So it’s 2019….A New Year

A new year, a new season! January is typically the month I rest up and take a little break, but this year the new season seems to have come earlier….. working on websites for The Bangor Art Society, Belfast Harbor Artisans, converting GlassOrchids.com over to GlassOrchids.art, working on a site for my sister, and one for SouthWestHarbor Artisans…and helping River Arts with theirs.

Getting the agendas set for the coop meetings this weekend, and entering pieces for shows at River Arts and the Bangor Art society. I need to organize my studio and stock, and make new work, and do taxes… planning my garden for this spring….applying for shows……why did I ever think Jan/Feb were slow months?

This year I’ve left 2 coops, and am going to try and pare down what I make to those things that have been selling, and things I just love to make. I’m hoping to focus a bit on obtaining a few new wholesale accounts too. 20+ years doing this and I’ve still not found the Golden Mix, the formula to maximize income based on wholesale. retail, coops, consignment, online sales……. sometimes I feel like Jason of the Argonauts.

Now, just to get back to something I said above.. I’ve moved GlassOrchids.com to GlassOrchids.art.. why? Well, maybe you’ve read my saga of Google Jail? GlassOrchids.com is in google jail so I get no traffic or search engine placement. I made an innocent / but ignorant mistake and will pay for it forever apparently….. but hopefully with GlassOrchids.ART I’ll be able to recover…. time will tell….

Anyway, till next time,

Nancy

The continuing saga of Google Jail

Well apparently one of my ads for GlassOrchids.com has been released from Google Jail and  has made it through the gauntlet of Google ad approval. I have no idea why it’s different than the ones that have been denied. I’ll let you know if/when I figure it  out. This one seems to be targeting mostly mobile devices. I guess any new traffic is good but it sure isn’t transparent on how Google Ad approval actually works.

Anyway, I’m thinking about what to do next to get more traffic to this site given my striped pajamas. I’ve got two solutions that I’m going to try:

  1. Adding a few pages to my other site NancyDaviesTang.com , and pointing them to this site and then submitting the new pages to get crawled might work.
  2. Creating a mirror site (already  registered a name GlassOrchidz.com.. the Z for zombie version… raised from the dead and all that) and pointing it to this site too.

The second takes much longer to implement so I’ll work on the first one first. I have been known as being stubborn, and I’m not giving up.  If nothing else, my saga should serve as a warning and education to others…..

~Nan

Google Jail Continues & DuckDuckGO

Can DuckDuckGo replace Google?

For very personal reasons I’m beginning to think Google has entirely too much power over our internet lives. As a business, being well indexed is integral to survival, and yet, it’s becoming more necessary to pay to get a high index placement.  In the categories I’m in, companies like Etsy and Alibaba get the highest placement. A small, individual run company has a hard time competing with those companies.

 Awhile back I posted about the error I made way back in 2013 by not replacing an image in a free template; this led to my being removed from the google search engine because of a DCMA complaint by the owner of the image (it was the face of a woman, stock image).  Google Jail is for life. Rather a harsh sentence for such a small and innocent infraction; especially given the importance of being found in the google search engine. As you may have seen, if you follow my blog, I did find a workaround and some of my pages are now being indexed.

No Ads for you [said in the voice of the soup nazi]

So, I figured, hey, let me pay Google by running some ads and, hopefully, my site will start to get some traffic again. But no, no Nannette, you can’t do that.  Apparently Google will still not allow me to buy an ad because of that original DCMA complaint. Even though my site has been ported to a different server, a different platform, and the offending image and template are long gone. Now I’m not saying I had no culpability in my own downfall, but my error was one of ignorance. I do feel there should be a solution to get out of jail before the end of time.

I am indexed in Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo more and more because of a growing concern about internet privacy. I’m pretty happy with it so far and my site is listed on the first page of the search for some of my key words; as it used to be in Google.

Check out  DuckDuckGo

Like Facebook, Google needs to be replaced. Both  have grown too large and serve those who pay to play more than  fair and open access to information. Both use our information, and invade our privacy, in ways they should not; although we allow them to do so by playing.  IMO, It’s high time the next new thing appeared on the horizon.

WordPress Technical Support & Development

WordPress Technical Support:

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Press Releases

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