Newsletter 04/12/06
Hello there and welcome to the first ever Burf.com newsletter (warning it’s a mega issue).
I am sorry that it has taken me nearly a year to get the first issue out but I promise that the second issue will be a lot sooner and shorter (e.g. ever month!).
Ok, so what is this newsletter about?
I want this newsletter to give its readers inside information about Burf.com, discuss reader’s suggestions, offer special offers and free stuff, and be a helpful resource to people.
If this is not what you are interested in receiving then you can do 1 of 2 things
1)Unsubscribe via the link at the bottom.
2)Tell me what you do want in the newsletter! (No adult suggestions please!)
A bit of history!
Ok my name is Simon Burfield. The site is named Burf.com due to my surname! It was first started as a project to prove someone wrong and has been operational in one form or another for 5 years! It is not my main job, but a hobby which to be fair, probably has more time spent on it than my job.
What do I want out of Burf.com?
Well, money is quite good but not the main driving force of the site. My main focus is to create a site that people will use regularly and keep improving on that.
Main News
Ok now that I have got the history part out of the way, I will let you know what has, is and will be happening on Burf.com.
Has happened / working on.
The last few projects I have been working on are:
Burf.com Proxy (http://www.burf.com/proxy/).
This has been added as an experiment (I like to do them you know), to see what the effect of adding one would be. The first noticeable thing was that it took the server down, it was receiving over 200,000 page request (just this page) a day and due to this, I have moved Burf.com to a larger better server (yet again provided by http://dubhosting.com.
Caching and search engine improvements.
I have implemented caching to the main server so that searches are faster on popular terms. I have and am still working on improving the quality of the search engine.PPC feeds
I have tried out Mirago and SearchFeed pay per click feed and well they just don’t impress me too much. I need to find someone who is not from the big 3 (Google, MSN, Yahoo) which also have some decent advertisers and not just show eBay all of the time. I have heard Feedpatrol.com is good and have applied! Update on that soon!
Controlling the search engine
If you do a search on Burf.com, your notice that the organic feed has a Burf rank, a star rating, and a few other options. These are designed to allow the visitors more control over the search results.
The Burf rank is based on how often your search terms (broken down to each word) are found in your url, meta data and body text. The higher this is, the better and is also dependant on how many words where in the search query.
The ban and adult options will instantly hide the site from everyone and can only reappear if I allow it or if I turn off the adult filter!
The star rating is purely for show at the moment while it is in testing. The plan for this is to be implemented in to how your site is ranked and so a 5 star site will appear higher than a 4 star site with roughly the same Burf rank.
Future improvements / New features coming soon
Newsletter.
The first thing I want to work on is improving this newsletter. Please give me your suggestions (contact details at the bottom) and feedback and I will mention them and discuss them! The best suggestion / comment or review could win a prize (well will win a prize when I get a suggestion of a good prize). I will also look at creating a html newsletter!
More improvements to the search engine results.
Yes this will be here forever until they are perfect! I am still writing the new formula for rating different types of pages
Ramping up hosting.
I want to integrate a proper way to sell hosting through Burf.com. This will include selling VPS accounts and reseller accounts. The idea of this is purely to offer cheap but reliable hosting to visitors and at the same time funding the future of Burf.com. Currently hosting starts at $2pm! http://www.burf.com/hosting.php
Online Shop.
I want to add a shop that sales e-books, and digital media at a very low price. This again will help fund the site but also be quite fun to manage. If anyone has any experience of online shopping carts and selling digital media, please could you contact me.
The big update!
Well I need to update the burf.com mini portals (e.g. Burf.info, Burf.us etc) and release Burf.mobi, Burf.ws, Burf.be etc and also interconnect my other 70+ sites with Burf.com. This will create one huge network once it is done and should bring in quite a lot of visitors.
Review(s).
I don’t usually fall for these crappie blog / web / email spamming pieces of software but I thought I would try out http://www.youtubemailer.com because I had several emails saying it was good and even a full blown conversation saying it was brilliant. I have tried if a few time and not noticed any increase in traffic or anything so I would not recommend this to anyone
Special offers.
Nothing special has been organised for this issue BUT, if anyone wants hosting, they will get double the spec/ features of what ever hosting package they purchase for free
http://www.burf.com/hosting.php
XMAS Special
Text links on the Burf.com network start from $3 a link for a PR4 site. If you refer to this newsletter your get a free PR4 link with every link brought!
For more information go to http://www.burf.com/buy-text-links.php
To subscrible to this newsletter go to
http://www.burf.com/newsletter.php
