Check this out -
http://www.istockphoto.com/design_spotlight_details.php?ID=7757
My photo (From costa rica) was used in a design spotlight at iStockPhoto. It was actually used in a postcard to promote a Yoga retreat in Costa Rica.
Cool.
Yesterday Michal and I saw a really good tragi-comic play - Mikveh. I really recommend it, for people living in Israel, that is 
Heya.
My friend Nir has a new travelogue site. He is a gifted photographer, although I personally think the travelogue is a bit messy. But the pictures are great.
Hey.
A lot of people have asked me recently for help about writing web pages. From actually writing it, to hosting, domain name choosing, how to make money, AdSense, how to attract visitors and more.
So after a few long discussions about the same issues, I decided to write some simple guides. And here they are -
http://www.ronmertens.com/guides/webPage/
I hope you’ll find them useful!
I’ve updated the Metalgrass site. A few graphical changes, and some text-copy change. I’ve also started to write a “Metalgrass blog”. Please tell me what you think!
So I expect that all technical-metalgrass-adsense issues will now be written in the Metalgrass blog. If you want to stay updated, please start reading that blog as well.
I finished development of AdSenseLog v4.5.0…
I have added a new feature… I don’t want to discuss it yet (hush hush), but it’s already in beta testing with a few clients. I hope they’ll give me good feedback.
Another thing I have added is a short survey when people uninstall the software. I find that I have many downloads, and a lot of people do not purchase. Some of them use the free version (if they earn less than 50$), some probably use a crack (yeah…) but some simply decide not to buy. Hopefully I’ll get a few answers, and it might help me make this a better product. I’ve added the survey to the un-installer of version 4.0.1.
Now I have another decision to make - what to do next? I have decided to start a new software project… Stay tuned!
One of the toughest things for me, now that I’m self employed, is time management.
It’s very easy to find myself just thinking about what I should do, checking my AdSense statistics, reading e-mails and blogs and stuff like that. One of my main problems was that I have two major things that I do - Software and web pages.
So I have made a decision that I’m gonna dedicate some days of the week to software, and some to my web pages. Currently sunday, tuesday and thursday are software days. Of course if I have OLED news I’d still update the site, but basically that’s the way I decided to do it.
I’m not sure if that’s the best way to split my time. In october, revenue from the web pages was over 65% of my total revenue… So I guess I should put more time into web sites, rather than software.
Anyway, so far it’s going quite well. It helps me to be more focused. In the past, when I wrote AdSenseLog 4.0.0, it took me a lot of time. So basically it was a time with almost no web site updates. Now these things won’t happen again.
I finally finished working on my current 5 sites.
OLED-Info has been updated to a CMS system (drupal). This was a lot of work (mainly to convert the old data), but it’s been worth it. Traffic has gone up, and page views has a doubled. Revenue has also doubled, more or less. I’ve got in touch with several more OLED companies, and should post some new interviews pretty soon.
U3, Spintronics and ExpressCard have been updated. I’ve made a new template (graphic wise). It looks lame, but it is at least consistent with my main sites, so it’s easier to work with. When/If the traffic will grow, I’ll have someone design the sites with good looking graphics.
Results of all this work? October has been the best month ever (both in AdSense revenue, and in total Metalgrass revenue).
So now I have to decide what to do next. More small sites? Or maybe start working on a larger-scoped project? Or invest even more time in OLED-Info? Not easy decisions.