I’m Just Sharing

Man, I hate when things don’t go right.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll remember when I wrote about my excitement that Firefox 3 was coming. Then you later read where I said I’d downloaded the program and was testing it, and there were some good things and some bad things, but the jury was still out.

The jury has come to a decision, and it’s not good. The Firefox 3 experiment is over, done, finished. I’ve decided that, for now, it’s just not worth the trouble and the things I lost. So, I’ve spent about 10 minutes getting rid of it, then getting rid of the latest update, and starting from scratch again. Well, maybe not all the way, as I didn’t get rid of my bookmarks or anything else, but you know what I mean.

What was the main thing? There actually was a main thing this time around, and it was the Google Toolbar. Seems it was incompatible with the new version, and trying to run Google Desktop was almost impossible also. I probably rely on that more than anything else, so that was a really big deal to me.

Then there were the smaller things. For instance, TwitterFox for Firefox 3 just wasn’t going to work. Actually, it worked for 2 days, and that was that; irritating as sin. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d gotten on it, but I have. Another add-on I really like is colorful tabs, as I tend to have a bunch of tabs open at once, and the colors help separate them so you know where they are. That may seem odd, but it’s the truth. And there were a bunch of smaller add-ons and some of the themes I’d downloaded before that I liked that just wouldn’t work in Firefox 3 either; heck, my few Greasemonkey scripts wouldn’t work either, though all my userstyles did work.

And finally, it didn’t save anything on my resources, which is had promised to do. Yes, it was a little bit faster, and I really noticed it with Facebook, but heck, I’m on cable; that little bit of slowness on Facebook isn’t worth all the other things I’ve had to give up by switching over.

So, I’m back to my original version, 2.0, though I’ve now run the update back to 2.0.0.15 for security purposes, and my Google Toolbar is sitting there smiling at me. Sometimes we have to learn those lessons, and this is the first time Firefox has failed me. Maybe one day all will be right with the world once again; but not now, unfortunately.

I’m going to touch upon what might end up being a sensitive subject, but I feel I must.

There are lots of pundits out there who say one must have a defined niche so they know just the market they’re trying to get, and hopefully will have that particular market find them. I understand that in general, of course. After all, this blog, though I get conversational from time to time, is more about blogging, online marketing, and the internet. And my other blog is on business topics related to people and leadership.

However, I wonder about niche’s that not only seem a bit too defined, but also seem, well, “exclusive” instead of “inclusive”. In other words,by their general definition they seem to say to others “stay out, you’re not wanted”; at least that’s how I see it.

I’m talking about niches such as “work at home moms”, religious based, or ethnically based businesses. From where I’m sitting, I’d be immediately knocked out of two of the three, and on that third one, I’m not sure I’d identify myself as “only” being a member of that group because I think, if others had my same thought process, that it would keep some people from coming because they’d feel like I was part of an exclusive club that they weren’t invited to.

Of course I know that’s not really the case, but appearances really are everything up front, and any time you’re doing something that seems to be weeding other people out, or putting a stamp on their foreheads, you risk alienating a big part of the population and, of course, impacting your opportunity to generate true revenue. I’m certainly not saying don’t be proud of who or what you are. For me, as a black man in America, I’m not backing away from anything like that. However, I’m not identifying myself as a black businessman, or any of my businesses as black businesses, because I want to invite everyone into my digital or business living room, where I’ll serve up some virtual cherry Kool Aid and low salt corn chips and we can have a nice little conversation with each other.

Then again, some of this reminds me of a post by Steve Pavlina when he wrote about why one shouldn’t have a religion, which I thought was a bit over the top, and then he followed it with his post on feeling blessed, which was very nice but leaves one confused in some fashion about whether it was a good idea to write the initial one in the first place. My intention definitely isn’t to stir the pot; it’s to ask the question about how much niche might one consider as too much niche. Of course, if you’re looking to only work or market to specific people, then go about your business; after all, it’s what the separatists do.

And man, do those folks know how to market. Still hate them, but they’re everywhere! Overall, what do you think about this?

This is something I don’t often do, but I decided to look at my monthly stats and post some items here, though I’m probably not going to post all the numbers that I could. However, the month has shown me some very interesting things.

For one, when I first signed up on Twitter, it seemed to help my blog grow, and my visitors doubled for awhile there. Supposedly, this past month, my readership jumped again, but Twitter had nothing to do with it, as the number of people who came from Twitter dropped drastically; not sure why, other than Twitter had lots of problems this past month.

What made my blog jump seems to be StumbleUpon, which is strange to me because not only do I not have an account there, but I’ve never even been to the website to see what it’s all about. So, that was a major surprise. The second surprise is that, according to Google Analytics, the second highest number of visitors came to the blog directly, no referral source. That’s actually pretty good because it means repeat visitors are coming back for more; that’s a good thing. Maybe they’re not commenting all that often, but they are coming back to look at stuff; thanks folks! And the third highest referrer is my business blog; thanks me!

And, it would seem that the people coming from my business blog are the most serious readers, or viewers at least, spending an average of 4 minutes and 16 seconds here. Hey, I try to write interesting content as much as possible. The overall average time on the site for the month is a minute and 48 seconds, which is about how long it should take the average reader to read one post, so that’s not bad either.

I’m not even getting into the business of talking about how much money I’m making here per month because, well, I don’t want anyone laughing, and I don’t want to cry. It’s not all about making money, though; just don’t tell the O’Jays I said that: