If by now you don’t know, the first thing I do when I go to review a site is think of how the blog will be based on the name. A name of American Drifter to me says that there is someone (male or female, though probably male) who is off traveling the world for whatever reason and now we get the chance to see what its like. I was kind of right, but mostly wrong.
I am a creature of habit and I always take a quick glance at an entire page before reading anything just to get a feel for what is there. This site is a two column layout with all the important non-blog-post stuff on the right. As I went down the column I found out more about the author, his links, and of course his archives which were interesting. Then I noticed something I rarely see on a blog a lot of advertisements other than Google. There are thirteen of them to be exact if you just count the spots and not the ads (Google and eBay have multiple listings). This threw me for a loop.
So with this quandary, I decided to start reading. The author immediately tells us that he isn’t a really a drifter, but he travels around the world for his job. In this year alone he has been in two different states and two different countries; all because of his job. We then quickly learn that his job is at a construction and engineering firm who helps pharmaceutical companies bring new drugs to the market. Of course this isn’t in his blog, this is all in his sidebar.
The blog itself has posts about different aspects of his life. Some are related to his job (about coming home) or the friendships he makes at each location. Other posts are more about him. An interesting post in July of 05 really came out to me. His site was reviewed and they said his site was “Dribble”. This site is hardly anything close to dribble.
It was in this post that I learned the true meaning of all the advertising. He makes a boat load of money off of it. He apparently has good rankings with certain keywords in Google for stuff that you can only find on eBay. And thus he found that eBay has an affiliate program and bam, affiliate programs galore on his site. Since they don’t really take away from the blog itself, and that he is making good money off of them, who am I to say they shouldn’t be there?
One thing that really disappointed me was the infrequency of posting. His archives go July 04, Sept 04, March 05 and then to the present (each month has posts from then on). The author writes well, and writes long posts. This isn’t a “I need something to read in the next minute while I finish my break” type of site. It is in fact a “I need something to read during my entire break” type of site. This site is good and has some gems to it. Take the time and sit down with this blog because I am sure you will find it worth your time.
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