If you have a blog or website and aren’t using Google Analytics, you should check it out. There are equivalent services out there but there are a couple compelling reasons to try Analytics.

• Detailed
  There’s so much information available on your traffic patterns, it’s crazy. You can easily see where everyone’s coming from, where they went, the paths they took through the site, etc. It really gives you some great opportunities to increase value for your readers by adjusting the site to them.
• Interface
  With the amount of data that Analytics tracks, it’s amazing they’re able to keep the interface as clean and as organized as it is. The dashboard is very helpful for a quick overview, but it’s still easy to drill down and switch between sites.
• Adwords integration
  If you run adwords, you can set up conversion goals and traffic funnels to determine which pages need to be tweaked. I haven’t done any of this yet, but I can see how helpful it would be.
• Free
  Seriously, they could charge for this, it’s so useful.

All that being said though, I’ve had some problems with it. I’m currently tracking 3 domains and I’ve noticed some overlap. All of the top landing pages for this site are being identified as t-shirt pages. When I’m tracking tshirt all the data fits, but I can’t see which pages you’re all landing on when you visit bradleykelly.com.

I’ve triple-checked the tracking code I don’t know how many times, and I’ve tried using the legacy Urchin code instead of the Javascript. I’m starting to debate putting this domain on a separate Analytics account so it has a new ID. Any ideas?

This past weekend was the most unproductive I’ve been since the holidays. It’s not like I had nothing to do either, I just had a hard time staying focused. I did manage to experiment with a few different plugins though, one of which temporarily broke the Wordpress. I thought it’d be a good opportunity to recommend a test installation.

Basically, I keep a parallel instance of each site running privately so I can test things before rolling them out publicly. I just install wordpress to a domain subdirectory, and in setup I opt not to make it visible to search engines. Since I use DreamHost, and they have one-click installations, it literally takes me 5 minutes max to set it up. I copy the theme over to the test environment, and take the installation active.

Over the weekend, I was installing and testing the Adsense Deluxe plugin and placing adsense ads for tshirtreviewblog.com. By doing this in the test environment, I was able to try different ad sizes and locations without breaking or distorting the theme publicly. In fact, another plugin I was testing for managing 301 redirects broke the site pretty badly whenever a link was active. Again, this was thankfully done in the test environment and was invisible publicly.

This doesn’t just go for plugins of course, it’s great for trying new graphics or CSS tweaks. Once I know everything will work alright, I simply switch to the live installation and repeat. You could use one Wordpress test environment if you run substantially similar sites, but I have fairly unique plugin setups for both sites. If I clone T-Shirt Review Blog, which I may do in the future, I could continue to use the same test environment for multiple sites.

Update: Here’s a good personal example of how this setup can save your ass at some point.

I wasn’t completely idle over my Christmas break, and was able to launch tshirtreviewblog.com today. It feels good to have accomplished that before heading back to work tomorrow, that was really my only BKE-related goal over this break. I didn’t have that much left to do, with most of the work finished in mid-December.

Instead of verbally telling someone “I saw the coolest shirt the other day…” and not being able to tell them where I found it, I can now document all the unique designs I come across and hopefully help someone find their next favorite tee in the process. If you have a chance, take a look and let me know what you think.

As always, this is an experiment and could fall flat on its face, but if it does, you’ve got a front-row seat. I noticed there were several tshirt blogs out there, but many don’t seem to be monetizing their traffic like they could. Some others used affiliate links so heavily that you can’t trust anything the writer has to say. Down the road, tshirtreviewblog.com will make use of affiliate traffic, but I think maintaining editorial integrity is important. I’ll try a number of methods to generate income with tshirtreviewblog.com, and I’ll report what works and what doesn’t.

The most important thing, I think, is that this is something I’m genuinely interested in, and would do for reasons other than money. I think that’s an important test that a lot of people don’t put their projects through. It’s not going to be fun, and it’s going to seem like a chore if you’re writing about something just because it’s a popular or profitable topic.

In the past, BKE has made all its income from eBay, and this will be the first step in diversifying that a bit. Stay tuned.

I can’t say it’s finished, but we’re well on our way now. Big thanks to Jared for his help with cross-browser compatibility. Jared was blogging before there were blogs, back when everything was IE4 HTML and comments were in the guestbook. This is definitely the first site I’ve done that looks better in Firefox than it does in Internet Explorer.

I haven’t really blogged (or had much of a web presence at all, for that matter) for quite a while, but a lot has changed. We’ll probably see some cosmetic and functional changes around here as I work on things. Your patience is, of course, appreciated as I work to get things rolling.

I’ve become a big fan of the “get it out there and tweak it” mentality as of late. In the past I’ve developed ideas for the web on a long dev cycle, with dozens of reworks and trying to be all things on launch day. In some cases, launch day never comes, because I’ve grown too tired and discouraged spending such an enormous amount of time on something with such little return. I’ve realized recently (yeah, I know, welcome to the party, right?) though that the internet has really become a place where it’s a lot more rewarding and indeed a lot simpler to just launch something barebones. It’s a place where you can try an idea cheaply; proof of concept doesn’t cost much around here.

In June, I bought my first place. I had family living with me for some time, but I’m now on my own. I’ve always managed my money carefully, and personal finance has always been an interest of mine. It’s become apparent though just how important those skills are in the last several months. You can only do so much with so much though. I’m happy with work, but buying a house a little before I initially planned to did take away a bit of my buffer zone. The percentage of what I make that is already spoken for, while managable, is higher than I’d like of course. I’ve also become a firm believer in income diversification. If you can’t decrease your expenses below a certain floor level, you just need to make more money.

Enter Brad Kelly Enterprises. I started BKE in July as an umbrella of sorts for all my side projects. You’ll hear me talk about BKE quite a bit I’m sure. I’ve had some success so far, and will likely detail that in the future. Suffice it to say though, that I enjoy what I’m doing and would like to do it all the time. As a quasi-serious goal, I’d like to be making enough through BKE by the end of 2008 that working my office job becomes optional.

Would I really quit a great job to do this all the time? I’ll cross the bridge when I come to it. I think a goal like that’s necessary though. Without it, generating additional income streams becomes just another project I can put on the shelf. I need a deadline to get my butt in gear! Regardless of what happens, this blog will document my progress between now and then.