In my last post, I unveiled my little asides/mini-post/Twitter clone and I asked for input on how to work my site feed. Should I include the mini posts or not? Those of you with a preference were unanimous: keep the mini posts in the main feed. Well, you were mostly unanimous. Three feeds were suggested.

I didn't think of it, but a good idea is a good idea. So… there are now three feeds for your subscribing pleasure.

The main site feed, the one you're most likely subscribed to already, will remain as-is and will include all posts. The feed icon in the upper right will continue to point to this feed, which can still be found at http://feastofcrumbs.com/blog/feed/

Category feeds have always been available, even if you never knew about it, and this one is no exception. The feed for only the Cuppa mini posts is linked in the Cuppa box in the sidebar and can be found at http://feastofcrumbs.com/blog/category/cuppa/feed/

Finally, a brand spanking new option. For any of you who don't care for them, there's now a feed that includes all posts except the mini posts. It's an ugly url, and it took some beating on my FeedBurner plugin, but here it is: http://feastofcrumbs.com/blog/?feed=rss2&cat=-33

All three of these feeds are set for autodiscovery in my theme header. If you give your feed reader the blog url (or the url of any other page, for that matter) you should be presented with a choice of feeds. If you're one of the people who wanted to keep the mini posts in the main feed (thanks for your opinions, by the way), you don't need to do anything. Continue using the feed you have been and you'll continue to see all the content.

Lately I've had an inclination to post many small things. I haven't, mostly because I'd feel a little silly throwing out a lot of ten word posts. So I worked out something different.

At the top of the sidebar I now have a special block just for those short posts, titled "Cuppa." It's essentially the same thing as "asides" you might have seen on other blogs. It's kind of my own answer to Twittter. With that block, they're removed from the flow of the rest of the blog so if you don't want to see them, you don't have to.

One question, though. Should I separate that in the site feed? Would those of you who subscribe to my feed prefer a second feed for those posts?

So I got this e-mail a week ago. Apparently someone wants to advertise here. Because I think it's interesting, here's our e-mail conversation so far.

Hi there,

I'm interested in doing some music related advertisement on your site that I think is unique and non-intrusive to your visitors and even adds extra benefits to your blog.

Please let me know if you'd like to hear more about my idea.

Sincerely,
Ad Guy

I'm skeptical, but I'm curious. I'll hear what you have to say. What do you propose?

The Fish

Hi sorry for the delay, had a very busy week

Ok so what I had in mind is every week I compile a list of new songs that will come out in the future that either leaked on the net or have been officially announced. I would like to promote that list. The advertising method, I don't want to put it on the side and have users look at it every time they're on a page but instead at the bottom of a post when you make one, once a week. So on one post a week it would have a small list at the very bottom of it and by tomorrow it's already old news and within a few days most likely on the back pages and archives. The way I can see it's beneficial is it's not taking up room on the side so you can still make more money from conventional advertising. It provides your users with relevant content (new songs) and a user may or may not be interested in it but if a user ever wanted to know upcoming popular songs they need not search google but just visit your site instead.

What do you think,
Ad Guy

Is this list text-only, or does it include images?

Will this carry any restrictions on the content of the post to which it is attached? Will I be free to editorialize on your advertisement in any way I choose, even if it's disparagingly?

Will there be any contract or other obligation? Will I be free to end my involvement at any time, for any reason?

How many items would be in this list? Three? 10? 50?

Is advertising content always chosen by you, or is there a "cafeteria style" option where I can choose one of several ads for any given week?

Will I be free to present that list any way I choose or are you expecting that list to appear in a particular format, ie, will you be sending me a block of code to paste or a script to reuse?

If the ad must be displayed in a specific way, do you have an example I can see?

Will I be free to exclude the advertisement from my site feed if I choose?

Will your advertisements attempt to set cookies with my visitors? If so, from what domains?

Do you have a privacy policy I can read? If so, what parts of that policy might apply specifically to people viewing your ads on my site, as opposed to viewing content on your site?

Will your ad trigger pop-ups, pop-unders, windows that resize themselves, JavaScript alerts, etc?

On what basis will I be compensated? By pageview? By clickthrough?

How often is payment sent, and by what method?

How long has this advertising program been in existence?

How many other bloggers participate in this program?

What's the turnover rate for participants in this program?

 
I might have more questions later. This is just what I have right off the top of my head.

 
The Fish

I haven't heard back from him yet. Do you think I will? Can you think of any good questions I should have asked?

Update: Ad guy responded very early Friday morning. His responses are italicized. Spelling mistakes are all his. My response follows.

Is this list text-only, or does it include images?
Text with a few links and no images

Will this carry any restrictions on the content of the post to which it is attached? Will I be free to editorialize on your advertisement in any way I choose, even if it's disparagingly?
You can edit it any way you want just have ot elave the links in tact

Will there be any contract or other obligation? Will I be free to end my involvement at any time, for any reason?
Absolutly not, 5 seconds of your time one day a week is all that's needed

How many items would be in this list? Three? 10? 50?
On some weeks 3 on some up to 10 varies on how many songs are announced

Is advertising content always chosen by you, or is there a "cafeteria style" option where I can choose one of several ads for any given week?
We do have different styles

Will I be free to present that list any way I choose or are you expecting that list to appear in a particular format, ie, will you be sending me a block of code to paste or a script to reuse?
You are able to do it any way you want

If the ad must be displayed in a specific way, do you have an example I can see?
Certainly, here's an example (this is a week with more then usual songs)

Will I be free to exclude the advertisement from my site feed if I choose?
The content would not be allowed to be removed from the post, however, you may exclude it from your feed.

Will your advertisements attempt to set cookies with my visitors? If so, from what domains?
no cookies, it's just text and a link

Do you have a privacy policy I can read? If so, what parts of that policy might apply specifically to people viewing your ads on my site, as opposed to viewing content on your site?
it's nothing that serious that requires anything drastic such as that

Will your ad trigger pop-ups, pop-unders, windows that resize themselves, JavaScript alerts, etc?
Defiently not

On what basis will I be compensated? By pageview? By clickthrough?
Flat fee per post. $10 or so per post

How often is payment sent, and by what method?
Paypal, weekly and within minutes after you put the code up

How long has this advertising program been in existence?
It's private by us, it's not a mainstream thing

How many other bloggers participate in this program?
Maybe 7 or so that we contacted

What's the turnover rate for participants in this program?
Not quite sure what you mean

I might have more questions later. This is just what I have right off the top of my head.
Sure but this is not anything that's extreme or ties you into any contractual agreemnts, we're simply just looking for a few extra places to put ads without any strings attached

I thought of two more questions.

Can I choose a different advertising interval? Say, twice a week, once a month or every three months?

If I decide to stop participating in your program, is it possible to resume participation again later?

My friends also have two questions I should ask you.

A reader wants to know if all the links will be at the same url or if you're building Page Rank with new urls every week. This question seems particularly savvy since he asked this before he saw your response to the battery of questions I asked in my last e-mail. Given that I'm able to change the presentation of your links any way I please and I'm able to exclude them from my feed but I'm not allowed to remove them from old posts, this does give the impression that you're less concerned about clickthroughs than you are about the long-term existence of incoming links. Are the ads all about Page Rank then, or what?

Also, another reader wants to know the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow.

Thanks,
The Fish

I await his next response with tingly nipples.

Er, 2007. There are no good rhymes for "seven." Sidebar-less heaven in 2007? That just sounds dumb. Anyway, no more sidebar. I was mostly rather fond of my sidebar. It had good information and neato things. Plus it had that super-spiffy Docking Boxes script.

The one thing I did not like about my sidebar was how damn slow it was.

I keep tabs on all sorts of statistics from my blog, including page generation times. On average, one of my pages took 2.5 to 3.0 seconds to generate. That's crazy. And that's just the time to generate the page on the server. That doesn't count everything else that goes into a single page load. Clearly, all the spiffy data and the pretty shiny things were dragging me down. The sidebar had to go.

And go it has. Archives, categories, tags and search have been offloaded to a separate Page. The favorite blogs, top commenters, subscription links, flickr, last.fm and del.icio.us lists have all been shuffled down to a newly expanded footer. A few other items made it to other Pages or the brand new tab bar above the content area. Everything else was dropped completely.

Half the footer loads separately through AJAX and now my leaner, meaner pages generate in 0.5 to 0.6 seconds. Great success!