Google has updated pagerank on a lot of sites. For the most part it appears that networks of sites that interlink heavily have been penalized the most.

When I see this happening on smaller sites, I don’t see this is as being such a big deal. A site doesn’t deserve a good pagerank just because it’s in a network and you can provide it nice targeted links. This is pretty much the same thing as having paid links, they just aren’t paid for because you own the sites :) These are unnatural in Google’s eyes. The sites didn’t receive the links because of any merit of how good the content is, they received them because people like to interlink their related sites. No matter how much I’d like related links from my own sites to count, Google sure as heck has the right to not count them.

I think the more telling statement by Google is about the bigger sites, like ProBlogger(PR6 to PR4), and Engadget(PR7 to PR5). These sites obviously didn’t survive by the links of their respective networks alone. These have to be 2 of the most linked to blogs on the internet. They’ve created great content over the last several years, and they deserve to be ranked well for it. Expanding on that, ProBlogger, didn’t even sell links, which suggests that it was penalized for being part of a network.

All in all, I wouldn’t necessarily care if our sites lost some of their PageRank, I’ve never liked to heavily rely on link selling simply because of exactly something like this happening. Make money based on traffic and you won’t have this problem. For most of the bigger sites and networks, this should barely make a dent in earnings because they’ve been smarter than that. If the loss in pagerank directly resulted in a noticeable loss in traffic, that, is when I would worry

McDonalds’ coffee is better than Starbucks. Even if it weren’t, people spending $5/coffee/day doesn’t make sense to me.

It seems like any time anybody has a problem with FeedBurner, and posts about it publicly, the FeedBurner team is quick to reply. It always seems like they have at least 2 people posting, providing a solution, and being extremely friendly. I’ve only seen a few posts about them, but their team is on the ball every time. Very few negative posts show about them though, because their service rarely has problems(that I know of). We’ve never experienced any problems with them anyway, and we’ve been using them for a very long time.

Anyway, kudos to FeedBurner!

It’s amazing how fast our sites in Bloggy Network are growing. There is hardly ever a month that goes by that we don’t break traffic records for every site we have in the network. I pulled up a few graphs on a few of our sites for everybody’s viewing pleasure. These graphs are all for the past 3 months of traffic

Blog Top Sites - We started this site about a year and a half ago. It’s growth never ceases to amaze me. It’s traffic has more than doubled in the past three months. Never really any sudden jumps up in traffic, just good solid steady growth:

bLavish - Now slightly more than a year old it’s really coming on strong. People enjoy reading on the finer things in life apparently :) More than tripled in traffic:

Filmsy - I struggled to find the right mix of content on Filmsy for a long time. We really started getting the perfect mix at the beginning of this year and it’s *really* starting to pay off now. Traffic has grown seven fold:

LifeSpy - We took over this site sometime around 3 or 4 months ago. A little SEO and a slightly new strategy and voila!.

Again, those graphs and numbers are only for the past 3 months. Needless to say, things are going very well. I remember about a year and a half ago, it was just me and David. Now it’s me, Ahmed, David, 5 other full-timers, and many others in smaller capacities. It’s been one of the best experiences of my life taking a company from nothing to something(without raising any capital I might add).

Began moving into my office today, finally took some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

And a view from my window:

There you have it, my brand spankin’ new office. The desk you see was in there when I moved in, so I just decided to keep it instead of buying a new one. It’s a little rickety but it’ll do the trick. No point in wasting a couple of hundred more bucks on something nicer when there is something completely functional already there :P They’re coming to setup my phone line and internet tomorrow.

I did end up cancelling my Comcast appointment to see what I could find out about DSL. I found DSL for $55.00 a month compared to $95.00 a month through Comcast. Not *quite* as fast, but it’ll definitely do the trick. I highly recommend going DSL over Comcast when getting a business internet connection. If everything gets setup alright tomorrow, then I will have some pictures tomorrow of everythig compleely setup.

I also just got in a new 22″ Samsung widescreen monitor. Currently in my home office, I have a 20″ LCD monitor and my laptop side by side. I’m going to leave my laptop at home pretty much for the most part, but I didn’t want to lose that extra screen so I bought a new one. From using this thing for an hour or so far, I highly recommend Samsung’s monitors. The picture is very sharp and vibrant. Much more so than the Dell(not an ultrasharp) sitting next to it.

How did these disgusting little things every become popular? You might as well swallow pour a cup of sugar down your throat for the joy of it. The problem is, every woman I’ve ever come across is in love with these things, especially around Easter. Women!

Comcast is a terrible company, I can’t stand them. I just signed the lease on my office and called to get internet setup. Price? $95 a month. What a ripoff. I think I pay $42.95 for my home internet. Granted, I also have digital cable and such, so the normal price would be $57.95 or so if I was going to not get cable tv.

I asked if there was a cheaper plan, and this one was the entry level, I had no other options. They charge close to $40 more a month just because they’re dealing with a business. What a load of crap.

I then asked when it could be setup, and the first available date was longer than I wanted to wait, so I asked to install myself. They don’t allow self-installations on business accounts. They tried to spin this to me as a positive thing. They said that they wanted to make sure it was installed correctly so that there were no problems for me later. They told me they installed so I could “focus on doing the important things like running my business”. The problem is, running my business requires the internet! I also get 7 complimentary e-mail addresses with my account. Whoopty doo(sarcasm).

I tell you why they won’t let me install it myself, it’s because they want to install all their crappy software on my computer. Whenever they have come to my house in the past, the cable guy usually tells me the software really doesn’t need to be installed, so I always have told them not to put it on my computer.

I’ve always hated Comcast, but now I hate them more. In fact, screw them, I’m cancelling and getting DSL.

I went and checked out an office yesterday. I thought it was going to be good at first, but it was 473 square feet. Since this office is for me and me alone, that was big time overkill. It was separated into two separate but equally sized rooms. One of those rooms would’ve done the trick, in fact, it would’ve more than done the trick.

I did a little more searching today and found a couple of larger office buildings with smaller offices that look appealing. Here’s the nicer one as viewed from above courtesy of Google Maps:

I could get about 160 square feet in this place in their brand new “Executive Suites”. Because of the location and the fact that these were just built(opened on April 1), the price per square footage is kind of high compared to other places. However, it is *perfect* in every aspect. I’m pretty sure it is at least, haven’t viewed it yet, but how can they screw up a newly built 10×16 room? It’s only about a mile or 2 from my apartment. A room that size would have plenty of space for a couch, a desk, a bookshelf, a filing cabinet, and maybe a mini-fridge :-D Did I mention it’s brand new?

Today I’m going to check out an office for rent. I’ve considered the possibility in the past, but never really considered it worth it. I got to thinking about it some more the past week and I realized that my life is becoming a little too cluttered in my 2 bedroom apartment(one room acts as an office). Here’s the building I’m going to check out:

I’m not by any means an organized person, so I figure that providing a little separation between work and home would be nice. Not to mention I’m sure my girlfriend will love the change :) I’ve thought about this a good little bit since one of the greatest things about working for yourself means you can work *anywhere*. I’m going to still take advantage of that, it’s just not going to be from home. Just going to get something small, around 400-500 square feet should do the trick. Maybe I’ll have some pictures later on today.

Taxes really tend to hurt quite a bit more when they’re not being taken out of your paycheck automatically by the company you work for. Since the company I work for is my own, and I don’t have it setup to take taxes out automatically, I have to take them out myself.

Unfortunately for myself, I haven’t been very good over the past year putting putting money aside like I should. I now have the honor and joy of writing the IRS a $16,000 check. This is just a rough guess of what I’ll need to pay considering I filed for an extension, but nonetheless, I’d consider it a pretty accurate guess. Starting this year, I’m going to start doing quarterly payments(even though I should have started doing this a long time ago). Unluckily for me, the first quarterly payment was due at the same time as the payment for last year’s taxes.

Cutting two substantial checks to give away at the same time is not fun, not fun at all.