We Are Suing OPEC?

This just released from Reuters. Wait till you feast your eyes on this.

By Tom Doggett

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

"This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities," said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

The lawmaker said Americans "are at the mercy" of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.

The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards "would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners."

The administration said less oil going to refineries would limit available gasoline supplies and raise fuel prices.

Foreign investment in U.S. oil infrastructure has declined in the last decade. But the state-owned oil companies of several OPEC nations are owners of U.S. refineries, and those investments could be affected if the legislation becomes law, said Arlington, Virginia-based FBR Capital Markets Corp.

The bill also requires the Government Accountability Office to carryout a study on the effects of prior oil company mergers on energy prices.

The Senate would still have to approve the House measure.

The Senate previously approved similar legislation as part of a broad energy bill. However, the OPEC-suing provision was removed after White House opposition in order to get the underlying energy legislation signed into law."

What is going on here? How can we win from such an action?

Holy cow, you think the prices of oil are high now, wait till they decide they don't like us enough to sell us oil. AND with foreign ownership of US refineries and oil fields this could get ugly. Foreign ownership of any land or interest in the US should be banned. There are NOT a lot of countries that would let me, as a US Citizen, own land in their country. Why can't we just drill for oil in Alaska.

What do you think on the subject?

 

Feedburner?

What the heck is going on? I just looked at FB and it's reporting that I have 45 subscribers. It looks like all of my email subscribers have dropped off. Once I dug down into the email subs, I found that they were still there they just weren't reporting on my home page or on my little chicklet.

As of today it says that I have 118 via email and 45 via feed readers. That should have 163 RSS subscribers. Anyone know what is going on with feed burner today?

 

Traffic Presents Part Deux

Last month was a pretty good traffic month at The Big Bald Blog. Here's the final breakdown for March.

Unique Visitors - 94,113
Page Views - 183,696
Total Hits - 2,008,009 (that one deserved a bold)
Bandwidth - 70 GB

My biggest day (March 17th) had about 16,000 visits. RSS subs went up about 10 but the comments increased significantly. It feels pretty good to say I got over 2 million hits last month. I know, I know, hits really don't mean anything, BUT it's still pretty cool to say.

My server worked great without a single hiccup. This is good to know since I am hosting a large number of client websites.

Now all I need to do is have someone show me how to monetize my site properly. Anyone want to take BigPappa under their wing or adopt The Big Bald Blog as a pet project?

Again this is all due the YOU, the reader, who has graciously supported this tiny piece of the web. The credit is all yours. Thanks again for being a valued reader of The Big Bald Blog.

And to think, some people say that being nice is not as effective.

 

I Love Traffic Presents

Traffic present? Yes, a traffic present is when you get up in the morning, check your stats and you have over 9000 unique visitors for the day. Normally I have about 800 uniques on average per day but yesterday, 9000!

Evidently the good folks that are a part of the Stumbleupon community just love my "What I found in my email" series. I have been writing about marketing, advertising, internet industry news, web design, graphic design and other topics related to my industry for quite a while now. It wasn't until I started putting up fun little posts like these that I started getting some SERIOUS traffic. Go figure.

This is the third time that I have been "stumbled" and have received a big spike in traffic. The funny thing is, every post that has went big, I did not initiate the stumble, someone else did. All the ones that I "discovered" myself, have died a quiet death.

So here's a shout to all the stumblers out there. Thanks for your kind words and participation.

 

My Own Personal Goal With Barbados

One of the many blogs that I read is Joe Tech. It is pretty entertaining and well written blog that does a good job of keeping my attention which is not easily done. Many of you may or may not know but he has a sister blog called Link Bait Me. Yesterday Joe wrote about a personal challenge he has with increasing his traffic ranking in New Zealand. It seems that he gets quite a bit of traffic from New Zealanders and wants to get his traffic ranking above 500.

I thought that was pretty odd. Why is he getting so much traffic from such an obscure place. Then I looked at my own rankings in different countries and here is what I found.

Barbados - 3,359

Jamaica - 6,883

New Zealand - 8,053

United States - 10,745

Australia - 11,019

Norway - 11,644

Pakistan- 12,289 (wow the Paki's even love me)

United Kingdom - 15,492

Canada - 18,403

Indonesia - 25,209

I am highest rated in Barbados! Now, the 3,359 ranking probably isn't saying much as Barbados probably doesn't have many sites or much internet traffic. Heck I didn't even know where Barbados was until I looked at a map.



So there it is, the Eastern most island in the Caribbean island chain.

The economy in Barbados has traditionally centered around sugarcane. However in recent decades, the tourism trade has been a major factor for the country and is responsible for almost 50% of the country's income. So what's the point? The point is that I am going to try and break into the top 3000 for Barbados. Why? Just to see if I can do it. Everyone has to have goals right?

How am I going to do that? Linkbait as Joe suggests. I will try a couple of things in the next few weeks to see if I can crack the 3000 mark and report back to you at the end of the month.

Please make sure you seat backs and tray tables are in their upright positions - we are heading for Barbados!

 

Again With The Fox!

Would you take a look at this. This is happening month after month on my site. This has to be a blogger thing or something. The regular Joe computer user has to be the one that is using IE. For about 6 months, the Fox has been dominating my stats. What are you seeing on your sites?

I always wonder what the unknown is.

 

The Tops in December 2007

Top Commented post
I Am Giving Away An iPod Touch And More. (pretty obvious)

Top Posts
What I Found In My Email" Mondays. Vol.1 - Issue 9
I Am Giving Away An iPod Touch And More.
What I Found In My Email" Mondays. Vol.1 - Issue 7
The Impact Of The Internet On Newspaper Advertising
Business Cards

Top EntreCard Droppers (my meme contribution)

CK Marketing
joanjoyce
The Mountain
JeanCosta.com
GorillaSushi

Top Browser accessed - FireFox

Top OS Accessed - Windows

Top Traffic Referrer - StumbleUpon

Top Commenter - Karen and GorillaSushi

Top Time of Day Accessed - Midnight

Top Day of the Week Accessed - Wednesday

Top of My Head - Still Bald

 

Contest Update!

This Friday is the Day! For those of you who haven't entered yet, make sure you do by Friday at 4:00 CST. I will be drawing the winner that night. Since I have reached my goals already for this contest, I might as well report what I have accomplished.

One of my goals for this contest was to increase RSS subscribers - CHECK

For some reason this number is never correct. I actually have 80 email subscribers and 32 other subscribers. Giving me an actual total of 112. Given THAT number, I more than doubled my subscribers.

Another goal was to increase my Technorati authority to over 100 - CHECK


Some side effects of the contest were loads of traffic. Ok I will say CHECK to that one too.




The Alexa screen shot was taken last last Friday before I took off for the weekend. Bottom line is that all of my goals have been reached for this inaugural contest on The Big Bald Blog.

In the end my traffic for the month of December amounted to 32,344 Unique visitors which is obviously a new high.

To say thanks I am giving an additional 250 Entrecard credits away to a second winner making it a grand total of 750 credits. That's just how I roll. ALSO as a late add-on bonus, anyone who has "faved" The Big Bald Blog on Technorati by the time the contest closes, will get an extra entry.

Remeber it's all about YOU, the reader. Without you, none of this is possible. Thanks again!

 

Entrecard Revisited

This is kind of cool. I made it to the second row in the "Most Popular" category on Entrecard.
That's me at the very end of row 2. I don't know what this means but being in the top 12 seems pretty great. It looks like I only have about 9 more more points to make up in order to pass up our good buddy John Cow (who I think is really John Chow).



For those of you who are a little confused about my Entrecard design for The Big Bald Blog, let me explain. I also have another site that I mess around with called Big Pappa World Wide. It too is an experiment in fun. Just in case you were wondering, there you have it.

As a matter of follow up on Entrecard. It is still working great by delivering traffic, comments and quality people. Another completely random side note, my card is the only circle style card on Entrecard. How is that important you ask. It's not.

Also, I haven't been very good about this but here goes my pitch. Make sure you subscribe to The Big Bald Blog either with the RSS or sign up and have posts delivered to you by email.

Thanks again for stopping by.

UPDATE:

A few hours after writing this I went back in and this is what I saw. Now, I am 100% positive this fluke will change rather rapidly but at least I will always have this post to remember the day.

 

Wierd Term That Found Me: Cyclobenzaprine

I was checking out the stats this morning and in the search phrases that yielded a click was the word: Cyclobenzaprine. I found it fairly odd that I came up for such a strange word. In fact I didn't even know what it was. So I ran on over to my trusty medical research resource (Google) and looked it up.

Apparently Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxer. Who knew. I did a site search and it was no where to be found on my site (until now obviously).

For those of you who find yourself here from the linkbait, here is some information about the drug so it wasn't a wasted trip. From Drugs.com: "Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxant. It works by blocking nerve impulses (or pain sensations) that are sent to your brain. Cyclobenzaprine is used to treat pain, tenderness, and limited motion caused by muscle spasms. This medication is used together with rest and physical therapy for short-term treatment (2 to 3 weeks). "

Now for the disclaimer. Cyclobenzaprine may have certain side effects.For more information about Cyclobenzaprine please consult a physician. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

 

Top Posts For The Month

Just a quick note of thanks to our readers. Thanks to you, our traffic has, again, doubled this month. As always, if you would like to see anything on The Big Bald Blog just drop us a line at: the big bald blog at impact mt dot com.

Here is the list of top 5 posts from October.

1. Google is Reading Your Gmail
2. Radios Reign is Coming to a Close.
3. Big Pappa's Top 10 Road Trip Rules for Guys
4. I Got These Things in my Email
5. Bad Logos and the Mistakes that Made Them

Thanks again. Until Tomorrow.

 

Firefox - 400 Million Downloads Later

In November of 2004, Firefox began it's grassroots campaign to build a better, faster and safer web browser. Nearly 3 years later, the proud little fox is boasting a record 400 million downloads.

Currently there are estimates that Firefox has a market share of 17.5 percent to 25 percent depending on who is doing the reporting. Microsoft is still the leader of the browser market with 63.9 percent but Firefox is steadily gaining ground. Contrary to these figures, as of today, my site stats are showing Firefox users have hit this site 2264 times so far this month with IE coming in second at 2071. The balance of browsers being Netscape, Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon and Opera with 69, 59, 58, 21, 11 and 11 hits respectively.

With a host of plugins available and features that were ahead of the IE curve, Firefox's stable platform will no doubt continue as the preferred browser by those who have tried it. Now all that needs to be done is to get Dell and other manufacturers to deliver Firefox equipped computers.

Congratulations Firefox!

 

Thanks To All Our Readers

As The Big Bald Blog continues to almost double every month, traffic in August was at an all time high. Even though I mistakenly had the comment posting option set to "registered users only", our RSS subscribers have continued to climb. Admittedly this was an amateur blogging mistake and I have corrected the settings, so feel free to comment away. Thanks for bringing this oversight to my attention.

Ranked in order of traffic, here is a recap of the top 10 visited posts from August.

1. 3 Billion Songs on iTunes
2. Digital DNA on your Photos
3. 20 Million Visitors
4. MySpace Cleans Up Sex Offenders
5. Social Media and How You Market
6. The Impact of the Internet on Newspapers
7. The 3000 Mile Oil Change Myth Revisited
8. What Has George Bush Done Wrong
9. Bad Logos and the Mistakes that Made Them
10. Viral Marketing Part 1

Thanks again for visiting The Big Big Bald Blog!

 

The Internet Used For Health Care Information

We all know that consumers are becoming more savvy on just about every topic under the sun. Consumers, in their continuing quest for knowledge, are turning to the Internet for information on Health Care information.

According to Harris Poll #76, in 2007, 160 million online users have turned to the web for Health Care related information. This new data reflects a dramatic increase over 2006 where a reported 136 million used the Internet for health related information. In this poll the term "cyberchondriacs" was coined to describe users that repeatedly turn to the Internet for health related information. Here are some other interesting statistics that the poll uncovered:

• "On average, a cyberchondriac searches the Internet almost six (5.7) times per month
• Fully eighty-six percent of cyberchondriacs say that the health information they found online was reliable (26% "very reliable" and 60% "somewhat reliable"). Of special note, the percentage of those who indicate that online medical information was "very reliable" has declined substantially from 37 percent in 2005 to the current 26 percent.
• Two thirds (66%) of adults online say that they have looked for information about health topics often (26%) or sometimes (40%), an increase of five percentage points from 2006 (61%)
• The number of U.S. adults who have ever gone online to look for health or medical information has increased to approximately 160 million up from about 136 million last year. The reasons for this increase are that the total number of Internet users has increased somewhat and the percent of people online who have looked for information has increased as well. Cyberchondriacs now represent 84 percent of all online adults, up from last year’s 80 percent, and 72 percent in 2005
• Cyberchondriacs are not only using the Internet to educate themselves, many are also using it to assist in their conversations with their physicians. A 58 percent majority of adults who have gone online to get health information say that they have discussed this information with their doctors at least once in the last year."
  

This last bullet indicates just how much impact the Internet has had on the patient-doctor relationship. For years patients have been encourage to ask more questions during a medical encounter, now more than ever, consumers are armed with readily available information allowing them to better evaluate their choices and make better decisions regarding their health care. There's no question that this trend will continue as the younger generations move into the stage of life that require increased medical services.

 

Nielsen Nixes Page View Measurement

Everyone has heard of the Nielson Ratings regarding TV viewership. However, not a lot of people know that they are also measuring website traffic. In a recent press release it was decided by the ratings company that they were no longer going to be using page views as a measure of a sites popularity. They will still be providing the numbers but won't be formally ranking them. Instead, they are placing the emphasis on the total minutes viewed.

IMHO, I would tend to agree. This gives a more accurate picture of what people are actually looking at and a better determination of viewing quality. However, some industry experts are claiming that time spent on AOL's instant messenger and other similar aps are now going to be counted and can skew the results. With that being said, the new form of measurement is going to have the opposite effect on sites like blogs where users spend much more time actually reading the content.

This decision was made and influenced by new technology like AJAX which allows users to spend more time interacting with a page and not having to re-load the page content from the server.

I just have one question. Since online advertising is gauged by impressions, won't the impressions go down under this this new rating system? Will this de-value the ads or will ad providers have to adjust their measuring to accommodate this new metric?

 

Firefox Vs. Internet Explorer - UFD

Over the past couple of years, as a matter of personal curiosity, I have been tracking the Firefox users vs. the IE users on the sites that we host. The numbers have been showing that Firefox is gaining slowly on industry leading IE. Just as I was wondering what the rest of the world was seeing, OneStat released findings that indicated that Firefox was climbing the ladder. FF is gaining about 1% per year.

Reported numbers are saying that Microsoft still has about 85% of the browser usage market and Firefox is at almost 13%. FF is showing a little bit better than what I was seeing but the numbers are real close. Typically I am seeing that FF is at about 10.5% of all searches with the understanding that the site demo dramatically changes the numbers.

Another UFD completely unrelated to the headline but I thought that I would throw it in anyway. In the US, is seems that browser resolutions are overwhelmingly 1024x768. The stats from all the research that I have done, indicate that anywhere from 53% to 81% of people have their monitors set at 1024 x 768. Only one source reported the 81% and I am willing to discount that one. The majority agree that 53% to 58% of browsers in the US are using the 1024 x 768 resolution.

Oh, and by the way, UFD in the headline = Useless facts of the day.

 

Google Still on Top

ComScore recently reported that Google now has an incredible 50.7% of the search market. This is an increase from the last reported number at just over 47%. This means that, of the searches performed in the US, 3.9 billion are being done with Google.

Yahoo dropped to 26.8%, MSN was at 10.3%, Ask came in at 5% and Time Warner (AOL) finished at the bottom of the heap with a paltry 4.6%.

Where is it going to stop? How big can Google get? Let me just throw this out there...What happens when/if Google gets so big that they have end up having 90% or more of the searches? Will the government step in and break them up like they did with AT&T or impose some anti-trust legislation like what happened to Microsoft?

 

Holy Wiki Batman

Ever notice that just about everything you search for, a result on Wikipedia shows up.

Some amazing stats were published on leuksman's blog earlier this month. These kind of stats aren't for the weak of heart.

How's this for traffic... Are you ready? 7 billion page views per month. Yep you read it right, I said SEVEN BILLION. AND the chart says that 24% of the traffic is contributed to Google. This means that Google results in almost 56 million clicks per day. Given that there is 1440 minutes in a day, that is 38,888.88 clicks per minute just from Google. Staggering isn't it?

Good grief, just think if they had some AdSense ads on there. How much money do you think they would make per minute?

 

Make Your Website Stats Work for You.

How often do you check your website statistics? Do you actually have site stats or know how to get to them. Are you using them to track the effectiveness of other forms of marketing.

We just launched a website for a company that, prior to us re-organizing their web presence, didn't "opt-in" and pay the extra to have their site stats turned on. Almost 80% of their marketing efforts were geared toward driving traffic to their website. When asked what kind of ROI they are receiving from their direct mail and other forms of advertising, they had no idea.

Determining effectiveness from a marketing campaign is nothing new. The "old school" method was to publish a vanity line or distinct phone number in certian advertising outlets and monitor the response on that one line. With your website statistics, it is much easier and produces much more information to better help you determine ROI. Demanding results from your site is not just a bonus, it is critical in today's web world.

Impact Marketing can help you with your web design and web marketing to maximize the ROI and get results from your web presence.