Today is a big day for btyb. Why? I have an actual advertiser besides google. Actually, google has recently been paying me about twice what I used to get. I have no idea why. My best guess is that they’re getting better at figuring out what sorts of ads are appropriate for my site, and people are clicking them. Either way, between my advertiser and google, I now make enough to justify the time I spend writing. What a cool feeling!

Here’s how I got my advertiser:

Steve, my boss / compadre, belongs to a group called “Hill Country Outdoors”. It’s a group that you can join for $15/month or something and they plan cool trips and activities. One such activity was hang gliding, which he invited me along for.

I won’t get into the details of hang gliding lessons (in short - not that much fun), but the class was broken into smaller groups, each with its own volunteer teacher. Our teacher was a guy named John who was about our age. Also an entrepreneur, we quickly started talking about business and dropping out of school.

Steve mentioned my article about dropping out, and John paused for a minute.

“Are you the guy who went into the UT tunnels?”

It turns out that he had read my blog off and on in the past. A few months later, he saw the redesign of the site and asked if I’d consider advertising his new site. Pretty cool how these little coincidences stack up, eh?

Unfaced is a sneaky survey you can put on your facebook account to see who’s looking at your profile and what they’re putting into the survey. If you use facebook, you should definitely check it out and write your thoughts about it here. I’m sure John would be interested in some feedback.

PS - if anyone else wants to advertise, let me know!