The Crappy Part of Running a Website

Sometimes it sucks being a webmaster!  My least favorite thing of everything running a successful website involves, is link building and link exchanges.  The whole process is quite absurd as you kindly ask people in your niche to link to your site in return for linking to theirs.  At the end of the day the only people that gain an advantage from such a system are the scammers and spammers who spend hours and use software to build an artificial presence on the web.

The reason I am rambling on about this is I just did some cleaning on our links page.  Basically I removed a bunch of sites that we had linked to hoping to get a little link love in return.  After several months if they have not linked back and don’t really have anything to offer our readers I clean them off the list.

Sometimes it feels good to do this.  We put our heart and soul into our website and make our site always about content first instead of just trying to make money.  So we tend to take it personal when we find websites in our swinger niche that ignore our requests for a link exchange.  It makes me wonder if they think our website sucks, or what issues they have with us. 

I can understand if it was a blog about jewelry, movies, or even a purely sexual blog.  But why would a blog about swinging not think our blog is a good fit?  We will give anyone the benefit of the doubt often linking to brand new swingers blog before they even have any readers (Trust me…most webmaster don’t do this)

Gentle Nibbles currently has over thirty thousand hits a month, over 200 readers, and we think it is full of terrific content, so it just confounds me when our blog is not good enough for a link on another blog or website specifically in the swinging niche.  In these cases it kind of feels good to hit the delete button on a link to a blog or website that we feel is taking advantage of all our free unreciprocated traffic.

OK So that was awful harsh and we are not really that pissy but there is atleast a couple of ounces of truth in the words above! 

Getting off the soapbox and up from the psychologist’s couch…

~Mr. Gentlenibbles

Yahoo Love, but Google Still Hates Us

Wow!  We are getting crazy love the last couple of days from Yahoo.  We have been for awhile on terms like squirting and “female ejaculation” (don’t ask me why), but now we have really climbed the ranks on all terms related to swingfest, such as swingfest, “swingfest 2008″, “swingfest 2009, etc…

As a matter of fact we are front page on all searches and top five on most even ahead of the official Swingfest stuff.  All the hits are linking to our daily trip reports we filed while at Swingfest last year.  If it keeps up we will probably break another traffic record today on gentlenibbles.

It almost makes waking up early after a loooooong night of play to type our reports while at Swingfest worth it!

Google on the other hand as of January 5th has decided they don’t care for us much.  Our traffic died that day and is slowly improving but still about a tenth of what they use to refer.  Also it seems all of our backlinks are slowly disappearing from Google eyes.  Even though we have thousands according to all the other search engines, Google is only seeing fifteen right now.  What is crazy is the fact it is not even recognizing our DMOZ link, which is kind of the Holy Grail of backlinks due to the toughness to obtain one.

The Good news is even with all the “no-love” from Google we are still growing at a steady pace thanks to the other search engines and the fact are subscriber count goes up on a daily basis.  In the end I am sure it will all work out.

Here are some search terms people are finding us by today in order of popularity:

swingfest 22 
swingfest 2008 9 
female ejaculation 5 
site:www.gentlenibbles.com lifestyle swi 3 
swingers games 3 
swing fest 3 
sex encounter stories 2 
sex discussions 2 
swingers philly 2 
sex fantasy letters 2 
young nibbles 2 
female anatomy 2 
swing fest 2008 2 
sex swingfest 1 
couples real stories 1 
videos of swingfest 1 
swingers key game 1 
soft sex 1 
swinger sex party 1 
swingfest 2009 1 
what is swingfest 1 
sucking two cocks in the mouth at the sa 1 
sexy couple pictures 1 
free pics of swapping couples 1 
what is soft swap 1 
sex stories pics 1 
gentlenibbles.com 1 
first time swinger stories 1 
group sex & swingers 1 
most common fantasy wives have 1 
same room sex couples 1 
squirting technique 1 
swingfest pictures 1 
brazilian wax 1 
sexual intercourse 1

Have a good night!
~Mr. Gentlenibbles

Exciting News Possibly on the Horizon

We were contacted last night about possibly being given a “trip” to giveaway as a contest on gentlenibbles.com, as well as another prize!

We are pretty excited as that will be about the coolest thing we have given away so far on the site, our $100 Gift Certificate being the second coolest! ;)  Now we are busy thinking of contest ideas to make sure it is really cool and successful.

Usually, our contests are designed to attract readers and build the site overall as well as give stuff away and promote the “company” that donates the prize.  This contest could have the potential to be pretty cool, so we really want to come up with something cool, that also does a lot of good for Gentle Nibbles.

Any ideas?

~Mr. Gentlenibbles

Ode to PHP and MySQL

I am officially cross-eyed as I have spent the last several hours knee deep in trying to finish up some programming on the new “The Swingers Clubs List” we are about to launch on gentlenibbles.com. 

It took quite a bit of tweaking to get it working, but I think it is functioning like I want it to now.  We think once it gets finished it is going to be pretty cool.

The idea is to have a resource for finding Swingers Clubs, beyond just a links page.  So this page will have the ability for patrons to rate and review the club after they attend.  It will also list clubs in order of traffic, which is about the only “fair” way we can think of.  In theory the bigger the club, the more popular the website, the more clicks back to the site, therefore the higher rank.

Eventually since it is all based around a MySQL database, after the list gets big enough we will be able to add more functionality by building queries based on reviews, ratings, locations, etc…

If you want a sneak peak you can find it here:

http://www.gentlenibbles.com/swingersclubslist/

Keep in mind, there are no clubs listed yet!

~Mr. G

New Adult Blog Directory

Today I put the finishing touches on a new Adult Blog Directory.  The directory is called the Swingers & Sex Blog Hub.

It’s purpose to provide a place for new blogs and established blogs alike to promote their websites.  As of now all of the Blog Directories out there with a Swinging Focus are all completely corrupt with very little actual links.  I actually pulled them off this blog because it felt unethical sending readers unsuspecting into these spam filled websites.

With this directory we can now have editing power to make sure all the blogs associated with it are legit and their focus is writing not trying to make a quick buck.  The site I am modeling it after is the Cunning Linguist topsite listed in our special links above.  They have a great website that has alot of quality blogs in it.  My only complaint with their site is they are more of a focus on erotic literature and not on the Swinging Lifestyle.

There are so many couples out there that have started an awesome blog or website about their adventuresj and without places to promote it no one ever finds all the great stuff.  so if you have a website or blog make sure and sign up at the link below.

http://www.gentlenibbles.com/swingerssexhub

Thanks,
Mr. Gentlenibbles

Keywords Used to Find Gentle Nibbles

I thought some of you may be interested in what keywords entered into a search engine could cause you to end up at Gentlenibbles.com. 

There are too many odd ones in here, but every once in awhile we find some pretty funny stuff people are searching for.  A couple odd ones today:

“swamping spouses” - either that is a type or an illegal activity… I don’t know
“windsurf cruise what to take” - I have a feeling this surfer was surprised!

My favorites is often we see search like “Mrs. Gentlenibbles Naked”!  I can assure you there are not any of those public on the search engines yet…. that we know of!  These are a list of the keywords users found us by yesterday in order of their popularity.

Here is the list:

gentlenibbles.com
female ejaculation 
soft swap
gentle nibbles 
swinger stories
threesome story switch my 
sex stories about swinging 
swing lifestyle stories 
“the lifestyle” 
swap swinger stories 
pleasing your spouse 
swinger party pics  
unicorn swinger  
swingfest 2008  
soft sex  
why husbands want to swap wives 
swinger party games  
swap couple  
swingers stories  
sextual release squirting 
gentlenibbles  
houston swingers clubs 
swinger  
shaved ladies  
brazilian waxing valentines day special  
swamping spouses  
couple partner sex swap 
“swinger couple”  
bisexual couples party pics
soft swap+definition 
swingers playing  
sexting  
swingers lifestyle stories videos 
i can’t get an erection what do i do 
windsurf cruise what to take  
voyeur/exhibitionist relationships 
naked swingers 
swingfest  
same room sex 
squirt techniques  
the lifestyle + couples  
houston pick up club  
swinger lifestyle and picture
define soft swap  
can’t get an erection  
swinger armbands  
swinger storie blog  
spontaneous ejaculation  
swap with older couples  
what i wore to the swingers club

~Mr. Gentlenibbles

Just Completed Some “Major” Minor Changes to Gentle Nibbles

OK, I just wrapped up some “major” minor changes over at Gentle NIbbles.  What I mean by that is hopefully they are relatively unnoticeable to the average repeat viewer, but have potential to “break” some things I am unaware of at the moment.

The one I am most worried about is the font size change of the overall “body” content in the blog.  Either I am getting older or for some reason I just have been feeling like the blog is tough to read lately due to the smaller font size.  In an effort to make it a little more friendly I upped the fontsize from Arial 12px to Arial 13px in the CSS.

It is not a big change, but I think makes a lot of difference.  The worry comes from anywhere I may have text that will become to big for the space I have put it in.  It may have fit when it was 12px, but will not after the increase.  I looked through a lot of the blog and did not see any problems, besides the subnavbar which I overwrote in the CSS to stay at a 12px.   If you notice anything that looks “funny” over the next couple of weeks please give us a shout at: thenibblers@gentlenibbles.com

Other changes include:

Adding the RSS from The Daily Nibble to the bottom center of the Homepage.  This will be a good way to get updates about the site out without having to work up a fancy post.  I also hope this turns out to be a more socially rewarding piece of the whole “blogging” thing for me as I can be much more conversational.

I also implemented a much more professional look of the buttons in the “Gentlenibbles elsewhere on the Web” box.  They are standardized now and I think look much better!

I added a notice bar at the top of the blog that will be a good way to make important announcements.  Right now it is announcing the sign-up for the contest.  Please let me know your opinion on this bar, as I am a little worried it is too obtrusive and bringing down the look of the blog.

Lastly, I added a “Special Links” section above the polls on the right side.  This is where I can put links for special friends as well as Blog Directories and Toplists.  These toplists and directories give more traffic the more you give them.  I did have these links hidden on the “Blog” page where they were virtually ignored.  Hopefully now, readers can not only enjoy finding a bunch of new blogs, but will improve our rankings on these sites and bring us more traffic.

I think that is about it….

~Mr. Gentlenibbles