DoggieNews.com continues to impress. The traffic just seems to grow month-after-month. Dog blogging seems to be the "sleeper niche" of blogging. There are already hundreds of dog bloggers, but I've yet to see another one that has employed all the tactics and strategies of a commercial blogger. I just hope my company can gain a strong foothold in this genre.

Google AdSense seems to be the most profitable advertising vehicle in this vertical. I tried some of the traditional advertisers like FastClick, but the CPM is paltry, it's actually embarrassing.

Interestingly, I was receiving complaints from the readers of DoggieNews that Google AdSense was serving up ads for puppy mills. I made a genuine attempt to block out every ad from a puppy seller or breeder. But it was just impossible. There are SO many merchants buying AdWords for puppies, that you just can't manage the Ad Filter. So, I had to forget about blocking these ads.

In terms of affiliate programs, the only ones that will give you any decent chance of conversions are PETCO and PETsMART. But blogs are just a poor vehicle for that type of revenue strategy, at least in this vertical. And most Americans buy their pet supplies from a brick-n-mortar store, anyways.

The target audience of a dog blog are those people with a passion for dogs. My initial target, however, was the "average American dog owner". As far as I was concerned, I am the average American dog owner. My dogs are treated better than any of my neighbors' dogs, but I know that there are dog owners across the country that take "humane treatment" into religious extremes.

In reality, the average American dog owner is not passionate about dogs. The dog is simply a "family member" and that's it. I mean, just because you have a sister, doesn't mean you treat her with a passion do you? Take motorcycle owners on the other hand. Every one of them has a passion for motorcycles, either riding them, or customizing them, or maintaining them. My motorcycle blog targets the average American motorcycle owner, and that's exactly who reads it.

But for dog blogs, it's typically those people with a passion for dogs who read them, and those people are not average American dog owners. So, while you can definitely create a large following of readers, it's difficult to monetize those page views. While AdSense seems to be best solution, the problem is that AdSense serves up so many "puppies for sale" ads, and most of the people reading DoggieNews will not click those ads.

The pet industry, however, is a booming industry. All indications show that America is moving towards having a dog in every household. I have some ideas on how to change the focus of DoggieNews so as to target a slightly different audience, and perhaps create better monetization through Google. I won't explain what that strategy is. Most of you who read DoggieNews, will never notice it.

I'm not sure what happened exactly. But Genealogy and How (GAH) lost its blog template. Instead, the template that I had worked so hard to create, was replaced by one of Blogger's pre-made templates.

For the record, Genealogy and How is not a CDM property. I personally co-own it with my blog buddy David.

Ok, I do kinda know what happened, here's the scoop:

I was helping Russ, a friend of mine who runs BikerCrap.com. He wanted to get a blog going, and he actually got one up. He was asking me some questions about blogging. He was using one of Blogger's pre-made templates. So, I needed to take a look at the source code of that template. Do this, I logged into Blogger, went into one of my blogs (in this case GAH), clicked on Template, and clicked on New Template. I then found the template he was using, and clicked "select" to replace GAH's template with that one. This way I could view the source code of that template.

But, I did not save the template. That is, I merely selected it, but did not click the "Save Template Changes" button. After I saw what I needed to see, I simply left Blogger. When I did that Blogger warned me that if I left now, without saving the changes, I would lose those changes. Ok, that's exactly what I wanted.

So why in the heck did Blogger abandon the old template, and write the new over it? I never clicked on "Save Template Changes"! In that sense, I really don't know what happened. It shouldn't have happened. I guess it's my fault for doing things the idiot way.

Oh well. I got the old template restored, and all is well.

Strange New Products is our newest blog. It was kinda fun and frustrating creating the Blogger template. The template is based Blogger's "Minima" template, with several modications of course.

Anyways, the blog features strange, funny, interesting and innovative new products just now hitting the market.

I created it in response to all the "gadget blogs" that seem to be getting tons of backlinks and ungodly Google PR. Except instead of focusing on cool new gadgets, I decided to focus on the strange stuff, not necessarily gadgets, but just anything new and out of the ordinary.

I figure one reason why those gadget blogs are so popular is because for one, people like news, and two, people like new things, and three, people are intrigued by new ideas. So, this blog focuses along the same lines, but adds in some humor by dealing with the "STRANGE".

Well, the new blog was actually launched on July 20. Already one site, The Green Head, is syndicating my feed on its "Cool Stuff" page.

The new phone books are here!
The new phone books are here!

I made it to the famed "Blogebrity List". Ok, I'm only on the "C" list, see "Johnson, Steve". And the link points to DoggieNews. I guess that's our flagship blog now.

Actually, the Blogebrity blog is kinda cool. It's a blog about the bloggers. It focuses on the movers and shakers, as well as those bloggers that get moved and shaked.

So now I'm wondering what I have to do to make it to the "B" list.

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Clear Digital Media, Inc. was founded May 10, 2005, as a California corporation.

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