Categories
Blogging

Why I’m Here

I’ve had a website at this domain name since 1998. I was blogging before there were blogs. I was blogging before blogging was cool.

This site is an adjunct to my primary website, Everything-Everywhere.com. I don’t want to keep that site on topic with my photography and my trip. I especially don’t want to bother people by talking about the website on the website.

So, I figured the best approach was to revive this site.

In 2008, I want to start making inroads towards covering the costs for my trip. To that extent, I’m going to start to try and monetize my photography. In the next month, I’m going to launch the following advertising based sites:

  • A website for travel themed wallpapers.
  • A website for travel MySpace themes
  • A website for travel iPhone wallpapers
  • A site to sell high quality prints of my photos

The first three sites are really the same thing populated with slightly different content.

The print sales site I’ll probably run through SumgMug or something like that.

Based on similar sites I’ve seen, I’m shooting to make $5,000 from online ads in 2008. Most of the traffic I’m expecting to be driven from Google.

I am also going to be paying for a custom WordPress theme or my main site. There are several design elements which I think are unique to a site like mine I want to integrate:

  • I’d like to put my Google Map front and center in the site header. The best example I’ve seen of that is on Hitch50.com. The rest of the site sort of sucks, but the map integration is sort of clever. I think using a map in the header not only neat graphically, but it is functional as well.
  • I want to integrate the photo of the day more prominently. I don’t know how, but it has become one of the most popular features on the site
  • The country navigation is getting to long and unwieldy. I’d like to make the country lists collapsable by continent.
  • I’d eventually like to integrate advertising into the site, but I want to be very subtle about how I do it. I really don’t want to turn it into a NASCAR page. The photo download pages can go full blown NASCAR, but the main site I’d rather focus on increasing traffic.

Those are my goals for the next 30 days.

Next post I’ll go over my traffic history for Everything-Everywhere, my strategy for increasing traffic, and my goals for the next 3-6 months.

Categories
General

I’m back

I’m going to revive this site while I’m traveling for non-travel related posts and posts about my main site and the other sites I’ll be starting.

Categories
General

If you are still geting feeds from here…

Go to Everything-Everywhere.com.

Categories
General

New Website

I’m not going to be posting here much more. I’m beginning work on my trip website which now exists (sort of) at http://www.everything-everywhere.com.

There is no content yet. I’m going to be changing most everything, including adding Google Maps support, better video integration, changing colors, etc.

I’m open to any and all suggestions at this point. If you want to help with design, or help monkey with WordPress, I’m also open to that. No one is under any obligation or time commitment.

Categories
General

Tiger Woods Invades Europe

I have never played a round of golf in my life. Ever. Yet my odd fascination with records and statistics has led me to Tiger Woods.

You can read about all his records and everything else anywhere on the Internet, but I have for you today a special Gary exclusive calculated by me.

Since he has turned pro, Tiger has won the PGA Player of the Year Award eight times. This is given to the person each year who is the biggest money winner on the tour. No surprise there. He plays on the PGA Tour and he’s really good. The equivalent award for the European PGA Tour is called the Order of Merit. It is determined in the same fashion as the PGA Tour award, but they calculate everything in Euros and they use tournaments on their schedule instead of the American PGA Tour schedule.

Here are the current leader of the Order of Merit for 2006 as of today:

1 Paul Casey 22 events €2,256,194
2 David Howell 18 events €2,089,487
3 Robert Karlsson 26 events €1,852,231
4 Padraig Harrington 16 events €1,494,063
5 Henrik Stenson 20 events €1,491,716


It just so happens, that there are some tournaments on the European, Asian, and American PGA Tours which overlap. In particular, the majors and the World Golf Champion Events. There are four of those events each, every year.

You need 11 tournaments on the European PGA Tour to qualify for the Order of Merit. So far this year, Tiger Woods has played at eight European PGA Tour Events and a ninth, the WGC-American Express Championship is this weekend. Here is how he has done in the eight tournaments he’s attended so far in 2006:

Dubai € 329,760.30
WGC-Accenture € 104,989.08
Masters € 260,070.87
US Open € 1,582.79
British Open €1,045,965.60
PGA Championship € 959,469.52
WGC-Bridgestone €1,014,833.58
HBC World Match Play € 61,971.66
Total €3,778,643.40


Basically, he’d be winning by a wide margin and this doesn’t even consider his ninth tournament this weekend, which he’s won four times.

So, when all is said and done, he will have won more money than anyone else on the European PGA Tour at European PGA Tour events, yet he will not win the Order of Merit.

All he’d have to do is show up to two European events and send in the application fee to join the European tour and he’d win their championship.

Moreover, this year will be the 6th year he would have won the Order of Merit (1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002, 2005).

Had they no minimum tournament requirement, he would have taken 2 titles away from Colin Montgomery and would have tied him and Seve Ballesteros this year for the most Orders all-time. Moreover, he would be the career money winner on the European Tour.

Considering that this is in a sport where the biggest infraction you can have is not signing your scorecard, this should not be surprising.