Category: Blog Info

I sent the post below from the Kuwait Bookshop via 3G. The size of the image is small but when you click it you get a bigger one although at a very low resolution. I could probably figure out how to make it a higher resolution but then each post will cost me 500fils or something crazy like that considering I will be photo blogging while roaming..

For those of you who signed up to the forum in the past few days please be patient for me to approve you. I have 41 new accounts I need to approve manually and the connection here is extremely slow.

The Forum on this blog has a “For Sale” section where users place items they want to sell and other users in the forum can bid on them. There have been a lot of good deals in the forum recently for example, a nearly new Xbox 360 with 13 games, extra pads, and even an extra hard drive got sold for KD200, I personally purchased an excellent condition Apple G4 iBook for KD90, and just a while ago someone sold their 1 month old 4GB iPod nano for just KD30.

If you haven’t checked out the forum yet you should. Its a great place to meet people and there are a ton of things for sale there. Here is the link. [Forum]

I am back in Kuwait so things should get back to the way they were by tomorrow.

It seems there is someone going around pretending to be me and leaving some strange and nasty comments on various blogs. Well that person is not me and the easy way to tell is from the email address they use. The fake mark uses the email address [email protected] while I use a completely different one. I only post comments on a few blogs and those bloggers know the email address I use.

Just a heads up…

I just got a phone call from my Mercedes contact asking me nicely if I could remove my negative review of the car so I complied. I didn’t have to remove the review, I did it out of courtesy because I didn’t want to cause the person any problems. Just wanted everyone to know why that post disappeared.

Had a minor problem with the site but everything is back to normal. If you posted a comment today its gone since I had to revert to yesterdays back up of the site. Forum will be back up tomorrow.

update: Forum is now back up

I just want to introduce my new sponsor to replace Mercedes called Q8Flowers. You might remember them because I posted about them back in November. I had ordered flowers for Nataly from them since they were the only flower shop in Kuwait where I could place an order and pay for it online. If you haven’t checked them out you can do so by visiting their website located at www.q8flowers.com

As you probably noticed I have a new sponsor, Al Ghalia Group who are based in Bahrain. This means I now have a total of 5 banners on my blog which I won’t deny is a lot. I have tried my best not to clutter up the blog too much with banners and this is honestly the best I can do.

Like you I would rather this blog had no banners at all but the banners are there for a reason… they provide me with extra income. I understand these banners decrease the aesthetics of the blog but the money is actually pushing me to continue blogging.

Blogging daily is difficult, its a lot of pressure and it takes time. I currently try to post a minimum of 3 posts a day so I could remain consistent. If I didn’t have the income coming in from the banners I might have stopped blogging ages ago or at least I would have stopped posting as often.

Now money usually is not a comfortable subject to discuss but this is a blog and I think its important for me to be as open as I can with my readers.

How much money am I making? Well I have decided to share with everyone a PDF file I send to people who request information on advertising on the blog. Its my rate card and you can download it by clicking [Here]. I wasn’t sure if I should make this information public or not but I figured if I was a reader I would be curious to know how much money this blog is making the same way I am curious to know how much money engadet or digg make. Well as you can see from the rate card this blog is currently making nearly $3000 a month. This is a good chunk of cash and I hope now everyone understands why I have so many banners here.

I have not sold out. Just because I am making money from the blog doesn’t mean I have sold out. All I am doing is cashing in on my 15 minutes of fame. When something sucks I will still say it sucks and when something is good I will still say its good.

Anyway it feels awkward sharing this information but I hope everyone especially my long time readers understand the reason for all these banners. Thank you!

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update: If anyone has any questions you can ask by leaving a comment below and I will reply to it.

One reader, Biohazard asked an important question which is Can I bash a sponsors product? The answer is simply no. When Alghanim Automotive were my sponsors I told them that if a cars they lent me to test drive sucked then I would post negative stuff about it. So what they did was just lend me their best cars. Now though what I do is tell my sponsors that if they lend me a product to try out and it turns out to suck I will just not mention the product at all. This way they aren’t afraid to send me more stuff to try out.

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update 2: I changed the location of the new banner because of complaints. If you prefer the new location over the previous one please leave a comment below. In case you missed it here is a screen shot of the previous location. [Screen Shot]

I would like to welcome Mercedes Benz to the site, they are one of my new sponsors. They’ve taken the skyscraper ad on the bottom of the sidebar and will be us for a few weeks. I hope they will lend me one of their cars to try out, maybe the new S Class, or an SL, or CLS or even an SLK. The weather is cool and I wouldn’t mind driving around in a convertible, hint hint.

As some of you might have noticed I have a new sponsor, Waa7a.com. They will be replacing Al-Ghanim Automotive who had been with me since April of last year.

Waa7a is a restaurant database and review site. Its all user generated content so if there is a restaurant thats not listed you can add it and if there is a restaurant you want to rate and review you can do so. Someone for example gave Hard Rock Cafe a positive review which I disagreed with so I wrote another review that reflected my experience which was negative one. Its a pretty cool idea and should be even cooler once a lot more people start posting their reviews.

The site design and features are still being adjusted and fine tuned so if anyone has any feedback you can email it to them or leave it below in the comments. I am posting reviews there under the name “Mark” and so far I think I have only 5 or 6 reviews.

So if you feel like writing reviews and rating restaurants then check out Waa7a.com

Here are the statistics for 2006 but I am telling you from now, 2007 is going to be a lot more fun thats for sure. I already have a couple of cool things lined up including new sponsors and new stuff for the blog, one which I am hoping works out soon because it will involve me and a couple of super cars. Thank you everyone for being part of this blog either by contributing with the comments or even just by visiting. Thank you!

Total amount of unique visitors for 2006: 901,989
Total amount of page impressions for 2006: 7,863,277
Highest amount of unique visitors per month: December – 117,943
Highest amount of page impressions per month: November – 1,224,453

If you haven’t checked the Forum yet then you are missing out on a lot. With over 21,000 articles and 635 users its really an informative place. There is even a section for buying and selling stuff where people have sold things ranging from mobile phones and Nintendo Wii’s to laptops and cars. So pass by and check it out. [Forum]

In the comments to my Nearly There post, a reader commented saying that I needed to “add more interesting stuff which appeals to a broader audience”. I try my best to scour the web everyday trying to find interesting stuff to post, I also spend most of my day looking for stuff to post wherever I go and some days I find a lot of stuff and other days its a struggle.

My question is what would you, my readers like to see more of in this blog? I don’t know if I will change the content much since the formula at the moment must be working if people are coming back, but it would still be interesting to read what you guys would like.

November had the highest amount of visitors come to this site. The total for November was 97,411 unique visitors and they generated 160,612 hits. If November had 31 days we would have been able to top 100,000 visitors. We’re nearly there.

I was talking to one of the owners of Choowy Goowy when we ended up talking about different kinds of cookies and what cookies I would make if I had a bakery. One thing led to another and basically me and Nat are now invited to create our own cookies. Tomorrow evening we will be visiting the Choowy Goowy bakery and with their help we will be creating our own cookies. We will experiment with a variety of flavors and ideas and our best creation will be sold by Choowy Goowy for a limited time.

Now I have a lot of ideas for cookies but I thought I would share them with you guys first. Some sound strange but I want to do them out of curiosity and they might even end up tasting good:

– Cookie with a soft nutella chocolate core
– Pizza Cookies. Cookie dough mixed with tomato paste and stuffed with mushrooms and olives
– 4 Cheese cookies
– Chocolate chip cookie dipped in chocolate sauce
– Rice krispy cookies
– Plain cookie dipped in chocolate sauce topped with cornflakes
– Tempura cookies
– A healthy cookie probably stuffed with broccoli and something
– Bubblegum flavored cookies
– Zaatar cookies
– Cookies with cocopuffs
– Oreo cookies
– Choco-Banana cookies

After sharing my ideas with the Choowy Goowy guy I felt he was going to take his invite back. Luckily he didn’t or should I say hasn’t yet. I will continue brainstorming on some cookie ideas and might add more to the list.