Hello, and welcome to a new feature I’ll be running on this blog on a monthly basis. The Horizon is a newsletter that carries news and features pertaining specifically to this blog.

To tell the truth I’m still not sure quite how I’m gonna pull this one off, so bear with me on that and I’m sure I’ll come up with some ideas over the next month or so before I start writing the next edition.

It’s at this point where one of my long-term readers is gonna say “You used to write a bi-monthly newsletter in the old blog”, and you’d be right: but I didn’t have a clue how I was going to pull that off either, and, let’s face it, it sucked anyway. If you read it and liked it then thank you; but you were probably the only one who actually did like it out of the few who read it.

Anyway I’ll clatter-off this first edition for the time being. Perhaps you readers might like to give me some suggestions and ideas for what you’d like this publication to look like. I don’t promise to act upon every idea and thought that you contribute; but as the UK supermarket-chain Tesco say; “Every little helps.”.

Xtranormal

Now the first thing you may have noticed is that I’ve featured three promotional cartoons on the Home Page. I created these at a site called xtranormal.com, and I was hoping to bring a little extra spice to the blog by using them.

In my usual inimitable style I’m going against the grain, and thoughts of professional blogger-entrepreneurs such as David Risley, my guru, who reckons that these cartoons can be a load of fun but aren’t really the tops as far as advertising and promotion are concerned; being far less effective then a personal video appearance.

Now I’m not for one second doubting that as far as the original ‘make-money-online’ niche that he’s in goes. Remember, though, that I’m in the ‘get-more-out-of-your-computer’ niche, in which I’ve chosen to include blogging and a bit of the ‘make-money-online’ scene, in addition to practical and technical computer-help/electronics. In addition to that I have a condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a functional form of autism. (see link) – Therefore my communicative skills maybe could do with a polish, but by nature they’ll always be substandard to some extent, even given time and perseverance. (Yes I know I have a show called Radio Nipple that goes out on Ustream; but how often do I do that? – In reality it started off as a personal experiment to find out if I could do it. I don’t know and I don’t really care how good/crappy it is. I might continue with that though occasionally, because I enjoy doing it.)

Anyway; back to the track, and I think that these cartoons, if made well and worded properly, can add some sparkle to what amounts to a rather drab world of advertising and sales-promotion. What do you readers think on that? I’d be interested to hear your comments.

Staying on the subject of xtranormal.com, I’ve also thought of creating a cartoon to go along with each post in which the character reads the script of the article. – Now there’s a problem here with logistics, in that xtranormal.com is, I believe, in beta, and the pronunciation of certain words by the characters’ electronically-generated text-to-speech voices does leave something to be desired. This can be overcome by tactile use of strange spellings of the word in question, but it does take a lot of work comparatively. – For instance, that latest single-character promotional advertisment for David Risley’s Six-Figure-Blogger-Blueprint that I created took a whole afternoon in total to produce, yet it’s under 2 minutes in duration. Imagine making a 5-minute or longer animation for each post on this blog. – It’s not so much the “actor”’s bit that isn’t easy to do; it’s going through all the text and correcting the mispronunciations of words that is so time-consuming. I might have to wait a while until xtranormal.com get their act together a bit better before I go with that idea, if I choose to do so eventually.

New Design

You’ve quite probably noticed that, since this blog’s relaunch in November of 2010, I’ve considerably changed the layout and design of many pages. The main thrust here has been to get rid of the sidebar on all but posts. – And the reason for that? – Well, think about it: If you’re reading something and every time you come to the end of a line of text you crash right into an advertisment or listing-table, then it distracts the reader. In addition to that it makes the overall appearance of the screen untidy to a degree.

Some bloggers are going to disagree with me here I know; but there’s a thing amongst some bloggers where they feel that they have almost an obligation to stuff content amidst a few banner or text ads into the main column – as I usually do to some extent, and then throw as much as possible; garbage, no-chance-advertising, unwanted and unused listings by widgets, links that will never be viewed…etc, into the sidebar.

OK first things first: Banner-advertising/Google Adsense doesn’t really work [any more]. – Yes it used to be the path to an instant fortune: Get a website up and plaster it with banner-ads, then sit back and watch the money fall from the ceiling…. 12 years ago you might have gotten away with doing that; but these days guess what happens if someone comes across a website plastered with banner-ads like Times Square? – They quickly go elsewhere, that’s what. The number of times I’ve gone to someone’s blog to read an article and had to hunt it down amongst a sea of banner-ads has become too much for me: Now, if I follow a link and get a face-full of text/banner ads I just hit the back button. – So does pretty much everybody else too.

Next… A sidebar full of useless crap is a total waste of screen real-estate, period. – Nobody’s going to read a sidebar stuffed with crap/banner-ads anyway, so why not utilise the space in a better way? I still have a sidebar on posts; but it has a few, well-spaced, listings, a number of separate separated features, and a couple or three banner-ads. People just might be able to see those banner-ads and who knows – might even click them. If you stuff your sidebar with concentrated crap it will be ignored. – End of.

…But. on most if not all pages, there’s no sidebar. I put important announcements and special features on pages: The last thing I want is for the readers’ eye to wander off into the sidebar mid-paragraph, scan down to the end of the page, and browse on to somewhere else. That defeats the point of the exercise of putting the content there in the first place.

Finally, for this edition of The Horizon: -

Micropayments

Now let me start off this section by saying that it is a well-known fact that the best way to make money online with the assistance of a blog is through membership-courses. They’re a source of repeated-income…etc etc – go read up. You may notice that I’ve never had my own membership-course, and have relied, to a large extent, on affiliating for others with their own membership-course/membership-site for a source of income. Was this a silly move on my part? Possibly, maybe; but I really can’t be arsed to get all the information for a decent membership-course compiled and put into easy-to-understand tutorials that all fit together into the structure of a course. Call me lazy if you like; but to my mind that’s too much hard-work. Yes I might get a few thousand dollars at the end of it, and then again I might not: It depends if the course takes off…etc.

…But it’s as if the trends-committee of the internet have met and come together to my rescue. You see I’ve been thinking of doing a number of small courses for some time now; but my chances of competing with the bigger brands like David Risley with BlogMasters Club, and Yaro Starak with Becomeablogger, even Leo Notenbloom with his XP-Training-course, have, until recently, been rather slim if I had done so…

Cue the latest upcoming web-trend: Micro-courses/micropayments: Pay 99 cents for a short, single-page atticle which meets a need and solves a problem… – Yeah; basically, paid-for-content.

All the big blogging names are abuzz with this right now. I believe even people such as Darren Rowse are beginning to use this model, and it’s catching on. David Risley’s been on about it recently too in his blog at davidrisley.com <– Click and read why not; it saves me writing reams of buzz in the echo-chamber.

So exactly what am I thinking here? I’ll be honest – I’m not at all sure yet: You see I have a reputation for providing a lot of value to my readers without charge, in addition to providing the opportunity to get onto other probloggers’ courses for a charge; and yes I do get a percentage of that charge for recruiting the new student, I make no issue from that. – It’s what has kept this blog running until now… Oh you didn’t really think I was doing this for the love of humanity did you? – Well okay maybe to some extent I was, but I’d like to make a small profit in doing so at least. If this blog becomes a loss-making venture then it disappears. I’m in no two-minds about that. Yes I love to share what I know; but I also need to make a living in order to be able to do so.

…So I’m gonna be watching the big-brands and the gurus and the major-players very closely in the future. – And I’m going to leave this subject there for now – until I have more to tell you.

On that note I’m going to end off this copy of The Horizon for this month. With a bit of luck and determination I’ll be back at’cha in the next edition, next month. For now, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere above sub-tropical latitudes as I am, then enjoy the start of Spring. If not then have a good March anyway.

‘Until next time.