Well, yesterday’s experiment was a bust.

It probably did not help that:

a) By the time I posted it, the work day was just about over, so some of the people who may have taken me up on the offer probably did not see it as they were shutting down for the day or, in some time zones, probably already on the way home from work.

b) Shortly after posting it, I headed home from work.

c) I went home, ate dinner, shoveled snow and watched TV, all of which pretty much consumed the bulk of the evening.

d) I did no additional promotion beyond a blog post here and a couple tweets. Granted, that was all I did for my weekend earning experiment, but I started that earlier.

Anyway…

I guess I will have to retry another time.

I am doing a little marketing experiment today, which is similar to one I successfully did back in May of this year.

My goal is to earn $100 via PayPal before 11:59 p.m. Monday, December 13th.

So, once again, I am offering some of my services…

ARTICLE WRITING
I haven’t done any article writing for clients in a while, so I don’t have a set rate for it. Today’s special is going to be name your price, but the offer needs to be more than my editing rates because, I mean, come on…

EDITING
Perhaps you’ve written a solid report or eBook, but your writing skills are not up to par. I can assist you in polishing your written material.

Proofreading: $10.00 per 1000 words
Proofreading includes checking for typos, misspellings and other minor errors. This is a good option if your English skills are strong and you primarily need a second set of eyes to check your work.

Copyediting: $15.00 per 1000 words
Copyediting includes checking for typos, misspellings, grammatical errors and punctuation. It also includes any rewriting necessary for clarity or consistency. This is a good option if you’re not an experienced writer or your English skills are not strong.

GRAPHICS
This will depend upon what you want done. I’ve done Twitter backgrounds for $100, so if you want one of those, that would be awesome. Otherwise, I can do banner ads, simple logos, headers, starbursts, dancing monkeys, etc. I’ve done logo clean-up, converted bitmap/JPEG logos to vector. Need a 125×125 ad for your blog? I can do that. Again, today’s fee is going to be name your price, but be reasonable.

If you want me to do something, eMail me at “hire dcr” (but no spaces or quotes) and that’ll be at (as in @) this blog address, that is dcrblogs.com. That’s dcrblogs.com with hiredcr and the little AT symbol in front of it. Got it?

I reserve the right to reject any offers that are just too low. I’m not going to write you ten articles for a buck or do 100 graphics for $1. It’s just not going to happen. So, contact me first and we’ll discuss and I’ll give you a yay or nay on your name your price offer.

Here’s the thing, though. This offer is only good until I’ve made $100* or 11:59 p.m. Monday, December 13, 2010. After that, it’s done. So you must ACT NOW!

*So, if someone offers me $100 for, say, a banner, then it’s game over. Thus, it’s also worth your while to make higher, rather than lower, offers, to make sure you lock in your deal.

That’s often an argument—or at least something in the back of people’s minds—when the topic of lost civilizations or lost knowledge are brought up.

It’s unfathomable for some that an advanced civilization could be wiped out without a trace, except through stories passed on by word of mouth, which are eventually believed to be myths rather than true tales.

But, when disaster strikes, how many people say “Grab as many books as you can and run for your lives!” versus how many say “Grab the kids and go!”

We typically value life above all else and when disaster strikes, the survival instinct kicks in, so the thought of preserving life takes an even higher precedence than it might at any other time.

The thought is to save lives and rebuild later.

Of course, it can be hard to rebuild without all the knowledge and tools, which were probably left behind or, in some cases, just not possible to move.

Think about it. Can you rebuild your desktop computer from scratch, if there were no place to buy parts?

And that’s what happens in a major disaster, especially if you were more advanced than neighboring civilizations and didn’t share everything with them. Or, if the disaster is a worldwide phenomena. Then, everybody loses stuff. Experts are killed. Knowledge is lost. Tools are destroyed and lost. People that could fix things no longer have the parts and tools to do so. They may become scarce. People may fight over them, and then they get lost or destroyed again.

As resources become scarce, people think of their immediate survival and not of the future. So, things get worse before they get better. And knowledge gets lost over time as people with the knowledge are killed or otherwise die.

So, it may be unthinkable but, yes, it can all just disappear.

If you don’t mind the inconsistency in numbering methods (when compared to yesterday), then, hey, today’s date is cool too.

December 11, 2010.

That would be 12-11-2010 or 12-11-10.

Of course, done like yesterday’s ordering, 11-12-10, it’s not as interesting.

And 10-11-12 wouldn’t make sense because I’ve not seen an example where you would put the year, the day and then the month. It’s usually the month first, then the day and then the year, which is the standard method but which itself doesn’t make too much sense.

I prefer the year first, then the month and then the day. Plus, that scheme makes it easier to sort by date, especially on the computer.

Look at it this way… Let’s say you have these dates.

December 10, 2010
December 12, 2010
December 10, 2012
December 12, 2012

Now, put those all as numbers.

12-10-2010
12-12-2010
12-10-2012
12-12-2012

Now, do a sort (on the computer) and you’ll get this:

12-10-2010
12-10-2012
12-12-2010
12-12-2012

See? Messed up. (Unless you’re sorting in something that’s date-aware.)

Now, try it with the day, month, then year.

10 December 2010
12 December 2010
10 December 2012
12 December 2012

Convert to numbers.

10-12-2010
12-12-2010
10-12-2012
12-12-2012

Now, sort that.

10-12-2010
10-12-2012
12-12-2010
12-12-2012

See? Messed up again.

Now, let’s try it the sensible way.

2010 December 10
2010 December 12
2012 December 10
2012 December 12

Now, convert to numerical.

2010-12-10
2010-12-12
2012-12-10
2012-12-12

Now, sort them.

2010-12-10
2010-12-12
2012-12-10
2012-12-12

See? They stay in order.

You put the things in ascending order of frequency of change. The year changes the most infrequently, so you put that first. Then, you put the months. The days change the most frequently so you put that last.

We do the time like that. We might say it’s quarter to five rather than four forty-five, but, in either case, we record the time as 4:45. If we add seconds, we’d record it as 4:45:15. We don’t put the minutes and then the hour, so why do we do dates backwards?

Also, I prefer the 24 hour clock, because that keeps things sorted too. Because, if you were to do a sort, you’d have AMs and PMs mixed up. Use a 24-hour clock and you don’t have that problem.

Anyway, so I guess today isn’t so interesting after all, being 2010-12-11 and all.

Today is December 10, 2010.

That’s the 10th day of the 12th month of the 10th year.

Okay, so maybe I’m the only one that thinks that’s sort of cool.

Of course, I think I missed 10-10-10 so this is a lame way of making up for it.

Still cool, though.

Next year, we’ll have 11-11-11.

The year after that, there will be a 12-12-12.

Of course, as I recall, I didn’t recognize 10-10-10, because these things are kind of lame. It would be more exciting—maybe—if we actually lived in the year 10, as opposed to 2010. So, when people say it is 10-12-10 or whatnot, well, I know it’s really 10-12-2010 (or 2010-12-10) so that kind of ruins things.

There’s a lesson here in this blog–believe it or not.

As my handful of regular readers are quite aware, I’ve posted a lot of drivel as of late.

And, by “as of late,” that’s pretty much the past year or so.

Yet, inexplicably, it doesn’t appear to affect traffic all that much.

Sure, fewer people comment, but traffic? Yeah. It keeps going.

True, traffic is down overall, but it’s still high. I know people with blogs older than mine and with better content lately (compared to mine, lately) and they struggle to get content.

Now, there is a certain amount of traffic you can disregard. That is traffic from search engines and robots and the like. If you keep your site or blog updated, you’ll get a regular flow of them. Some stats packages will filter them out and not include them in your traffic stats; others will not. So, that’s one thing to be mindful of.

Still, past that, there’s a lot of traffic coming here.

You see, there used to be quality content here and maybe there will be again, but the point is that all those past quality articles continue to get traffic. So, I can coast a bit and still get traffic despite posting drivel.

Take Tuesday, for example. That was a high traffic day this week. All I posted were a bunch of my old tweets. But, inexplicably, traffic increased. Were they looking at that post? Did something else draw them here? Who knows? All I know is that I spent a few minutes copying and pasting and—BOOM!—high traffic day.

Yeah, probably unrelated, but the point is that quality is what counts and can even overcome a plethora of mindless posts.

Which is good because otherwise it’d just be me reading this thing.

Nah. Who am I kidding? Even I don’t read this stuff.

Okay. Not really. I’m not sure I’d trust food sent by strangers in the mail. Sorry.

Anyway, if you have a hankering to fill your blog with nonsense, I am available for guest blogging.

Yes, if you are having a slow week and can’t think of something to post, I’m there for you.

I can produce all sorts of mindless drivel.

Like this:

rats

Oh, how they play not so well together!

See? Instant blog post.

Sometimes, I can do serious stuff too. But that doesn’t seem to happen as often. Though it could happen more often if money were involved.

Just saying.

If you think you can, maybe you’re just fooling yourself.

Someone just unsubscribed from my blog. That was shocking. I didn’t know my blog had a subscriber.

I wish I could organize my YouTube “channel” into subchannels or something for different topics.

Maybe they could let you have your own “network” rather than just “channel”? Then you could have different channels in your network.

Do you ever think about the fact that a lot of the junk on the Internet is all Google’s fault?

Celebs to go quiet on Twitter until $1 mill raised for World AIDS Day. No word on a charity to donate to to keep them silent.

Think for a moment…

Done? Okay…

Anyway, remember how I used to have lengthy posts and stuff?

Stuff that enlightened you?

Stuff that entertained you?

Stuff that made you think?

Well…

Just think of all the time I’m saving you now.

Yo!

Way.

Row!

Pirates in your bathtub.

Go!

Stay.

Flow.

Pirates in your bathtub.

No!

Hey!

Throw!

Pirates in your bathtub.

Row.

Whoosh.

Sunk.

Pirates in your bathtub.