Majin Planet

Why This Article is too long Part 1

Before I start off this is a rant, and it’s a long rant. The areas I am covering is that of web design, back linking, Google’s control of the web, scams and how the internet in less then three years will no longer be free and most of what we do no on the web will no longer be allowed. How Wal-Mart rules the world now and more little stories of mine. I have a few lame jokes in this as well as some good points and options that I want to share. In the end, it comes down to one thing and that is we must be able to think for ourselves and not get sucked into silly scams and most of all just have some fun and not worry about whether or not your web site is worth the time of day. Shall we begin?

Back in 1997 when I first took in this whole web thing and start my path down that as a webmaster, I reach out and gathered as much info about it as I could. In fact my last three years in high school I spent more time reading about the internet then living the high school life.

My first book I check out at the local library about HTML and how to make it big on the web. I do not remember the name of the book, but the main point it covered was that content is king. Every book I read and pick up from then to 2004 said the same thing. Every online article about HTML and the web, all of it. Content, content, and content. You know before I start web design I didn’t even know how to spell content and now I have nightmares about it. The fact of the matter is, content is king is a scam. Now when I say scam I don’t mean what we know as a scam, but as something that was miss lead to help one become rich while the rest of just took in the bull shit because no one (not even those writing the shit) knew what the hell they where taking about. In fact 90% of everyone who where “experts” in web design had no clue. Sure more people know now, but at what cost?

Well fact is this, every one said content is king, but they never really went past that. Maybe I just looked at the wrong books or something. The fact is the right content is king, anyone can make a web site and fill it with content. Do you know that most web sites don’t even follow this rule? Because you know when it comes down to it, its about break the rules and thinking out side the box. A mistake I may have been making the last 10 years. Most of the content out there seats into two areas, the first the most common and that is the crap that is put up over and over again. In either the same format or reworded or in another format. The next is user created and/or what we know as blogs. After all we all love blogs because we have nothing better to do then to blog about what something no one cares about but you and your dog. This article itself falls into that. While people reading this may find most of my jokes lame or stupid. Some will find that I made some good points and will go on about who they agree or disagree. Then those fans of mine who will see this and go, SHIT another long as article and will skip it. What can I say I know you better then you think.

In fact I made this super long because I don’t want you to read it. After all its a long rant on how I think all this SEO crap is nothing more but BS scams that do nothing more then create a generation of stupid people who can’t think for themselves. And you know if I keep going on and making the same point over and over, maybe finally one of my pointless articles will get digged. I mean that’s what it’s about, getting someone to link to it so that more people will get to read my long article full of… well I wont say it, moving on now.

One of the biggest scams I have ever taken part in has been the link trading, affiliating trading, whatever the hell you want to call it scam. Why is trading links a scam? Here is why, first the idea is that you contact a web site and ask them if you would put a link on their site to your site and you’ll do the same. This adds to your Page Rank, and the more back links you have, the better rank in Google, Yahoo, and many other Search Engines. That’s good right? No, in fact Google has made back linking so hard now that its now a bad thing.

First you have a web site, its nice, has a good amount of content. You search Google using keywords you think visitors will use to find your web site. You find web sites that have equal or better content then you. You then request a link trade with them. The problem is the chances of them even answering your request is slim to nothing. After a few hours of doing this, you start searching for ways to get back links and let me tell you there are some big scams out there.

The biggest one is SEO which is a program that allows you to get back links. But guess what? Google and most search engines will rank you low for using them, so all that time you spend on working that SEO project got you no where fast, sure you may see a boost early but in the long run it doesn’t work. It’s much like those Surf for Credit scams, which are better because most are free. Never once have I found a SEO that is free.

Oh wait but Google has great tools that allow you to get higher ranking. Wrong, its just another scam to pull you away from what’s really important. Google Site Maps, why use it? You don’t get added to the search index any faster and at times I’ve heard stories that it’s hurt a site rather then help it. What I found funny was the option to remove one domain from the index. Oh yeah every site has two domains, one with and one with out the www. Funny most people will have it point to one and remove the other because what do they tell you? Having both listed will cut your PR in half! Oh know! I can’t have that, because PR is king and with out a high PR form Google, my web site is worthless.

Man how Google rules the internet now. I wont lie to you, I have been sucked into so many of these scams, from top sites, link farms, networks, voting sites, link trading, friends, affiliates and all that good stuff. Where has it got me? Not that far and the funny thing is you always hear about all these stories about how people make it big on the internet. Where are these people? I love to met them. Some may say that I’m just saying this because I haven’t hit it big. Sure when I started out back in 1997 I too thought I could make it big online and make millions. I even play it safe, follow the rules and time and time again each program, tool and rule to become big failed, even know I follow their rules and played their games.

But watch out for back linking. Sure you may have a site about Video Games, you find a site that has a much higher page rank then you, they agree to trade links with you. Oh man now I’m going to get traffic. After 3 months my page rank is the same. Oh know, my links in Google are lower then before. Why? Because you linked to a bad site or at least Google has label them back. In fact if you link to one bad site or as many call “bad neighborhoods” it can hurt you lot. But that’s not the kicker, there is such a link as link trading too much and if you can get hurt for doing that. I read an article a few days ago that link trading isn’t really the next step now, oh well thanks I wasted 5 years in working my back linking to find out that all that time was basically a waste.

Here is a little link trading story for you, okay not to long ago I got an email from someone requesting affiliate link trade. To sum up the email they (it was short) “I think your site is good and I think we can both offer each others visitors with great content.” Now I knew right off the bat I wasn’t going to trade links with them. Simple was that they request a affiliate link trade. After going to their site I knew that they hadn’t taken any time to look at my site. Not only did I state on my FAQ page that I no longer do affiliates but no where do I say anything about if you want to affiliate contact me. Next they said we both have the same content, which was a lie. I had far more content and their content was of media style and a simple look at my link page would tell you I already have to many of those kind of sites. So why would I need another one?

Well so I thought that maybe I can make something out of this. I made an offer and simple drop the offer and then asked what they want in return. All they wanted was traffic. Well I then stated that I don’t get much traffic and that I could care less if I got 10 hits a year or 1000 a day. Now keep in mine I totally looked over their site and saw on their affiliate request page they had what many do, a require number of visitors per day and let me tell you it was a big number. So when taking in everything I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere but down hill. Then I got the kicker and what makes the story worth telling. The email I got back was that they didn’t fine my offer worth anything to them, being that they couldn’t see what was in it for them and also they had done a traffic rank search on Alex and found that my site was ranked way low when compare to theirs and then thought to kind of insult me by saying they be doing me a favor.

This is an example of someone link trading and not giving a crap about the sites they link to. If the webmaster care so much about the traffic the site had so that to get more traffic for their site, why not just simple do the search first? And another thing when did Alex become the all tell of what rank a site is? The data is only collected form a small part of the real traffic on the web, so it can’t be taken as official. I don’t think anyone will be able to track how much traffic any site has. But wait their are SEO tools that can do that for you. Because when you are looking for advertisers having lot of daily visitors is important. Now if you think I’m talking about you, feel free to send me a nasty email telling me how much of an ass hole I am and how much my web site sucks! Because after all your the one who set the high standard and your the one who contact me and your the one who didn’t do your research. Lesson, if your going to request a link trade with a site, god damn it do some research!

Speaking of that, why both? After all every moment you spend worrying about how many back links you have, who is linking to you, how much money your making from ads and crap you could spend making more content for your site. In the last two years I have learn something, something special that I like to pass on to my fellow webmasters, problem is most of them are stupid to understand it. In those years I have gain more visitors, no I mean more loyal people who come here looking for something I offer. I didn’t get them because of how many back links I have or what my Page Rank is. But because they either knew of the site, someone told them or that because they found the site in a search.

Lot of the growth of Majin Planet I can’t really take any credit for. After all back in 2003 when I was trying to get my fag of web site Anime-ENT off the ground, Majin Planet was kicking ass and taking names. That credit goes to the former webmasters who did more then I will ever do here. Now I know some of you will debate that, but the sad truth is I would rather have the community from then then now. Don’t get me wrong the people now are great, its the rest of the world the bugs the shit out of me.

Things have changed so much, and I some who have fallen behind. Maybe its because I believe that it has to be hard and things can’t be that easy. I guess I’m just old, even know I’m only 24 years old. But in web years I guess I’m a dead breed that needs to be taken out back and shot. Over the last few days I have been looking at all the pointless crap I have been doing just to get more traffic. When I could have spent more time working on shit I should be working on.

The community has also changed and I’m not talking about anime or anything. I mean webmaster communities. The fact is I don’t use the internet for a personal life. As you will note I have never posted my real life picture online, not that I’m ugly has hell (as I am, can’t lie about it) but because I don’t see it as a tool to pick up woman or to become king of the world. I only use the net for what it was met for back in the 90s, information. I either downloads shows I in any other case would never be able to watch, read about those shows, read about crap I know too much about already or things I have no idea about. Work on making my site the best that I know it can be. Check out news on stuff that I like and then maybe chat with a few people I call friends and mostly of the time I generally only want to chat about my site.

A bad habit of mine, and I know most people I chat with hate it and that more or less why they generally change the subject or stop responding to me. But that’s just how I am on that crap and I guess we all have are flaws and we have to deal with it. Okay lets move back on track.

The funniest debate I have had about web standards has been that of the growing line of wide screen resolutions. 8 out of 10 web designers still design with 800×600 in mine. I had a little debate with a friend of mine not to long ago. I asked him to show me a beta of his site and he did. Now I’m not the standard 1024×768 and I had a little scroll, I really hate that (Guess I’m picky) so I zoom it out to 800×600, as I have a little FireFox tool that lets me do that and it was clear to me this site was design for resolutions bigger then 1024×768. Is that bad no it isn’t. However when I state it, the responds I got was very funny to me.

What I find funny in more and more along many webmasters is that because more and more are computers coming with large wide screens we should design for them and say the hell with the people who haven’t upgraded. What’s funny? Same thing happen when 1024×768 start to take over 800×600. The difference is that if you did what I just said everyone would hate on you. Dude what about your 800×600 users? Well now its what about your 1024×768 users? Another issue I see is lot of sites love using px for font size. Sure back on 800 days and 1024 days you could get away with it. However the wider you get and more px on the screen the smaller that little px gets and the longer the lines get. So what happens? How many people do you really think who have wide screens maximize their browser to the full width of the window? I do, well that’s great, but your visitors may not be.

The fact is this, any design no matter if its graphic base or text base should work at any size, no matter how large or small. After all Cell Phones, PDA’s are more common now and those are small screens. Hell my DS can surf the web for god sakes. So while standards have gotten better, you can’t forget about the old because it just looks sloppy as hell. And while I’m at it, I know the person this happen with will read this and go what the hell? Well nothing personal, fact is it was a good example and to those people who say screw you I’ll do it my way, more power to you.

Now at the start I said that the Internet wouldn’t be free in three years time. You be thinking… yeah it was never free I pay for access!! True you do. However you can go to any web site and download almost anything. Like music, movies, TV shows, video games. You can even download porn or sell your crap no one is ever going to buy. What would happen if you could no longer do those things? You may ask how would it ever get to that point? Well I could see it happening because more and more people are making money off of the net that is pissing off people who use to get that money. One example are movies. Sure you can right now watch almost any move every made online right now for free. If you have a few hours and know what to look for and how to find it you can fine it.

Did you know because of all these new online rental services, such as ones where you can pay to download a movie for a set number of days or steam them on your computer has cost Hollywood to talk up a strike coming in summer 2008. No shit, its true. In fact I care so much I haven’t bother to do any research on it, well that’s not true. I know that they want to redo the contracts so that those people who should get paid from new media (the web) get paid. Now I want to myself get into the movie business so I feel them and hell even if you made the worst movie ever (Catwoman) you should at least get your cut if people are watching it online for less then $3 bucks. But god damn it just strike already. Stop talking about it. That’s like saying your going to start working out and for the next 40 years the only work out you ever got was playing your Wii.

Did you know that Napster was shut down? Yeah turns out some guys start it up as a free music sharing site and everyone could download any song they wanted for free. That’s crazy and it cost the Music Industry so much money they sue and won the case. Crazy stuff there, but oh wait why is Napster still up. Oh it cost now to download, well what do you know. But did you know you can still get any song you want right now for free? No shit its true. So all that stuff about shutting Napster down and then bring it back as a paid site didn’t really do anything but add another hour of searching for everyone.

Taking both my movie and music examples that just shows you how they “the copyright holders” will get so crazy about this they will force the internet to go paid and will make it where the only way you can go online is if they know what your doing and who your doing it with. Because we want to be save. All we need now is for the terrorist to take to the web and we have ourselves some massive online attack. I mean really, I get it you want to be paid for your hard work and you should be, but remember that your part of the problem to why people boot leg crap to start with. Sure some people do because they can. Other do it because they have no other choice.

After all who in the hell would want to pay $15.00 for a CD with one maybe two good songs and 11 other crap filled songs you’ll never listen too. I mean hell I have to pay high taxes so my public service leaders can buy what they want. In case you didn’t pick up on it yet I’m an American and if your not in the USA your partly lucky. Even know right now I have the freedom to say what I want and do what I want (for the most part) it may some day not be. The point is maybe if they spent more time looking at the whole problem and not just begin asses with large sticks up their asses we may be able to save the web from becoming a large ass plus service. Can we say boot leg web anyone?

So I guess the best way to end this article or part one is to go into some sort of closing statement, but the funny thing about that is I don’t need to. Why? Well for one its my article and I can end it right now if I want too….

… or keep going. Fact is the ending of this was at the start in the first paragraph. In case you miss that guess you didn’t read and just figure you read this because most of the time they repeat everything they said (just the points that is). So that ends Part one and if I have to write Part 2 I’m going to kill someone.