Tag Archives: blog

January 10, 2013 · 8:00 am

Advertising in this blog

I started this blog in February 2010 as theblogbyjavier.wordpress.com . Sometime later I purchased an upgrade from WordPress acquiring the domain theblogbyjavier.com (initially for 25 $ per year, a bit expensive, though comfortable), that is why you don’t see the wordpress even if the blog is hosted in WordPress.com .

Among the conditions of WordPress to provide free hosting is that no advertising shall be included in the blog. However, you might have seen some advertisements at the bottom of the posts along these years. “How can that be?” When WordPress mentions no advertising, that means no ads included by the blogger (i.e. me), but WordPress has been indeed including ads from time to time. This is made if the blogger is not purchasing the option “No Ads“, for 30$ per year. I did not purchase it.

Some weeks ago I received an inquiry from a British advertising agency asking whether I would be interested in selling some advertising space. I knew it was against WordPress conditions and this blog is not aimed at being a profitable operation, thus I would not accept the offer. Nevertheless, I exchanged a couple of emails with the agent to know more about the proposal.

The offer consisted of including a link behind a word in one of my blog posts (a single word in a single post). The link would direct the reader to the advertised company. This is what they call unobtrusive advertising (it is funny that at the same time, a Spanish leading blogger, Enrique Dans, also wrote a post criticizing this kind of advertising practices in “¿En pleno 2012 y aún con estas tonterías?“ – in Spanish).

The proposal for that single link exceeded 100 $. This surprised me. I had previously researched how much one could expect to earn via Google AdSense depending on the traffic of a website, and the order of magnitude for a blog with the traffic of this one was below 100 $ per year.

Once I had left the offer aside, I took a look again about advertising possibilities within WordPress conditions, and I found out about a new program: WordAds.

This beta program had been running for over a year. Bloggers could apply for it and they would be accepted into it if the blog met some conditions. I applied. Few days later I got the confirmation that theblogbyjavier.com was accepted into the program as I announced it in Twitter:

The reader, you, will find some ads at the end of some posts. The same that happened beforehand, as I had not purchased the “No Ads” option. The only difference: now, I will earn some cash out of them. I don’t expect (nor intend) that sum to be big, but it will hopefully pay for the 26$ a year that the domain costs now. I will further comment when I start to see revenues.

About these ads

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December 25, 2012 · 10:00 am

The best (and the worst) of the first 300 posts

This post is a classic of the blog: A hundredth post dedicated to show which were the most and least read of the first 300 posts. (I wrote two just posts when I reached the first 100 and 200 posts in the blog).

Since I started the blog in February 2010, the blog has received over 65,000 visits and hundreds of comments.

Find below the list of the top 10 and bottom 10 posts:

1. Will Boeing 787 ever break-even?
2. Impuestos en Francia vs. España
3. 787 Break Even for Dummies
4. Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts (2011)
5. Patek Philippe Caliber 89
6. Mi adiós a Ibercaja
7. Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts
8. Beluga vs. Dreamlifter
9. More on Boeing 787 break even
10. FC Barcelona copying Real Madrid
…

290. The origin of football in Spain
291. Opera with subtitles
292. “Caimaneando”
293. Resist the bias to act
294. Studios are more profitable than flats
295. Casablanca
296. De Feria en Feria
297. From climbing to merely walking
298. International Day of the Book
299. Book review: Pirate Latitudes

Comparing the lists to the previous 2 years ones: 7 posts of the 10 most read ones in 2011 are still there while only 2 remain from the most read after the first 100 posts. On the least read ones: 6 were in the list after 200 while only 3 in the list after 100.

Let’s see what I’ll write in the next 100 posts…

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NOTE: the box in the right showing “Current Top Posts” shows the most read ones in the last two days, not the all-time most read ones (the ones above).

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July 8, 2012 · 12:00 pm

On why blog posts are read

Yesterday I wrote a post about the curiosity of seeing which blog posts are read more at different points in time. I pinpointed the case of a blog post related to taxes in France and Spain. I guessed that, referrals from the blog itself aside, this was due to the economic situation in Spain.

Now take the other top posts at the moment (prior to these last 2 posts were published):

Current Top Posts as of July 7th 2012.

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July 7, 2012 · 8:00 am

Brain drain or bank run?

A curiosity that comes with having a blog is that sometimes certain post starts to be read more and more and you keep wondering why. One plausible reason is clear and self-fulfilling: since the most read posts in the last few days appear at the right of the blog, readers may opt to read one of those after having read the post that brought them to the blog.

One of those post that it’s being read more and more recently is a comparison I made about income tax rates between Spain and France. I wrote it because I had some work colleagues who asked me about that, and instead of writing always the same answer I could refer them to the blog post.

See the stats below:

Stats of the post related to France income taxes.

In this particular case, and since the post it’s written and titled in Spanish, I decided to check the stats with the dates of the announcements of the bail outs of Bankia and Spain.

Another thought I have is: since the title is relatively vague “Taxes in Spain and France” (it does not mention “income” even if it only refers to income taxes), this keeps me wondering whether people arriving at this post are tempted to emigrate from Spain or to relocate their savings… brain drain or bank run? Sigh (as in lament).

To have a better view on that, and taking into account that my blog is not a special reference nor its low readership is representative of Spain, we could simply check with Google Trends. I started to look for it, but Google’s answer was “Your terms [...] do not have enough search volume to show graphs”. Sigh (as in relief).

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May 25, 2012 · 8:00 am

Where do you come from?

WordPress introduced a feature showing the geographical origin of the visits to the blog back in February (find below a map offered by WordPress – the host service of this blog). After 3 months, I decided to take a look at those stats.

Readers’ origin map provided by WordPress.

In these three months the blog received slightly above 7,700 visits; over 2,000 came from the United States and above 1,300 came from Spain (my country of origin). The top ten countries of origin summed up 75% of the visits (USA, Spain, UK, France, Germany, Canada, NL, Australia, Ireland & India). Following the famous “80/20 rule” or a Pareto distribution, the top 20% of the countries of origin summed up 85% of the visits (out of 117 countries).

Pareto distribution of blog readers per country of origin.

Finally, I had the curiosity to analyze the origin by world region. For this purpose, I compared the proportion of readers to the proportion of world population, internet users and internet penetration per region (internet users/population).

Blog readers, world population, internet users and internet penetration.

Europe, mainly due to Spain (my family and most of friends’ origin), is overrepresented (higher % of readers in relation to internet users). The other two regions overrepresented among readership are North America and Oceania, this must be due to the fact that most of the blog’s articles are written in English. Those three regions are also the ones where internet penetration is the highest.

China. In the last 3 months my blog only received 8 visits from China, that is 0.1% of the visits. China with over 1.3 billion inhabitants represents almost 20% of the world population; it counts with over 500 million internet users, over 22% of  the total; and the internet penetration is above 38%. China is clearly underrepresented among the countries of origin of the readers of the blog (0.5%). Shall I start writing more about China or in chinese language?

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December 12, 2011 · 8:00 am

The best (and the worst) of the first 200 posts

About a year ago, I wrote in the 100th post which were the most and least read of the first 100 posts. Today is another such occasion as this is the 200th post in the blog.

I started the blog in February 2010. Since then the blog has received over 29,000 visits, hundreds of comments while I have enjoyed thinking about what to write and structuring my thoughts to do so.

If a year ago I wasn’t yet sure which kind of posts were better received, now it is much clearer: those related to aviation.

Find below the list of the top 10 and bottom 10 posts:

1. Will Boeing 787 ever break-even?
2. 787 Break Even for Dummies
3. Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts
4. More on Boeing 787 break even
5. FC Barcelona copying Real Madrid
6. Algunas cifras de la industria cultural
7. Mi adiós a Ibercaja
8. An aircraft worth its weight in gold?
9. Boeing commercial aircraft discounts (update for 2010)
10. Beluga vs. Dreamlifter

…

190. Speech about Minifutbol
191. “Playas” in Lima
192. International Day of the Book
193. Bill Clinton endorsing Kiva (video)
194. Three centuries of confusion
195. De Feria en Feria
196. From climbing to merely walking
197. Nothing like a good red wine…
198. Opera with subtitles
199. Book review: Pirate Latitudes

I find it curious that only 3 posts of the 10 most read ones a year ago remain in the top 10 list, however 6 out of the 10 least read ones still remain in that list.

Let’s see what I’ll write in the next 100 posts…

—

NOTE: the box in the right showing “Current Top Posts” shows the most read ones in the last two days, not the all-time most read ones (the ones above).

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June 17, 2011 · 8:00 am

Todo ha cambiado ya

Hace unos meses leí el libro “Todo va a cambiar”, de Enrique Dans (profesor del Instituto de Empresa y blogger), que recomiendo.

De este libro en particular me gusta la diversidad de temas que trata y el enfoque positivo, divulgador que tiene con cada uno de ellos: neutralidad de la red, copyright, impacto de las nuevas formas de comunicación en las empresas y las personas, políticas de comunicación de empresas e instituciones, relaciones con clientes, soluciones a problemas desde las nuevas tecnologías, generación de contenidos, web 2.0…

Para aquellos que lean regularmente su blog, este libro no aporta grandes novedades, se trata más bien una recolección amplia y ordenada de las visiones que el autor tiene sobre varios temas de los que regularmente escribe en el blog.

Especialmente anima a que la gente experimente, use redes sociales, escriba un blog, se haga una cuenta en twitter, etc. Además ofrece varios consejos para padres con hijos pequeños sobre cómo afrontar el acceso de estos a la red de una forma natural, lejos de intentar prohibir el uso de la misma.

Unos meses después de haber leído el libro, los capítulos sobre el impacto en la sociedad de las nuevas tecnologías cobran mayor relevancia tras haber visto los muchos movimientos originados y / o  amplificados tanto en los países árabes como en España antes y después la últimas elecciones municipales y regionales.

Como dice el autor al final del libro: no es que todo vaya a cambiar, sino que todo ya ha cambiado…

Por cierto, ante la pregunta ¿debo tener/abrir un blog? La respuesta del autor, que comparto, es: si todavía no lo tienes la respuesta es sí.

Finalmente, quería dejar un enlace a otro post escrito por un amigo en el blog de los Jefotecs donde también dan su visión sobre algunos de los temas que trata el libro (descargas, conocimiento, neutralidad de la red).

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February 9, 2011 · 8:00 am

Start blogging

Today it’s been a year since I started this blog. I wrote the first post on February 9th 2010, and went live a few days later. I had been musing the idea of starting it for some months plus some people close to me encouraged me to do so as well.

In the end I decided to give it a try. Initially, I took it as a learning process: It would force me to learn what that of blogging was, some etiquette about them, etc… Few days after the starting the blog I created my Twitter account and gave it a try with some other tools… still, there are many other tools and applications that I still have to learn and use.

During those days I had the simile in my head of our previous generation: some of them are not even using the internet for as little as 10% of the things we use it for (buying things, social media, reading the papers, watching videos, etc.). It all started because some years ago they did not push themselves to try it, when it was all starting. This was what moved me to start. Who knows how the Internet will evolve from now to 10 years time? But what it is sure is that it won’t go backwards, so we better do as much as we can not to stay behind.

I just finished reading the book “Todo va a cambiar”, by Enrique Dans (in Spanish; I may write about the book soon), in the last chapters you may read the following passage:

“¿Debe [...] empezar un blog? La respuesta es clara y concisa: si no lo ha hecho hasta ahora, sí”

Starting the blog is relatively easy; you just need to follow the instructions of any of the free blogging services. Continuing with it is a bit more difficult. You need to be creative, think about more or less valuable ideas that you want to transmit: During this first year I have written 120 posts, about 10 per month or one every 3 days… behind some of them there are hours, of thought, of calculations, of editing. But it has always been fun (as my brother said “you started it because you wanted to preach freely”).

It is fun to think about ideas, that later may or may not be translated into a post, while you are travelling, reading the paper, watching a video, etc. It is fun to see the statistics (over 8,000 visits during this first year), make calculations with them (for an average of 22 visits/day), it is fun to read and reply to comments, and even better to see someone recommending one of your posts.

There are many, yes, many other very good reasons for writing a blog.

Since some months ago I follow in Twitter and read the blog of Connor Neill, a professor at IESE business school. I had the chance to attend a workshop/conference by him at the Toastmasters District 59 Fall conference in Barcelona last November where he spoke about leadership. One of the pieces of advice he gave was to write every day for some time, be it 5 minutes, 500 words…

You may find a very good post in his blog that describes very well that part of his presentation about the importance of writing, where he gives up to 20 “starting questions to use for reflection”.

Should you start a blog? The answer is clear and concise: if you haven’t done it yet, yes.

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December 31, 2010 · 11:00 am

Summary of 2010

Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2010.

This was a heavy learning year, to name a few learning experiences:

  • I continued to study French,
  • Toastmasters: I delivered some speeches at Toastmasters, received the CL and ALB awards, and attended 2 District 59 conferences and 1 Division H conference.
  • I went to several EOI conferences and others, including one with the economist Robert E. Lucas who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995 and the TEDx Madrid event.
  • I read over a dozen books, many of which I commented here (being the 3 ones I liked the most these ones: first, second and third). At the end of the year I was given an eBook so I expect this trend to continue.
  • I continued to enjoy the subscription to The Economist (frankly, one of the best decisions I’ve taken in recent years) and subscribed to Scientific American for a dime.

I also had lots of fun reading and learning things related to aerospace & defence, to investments, and enjoyed supporting some charities and especially seeing some friends starting to support them as well.

Travelling. Either we together or I visited for the first time Porto, Morocco, Tunisia, Poland and Egypt. We also spent some time in Luxembourg, Brazil, Netherlands, Sevilla and France. Travelling well over 65,000 km last year (equivalent to 1.6 rounds to the Earth). Of all the places we visited, the view that I liked the most was the falls of Iguaçu, no doubt.

Javi 2.0 Encouraged by Luca and some friends I started this blog in February 2010 and a twitter account shortly afterwards. I reckon that my twitter account has become one of my biggest hobbies and sources of information apart from a communication channel with friends. I even saw some friends (here and here) and my sister starting their own blogs!

In the sports side… even though this has been a great year for Spanish sportsmen, it hasn’t been so for Real Madrid: not for the football or basketball section (being the last year I attended with the season ticket). On the personal side I competed in two championships of Minifutbol but won neither one, the same applies to paddle tournaments… the best sports moment was completing once again the San Silvestre race.

Other reasons for joy have been:

  • our friends Amalia & Paco, María & Alberto, Janine & Rients, Leyre & German got married,
  • we saw the newborns Paula and Javier, while two of our friends are pregnant today (that we know),
  • my sister finished her bachelor and continued studying a master; my brother finished his MBA and joined my company; my mother continued to take several courses.

To close the year, I got a new position within the same company in another country, where I moved a month ago. This will allow me to continue learning and experiencing new things!

I use to tell my friends and family that since long ago I feel that I enjoy more and more each coming year and am happier with time; this year, with a few bad moments included (including some sad losses), has been no exception to the trend. Thanks to all of you who contributed to it. As I say, if it continues like this, I may explode one of these years :-) .

Now it’s time to make some few resolutions for 2011 as well… I have thought of 5, that if I manage to fulfill, next year’s account will be even shinier. I wish you the same: keep learning and enjoying your time.

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December 28, 2010 · 6:02 pm

Impact of an AdWords campaign (cont.)

After my previous post was published, I had a conversation about it and received some comments. These made me think that it could be interesting to comment on the other 2 campaigns to gain more insight about how AdWords works and how useful it can or cannot be. First, let me share some data of the 3 campaigns:

  • Al Andalus club (Rota, Cadiz): had a cost of 29.68€ for 250 clicks, thus 0.12€ per click (CPC). It appeared in the screens 208,520 times. It used 72 words or combination of words, restricted to a circular area about 90km around Rota.
  • Standing Ovation club (Madrid): had a cost of 16.56€ for 59 clicks, thus 0.28€ per click (CPC). It appeared in the screens 166,291 times. It used 49 words or combination of words and was restricted to Madrid region.
  • Blog: had a cost of 51.96€ for 1,410 clicks, thus 0.04€ per click (CPC). It appeared in the screens 3,685,521 times. It used 41 words or combination of words and was not geographically restricted.

Even though I am not an expert in AdWords, from what I have experienced and as you can see above:

  • The more clicks it has the lower the price per click will be.
  • You may set a maximum amount of money you want to spend per day (I normally didn’t spend more than 1.5€ euro per day per campaign), this means that once that amount is reached your campaign is de-activated until the next day (ads won’t appear for some hours).
  • Using more words does not necessarily translate into more clicks. You need to find adequate words, related to the website, so it appears and appears high enough in the web. Also, some words are more expensive than others, though the price varies with the number of clicks.
  • The ads themselves need to be attractive, as it may appear many times but still needs to make people click on it. In that sense, the most successful one was that of Al Andalus (people clicked on it 0.12% of the times it appeared; 3 times more effective than the other 2 campaigns).
  • You need to focus the campaign in the segment you want to target. E.g., I first centered the area for Al Andalus campaign, until I found out that some clicks (consuming campaign money) came from Tanger and other Moroccan cities… I had to move the target area, as no one from Morocco would go to the club on a weekly basis.

I didn’t measure any kind of conversion rate as I am not selling anything through my blog nor could I check how many guests went to Al Andalus or Standing Ovation meetings thanks to ads (I was not attending those clubs); and that would be an extremely interesting indicator for any business.

Finally, my friend got the 75€ from a special offer from Google. In the Iberia in-flight magazine (“Ronda”), I have also seen some months ago codes for 50€ to be used in AdWords campaigns. So, be aware of possible next opportunities and give it a try (and you can always spend some little money as a learning experience – everything is very well explained inside AdWords tool).

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