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I suppose we all inherit various traits from our parents. Me? Every now and then I get the urge to rearrange things. Mom loved to rearrange the furniture in the house, which could make it interesting if you came home after dark and didn’t turn on the lights. Today though, I am just moving things around on my web site. Why? Because I can do it. Actually, there is a deeper reason. I have been doing a trial since I launched this site of using some ads, mind you ones that I tried to keep minimal and as non intrusive as possible, from Google AdSense and Amazon.com. After a year of trying this I concluded:
- They have not made me rich….not even close. Google has paid me barely enough for a fast food meal and Amazon has paid nothing at all.
- They have not increased my site traffic. In fact, I have a feeling that some visitors find any kind of ad inherently annoying and immediately depart never to return.
- I realized Google and Amazon have control of what ends up appearing in these ads on my site and there is no guarantee that their content is always appropriate or something that I would choose given the chance.
- They are just another distraction for me to devote my time rather than the core content of what I intended this site to focus on: My music, songwriting and recording and my causes of care for the disadvantaged – Namely those living with autism and seniors secluded from the rest of society in nursing homes.
Therefore and whereas, as of today there shall be no more ads on my site. If you find one let me know right away. You might have also noticed that I moved my current blog posts back to the front page of the site. I had had a static summary information page as the default, but my hunch is that the dynamic blog will be more useful…..I hope I can leave it like this and not change my mind again in a year or six months.
Does this make my site more useful for you?
In another version of me moving the furniture around I had to make a few changes to the mix on my last published song, Saving Grace, as I discovered somehow on the first release I had shifted the bass guitar part slightly from the rest of the tracks which made the playback less than ideal. I like this version much better and I think you will too.
But you know I need to admit that there is more motivating me to do these things than simple OCD, (not that that disorder is at all “simple”) — I actually feel a need to “simplify” some areas of my life…..especially in things that distract me from being creative. I have a hunch that before you know it I will also be scaling back the amount of times I spend on other things that experts have told musicians are necessary >> social networks << ….there – I said it. While stuff like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the plethora of music sites like iLike (did I studder?) and lastFM are strangely addictive and probably have a lot of potential to help one market their music, they take an incredible amount of time to maintain. It appears MySpace has decided to do some housecleaning themselves. So anyway, I am starting to think what if I actually devoted that time to actually practicing, or writing songs, or recording?
The Moving Furniture Around by Chris Hartzog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License.
