Fighting Eric Jones: How reCAPTCHA and Maspik Saved My Sanity

I despise Eric Jones. Like medieval-level despisal. Like tar-and-feathering, branding-with-a-hot-iron, pouring-boiling-oil-off-the-castle-ramparts kind of despisal. Eric Jones – a pseudonym for a well-known SEO spambot – has sent me over 2,000 emails. Most of them come from a Gmail account, like eric.jones.z.mail@gmail.com or something like that. They promise lead magnets, SEO

Don’t Forget to Disable Ads on These Pages!

Programmatic advertising is becoming the new status quo. But with auto ads comes the danger that the computer will place ads where you don’t want them! Because no one likes a webpage where Adsense just vomited all over the HTML. If you allow ads to overrun your blog, your Reader

Google Betrayed Me. I Lost 40% of My Traffic.

Google has betrayed me. I have a site in the Outdoor Travel niche (called “the Site”) which recently got the stuffing taken out of it.  You can see the carnage yourself. This is a 14-day snapshot of the Site’s Google Search impressions and organic clicks. September 20th was my Black

Should You Start Blogging With One Or Multiple Websites?

Should you stick with one blog or launch multiple websites? My quick Google search didn’t turn up any studies or polls, so you’re getting my opinions only. No double-blind scientific studies. Sorry! We can all agree that either extreme is counterproductive. You don’t want all your eggs in one basket.

My Personal Finance Website That Went Nowhere

Confession: I founded a personal finance website that went absolutely, totally nowhere. Some backstory: One blog isn’t good enough for me. There’s too much at stake. I can’t entrust a full-time income to a single blog that could be wrecked by an unbridled algorithm or bled dry by a slashed

Yeah, This Blog Has Awful SEO

As of January 21, 2022, FLUB has rather awful SEO. You may have noticed this dichotomy while studying one of my other articles. “For a guy that writes about the blogosphere,” you think, “this guy doesn’t practice what he preaches!” Touche, Reader. Touche. But you’re right. I think I’ve uploaded

Down in the Dumps (or Why Blogging Is Hard)

Hello Reader, Do you know why blogging is hard? Because you don’t exist yet. That’s right. You, Reader, are not even real. Not yet, anyway. Blogging: A Long, Winding Road As of January 20, 2022, FlubBlog.com has received exactly two clicks from Google Search. (hold your applause, please) Another one

Are You an Affiliate Marketing Tinkerbell?

Affiliate marketing sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Do you remember when you first learned about affiliate marketing? “Whoa …. I can get paid a commission just if someone clicks through my link? That’s so .. EASY! How hard can it be to get a click? Cute cats get a bazillion

Get Off the Social Media Hamster Wheel, Blogger!

You will not find a link to Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, or Snapchat anywhere on this blog. (And no, that’s not because I’m a cantankerous Luddite who thinks social media is to friendship what pornography is to sex. I have other reasons for thinking that.) No, you won’t find many

Why You CAN’T Start a WordPress Site in One Hour!

I’m not one to bury the lead. No, you can’t launch a WordPress blog in an hour. This headline isn’t clickbait.There is no “…. but wait!” coming.There is no “ …. Unless you purchase my $99 course!” call-to-action. This is just a fish slap across the face called “reality.” Here’s