. The first one was good but WTF Elias one of the characters doesn’t want to have sex with his girlfriend because he is scared of Pillow Pants the Pussy Troll:

“Well we can’t because of Pillow Pants”

We actually had to pause the movie because we were laughing so hard. If you haven’t seen the movie yet… go rent it.

Watch it for yourself. (NSFW)

We hold the Unofficial World Record for Avatar Advertising

*most posts with an avatar advertisment in them - 247,877 posts* (as of 12/6/06 2:33 PM PST)

Avatar advertising… sound funny??? Sure it is but it can be effective if done on a large scale. I set out with a goal this morning. I wanted to have our holiday avatar for Site Sift Web Directory on over 100,000 posts on DP forums. It took me a couple of hours but now we have our avatar on 141,526 posts on the Digital Point Forums.

This advertising has resulted in a 99% market penetration on the webmaster forums.

Andrew said, “The avatars are everywhere I thought the forum had been hacked! I see that Site Sift is on every thread with the colorful avatars.”

I’m hoping by this time tomorrow we will be close to 150,000 avatars. If you would like to help out please use our holiday avatar found here: http://www.stuartmchenry.com/sitesiftavatarxmas.gif

I appreciate everyone’s help so far… maybe I will open up a new market for advertising.

*update someone has added us to digg

I finally got around to posting some PICS of our new place. I only took a few from the inside but you can see the:
-kitchen
-dinning room
-family room
-living room
-media room
-daughter’s room
-my bedroom (where the magic happens… I know I watch too many Cribs episodes)
-guest bedroom
-office
-laundry
-a few of the people that came to eat up my turkey dinner

We haven’t really been in too long and we still have some decorating to do as you can see.

I forgot to take some of the outside… but will soon. I got all my holiday lights up complete with music… so look for that posts in a few days.

Ok… everybody and there mother knows the movie “A Christmas Story” but did you know you can tour the house. Yep some crazy fan (aka Brian Jones) bought the house and restored it.

Jones has restored the three-story, wood-frame house to its appearance in the movie and will open it for tours beginning Saturday. His hope is that it will become a tourist stop alongside the city’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other destinations.

He’s unsure whether he’ll make enough money to cover his $500,000 investment, but as sure as a kid’s tongue will stick to a frozen flag pole, he’s committed to the project.

BTW… I love the Christmas Story and this year I bought a Leg Lamp Replica which is life-size and stands 40 inches tall.

Black Friday

I spent most of my working life… working retail so I’m no stranger to Black Friday. I never go out shopping on that day.. once you have worked retail why would you want to. This year was an exception… after cooking (Thanksgiving) for 18 people my wife, sister, brother-in-law and mother talked me into it. (Shopping)

At 11:30 PM we decided to head over to the Outlet stores in Cabazon…. BIG MISTAKE! We thought *cool the outlet center is opening at midnight I bet they won’t be that busy* I couldn’t of been more wrong. About 4 miles before the outlet center we hit traffic and thought crazy must be an accident up ahead. Wrong again… the traffic (dead stop) was ALL for the outlet center. We waited in the traffic for about 20 minutes only going a few feet and then said *fuck it.*

We cruised from there over to Walmart to check out some of there deals. We didn’t have too much of a choice as Walmart is about the only store open in the middle of the night. I wanted to snag a TV they had on special about half off but when we got to the store they had a line. I asked one of the employees how many TV’s (specific sale model) they had and he laughed and said five. So I bailed….

Next stop was Circuit City where there were people with tents camped out in front of the store. At this point I was thinking *shit my wife is crazy for doing this every year.* My brother-in-law really wanted a TV and they had an advertised a 32 LCD” for $474.00 I figured since I was up I better try and get one. I own a lot of TV’s but figured one more in my office on the wall might be nice.

So after waiting in line for one hour (my brother-in-law saved our spot in line for almost 5 hours) I got a new TV for my wall. I also had to take everyone to two different Targets and a Toy’s ‘R Us. It was kind of fun being out with all the shoppers but I’m grateful I don’t work retail anymore. more info here

note: when I was at Circuit City they had a great deal on HDMI cables with a surge protector for $49.95… two days before I bought just an HDMI cable for $120.95 for I was happy to see this special.

Pubcon 2006

I attended Pubcon again this year… I enjoy going to Vegas and any excuse works for me. Like last year *most* of the sessions I attended where *yawn* boring as hell and some of the advice given by the so called experts was… how should I saw… so 2 years ago. Don’t get me wrong not every presenter was bad… just most. Here is a tip for anyone speaking at Pubcon in the future:

Don’t spend 75% talking about what you did before you got into your current webmaster job. I’m sure myself and the other webmasters don’t care that you taught school or worked at Burger King unless you worked in a department that had to do with the Internet.

On a brighter side I enjoyed the keynote speech from Guy Kawasaki. Guy has been involved in the computer world for a long time and is currently a managing director of a venture capital firm. He also has a blog (who doesn’t even my 7 year old has one) and has some interesting things to say and some decent Interviews.

Anyway… I was happy to see some familiar faces and met some new ones. Maybe going this year taught me to rank better for no fax payday loans.

I haven’t blogged in a while now… about two weeks I got the keys to my new (brand new construction) 3,000 sq. foot house. Moving always sucks… so much crap to do. I’ve been busy doing crap just about everyday. If I’m not meeting with some contractors then I’m out buying more stuff for the new pad.

Anyway… I will posts some PICS of the new place once I find which box my carmera is in.