jasonackerman.com

so i told you a couple posts back about this ‘writing’ site i stumbled across. so far, i’ve written 5 articles for a grand total of just under $20. it works… it’s a ridiculously small amount to pay for writing, but honestly, if you can just poop out these articles at the rate of one every 15 minutes or so, you can do OK. and since the only standard that the articles seem to go through is some kind of search keyword evaluation algorithm, you can pretty much write whatever you want and it doesn’t matter if it’s absolute drivel.

so wanna read my drivel? apparently, page views count for something too. so go to this link: my drivel.

once there, click through to all my articles. there should be 5 more popping up in the next several days. you don’t actually have to READ them, in fact you’re probably better off not, but the click through is appreciated. and if you want to join me in pimping yourself out as a writer for a ridiculously small sum of money (it may be small, but it’s going into the ‘monsters want to visit the northwest for christmas fund’.), let me know, i’ll send you a link. i think i get credit of some kind for referrals as well.

not a bad way to make some coffee money, anyway.

i’ve been simpsonized!

You can be too!

i took this picture in downtown denver the other day. it’s a camera-phone picture, so it’s not the best… it was very sunny and i couldn’t see the screen, so i just pointed and guessed, and did the cropping later. i’ve spent a couple days downtown, the last one i was tagging along with nick as he looked for swanky bars and bistros to apply for bartending jobs at. it’s pretty easy to come across wifi down there, so i mostly just sat and did what work i had to do, then did a fair amount of people watching.

the work i had to do was pretty quick and easy, and just like that it was wrapped up for the day. our work flow, and consequently our cash flow, has slowed to a frightening trickle. a couple weeks into august, and we’ll have nothing coming in. i’m not sure what the deal is, it’s not like we’re in an off-season, or like i haven’t pitched design work to everyone i come into contact with. it’s just not happening. i guess you could pray we come up with something before the september 1 rent payment comes due. it’s looking kinda bleak. i’m not super freaked out about it, i just know that in the past we’ve always had something to fall back on. we’re kinda working without a safety net here, because our safety net is what’s got us into this crunch in the first place. i can’t help but think that God is stretching us to the max for a reason, to clarify that even as hard as things have been, we haven’t had to rely on him as completely as many in the world must.

i also feel like perhaps all this focusing on business this and fence company that has removed our eyes from why we came to denver in the first place. there are some really intriguing ideas and opportunities floating around in my head about the church plant stuff, and i really just want to dive into it headlong and see what happens. maybe that’s what we need to do, i’m not sure. it’s the diving and finding out the pool is empty and i’m just falling at terminal velocity into a concrete bowl that makes it a little harder to ‘just do’. ultimately, it means hitting the fundraising trail again, and counting on friends and family to support us while we begin the process of living out this vision God has given us. fundraising wasn’t exactly a resounding success for us last time we did it, so you can see how we might be a little gun-shy risking our entire livelihood on it. in any case, we came here to live out a vision of planting a specific kind of church– specifics i won’t get into now– and the only thing we really feel compelled to do is push that process forward. if it comes down to flinging espresso drinks at a local coffeehouse in the meantime, i’ll do what i must.

in the meantime, we’ve been exploring boulder and all the cool things it has to offer. we’ve been kicking around at our house, dreaming of what it might be like if we had a couch. we’ve been simultaneously enjoying and cursing the hot weather and dreaming of fall.

I made my first music video today. I hope you like it.

Characters were made at Meez.com. I couldn’t just make the character and post it, I had to get excessively geeky with it. Sorry for the choppy production quality.

i was looking at my website stats today, to see what traffic to this site has been like lately, and what i found shocked me greatly. in june jasonackerman.com welcomed almost 4,000 unique visits. now i can write out about 5% to visits i can trace to my own traffic, and probably another 20% to the cross-posting… but where are the other 3,000 visits coming from? the wide variety of IPs and referring URLs tells me for some reason, this site has gathered up a fair amount of random traffic. a couple posts back i referred to my wallet as a “george costanza wallet”, and “george costanza wallet” was one of the top referring search terms for the last week. this makes me giggle a bit. in all seriousness, if you are visiting this site, please drop a comment. i’d like to know you’re here. especially if i already know you in real life… help me keep in touch with you, because i SUCK at it.

speaking of web traffic, there are a couple sites i’d like to point you to. i’m now officially blogging at Metroblogging Denver (linky!). this site actually doesn’t have any ads that earn me anything… but it’s a super fun site to write for. metblogs are a network of sites geared specifically to life in that particular city.

the second one is Pro Sports Colorado. this is a site i’ve started, and i’ve recruited a couple guys in this area to rant, rave, and otherwise analyze what’s happening in the pro sports scene here in colorado. it’s been a fun adventure, but it will get boring real fast unless we get some more visitors. so if you’re remotely into pro sports, colorado or otherwise, pop on by just for fun.

i also, being a freelance crazy man, signed up for a website that i don’t want to tell you about just yet, until i’m convinced it’s not a scam. it’s a site that signs up anyone and everyone to write ‘content’… it’s nothing more than a giant content aggregator. you write an article on whatever you want, submit it, and if they accept it, they send you a couple bucks via paypal. the quality of writing across the site is remarkably bad, so they obviously aren’t getting edited. the kicker, is that by accepting a couple dollars, you sign over your copyright to this article forever. so i wrote a crappy article about vinyl fence, and sure enough, three days later, i got an offer for $5.45. it feels a bit like authorial prostitution… pimping out your creativity for a ridiculously small sum. all i can figure is that they are using an algorithm to mine the submitted articles for potentially lucrative keywords, and using the traffic they drive to the site and the ad revenue to pay a couple bucks to the author. there’s no attention to quality, it’s definitely throwing tons of mud on the wall. i’m not sure i like it… but, to be honest, i’ll write tons of absolutely crappy articles for $5/each. the one i put in took about 15 minutes to poop out. once i actually get the five bucks in the paypal account, i’ll let you know the site and you can join me in filling the internet with even more useless drivel, and get coffee money for it.

the final bit of plugging is that just to the right there’s a link to my hosting company (you’ll have to click through to jasonackerman.com if you’re reading this on LJ). if you want a nice deal on hosting, click through that link… i get a cut, and you get the same host jasonackerman.com has been on for 4 years with no problems, and it’s cheap… $72/year… that’s $6/month. i own 15 hosting accounts with this company, and i’ve been very happy with them, and i know you will too.

ok. no more advertising, at least for now.

the picture on top is from wyoming… it’s been ridiculously hot here lately, so ice cream seemed appropriate. there is a nifty thunderstorm starting to move in though. it got awful dark in here. i can hear it rumbling in the distance… hopefully it keeps coming and brings cool air with it.

i have another scheduled phone meeting with the c&ma alliance church planting director friday, then there’s a big meeting next friday with a group of guys who have all expressed interest in planting on the west side of denver… i could come out of that meeting with nothing, or i could come out with a church plant team ready to roll, or anything in between. it will be interesting to see what happens… it feels a little weird, like something is being forced together, but it could be really cool. i’m trying to keep an open mind.

dad and michelle are visiting tomorrow through saturday… it will be nice to see them. we miss them a bunch, and since we don’t see the local family as much as we probably could, it will be nice to have them here. i doubt there will be a huge push to go to a 4th celebration… i’ll be happy to just hang out with family.

this concludes today’s episode of “what will jason write about since he has time because there’s no real work to do right now”. join me next time, where i’ll probably write about something else, only with fewer advertisements.