I realize I have been pretty slow about posting recently. But that doesn't mean I haven't been working on the site. Over the past few weeks I have spent quite a bit of time reorganizing and cleaning up, hopefully to make the site better down the road.

A few things you will notice that are different:

I have made some subtle changes to the layout and the look and feel of the site. This is pretty insignificant to you, and I realize it's probably foolish on my part to spend my time on trivial things like this when I should probably spend it on more important things like creating content and increasing my readership.

Another major change that has been implemented is the rollout of the "shopping" part of the site using Amazon's Astore feature. I know this is also trivial, but I figured rather than having random links send traffic over to Amazon, now I can increase my branding and the site experience by keeping readers on my domain. So now if you click through on an Amazon link you won't end up over at Amazon unless you are actually purchasing. I decided on doing this after reading Chris Guillebeau's 279 Days to Success Manifesto.

In short, he says that by using Google Adsense (yes I know Adsense and Amazon are different, but bear with me) you essentially devalue your site, give your users a worse experience, and also send your traffic away to sites that you don't endorse. The fact that I still run Google Ads, and also that Amazon and Google are two different beasts is not lost on me, but in taking a tip from Chris, I have attempted to customize my Amazon store to mostly products that I have used, or at least product categories that I would use myself. And by incorporating it into my site frame, if you do browse over there, the experience is seamless and you can easily come back.

Lastly, I have reorganized my travel section for better SEO, and also have focused on updating it to include my recent travels. I should be fully caught up in another week or two, at which point I can set my mind at ease and re-focus on putting out more content and increasing my readership.

Thanks for reading, and as always, I welcome your feedback here.

Labels: updates, work