According to his profile, Gary, or GMan1948, our blog author, has worn many “hats” over the years. He is a “semi-retired” CEO and bookseller.
The first thing that happened when I clicked on the URL to review his site was it crashed my computer.
After rebooting my system, I tried again. His blog forced a java update onto my PC, which I totally didn’t like. I use Firefox, so I guess that I wasn’t as up to date as I thought I was. After a few minutes of java updating and another cup of coffee retrieved, the site was loaded and I proceeded to get to work.
The top of the page under the blogger banner has six banner sized news and advertisement bars and a small calendar navigation box to the right for his blog content. The news and advertising banners weren’t interesting to me, so I began to scroll down the page. I scrolled down past articles about marketing and articles about advertising. I encountered his profile on the right sidebar, and more news and more advertising in the main part of the blog. Good grief, where is the content? More ads! eBay! Dell! Amazon! Blog Blaster!
Finally, an entry. It was dated recently, so I knew this wasn’t a shell of a site to click through for ad revenue, Gary’s content began more than halfway down the blog.
You know what my criticism is here, don’t you? One shouldn’t have to scroll until one’s fingers ache to get to blog content. The sad thing is, all that scrolling was for naught. The blog content wasn’t all that thrilling, and quite a let-down since I had to dig for it so deeply. Gary blogs other people’s content, about microbusiness, launching websites for small businesses, and how to make money with your blog.
Blogvermercial indeed.
The only saving grace is that he actually attributes sourcing to the authors of the articles he quotes extensively or reprints in total. How incredibly refreshing! I have reviewed blogs here on Weblog Review where the content is obviously lifted from other sources and the blogger NEVER links back or attributes ownership. So it was nice to see actual “about the author” information on each of the entries for the past several months.
The site archives go back to February 2006, and it was only by going back there did I find any content written by the blogger himself, from his opinion and position. Commercials he hates, commercials he loves, how he used Craigslist and wanted to know what other people thought about bartering.
That’s a blog. Interesting,
The past couple of months worth of entries are simply cut and paste reposts of other articles. I think Gary’s blog, opinions and voice have been eaten alive by the concepts of advertising and marketing on the web. And this is really sad, because I bet Gary has some great stories, anecdotes about customer service and business, and opinions that are better than what he is culling and pasting from the web.
That’s something that happens in our modern consumer culture. And it is kind of sad because I enjoyed reading the early months of the blog.
In short — the ads and all the noise at the top of the page totally detract from the site, and the author is lost. I give the site a 2. I see hope and potential if Gary gets back to writing and speaking his own voice instead of letting other articles fill the space. Hopefully he will. He has two other blogs in his Technorati profile, so perhaps those spots are where he shines. I’ll have to visit and see… but right here at the Blogvermercial? Not so much.