CDBurns

Damn that GoFundme is pretty damn depressing. I will say this and I think it holds true for a lot of people, I have to be asked directly to donate, fund, or give to a project, or it has to strike some personal note in me where I feel that I owe. Take for instance Spike Lee. I initially funded his Kickstarter and then I realized I hadn't backed any indie films and pulled my support. He didn't need it. Last month though I did back the De La Soul project and this is why: Last year they released their entire catalog of music for free on Valentine's Day. I was able to download every album I was missing. They had to do this because they couldn't get the samples cleared on those old albums digitally so they couldn't sell those albums as mp3s. Since they gave all of that music away I felt compelled to give back. In my new book I talk about relationships and reciprocity. I talk about how a business agreement is the same as personal relationship. It requires a transaction that is either financial, social or emotional. For example, if Troy posts a link, I share it because I have a social responsibility to share vital and important information. While I haven't done enough financial transactions with aalbc, the social transactions are supportive and just as important as the financial because the next person who sees the information may sign up or spend money. What we have in the Black community is a lack of understanding how relationships are built. We hold on to information because we think we lose if we give it away. We also want to be paid for everything, but that's not how it works. There has to be reciprocity for a relationship to work. While I don't expect it, I see a benefit from writing on aalbc and therefore I respond by sharing the site as much as possible. While the traffic to the site is about 1.8%, that 1.8 could be the reason something sells. It could be the reason someone gets some information that they need, so I continue to share. I also share because writing here sparks ideas for the blog and for potential books. There has to be something that can be done to get the financial aspect on par with the work being done. I can see the financial aspect growing in my sneaker business, so I just have to figure out how to translate it to different platforms. I definitely think AALBC is missing a Store component. AALBC as a brand has the ability to create downloadable content, shirts with sayings, hats, bags and things that can be sold, but there isn't a link anywhere on the site that says STORE. I think it may be time to look at that and actually have us writers who visit the site send books in on consignment or I can help you create apparel and writers bags to be sold. At least you are not like the guy above. You have teaching to supplement and a very good mind that has yet to be featured in a book (hint, hint). It seems this guy was privileged and didn't adjust with the times. Had he started a Video Blog show as well as run his site, he probably could have turned all of the traffic his dad had into something more.

Subscription model died in the 90s and early 2000s. The only means of consistently generating revenue for a site is to have so much content you get a ton of traffic that can be sold to people who want to advertise to your market. Outside of the monetizing is really a process of generating traffic and getting enough of a return on Adsense to pay some bills, but that takes some serious dedication and a lot of writers for content. It also requires entertainment as Black people have to be entertained for them to spend money with Blacks. We don't work well together and that really is the bottom line. We don't even help each other very well. If people simply shared each other's websites that would be a start, a big start. Like this morning you used the tag #HBIT and I immediately used it to tweet a website I found in the Huria Blog list. You know how many times it has been used today? twice by you and me and so goes the world. Once again you and I are still trying to see evidence of conversion and trying to figure out how to generate more traffic. I do have some validation for how social media only creates a temporary bump. I'm into my second week of my 30 days of only using social media for 30 minutes a day. My site had a huge bump in traffic right after I stopped using Facebook so much and it all generated from Google searches for "Black women called cockroaches on Shark Tank". That string of words generated the most traffic CBP has ever seen across a 5 day span. I'm talking almost 150 unique visits per day for 4 straight days and then it dropped down to around 100. This is because I was one of the only people on the web to have written about the comment on Shark Tank. I have this as evidence of the power of business writing as it pertains to entertainment. This is now in my "to do" list for increasing traffic to the blog. What is more interesting though is although I had such a huge increase in traffic, people generally entered the page and left on the same page or went straight to The Lip Bar's website (I included all of their social and website info on the article). With that much traffic I still didn't see a bump in the sale of books or in visits to the other pages on the site. What's even more telling is that on the best day I had 197 Page views, 160 Unique visits, but I only had 7 returning visits to the site. This has me very disturbed. Exactly what does it take to get people to return to your site? In the last 24 hours this is how long people stayed on the site: 47 VisitsLess than 5 secs 2 VisitsFrom 5 secs to 30 secs 7 VisitsFrom 30 secs to 5 mins 1 VisitFrom 5 mins to 20 mins 2 VisitsFrom 20 mins to an hour 5 VisitsLonger than an hour Now I need to find those visitors in the last 4 sections because they are my audience, but I would assume those people who came to the site because of the cockroach comment didn't stay very long, so what exactly keeps people on the site? What makes people come to AALBC and stay on the site? How do you integrate the message board into the site so there is a constant ability to have content provided? As I keep tracking this stuff I will share it with you. I will say this, I sold more books while participating in social media aspects so there has to be an equal distribution of time to both for those of us with content or items to sell.

She is getting a solid response if her comment section on this page is any indication: http://breakingbrown.com/an-important-message-from-breakingbrown-founder-yvette-carnell/ I haven't visited the site before today, so I would hesitate to give anything since I don't use the site that much. I wonder though if there is something that can be bought and shipped for sites to generate revenue? As of right now the few methods of monetizing require you to roll with Adsense. I was kicked out of the program and the only monetization I have on CBP is Amazon Associates and my books for sale. I also have consulting sessions, but that hasn't garnered anything. I also haven't sold many books through the site (paperbacks). Although I do get a few Amazon Associates bucks. People are definitely reading on mobile devices more. With the amount of traffic she is potentially getting, I would think that Amazon Associates could be very lucrative for her if she built an online shop. This is something I'm trying to get this basketball guy to do on 901prepscoop.com. I made him sign up for Amazon Associates and told him to start building stores for every sport on his shop. He has yet to do one post which is on him, but I know for a fact people would click through and he could make dough. What has to happen is a Google Adsense program designed FUBU. This is the only solution because I just don't think people will come off of 25 bucks a year or even 3 bucks per month very fast. I hope I'm wrong.

You know I haven't even looked at my page. I have been using the site as link through in my down time to look at different websites. I'm writing a series on it during this month where I've limited myself to 30 minutes of Facebook per day. Everytime I write about this 30 Day the Huria Blog will be featured. I don't think you need an incentive. I don't think it would work anyway. I'm realizing during this time off of Facebook that no matter what you do if your information isn't sensational or timely it will not get traffic. The best thing to do is to keep it organic and simply tag people on twitter and let them know the information has been added and then maybe they will retweet it. I do think a badge like the Power List would be welcomed of course. It's like the sister from Blogging Brown who posted the video making a request for funding. It's not going to happen. If you(AALBC) sent me a request for 25.00 dollars every month I would pay it every month. Why? Because I believe in your mission. It doesn't matter that I get advertising, I just know you are genuine in your work. I'm sure she is as well, but I've always been drawn to AALBC so I know its value. What you have in me and others who use the board are loyal users. We are the people who will give you hits and traffic which helps. We are also the people who will share info because we understand that the more info that is shared the better the search results are. What she is looking for is the support to put together a network of funders/backers. The problem is people want to see there money put to work, but that isn't even the issue. Black people simply don't spend enough time promoting each other selflessly. I know this is a generalization, but I use my own experiences. If you consider I'm a Black owned shoe company that ran a Kickstarter campaign, and you use my stats, less than 10% of the people who know me backed my project. While names are not an indicator of race, I'm pretty sure the pics of the people on their profiles are accurate. The percentage of my backers who were black were under 15%. I know this is only small sample, but of all of the projects I've backed, when I look in the comments sections the majority of the support for online ventures where money is involved are often skewed towards White folks. The only time this isn't the case is when the person being supported has a built in community. I've only seen majority Black backers of financial projects in the hair community. Unfortunately, Black people as a whole are completely ignorant to how the internet works. We have a surface understanding, but we don't realize the value in visiting blogs or websites daily. The internet is a purely hedonistic tool. It satisfies personal "stuff" for people, but in regard to Black business it fails because we just don't get that someone has to either share, or pay. We simply don't want to send people any money or if we have a considerable market or group of people following us, we don't want to share for fear that it will pull people away from what we are doing. Damn I'm depressed now, lol.

If more White people responded to the treatment of Blacks with the same vigor, the US would be truly incredible.

I want to respond BOOM! Because what you've written is just powerful and true. I have never sat in rooms with those type of guys or have I been privy to those rooms. I do remember going to the San Diego State Writer's Conference which is one of the biggest in the biz, this was in the 90s, and there was some Black representation, but they were swamped and had their pick of the litter. This is when Renee Swindle signed that 500,000 for her MFA thesis, Please Please Please. Since that time by 2004 when I left San Diego, it became increasingly white. I would have to guess that now there isn't any representation at all. It's troubling. I think it will be difficult to find Black male bloggers. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Blogging appears to be more about gossip as opposed to real information. It's either political or gossip and that's about it. I guess this caters more to women, but like we both know women are readers so the blogs are only reflecting the market. There are countless sports blogs and entertainment blogs, but business blogs tend to be run by corporations or known entities. Black men are blue collar primarily which places us in a unique position of trying to get readers and traffic with content written for guys.

In regard to Wordpress I was saying you should develop your own theme, not use a template designed by someone else. You could then upload that theme as AALBC and monetize it/gather information from users who download the template. I don't think you should use one of the themes already there at all. Google is definitely optimizing ads for their own reasons and see CMS as an easy way to integrate ads into websites as opposed to each vendor adding their own html. I have to think they will have a plugin that allows for placement of the ads with only your client number from Adsense very soon. Women do tend to be bloggers, but that's because they are better writers than men and in the Black community men don't see the need for a website at all. They know they can drive by, drop lawn signs or tag people and get interest in their business. While we know that these antiquated methods have temporary results, you and I both know that content is king. This is just another seperation between men and women and why Black women are continuing to outpace Black men and leave them behind. Black women own the book industry, they still buy music while guys either download or get it from file sharing locations while downloading porn, they share sales secrets so other women can buy cheap merchandise and resell it, and women go to conferences on tech. I saw this when I was working out of a Cowork Space. I was the only Black male and the rest were women entrepreneurs. I'd really be interested in the type of conferences you've been to dominated by men. I would have to think they were debates or places where guys could beat their chests or show their strength. I doubt that it was something about making money.. Then again I always see more men at those ponzi scheme/get rich quick type events. Which says a lot.

I think your sentiments are exactly in line with what I expect at seminars and tech events for blogging. Blogging and entrepreneurship is overwhelmingly female in the Black community. Much like the book business. I was being a little facetious when I said conferences are basically female dominated events or talking head events lead by the church. I knew your site had to have a major overhaul and I was going to write and share the mobile site that Google sis using for people to test their sites. I think the idea of writing your code for the site has always been and admirable thing, but I think your skill set is great for creating a theme for Wordpress and uploading it and basically redesigning your site as a WP site. I did this years ago and that's what I wrote about in One Hour To Wealth. I actually saw the change back in 2009 when I stopped working so hard to learn html and using wysiwyg. Quite possibly in the short term for you maybe a solution is taking your home page which is an index.html and either uploading a Wordpress template in the short term with links to archives for this site and then begin building the site with either php or Wordpress. That would prevent a lot of the pain of the redesign in the short term and make sure you keep your search in line with Google's changes. You know what is interesting is that a ton of authors right now don't have an idea of what is in store for their websites. You could write an article and discuss it in detail, but just like your social media dialogue, it will fall on deaf ears. I admire your desire to not skew Huria, but it's a fantastic resource that I'm really growing fond of while I've stopped interacting so much on Facebook. There isn't any reason at all not to integrate Amazon Associates into the page. You could use it to direct people to black books and movies although Amazon is not black owned it would at least offset some of the cost associated with all of that coding.

I have no idea of how to overcome your issue. I'm not technical enough. I know working without profit is a dead end so monetize. Adding social buttons is okay. It's not a bad thing at all. Social when used to connect with friends is great. Sharing business info is something to be done but not relied upon. It's the content that drives a site and solid keywords. Whatever you do let me know how to help. The black bookstore issue like everything else is a result of black folks being unwilling to pay for assistance, information and guidance. We only do seminars for civil rights and hair.

You know I'm with you. I've been saying this for years. There is a root problem to why a boycott won't happen. We are victims of assimilated actions. We copy white America. This is important because our nepotism has alienated the talented, the rich and the poor black. Our own decisions to act like whites in our hiring practices gives us a weak foundation. In HBCUs we hire friends as opposed to the best person for the job. In jobs we alienate the hard worker or best worker and hire the inefficient. As a result our banks and papers and restaurants are mediocre and not worth supporting. As honorable as it sounds it's not feasible for us to do without because we are no longer consolidated to one part of town. The disbursement of black people has diminished our organizational ability and power. The reason the black church is ineffective is because as blacks moved away from each other more churches were founded. Animosity and jealousy between churches corrupted the heart of the church which is the community. This fracture is a microcosm of how black power is in the black community, ineffective and sputtering. A boycott without an option is only a hiatus.

You know I agree and those stats above validate this, but it still overlooks the kickstarter project which forces me to look at facebook as a tool for direct marketing through ads. The daily use of facebook as a marketing tool is negligible, but a paid campaign to your url can see some benefits especially when that destination is a kickstarter or some socially based funding situation. This report is just a reaffirmation. My second book goes into more detail but doesn't attack it head on. Once again as you said getting people to change their browsing habits is key but like boycotting it's not going to happen.

The problem is the businesses aren't blatantly biased or racist. The new boycott isn't against a particular company. It is about supporting good businesses that are black owned. Black dollars are courted but a suitable replacement isn't available if there was a boycott. We don't own an uber or cab company. We don't have a national magazine or periodical to advertise in. We don't own a national grocery chain. We have been thoroughly wiped out of any financial system of importance. We have no black hedge funds or investment firms. We don't utilize black banks. There is literally nothing to boycott or use in lieu of. The best we can do is get blacks to stop killing each other and begin tackling the financial aspect on a local scale. If there is a great black restaurant in your city support that place. If there is a black owned theater support that place. I don't eat at chain restaurants but all black people own in Memphis are wing or rib joints. We have nothing to support.

Troy I've been saying this forever. Power is green and the dollars are the only votes that matter in the USA.

We had blackboard but I wanted traffic going to my site. Most professors didn't have websites and had zero interest in starting one. I actually had a high school course where I taught students to build websites using wysiwyg and small chunks of html, so I really pushed tech. I went as far as electronic paper submissions. The students liked the idea of responding online and it generated more dialogue in class.

In the black community there remains the problem that you've talked about before... there can only be one. Think about it like this, in film in the 80s it was Spike, 90s John Singleton, 2000s Tyler Perry, Now there is Lee Daniels. It's like White America picks it's black leader in every industry and that's who is promoted. We don't have enough togetherness to accept or promote as many people as we want and listen to all of the different voices. Instead someone has to be torn down for someone to rise.Since Dr. King it's been Jesse, Bill Clinton Al Sharpton and then Cornell West... kind of... but you get the picture. Dyson is now attempting to assert himself as the voice of Black folks because we can only have one. It's crazy! But it even happens in literature. It was Toni, then Alice, then McMillan, Then Adichie now. We can never have more than one voice. This is the problem with not owning our own media outlets. the funny thing is we have never had a voice in finance, I wonder why?

Okay I'm trying to add something, but got a little frustrated with the delete bar actually erasing my post when I was adding pictures. Here are two pictures. One is from yesterday. We didn't create any content for CBP. The day before however one of the writers wrote a blog post on a fight that happened at a school here. It was hot on Facebook and on the next day that morning the Social Media influence can still be seen in this chart: Now today, there wasn't a hot topic and this is from tonight, but I only posted a couple of posts using the Press This feature. One was the Pardlo reblog. Look at the interaction from Facebook: Now these are my stats on the year from January to yesterday for CBP. What's interesting is these stats are consistent across the board for the last three years. I have to think that this isn't a coincidence that there really isn't that big of a push from Facebook in regard to the sites. The problem is when I did my Kickstarter there was a direct influence on my campaign from Facebook. See this article: http://www.arch-usa.com/arch-x-kickstarter-project/ 38% of my funding came from running an ad on Facebook. I wrote this article about not worrying about Facebook Likes where I explain that a like doesn't really determine the interaction or readers on your website. http://www.cbpublish.com/business-why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-your-likes/ It's a very complex thing to look at and I'm hoping that this info helps to give you more data. Let me know if you want more of these kind of charts from me.

Good stuff even more detailed than my blog posts from my last year teaching African-American Lit. http://www.cbpublish.com//?s=African+american+li+southwest

I agree that it will. I have also really started loving what Wordpress has done to counter Social Media. I use WP for my sites. Their recent update allows me to utilize a feature called Press This. What this allows me to do is when I see content on Facebook, instead of just liking it and sharing it on Facebook when I go to that content, like your article on Gregory Pardlo this morning, I can click a button I've added to my bookmarks and it will pull the content from your site and allow me to create a quick post for that content which links directly back to your site!!!!!!! It literally cuts down on the amount of time it takes for me to share content. It's amazing. I can see this tool, if it's implemented by all bloggers, becoming exactly what will work to redirect traffic to sites and build real links.

I want to write more, but I'm trying to figure out how to upload pictures to the board so I can drop them in since I am taking screen shots and I can't upload the screen shots to my server right now. I guess the easy thing is to say my best days on CBP always coincide with huge bumps in Social Media activity. But on ARCH my sneaker site I have almost zero social media influence. As a matter of fact if I'm simply writing on my blog with sharing it, the organic traffic to both of my sites don't have hardly any Social media influence. I actually talk about this and give statistics and info in my new book that talks about how I launched the sneaker company. On average though when I look at my overall stats my number fall in line with yours in regard to social media. I tend to use it though because with my writing I've only seen sales of the book happen in conjunction with a lot of activity on Facebook. I will try to post pictures tomorrow.

What is your reason for why your interaction is so low from facebook?

I will do this today and post it. Just to compare. My info will look different since it will be direct from my hosting and from statcounter.

You guys have summarized this perfectly. Obama was never going to do anything extra. Black people are always Waiting for Godot. It's a surreal life that our people exist in. I mean we are basically always in a position of waiting to be saved as opposed to saving ourselves. Then again, we do save ourselves, we just don't extend the oar out of the boat to pull in more people. I had a long dialogue about this yesterday. The only thing anyone could come up with about the problems in Black America was history and slavery and not being able to overcome those issues. It's the same thing over and over and no one realizes the true power of Blacks is in the disposable income we spend. It's a financial struggle and we could fix "us" without Obama or leaders, but we can't get on the same page. I've been looking through the tags on Twitter for huria and the blog list. Outside of Troy and me there is only one other mention on Twitter. We just don't help each other.

Good to GO!

I think they are both positioning themselves to sit at the feet of the next Democratic nominee. It's all posturing and no substance. Both guys haven't really accomplished anything for Black America and they are basically playing a role that caters to their pockets. West is making music videos with Jill Scott and selling records, and Dyson is play pretending that he is the voice of the Hip-Hop generation. Neither provides solutions, just rhetoric. This is a poor man's Booker vs Dubois with a lot less substance.

I see what he's saying. When you use the drop down it doesn't load the category selected. You have to select the category twice for it to go to the chosen category.