Your Comments are Welcome, Except When...

I have received several comments recently that I deleted from the blog.  The content was obviously generic enough that the same comment could be cut and pasted onto just about any website, and they all ended with an invitation to visit a website.

I would be glad to help any of my friends promote their website, but please make your comments appear as if you are responding to a subject on the page.  Any comment that appears to be an effort to boost your SEO ranking, and not part of our conversation, will be deleted.

If  you are interested in boosting your SEO standing with reference links, here are a few tips from my own experience promoting the StirlingBuilder website:

1. Place a link to your website in the first paragraph of your YouTube video descriptions.  There are many hundreds of websites that copy the content of YouTube, and their piracy can work to your advantage if they are also broadcasting the link to your web page.  This simple trick can result in thousands of reference links back to your website.
2. Place a link to your website in your email signature.  Join the most popular discussion groups related to the topic of your website.  Participate in the group discussions and use the email response option to post your discussions to the group.  This has several advantages for your SEO. Every response that included your email signature creates a reference link to your website.  Those links are especially valuable because the context of the link is relevant to the topic of your website.  If the most respected sites for mechanical engineering discussions have links to your engineering site, that is more valuable as a reference than links from unrelated locations.
3. Create a Google Alert.  Google Alerts will monitor the web every day and send you an email daily that shows new references showing up on the web for your alert term.  If people start talking about your company or your products by name, you will know almost immediately.

One of the reasons I delete the junk posts from my social media sites is because I want to maintain a focus on the topic.  Keeping things focused makes your site better for your reader, and improves your SEO score too.

LTD Stirling Engine Success!

I am very pleased to see another one of my new designs working on the first test.  I have set some lofty goals for my next book of Stirling Engine plans.  I am exploring how to build the pancake style LTD Stirling Engine without using a machine shop.  The goal is to make an LTD Stirling Engine that will run from the heat of a warm hand, and to do so without spending a lot of money and without using expensive machine tools like a milling machine or a metal lathe.

My first book accomplished this by making some radical changes to the engine design, basically turning it on its side to reduce friction.  This proved very effective and created an engine that will run from the heat of my hand.  I believe I have now solved several of the engineering puzzles required to make a traditional looking Stirling Engine that does not have to be turned sideways in order to run from the heat of a warm hand.  Both of the engines I have tested to date have successfully run from hand heat with the addition of an ice cube to the engine top.  I am confident that under the correct conditions these engines can be made to operate on hand heat without the addition of any ice.

This is great news for those of us who have always wanted a heat-of-the-hand Stilring Engine, but wanted to build it on a budget.  The keys to this new design are the bearings.  I have found some material to make bushings that is easy to work with, very affordable, and available for ordering online.  I have also found an easy way to make clear sidewalls for round engines that uses bent acrylic which can be custom fit to any dimension needed.

Here is a video of one of the recent test runs for this latest engine:

I Am Recruiting An Artist/Illustrator

Here's the story:  I created a book that I called, "Kid's Coloring Calendar 2014" using free clip art and templates that I found in Microsoft Office.  When the book started to sell I decided to double check the copyright status on the artwork.  It is really nice art and it was hard to believe it was free.

After some research I found that the art came from EducationWorld.com. The Education World website offered the same calendar template on their website, but it includes a copyright statement on each page.  That copyright is removed on the version that is offered through Microsoft Office.  When I contacted Education World they indicated that yes, the artwork can be copied and used in education settings, but it cannot be sold for a profit.  They were unaware of the templates being offered in Microsoft Word.  Microsoft indicates they started offering the templates in Office '97, and the Education World representative was not with the company back then.

I am confident that the calender I made was put together using artwork offered in the public domain with no copyright restrictions.  But I have chosen to respect the copyright of Education World.  I personally detest copyright infringement.  I immediately ceased all sales on my printed version of the Kid's Coloring Calendar and I now offer it as a free download.

Artist Recruitment

I am now recruiting an artist to help me create a new Kid's Coloring Calendar.  I am looking for someone who can make traditional coloring pages that are themed to match the seasons. Compensation will have to be negotiated.  I am willing to offer a commission on sales or a flat rate.  However, I have a small budget and this is not expected to be a large revenue stream.  The greatest reward may be seeing your art in print and hoping that it may become popular.

I operate a small family owned publishing company that currently has 11 titles in print, with more on the way. We are exploring the possibilities for several theme based and purpose driven coloring books.  This book may be the first in a series of children's books that we publish.  The artist selected to work on this project may be asked to collaborate on future for-profit projects.

If you would like to find out more about this recruitment, leave a message here or email me at Jim@StirlingBuilder.com.  I suggest you download a copy of the current project to see what the art looks like that I am replacing.

Check out Genuine Journals

Hey everyone, check out GenuineJournals.com.  It is a growing collection of simple paperback journals that are very fun and practical.

3.3 Million Views!

3.3 Million Channel Views. 

I know that is still small on the scale of YouTube success.  But I am very happy to have achieved it!  I have had one viral video and a few other good performers.  I am just waiting for the next big viral hit.

http://www.youtube.com/16strings

Music Industry Predators

The music industry is fighting back against copyright infringement in the same way that Japanese pilots turned their planes into missiles near the end of the war.  In a desperate attempt to win in a war that is already lost, the music industry has cast a broad net to try and clean up the copyright violations on YouTube.  At the time of this writing I have responded to five false claims of copyright infringement on this video.  There is no music in this video, yet each time it is tagged there is a digital rights management company (Often "The Orchard" or one of its subsidiary companies) claiming that some obscure piece of music is being played in the video.

When a claim is made against a video, all ad revenue is stopped.  This means that I, as the true rights holder to the video, can no longer earn any income from the video.  At the same time, the company making the claim now has the ability to post ads on my video, and all ad revenue goes to them, as they have made a claim that they own the rights to the content.  In a strange twist of the rules, the music industry is now making money on media that they did not create, and that they have no rights to whatsoever.  They have found a way to steal digital rights income from other people, even when there is no music involved.

There is no human involvement in this process.  The digital rights management company simply makes a claim to the YouTube machine and starts making money on the videos.  As a YouTube up-loader I have the right to appeal the decision, but losing a series of appeals will result in having my YouTube account flagged for copyright violations.  The on-screen warnings indicate that this can lead to having my account closed and all videos deleted. 

If I file an appeal, it is not heard by YouTube staff.  The appeal goes to the company that filed the claim.  They have the ability to insist that they are correct in the absence of any evidence and without arbitration.  The music industry can shut down any YouTube user and eliminate their ability to make legitimate money on their own material.

The music industry has become the new cyber-bully on YouTube.  They are not making these false claims against obscure videos that are not being viewed.  They are targeting videos that are being viewed and generating ad revenue.  They are stealing ad revenue from people like me by doing this on a massive scale and making claims on (probably) hundreds of thousands of videos.  Others have posted that they have finally given up on the appeals process and just let it go.  Now the digital rights management company is making the ad revenue on those videos and earning large sums of money every month on material they do not own.

YouTube needs to wake up and modify their digital rights process.  They have allowed a bull to run freely in the china shop because they don't want to be the target of legal action.  Google and YouTube are a part of the problem.  They don't care if the ad revenue goes to the wrong person, because they make the same amount of money either way.

Click the image below to see the last two claims made against my video:

Watching the Amazon Sales Rank

The Amazon Sales Rank is a very dynamic rating of how well a book or product is selling on Amazon.  The number is updated about once an hour and does not reflect any sales that are happening outside of the Amazon domain where you see the number listed.  Amazon keeps separate sales rank numbers in each of their markets, so good sales at Amazon.co.uk will not influence the calculation of the sales rank in the US.

As a CreateSpace author I can see real time reports of book sales and watch the changes in sales rank that result.  Amazon reserves the right to make occasional adjustments to the sales rank even when sales are not occurring, and they will occasionally do this.  The sales rank will climb during any hour-long period where there is no sale, and it will drop to a lower number when a sale occurs.

Amazon decided recently to credit the self-publishing authors with sales after the book was printed.  We were previously credited with the sale at the time of the sale.  Amazon is able to print books for Print-on-Demand sales in usually just a few hours.  As a customer I have been notified of shipment within three hours of placing an order for a book that was printed after I ordered it.  This shift to reporting sales after printing has has an odd impact on my daily monitoring of sales.  Many of the sales now get reported while I am sleeping!  Now I am often finding that I can wake up in the morning and see sales that were credited to me during the night.

Amazon sales ranking is very dynamic for books that are not best sellers.  While books in the top 100 will not show a lot of movement throughout the day, books ranked lower can see their ranking jump several hundred thousand places with just one sale.  I guess it is hard to calculate the hourly sales figures on an item that does not sell every hour, or even every day.  Amazon wants the number to reflect sales during the last hour, and is not so concerned with the sales rank of less popular titles, even if they are selling consistently over time.  As a result, you may see large shifts in sales rank for books that are not best sellers.

There is another fun twist to sales ranks.  As a CreateSpace affiliated author I can ask that my books be listed in specific "browse categories" on Amazon.  The sales page for each book will show the ranking for the book in the chosen sales category any time that it is in the top 100 titles of that category.  My three books on Stirling engine construction all happened to rank well enough to be in a top 100 list at the same time recently, so I took some screen shots of the sales rankings to memorialize the moment.

The first book that I released is called "Three LTD Stirling Engines You Can Build Without a Machine Shop."  Here is what the sales rank looks like for that title (click for a larger view):

I was very excited to see that sales were good enough to be placed in the top 100 sales for Science Experiments and Projects and Mechanical Engineering!

 

The second book I released is "Quick and Easy Stirling Engine."  Here is the sales rank for that title (click for a larger view):

 

 



The third title I released is called, "Eleven Stirling Engine Projects You Can Build."  It was also recently listed in the top 100 for two different categories (click for a larger view):