Time sure flies when you're having fun (or in my case, buried with work). I'd like to take a minute and give you a State of the Blog update.
Upcoming Queue Top Submitter - May 2009
When we launched the Neatorama Upcoming Queue, we promised to reward Top Submitters. As a token of my appreciation, the top 5 submitters of May 2009 will get a random cool ice tray from our online store:
Ice Invaders, Gin & Titonic, Bone Chillers, and Cool Jazz ice trays
See our complete selection here: Party Ice Trays
You still have a chance to be a Top Submitter for this month (and there's always next month) - learn more about the Neatorama Upcoming Queue here: FAQ | Tips
Neatorama Facebook Fan Page Hits 1,000 Fans
Thanks to Neatoramanaut Becky, we have a Neatorama Facebook Fan Page - and recently we've just hit 1,000 fans! Thank you, guys!
Rogue Ads
It's taken a lot of work behind the scenes, but I believe we've significantly improved the quality of ads on Neatorama - not only are the rogue ads gone, but so are the annoying yellow teeth ads! (Scuttlebutt of the ad industry is that those yellow teeth ads are actually the best performing ads in the history of Internet ads. That's why you see them everywhere - they're coming from practically every single ad network on the web. Banning them cost us a pretty penny, but I think we did the right thing).
Running a small blog costs next to nothing (I know, Neato was once very small) but running a large one is actually quite costly. Bandwidth and server costs for Neatorama run in the 5-digits annually and growing. So unfortunately, ads are a necessary evil. Perhaps one day the Neatoama Online Shop is large enough that its revenue could sustain the blog, but for the foreseeable future, ads are our best option.
Because we have to rely on ad providers, sometimes rogue ads slip through - I appreciate everybody's continued help in spotting them. Please let me know if you see an inappropriate ad, banner that has a self-starting audio, etc., so we can track 'em down and ban 'em (my contact info is at the bottom of the blog).
As a final note, I'm trying to find a balance between maximizing ad revenue and minimizing the number of ads that appear on the blog. Many of you probably noticed ads moving/appearing/disappearing starting in the past couple of weeks.
Neatorama Widget
Neatoramanaut Ajan surprised me with an gift: Neatorama's very own RSS feed widget for Macs. Now, I won't pretend to understand the mechanics of how it was made (I don't have a Mac and wouldn't know the first thing about widgets) - but it looks very neat! If you want one, click here to download it: Link - Thanks Ajan!
Note: a while ago, someone asks how to get in on the Mystery Sale and whether there is an email alert or something like that. Well, the answer is simple: visit Neatorama every day (or subscribe to our RSS feed) - the Mystery Sale is never announced beforehand and it only lasts for a short period of time, so you have to catch it when it's going on (That's part of the fun!)
If you look at the Upcoming Queue, many casual submitters never take the time to format their submissions correctly - some just cut and paste their description (which is frowned upon) and others just write a one-sentence intro. This is a big difference between the UQ and digg or reddit: UQ subs are blog posts.
Sometimes, editors will rescue such posts (and re-write them), but this is time-consuming for us.
The top submitters of the UQ, like Marilyn Terrell, for instance, takes the time not only to submit properly formatted materials, but also to submit a lot of 'em. This takes time and a lot of effort, so if the same people show up in the top 5 over and over again, that's fine with me ...