Laws of Attraction
2005-03-17,

This week, I suddenly remembered that I have a bunch of banner ads through Diaryland that I've yet to use up. I've been parsing them out 500 at a time, which ends up equating to about 12-16 hours of exposure before they're used up, at least during the workweek. I've been using my 'Idiot' banner, because it seems to have been getting the most response out of the three I've got. So I sent hem out twice, the last two days, and I got a surprising number of hits, something in the 4.4% range, which, according to Andrew, King of Diaryland, is a really good response. Surprising, because the banner in question is pretty ugly: grey skies, too-dark tree line, and a self-deprecating quote. Not the stuff of legends.

But on they came, from all over the U.S., mainly. (Hello, new people! Stay a while! Don�t let the stark, daunting page format fool you! Do some back reading, for goodness' sake!) But, save for a few, none stayed long enough to read anything more than a page, if that (or at least that's what Sitemeter tells me-- though it doesn't always register the time spent at site very well). This can be attributed to a few things:

1. My entries are too atrocious to bear;
2. People have short attention spans; and/or
3. The site design isn't working.

I have to ignore the first, because otherwise I'm just going to stop writing altogether. The second item, I have no control over, but, considering these are diary/journal readers/writers that are clicking, they're predisposed to reading entries to some degree. So I'm going to have to go with number three. But really, who can say no to a black background and text too small to read? Not to mention a center section that keeps shifting around whenever I try and include something that bonks the column width, and sometimes just does it at random for no apparent reason. So I guess it's time to seek out a new format. I have to keep my text color though, if possible; I call it Alphabet Blue, cos the hex code for it is ABCDEF. Genius, I know.

So, to those new folks coming to this latest round of banner clicks, I say, Don't Run Away, dammit! See past the crappy site design and read on! And feel free to say something.

Plea: activate. Oh, and Happy St. Pat's Day-- whatever.

-- End Transmission --