Sex Offender Registry was relaunched today as a weblog.

This website had been an affiliate marketing site since 2003, promoting the services offered by National Alert Registry, a subscription-based website that hosts a nationwide database of registered sex offenders.

The old SOR site is still actually there, since those pages are still getting traffic from search engines. However, the homepage was replaced with a blog.

The reason for this is because Harris Digital Publishing, which owns National Alert Registry, offered to increase our commissions substantially. So to take advantage of that, we decided to give SOR a makeover, and use the blog format to help increase traffic, increase click-throughs, and improve search engine optimization.

The last part about improving search engine optimization is something we had success with on Death Records, a website owned by our sister network, Smoking Dogs Media.

It's probably no surprise that Alexa's website rankings are highly inaccurate. Perhaps grossly inaccurate.

I compared two of our websites: Interment and Strange New Products.

• Interment - Alexa Ranking 65,192


• Strange New Products - Alexa Ranking 52,837

This would indicate that Strange New Products is experiencing a higher traffic volume than Interment. But the fact is that Interment has four to five times more traffic than Strange New Products, based on our server logs as presented through Analog.

How can that be?

Demographics.

Interment's demographics are mostly older people. The last poll I took showed that 50% of its users are aged 50+. Meanwhile, Strange New Products is a website popular with younger folks, or tech-savvy folks.

Now consider that Alexa compiles its statistics from people who have installed its tool bar. Thus, folks aged 50+ are less likely to install tool bars, because most of these people don't even know what a tool bar is!

Heck about 50% of people who use Interment still have their screens set to 800x600 resolution. That alone tells you something about Alexa's statistics.

I've been using Technorati to monitor the link stats on our weblogs, like most other bloggers out there. But I'm giving up on them.

Recently, they erased all profile data from some of my blogs (doggienews.com, bikernewsonline.com, realestatehow.com, and junkfoodblog.com) and have stopped tracking them. I deleted claim from these blogs, and tried to reclaim them, but Technorati said these blogs were not claimable. They said I need to contact their customer support.

These weren't spam blogs, we don't publish any of those. These were legitimate weblogs with real content, and with groups of loyal readers. If that's how they're going to treat me, then I can take my ad impressions and give them to some other weblog tracking site.

They can't seem to figure out who their customers are. Me and all the other bloggers and blog users are their customers. If I'm not monitoring my blog stats through them, then I'm not using their services nor clicking their ads.

If it was a technical glitch that caused this to happen, well it seems they didn't give much thought as to how many loyal users they'd lose if they inconvenienced them.

They need to get their act together, and figure out who's serving who.

We blogged this little gasoline pill called Bio-Performance on Strange New Products last December, and since then it seems to have become a stage for debate.

As of this writing, there are 49 comments posted in what seems to be a debate over the efficacy of this gas mileage boosting product.

The pill is sold through an MLM (multi-level marketing) hierarchy. So, some of the commenters are marketers themselves claiming the pill has done wonders for their car's gas mileage.

Some of the other comments are folks who are "poo-pooing" this pill as being a fraud.

Others still are trying to take a neutral stance and evaluate this objectively.

What's driving this comment frenzy is the fact that Google lists our blog post at the top of the search results for "gas pill" and "gas mileage pill". We also rank #6 for the term, "gasoline pill".

It doesn't help to search for "bio-performance" because that's also the name of a beauty product.

So, this is the reason why MLM'ers keep posting positive comments, and why others keep countering them.

I just enjoy reading the comments!

Chris Garrett at Performancing asks the question, "Does Blogging Have a Future"?

My short answer is "yes".

This question gets blogged a hundred times a day on a hundred blogs, so it's a very OLD question.

But my long answer is as follows:

The truth is that the web constantly evolves, and blogging is an evolution up from personal websites (GeoCities) and hosting your own forum (EZBoard). Perhaps blogging will progress into another form.

What often causes these changes are innovations in hardware and software. Remember that Windows 95 integrated the web browser into the operating system, and brought web browsing to the masses. The fact that everybody's buying up iPods is what made it feasible to do podcasting. And it's said that Windows Vista will incorporate RSS, perhaps laying the groundwork for more innovations in RSS technology.

Why not blogging via text-messaging? Devices like the Treo 700 combined with broadband via EVDO can make that happen. However, one problem is that most folks still don't know what RSS is. Enter Windows Vista to bring RSS to the masses.

As a commercial medium, RSS definitely has its place. I'm not interested in any products from Kraft Foods or Proctor and Gamble, but I am interested in knowing what Harley Davidson is up to (being a biker). I'll definitely subscribe to their RSS feed, even if every other post is a commercial plug.

Or how about this. Imagine watching American Idol, and getting live feeds from the judges, being able to read their notes as some schmuck from Corntown, Nebraska wails out his best Marty Robbins. Then the show could bring in some comedian like Dennis Miller or Jerry Seinfeld to do live off-camera podcasts as the contestant wails away. Wouldn't you subscribe to that?

Blogging definitely has a future, but not like anything you see today.

We relaunched our weblog In Your Web, yet again.

Fresh with a new design, it was relaunched with a new focus, on running a home-based business.

It's somewhat ironic that we relaunch with this focus, as another home-based business blog, Home Office Voice, recently closed its doors. We'd like to extend an invitation to all those HOV'ers to come check us out.

In Your Web was originally launched in February 2004, two years ago, as an archive of articles pertaining to running a successful website publishing business. It was more about web design, affiliate programs, SEO, etc.

Since then it relaunched several times over covering topics such as "successful blogging", "profitable website publishing", and the like. But because these topics are being covered ad nauseum, it was almost stupid to write about the same stuff. Over the past several months I've had some great tips and ideas on how I was able to find success as a website publisher, but figured these things had already been said a hundred times elsewhere, and just decided not to bother out of concern for sounding like an echo.

But In Your Web is not going to be just about home-based business blogging, rather, it's supposed to follow my day-to-day dealings with running my own home-based business, Clear Digital Media, Inc. In some cases, it will be almost diary-like. It's more of a peek into what I'm doing and thinking while running my business.

We're going to stay away from such topics as "Better Blogging" and "How To Get More Out of AdSense". It's strictly about running a business.