David Airey, graphic designer » Web

To the commentators

David Airey — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:41:21 +0000

“In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.”

Source: “90-9-1″ Rule for Participation Inequality: Lurker vs. Contributors in Internet Communities

With that in mind, this post is for the 10%.

You’ve taught me a huge amount by sharing your experiences of design, of the Internet, of life. You’ve kept me motivated. You’ve made me feel less like I’m sat at my desk working alone. In fact, I reckon there’s a good chance I’d have quit publishing blog posts if it wasn’t for your perspectives, suggestions, feedback, questions, answers. Quitting wouldn’t have helped keep me in self-employment.

Some blogs don’t have comment threads. Seth’s blog and the johnson banks thought for the week to name just two. Others turn comments on and off depending on the post. I can understand why.

I started blog publishing in 2006. At the time of writing, there are 20,193 comments across 589 posts on this blog, 11,108 across 361 posts on Logo Design Love, and 877 on 85 Identity Designed posts. A total of 32,178, and an average of 18 “approved” comments every day for five years. In addition to moderating, reading, and thinking about every comment that’s submitted, I feel the urge to offer everyone a response, but I like to think you understand when I don’t always have time.

So for all you’ve given me, and for all you’ve given countless others who continue to learn from the insights you’ve shared, here’s to you, the 10%, the commentators.

Thank you.

—

A few interesting posts elsewhere about blog comments:

Commented Out, by Khoi Vinh
Why I don’t have comments, by Seth Godin
All these comments will be lost in time, like tears in rain, by Daniel Gray
Kill Blog Comments? by Oliver Reichenstein

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Using Twitter in the information (overload) age

David Airey — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:03:42 +0000

As someone who does almost 100% of my business online, a need to filter the bombardment of info ranks highly when it comes to paying the bills.

“Unless you can concentrate on what you want to do and suppress distractions, it’s hard to accomplish anything, period.”
— WINIFRED GALLAGHER

Since creating a profile in 2008, one of my distractions has been Twitter. I’ve used it for three things:

To share articles of interest (mainly design-related) and personal thoughts
To answer questions or reply to “@ mentions” from other Twitter users
To search for up-to-date info on a specific topic

What I found myself doing in addition, however, and every time I logged-in, was reading a back-catalogue of tweets from the 100 or so accounts I had time to follow until I’d “caught-up,” just in case I missed something juicy related to the design profession.

I kept the follower-count to 100 or less for exactly the same reason Don Dodge talks about in his post: Twitter litter — do followers really follow you?

But the tweets included more than snippets about design — I’d be absorbing anything from foreign weather reports to chat about what’s on the lunch menu 5,000 miles away. Lyndon described this as a “natural urge to sit on your arse and be spoon-fed information.” I can understand the sentiment.

Is that the best use of my time? There’s already a ton of non-stop design news coming from my feed reader and my daily visits to other blogs. I’ll often find it hard enough keeping-up even without the added Twitter stream.

So to decrease distraction and (hopefully) work more efficiently, I’ve stopped following others on Twitter.

It’s not that there aren’t advantages to following other designers. But for me, with client projects, the non-stop email influx, maintaining three fairly regularly-updated blogs, and making sure I have time away from design, I’m trying this as a way to streamline my working day.

For the amazing people I was following (and those I never did) I hope you don’t take it personally. There’ll be a psychology behind Twitter that’s similar to Facebook: “You unfriended me. I’m not your friend.” (Not that you’re as fickle.) With never-ending days I’d follow hundreds. Thousands. And hey, my email address is always open.

Those three main Twitter uses won’t change — sharing resources, thoughts, replies, research — I’ll just be saving some time and focusing more on bill-paying projects.

If you want to follow/unfollow me, catch me here on Twitter.

—

Update: 01 July 2001
Twitter lists. The way forward: @DavidAirey/lists

—

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Online advertising earnings

David Airey — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:34:08 +0000

Here are the details of my online advertising earnings and website traffic for March 2011 in the hope that they help to either initiate or increase your own additional income stream.

March 2011 advertising income

Amazon Associates: $200.58
InfluAds: $1,428.00

Total: $1,628.58 (£1,000.86 GBP)

Amazon Associates
I’ve already talked about the commission cheques I receive for helping designers look sharp.

InfluAds
After installation of the InfluAds code in the sidebar of my three blogs, a performance-based payment is received via PayPal upon each month of serving ads. If I see an advertiser that I don’t want to associate myself with, I have the option to block the banner from the within the publisher section of the InfluAds website (that hasn’t been necessary).

My agreement with InfluAds was that I’d receive $1,400 per month. But due to a better-than-predicted performance during March (i.e., higher traffic, more click-throughs) I was paid slightly more — an unexpected bonus that I offered to refund, thinking it was a mistake, but was told to keep it.

You’re probably wondering how much web traffic is needed. Here are my stats from March 01-31.

davidairey.com

logodesignlove.com

identitydesigned.com

Stats courtesy of Google Analytics.

What does that mean?
Perhaps the most important figure is the number of Pageviews (otherwise known as page impressions). This number indicates how many times the banner ad is loaded, or viewed, within the month.

davidairey.com = 502,788
logodesignlove.com = 545,496
identitydesigned.com = 100,561

So during the month of March my three main websites attracted a total of 1,148,845 Pageviews.

By dividing the Pageviews by the InfluAds payment we can see how much of a return was made for a range of web traffic stats.

1,148,845/$1,428 = 804

Meaning that for every 804 Pageviews generated, I earned $1.

Therefore, to earn $10 I needed to attract 8,040 monthly Pageviews.

$1 = 804 monthly Pageviews
$10 = 8,040
$100 = 80,400
$1,000 = 804,000
$10,000 = 8,040,000

To put it another way, and to give you a clearer picture of what you might be earning with InfluAds, for every 10,000 Pageviews received in March, I earned $12.44.

1,000 monthly Pageviews = $1.24
10,000 = $12.24
100,000 = $122.40
1,000,000 = $1,224.00
10,000,000 = $12,240.00

It’s probably not quite as straightforward — the number of clicks on each ad are also likely to be a factor — but it gives you something to relate to.

I’ve been told that InfluAds will be relaunching in May with a greater number of publisher/advertiser benefits. If you want to be kept updated you can subscribe to the InfluAds newsletter at the foot of the InfluAds homepage, or follow the service on Twitter.

Your online revenue streams

There’s a big online advertising pie to taste, but I’ve no idea how my ratio of income/stats compares to others. What ads are you featuring to make money online? Are there any types you’d avoid? I’d love to learn from your experience.

Painted dollar sign image via Thinkstock

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Don’t build websites using Flash

David Airey — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:39:15 +0000

15M+* iPads have been sold. If your website is built using Flash, that’s 15M+ potential customers you’re alienating. Read why Apple’s mobile devices don’t support the tool: Thoughts on Flash, by Steve Jobs.

Additionally:
Apple will sell 50 million iPads a Year, on Business Insider
Top 10 Luxury Brands’ Sites Fail To Work On iPad, on PSFK
Flash and SEO — Compelling Reasons Why Flash & SEO Still Don’t Mix, on SEOmoz
Things to Know About Flash Websites, on Don’t drink the koolaid
Don’t Build Your Site With Flash, on Hobo-Web
Flash, iPad, Standards, on Zeldman.com
An Adobe Flash developer on why the iPad can’t use Flash, on RoughlyDrafted

—

*15M figure obtained by doing the maths from here, here, and here.

The Flash logo via Shirtoid.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Boycotting GoDaddy

David Airey — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:14:45 +0000

When I created my website in 2005 I purchased the domain name directly from my web host, ICDSoft. There it stayed until 2007 when it was stolen by some idiot and transferred to an account with GoDaddy. After a week or so of battling (and a ton of support from your good selves), I managed to get my stolen domain transferred to a GoDaddy account of my own that their staff asked me to create. There it stayed (along with domains purchased after the event for sites such as Logo Design Love and Identity Designed) until yesterday, when I watched a “vacation video” (shown below) that GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons uploaded to his blog.

—

Update: 12 April 2011
The original video has since been removed from YouTube after Bob Parsons filed a copyright claim. The following news report shows a little of what was featured.

—

Elephants are highly intelligent creatures, and I don’t want to give my money to a man who glorifies their hunting and shooting, before standing triumphantly over his kill (not to mention having AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells as the soundtrack, as well as the payment that was no doubt given to Robert Mugabe‘s regime). As such, all of my domains have been transferred to UK-based Heart Internet.

Read The truth about killing ‘problem’ elephants.

Appreciation to those of you who offered domain registrar recommendations via Twitter and Facebook.

—

Update: 12 April 2011
In another vacation video hunting a leopard (since removed from YouTube), The African Safari Company is credited. Here are the Zimbabwe trophy fees that are charged for each species of kill.

—

Elsewhere:
Shooting an elephant — why GoDaddy’s CEO was wrong, on TIME
Don’t Go With GoDaddy and Its Elephant-Killing CEO, on PETA
GoDaddy CEO kills elephant, videotapes act, on MSNBC

Elephant photo courtesy of Thinkstock

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Twitter recommendations

David Airey — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:44:58 +0000

Those of you on Twitter will likely know the idea behind “Follow Friday” where you mention the names of those you deem followable. Rather than restrict myself to 140 characters, or Friday, here’s my take.

@blairenns — Blair Enns, of Win Without Pitching
Based in Kaslo, Canada, a short nine-hour drive from Vancouver. Those of you who’ve read my book will be familiar with Blair’s knowledge (he kindly contributed to the chapter on dealing with clients). Those of you who haven’t read it are probably familiar with Blair anyway, but if not, his manifesto‘s a great read. You can watch Blair’s Pecha Kucha talk here. Liverpool FC supporter.

@swissmiss — Tina Roth Eisenberg, of swissmiss
My familiarity began with a subscription to the swissmiss blog, and Tina has since branched-out with other design-based offerings like the popular TuexDeux task-list application, and the highly-regarded CreativeMornings events (design legend Milton Glaser is speaking at the next one). You can watch quite a few of the previous recordings on the CreativeMornings Vimeo channel.

@markmcguinness — Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action
Mark does a heck of a lot as a coach for artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. He’s also written a range of ebooks that are available for free — on time management, motivation, and more. Taking a slight, but creative, tangent, Mark’s on the editorial board for Magma Poetry. He keeps a note of poems he reads and a scrapbook of those he writes on markmcguinness.com.

@karj — Eric Karjaluoto, of smashLAB
Often makes me smile, but there’s much more to the man than witty remarks. Eric’s book, Speak Human, is a great read, and like the other creatives listed here, it’s not just about producing great design in the studio (remember this?), it’s also about sharing great content, and how design can change things for the better. Oh, and Eric’s excellent essays can be read at ideasonideas.

@debbiemillman — Debbie Millman, of Sterling Brands
A tireless advocate of ethics in design, Debbie is President of the AIGA, President of the design division at Sterling Brands, host of Design Matters (anyone know if that’s available to watch?), author of Look Both Ways and How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, and that’s not even half of it. Beautiful apartment, too.

@ilovetypography — John Boardley, of I Love Typography
A british born graphic designer and writer in Japan, it’s no surprise to see the huge readership of John’s blog, and the extension that’s we love typography. Additionally, he authors the Linotype newsletter, and created The Font Game. John’s just stuff I find blog hasn’t been updated in a few months, but is still work a look.

Might be a semi-regular thing, if that’s up your street. I could’ve easily made this post huge, but small packages and all that.

Excerpt image courtesy of Jennie on Flickr.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Amazon Associates: helping designers look sharp

David Airey — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:20:37 +0000

Amazon’s affiliate program, known as Amazon Associates, allows web publishers like me to earn a percentage of each Amazon sale directed from our sites.

I’ve been an Amazon affiliate for a year or two, now. What’s interesting about the program is that it doesn’t matter what specific product I link to — if the person who clicks through to Amazon from here or there does a little browsing after arrival at the store, and then makes a purchase, I get a cut (roughly 5% — doesn’t affect buyer cost).

What’s more interesting is that I can see what items have been purchased through my referrals, and also how much money was passed my way.

This sale, for instance, brought in $0.77 from Amazon’s US site. This one earned me a cool £7.00. I picked-up $3.70 from whoever bought this. Thanks. I hope they sent you two.

It’s hard to imagine someone clicking an Amazon link for a design book, then thinking to themselves, “Mmmm, peanut butter.” But it happens ($1.76 commission).

All-in-all, roughly £50,000 worth of Amazon purchases have been made through my affiliate links, so I received a couple of grand in the process. Not exactly in the same league as Darren Rowse, but I’m not sniffing, and hey, if I can help designers look smarter along the way, brilliant (£0.23).

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Design blogs on my subscription list

David Airey — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:25:04 +0000

Every day, or every few days, I’ll drop by Google Reader to read from a number of excellent blogs. That’s where I find many of my link-drop tweets.

You told me you’d like to see what’s on my subscription list, and as such…

Design blogs

300million
38one
A List Apart
@Issue Journal of Business & Design
Ace Jet 170
AisleOne
Anagrama
Andy Rutledge
Beast Pieces
Brand New
Chris Glass
Creative Review
davidthedesigner
Design Observer
design work life
Designers who Blog
DesignNotes
DSGN + DVLP
graphicPUSH
Hicksdesign
I Love Typography
ideasonideas
Identity Designed
Identity Forum
Information Architects
Interbrand Blog
ISO50
kottke.org
Landor
Logo Design Love
Lovely Package
Mark Porter
Mark Boulton
Moving Brands
Pentagram
NO!SPEC
Noisy Decent Graphics
Quipsologies
russell davies
Ryan Tym Graphic Design
Siegel+Gale
Social Design Notes
SonSpring
Subtraction
Swiss Cheese and Bullets
swissmiss
Sterling Brands: The 3rd Button
The Crossed Cow
the johnson banks thought for the week
The Dieline
The Skinny
things to look at
Type for you.
Typographica
Unit Editions
Visuelle.co.uk
We Made This
Win Without Pitching
Wishful Thinking
WordPress Blog

You’ll notice a couple of my own blogs in there. That’s just to check that the feeds are okay.

I also make a point of visiting every blog linked to by commentators on my sites, and those people I follow on Twitter often have me clicking-through from their tweets. My feed reader is updated with around 50 or 60 posts per day — that includes name-check subscriptions for “David Airey,” “Logo Design Love,” and “Identity Designed” (so I can check any websites mentioning those).

Anyway, hopefully you’ll have just discovered one or two subscription-worthy design blogs.

Neon arrow via Thinkstock

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

ICDSoft web hosting

David Airey — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:05:30 +0000

I received a nice email from my web host, ICDSoft, offering a couple of free accounts for any sites I was planning to launch. There’s nothing I want to use them for, so thought I’d give the codes to you.

“Each of the coupons is worth €77 and allows you to open a year-long account on the Universal plan, along with a domain registration, on a server in Germany.

“To use a coupon, please visit http://eu.icdsoft.com/order and enter the coupon code into the Coupon code field. The €77 discount will be automatically calculated and applied to your order.”

I’ve been a happy ICDSoft customer for about five years now, through some awkward times, too — my domain hijacking for instance. And even today, receiving around 350,000 monthly page views on this site, their business plan (coupled with a WordPress plugin to cache my pages) is still adequate. Support tickets are usually answered within minutes, too.

If you want one of the codes, just leave a comment recommending a mobile phone. I’m getting a new one, and am thinking of something that’s not the iPhone 4. Maybe the new Nokia N8 or the Blackberry Torch.

I’ll randomly draw two winners this Friday (15th), but even if you’re not chosen, here’s a 25% discount.

——

Update: 16th October 2010
Do excuse the additional day before announcing the results. The two commentators chosen at random are Peter and Janessa. I’ve emailed them the coupon code to claim their free hosting and domain name. Thanks for the all the great recommendations, folks.

——

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

WordPress plugins on davidairey.com

David Airey — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:01:00 +0000

I’m frequently asked for advice about starting a blog. Many of you will know I use the freely available service WordPress to power both davidairey.com and Logo Design Love, but very few of you will know what WordPress plugins I’ve installed to help make the most of the publishing platform.

WordPress plugins installed here

Akismet
Comes as standard with all WordPress platform downloads, and checks reader comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam. Those comments that do are automatically filtered into a “spam” folder.
All in One SEO Pack
Automatically optimises page titles and META tags for search engines. Easily override the predetermined titles and tags using form fields. In effect, you can have your post headlines say one thing e.g., “Are you serious?” and your page titles (usually the same as your headlines) say another e.g., “David Cameron new Prime Minister” for search engine rankings.
cforms II
Effortlessly creates easy-to-use web forms, sending the results to your chosen email address. I use this on my contact page, and when supplying potential clients with a few initial project questions.
Feedburner Feed Replacement
Directs all feed URLs from WordPress to Feedburner (the third-party subscription service I use). It’s by Steve Smith of Ordered List, but the plugin is no longer available for download, so I’m curious if I should just deactivate this one. The FD Feedburner plugin looks like it does the same job, though, so maybe it’s worth keeping.
Google XML Sitemaps
Another for the search engines. It automatically generates and updates your sitemap, so search engine robots can easily and quickly crawl/index your content.
Highlight Author Comments
Allows me to self-style my own comments in every post thread, so mine appear slightly different from other commentators. Good for those who scan the threads looking for post-author replies.
PostPost
Particularly useful, and lets me add text and/or images to the foot of my RSS feed. I’ve added a line of text saying, “Published on David Airey, graphic designer” where the David Airey, graphic designer part links back to my homepage. This means all those splogs that scrape my feed and republish it without permission are giving a continual stream of links back to my site (it’s something, at least). I also display a banner advertising my book.
Quick Cache
Stores a static version of every page visited for a set time of one hour. This means that if I’m getting a sudden flood of traffic, the burden on my web host is greatly reduced (helping to prevent my site from going down).
Subscribe To Comments
Adds a checkbox so commentators have the option to receive email updates when new comments are added after theirs. Hugely helpful for generating chat and a sense of community.
WordPress.com Stats
Google Analytics is great, but it’s too much for getting a quick look at where site visitors are coming from. This plugin puts an extra tab in the WordPress dashboard, and a single click shows the sites from which visitors arrive, what search engine terms are being used to direct traffic my way, popular posts, what people are clicking, and any new links to my site from elsewhere.
WordPress Related Posts
You see the “Related posts on David Airey dot com” section below? That’s automatically generated by this plugin, helping increase clicks to other (normally related) pages on my site.
WP Page Numbers
Shows clickable page numbers at the foot of the homepage and category pages (instead of next page and previous page)
WP Twitip ID
Adds an extra field in the blog comment thread, allowing commentators to enter their Twitter ID for display. According to the plugin page, this one’s no longer supported, and has been replaced by the newer TwitterLink Comments.

It’s important to keep in mind that each plugin used will add to the loading time of your site. If I was half-decent at coding I’d probably do away with “WP Twitip ID” and “Highlight Author Comments” plugins, adding a piece of code to my blog theme instead.

Hopefully this short list has given the WordPress users out there a new idea or two.

Can you recommend any plugins you think would improve my collection?

WordPress buttons photo credit

David Airey, graphic designer » Web

To the commentators

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Using Twitter in the information (overload) age

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Online advertising earnings

March 2011 advertising income

Your online revenue streams

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Don’t build websites using Flash

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Boycotting GoDaddy

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Twitter recommendations

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Amazon Associates: helping designers look sharp

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Design blogs on my subscription list

Design blogs

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

ICDSoft web hosting

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

WordPress plugins on davidairey.com

WordPress plugins installed here

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com