Numbers, Sarah June, Kickstarter, Remora, Dreams

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I read up a little bit on Google Ads compared to Project Wonderful.  Supposedly Google ends up paying around $0.03 per 1000 views & PW only pays $0.03 per 40,000 views.  Well, those Google numbers are probably close to right prior to the spike I had that Google ended up closing my account for irregular activity.  PW already gave me my $0.03 for QRD & I’m pretty sure I haven’t hit 40,000 views in three days.  That said, no matter what, you’d need a near infinite amount of traffic (okay only ten million page views a week) to make a living off a website from either of those platforms.  I guess I’ll just wait & see what happens.

So speaking of numbers, I was looking at my numbers on Alexa & Silber is ranked right now at about the 2,000,000 most popular website (& I don’t have an Alexa toolbar installed, so I’m assuming that puts their numbers more realistic than when I had it installed & Silber was one of the 100,000 most popular websites).  I know that doesn’t sound very good, but it’s about the same rank as Young God & Projekt.  It makes me feel pretty okay about Silber that I’m ranking up with the labels that Silber kind of aspires to be.

I talked to Sarah June today & she’ll be doing an EP for the secret series of EPs we have planned for this fall.  Pretty stoked about things falling together for that in the next couple of months.

The Kickstarter campaigns are done.  The Bottle Comics ended up with 57 backers & $769 & the Puzzle Boxes got 41 backers & $872.  It’ll be a couple of weeks before I go back to the well for the next Kickstarter stints.  I’m planning on one to raise money for doing some Remora “I Came to Party” t-shirts (which I think will be successful in the end) & another for trying to get the funds to go to the Malta comic convention (which I imagine will fail).

So the other night I did a Remora band practice with Peter Aldrich on bass & he was saying he liked the sound coming out with the new pedal setup.  So that’s a plus for that setup.  We’ll see how it all goes Saturday night.  I’m planning to try to do the Ustream thing, but that technology has been suspect at best every time I try to do it.  So you’re better off coming to the show.

I am fascinated with this video.  If anyone wants to buy me one of these things to tour in, I’ll totally accept it….

Last Night’s Dreams:
I find a photo of my father holding me as a child & I try to focus on it to travel back in time far enough to start my life over.  When I get there I’m not in the right house & then I realize that I’m not in the right body.  The photo wasn’t even of me.  I didn’t know I could jump into other people like this….

My sister bought me a vacuum cleaner toy from a thrift store.  Along with vacuuming it makes these organ noises & you control the pitch by altering the suction by how hard you press the hose against the floor.

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Promo, Practice, etc.

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I got the last bits of promo sent out for this latest batch of releases & a last promo push to comic press folks about the bottle Kickstarter today.  & bam today the project got coverage on both Comic Related & Bleeding Cool.  I also answered questions for two upcoming interviews about the project.

QRD got approved for Project Wonderful to take the place of the Google ads.  We’ll see what happens with that.

I have a Remora show Saturday & I’ve actually spent some time with a guitar in my hands.  I really should do it more.

Assembled some of the comics for the Bottle Project & some of the puzzle boxes for the puzzle box project.  Good to see some physical work at the end of the day instead of just doing stuff that is semi-imaginary on the computer.

Posted in comics, daily news, music, puzzle boxes | Tagged , | 4 Comments

4 Responses to Promo, Practice, etc.

  1. Peter says:
    August 2, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Return of the 90′s guitar pedals!

Google, QRD, & Dreams

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I heard back from Google & they said after consideration they are killing the account instead of just suspending it.  Which I guess is fine.  For the time being I’m replacing their ads with particular Silber ads.  Which until recently when they went to somehow making more money than I charge for an ad, I didn’t really want them there anyway.  I mean, it was definitely worth $50 a month (the current rate), but not worth $20 a year (the classic rate).

I got a late interview in for the current QRD from J.M. Hunter.

Doing a bunch of work on the promo end trying to get the word out on the new releases.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m on tour with my friend Don & we stop at a thrift store to kill some time looking at records & whatever.  I find a copy of The Book of Lists IV & accidentally walk out of the store still carrying it without paying for it.  I realize it’s still in my hand when we’re going into a restaurant.  I go back to the store to pay for it, but the store closed.

I’m working on a painting for a project for some art competition.  It’s all about color & texture.  I start trying to figure out what Journey album has “Separate Ways” on it, but I have no idea.

I’m at a show & there’s a dude wearing glasses with glow in the dark frames.  I’m not sure if they’re horrible or brilliant.

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2 Responses to Google, QRD, & Dreams

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    July 31, 2012 at 8:37 am

    i don’t understand the offense with the google thing?

    • Brian John Mitchell says:
      July 31, 2012 at 12:39 pm

      It ends up telling people that you make money from people clicking ads & telling them they should do it is against Google’s terms of agreement. Which is dumb to me, but whatever. More shocking is that putting that in the intro to an issue worked at all as far as generating clicks. I wonder if it will end up creating a spike for some of the other ads on the site through LinkShare or if when I get the numbers for the Silber site if some of the ads for older things on Silber will have generated more traffic because of the request as well (e.g. Zombie Kisses).

Newsletter, Unspeakable Forces, Downloads

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

I wrote up & sent out the Silber monthly newsletter.  If you didn’t get it, you can read it over here.

Last night I met up with Darin DePaolo (Unspeakable Forces) & we talked about doing some more recording while drinking mead & playing chess (I won, five games to two).  We’ll see what happens & when.  It’s funny because while he said he liked the Butterfly Corpse EP & he said it wasn’t music, but noise with musical influences.  So we’ll see if in the end things work out as far as more recording sessions as he’s wanting to go super structured & planning out the songs & I want it to be more free form jam.  I think we’re still at a point of figuring out how to work with each other.  The Butterfly Corpse EP is culled from only our second band practice (though we played together a couple of times in 1998 & he played on the Alcohol EPs in 2002), so I think there’s promise if we can figure out a way to do it where both of us are satisfied.

So as you may have noticed, over the past month or so we’ve had four new addition to our free releases series from Promute, Andrew Weathers & Brian John Mitchell, Panthan, & Unspeakable Forces as well as two one dollar downloads from Small Life Form & Brian John Mitchell.  What do you think will be the most downloaded release from Silber this month?  One of the new ones or will mwvm still be on top?  Can a $1 download get enough sales to compete with free?  Make your predictions.  Anyone with a correct pick of number one will get a free download of the new Small Life Form album voice in the sky.

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One Response to Newsletter, Unspeakable Forces, Downloads

  1. Nick says:
    July 29, 2012 at 6:18 am

    Honestly I think that mwvm will still be on top. Hope I’m wrong though.

QRD, Google, Small Life Form, Panthan, Unspeakable Forces, Dreams

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I got an email from Google today saying my Adsense account is suspended for suspicious activities.  To be honest I feel like it has had suspicious activities as well because it went from earning about $5 a month to $30 last month to $60 this month.  I guess it’s maybe from writing the intro to QRD explaining that clicking on ads is what helped it make money.  So I placed in an appeal.  We’ll see what happens.  Kinda sucks since I’d crossed their $100 payment threshold.  I was super excited by the idea that QRD was starting to make some money, I guess I should’ve known something was up.  So I guess I’m going to be adding Project Wonderful to the site sooner than later.  I do feel less incentive to push N=D & FCIO if they aren’t making a few pennies….

The new Small Life Form album Voice in the Sky is up.  Free to listen on the stream or you can download it for just a buck.

Also up is a new/old EP from Panthan.  It’s new because it’s never been heard before.  It’s old because it’s from 2008.  The reason it wasn’t released before is just that I’m lazy.  Back in 2008 me & Nic Slaton (slicnaton) were doing some recordings to shop for film placements & the money never panned out on that so these recordings have just been sitting around on a hard drive for four years.  Seemed like as good of a time as any to put it out.  It’s free.

& also up is an EP from my doomgazing project Unspeakable Forces (formerly Butterfly Corpse).  It’s free.

So for doing these Bottle Comics for the beat up bottles I wanted to get a bottle brush so they aren’t totally dirty on the inside.  At the grocery store they were three dollars & looked like they weren’t long enough to reach the bottom of a bottle.  But I found one that seemed good at the dollar store for just a buck.  So now I feel like a winner.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m talking to an in-law of an in-law that’s a descendent of Edgar Rice Burroughs & on the board of his estate.  I ask him if in his opinion A Princess of Mars is in the public domain or if it ever will be & he says no & goes into a long boring story.

I’m in high school & they’re having an assembly.  It’s some kind of dance squad/acrobatic/cheerleading thing & I leave & go to the library to drop off two books – a 1950s Merck Manual & the book How to Make War.

I go to work at the warehouse doing shipping receiving.  The co-worker who trained me I know is involved in doing some semi-illegal activity using the warehouse job as a front, but he’s a good guy so I’m not too worried about it.  I’m early going in & see what he’s dealing with on the side & it’s not drugs.  It’s body parts.  They’re freezing & killing people & cutting them up right there.  Just standing their seeing it, feels like they’re doing it to me & pulling my heart out of my chest.

Posted in daily news, dreams, music | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to QRD, Google, Small Life Form, Panthan, Unspeakable Forces, Dreams

  1. Godsmakk says:
    July 27, 2012 at 10:52 am

    ever consider combining all the blogs into one like how the print version of qrd had different sections it interview/review/wtf ever?

    • Brian John Mitchell says:
      July 28, 2012 at 2:26 pm

      Well, the reason I made the N=D & FCIO blogs separate was because my intention was (& still is) not to have me as the main contributor. I mean, it worked for the first couple of months as far as me not making half the content & I’d love things to change around so that it was like that again. I don’t know, it gets weird in that the Silber Blog really is only for the hardcore Silber fans & the other blogs are for fans of general pop culture or whatever. I don’t know. For a while I thought about putting the dreams in a separate blog or the comics, but I’m keeping those in for sure, just because it’s more trouble. The hope with the other blogs is that eventually they’ll drive traffic to Silber or make ad revenue when people read a review of a Bangles record.

Long Drone

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

So I got the long drone piece up.  Brian John Mitchell – four and a half.  It’s free to stream or a dollar to download (probably I’ll raise it to the regular $5 download price in a month). It’s worth noting that putting the download price at $1 in an hour it earned as much money as all the name tip jar downloads have for the year (given you don’t count the mwvm that at a minimum donation you got a physical).  So it’s interesting to have that knowledge & I’m not sure exactly what to do about it….

Working on getting the other three releases ready.  Hard to do press releases sometimes.  It’s a bit draining for me to do at times….

Posted in daily news, music | Tagged | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Long Drone

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    July 26, 2012 at 8:03 am

    are you saying all the name tip jar downloads have only made you $1.oo over the year?

Long Drone, Bottle Comics, Sarah June, QRD, FCIO, Dreams

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

Got the art & press release done for the long drone piece.  Now I’m just waiting to upload it & such.  Even as an MP3 it’s half a gig, so it takes a while to upload.

The new QRD is done.  16 interviews with indie comic creators.

I got in a video from Jason Young of him working on drawing his Bottle Comic.

Here’s a stripped down video Sarah June just did of “Til You Hit the Pavement.”

While I was working on stuff today I had on Johnny Mnemonic.  Here’s the review on FCIO.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m hanging out with a friend of mine somewhere out in the country by a little shack of a store that sells alcohol, fireworks, & cigarettes.  There’s about a dozen other folks just hanging out drinking around the store & I guess this is all there is to do in this town at 4 in the afternoon.  We’re both pretty drunk & my buddy starts talking to this one girl mistaking her for his sister.  I have to grab him by the arm & pull him away saying, “Dude, she’s not your sister.”

I’m with Jason Young in a warehouse that’s been converted to some weird versus bowling alley.  The lanes are curved to meet in a corner with the floors of them beveling with the curve.  I can’t understand exactly how the scoring works.

I’m hanging out with my son Andrew backstage somewhere & he hands me his phone saying, “Listen to this!”  It’s some conspiracy nut trying to sell his book.  I say to him, “Oh, this is just Coast to Coast, don’t you ever listen to AM radio?”

I’m on an observation deck watching planes land at the airport where I used to work.  I see this huge plane land flying the colors of the company I used to be contracted out to work for.  I hear one of the other people on the deck call it a 465.  I can’t imagine trying to work the plane with the staff & equipment we had.  No wonder we lost the contract.

I’m at church & I fall over on my side having a seizure chanting, “He’s not here! He’s not here! He’s not here!” over & over again.

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Promute, Rivulets, Bottle Comics, Panthan, Butterfly Corpse, Billy Corgan

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

Here’s a video Promute did for an installation in Taos, NM that Ben Link Collins had.

I think I posted on here about it a while back, but the funding for the Rivulets music videos/short films is going pretty well.  If you’ve always wanted to get Nathan to write a personal song for you, here’s your big chance.

I got the layout finished for the Bottle Comics.  I also got a bartender friend to try to acquire some bottles for me.  So I’m pretty stoked about that everything is finally seeming to smooth out for the project.  Now all I need to do is figure out a way to get people interested in putting money towards it.  So if any of you readers could tell your friends about it or post it on any forums you take part in or whatever, I’d appreciate it.

I got started on working on the Panthan EP.  The songs are a lot better than I anticipated.  I haven’t listened to them in at least three years, so I guess that’s part of it.

I also unexpectedly found myself working up a Butterfly Corpse EP.  I’m needing to change the band name of course since I found out that was taken.  I’m thinking of “Unspeakable Forces.”  What do you think?  I’m kinda surprise that it seems to be an available band name when things like Butterfly Corpse & Unicorn Blood are taken.

There’s been this buzz the past couple of days about Billy Corgan talking crap about Pitchfork (it’s on the second page).  I feel like he’s the first guy that I’ve seen made by the establishment who isn’t saying, “I don’t understand why people don’t give their music away & let the fans pay what they want, the creme will rise to the top.”  Which is a total crap statement when you are already on the top in the current state of the industry.  I understand his disdain that music doesn’t seem super-important or rebellious to teens like it was in the 1990s.  I also understand people thinking he’s a dick because no individual person feels they are a hipster & think he’s out of touch, especially given that I think it’s a safe assumption that he’s a hipster.  Crap, I guess depending who you ask I’m a hipster too.

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One Response to Promute, Rivulets, Bottle Comics, Panthan, Butterfly Corpse, Billy Corgan

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    July 24, 2012 at 7:42 am

    I forget what i was reading but it was about back in the day when people put ads on boards looking for other musicians. So the metal & punk flyers would always say NO POSERS. But really who would read that and go, “i’m a poser so i shouldn’t call them”

    RSmith, got a lot of shite for saying the Radiohead paywhatyouwant model was stupid and only works because they were already one of the biggest bands in the world. Complete with the “you jealous cuz your band isn’t relevant anymore” commentary. I personally think this and his other rant that got some traction awhile ago were pretty spot on, but much like his music, his delivery does nothing for me.

Remora & QRD

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

Usually I don’t bother to post links to reviews as they come up in the blog.  To be honest it’s because usually lately reviews are just regurgitations of the press kit.  But I really liked this review of Remora’s The Heart That Kills from Beach Sloth.

I mostly finished the new QRD.  There are three interviews that are supposed to come in that I’m still waiting on to make it officially live,  but it’s pretty much done on my end.

I have been running some broken link checkers on the Silber site.  I had 250 bad links, which I don’t think is too bad since some of the QRD pages essentially hadn’t been updated since 1998 (there were a few bad links to back when the Silber site was on Xoom (remember in the 1990s they were a competitor with Tripod, Geocities, & Angelfire that provided a whole 9 Megs of webspace?)) & there’s a ton of bad links because of people killing their MySpace pages & I don’t know any easy way to fix the links from when I imported the first few years of the Silber Blog from MySpace.  I fixed about 100 of them.  Maybe I’ll fix some more at some point….  Also it’s worth noting some of the bad link checkers give false positives.

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Movies, Interviews, QRD, & Dreams

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Brian John Mitchell

I spent most of the day working on interviews for the new QRD.  I’m pretty stoked that I’m going to have a significant amount of stuff to offer up as available new this month since the last newsletter.

So I had the TV on while I was doing the proofreading & so I put up a few reviews on N=D & FCIO for Gattaca, Alf, Teen Wolf Too, & Superman IV.

There’s a short little article about Silber up from the people in charge of the Malta Comic Convention.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m on Conan O’Brien as one of the guests for music week (all interviews are musicians).   The other guests are Jay Z & Jessica Simpson. I don’t see Jay Z’s interview because I’m the middle guest, but I’m sitting on the couch with him & Andy Richter for Jessica’s interview.  I had no idea she’d severed ties with labels & was releasing stuff on her own.  She came out carrying these big boxes filled with CDs & random promo swag & then did a prat fall over one of the boxes as a joke.  After the break we’re all supposed to do a musical jam with Conan.  I wish we’d practiced as jams can really suck with people you don’t know.

There’s a gasoline shortage & the government has ordered all gas stations to shut off their pumps at 4pm until further notice.  Of course I’m in the middle of a tour in Oklahoma with no way to get enough gas to get home.  I get to a station in time to wait in line & get to fill up, but a full tank doesn’t really even help.  I’m hanging out behind the gas station with four guys in similar fixes.  One’s in a suit, one’s in a polo shirt & jeans, one’s wearing slacks & a t-shirt, & one’s in shorts &  t-shirt.  The one guy’s saying he doesn’t think the gas shortage is real.  He thinks it’s about food.  There’s not enough food & they can blame it not shipping on the gas.  People are too worried about using their precious gas to go & buy up all the food in town, which might make it last a little longer.  In the end people will starve to death not strong enough to riot.

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