Burger Poll and Housekeeping

I usually do a follow-up post for a poll when that poll drops off the front page of my blog.  I'm a little late this time.  :) 

When the poll actually dropped off, Dain's, the Fed, and Wimpy's were very close to being tied (they were actually tied at some point, but I don't know if that's exactly when they dropped off).   In any case, the ranking right now has Dain's in the lead (25.6%), with the Federal 2nd (24.1%), and Wimpy's 3rd (23.6%).  But it's very close: out of the current 203 votes (you people, once again, totally rock!), Dain's is ahead of the Fed by just 3 votes, with the Fed being ahead of Wimpy's by also 3 votes.  Coming in 4th was Cook Out with 17.7%.  "Other" is 5th with 10.8%.  Everyone else after that is at single-digit percentages. 

This was an odd poll.  The Fed, which at first no one even nominated, jumped out to a big early lead.  But then, over the next month, both Dain's and Wimpy's made up the gap.  But these polls are more for fun than anything, so maybe I shouldn't sweat the occasional oddity in the polling. 

As I usually do, I've taken the poll out of the sidebar.  However, it's still open, and you can see and vote the poll off its original post or the polls page.  Knock yourself out if you feel so inclined.  And thanks for playing. 

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Once again I've done some minor site tweaking.  I took the explicit showing of Technorati tags off while still using them.  Unfortunately, that meant posts I tagged weren't being picked up properly by outside.in.  So I put that back. 

I also installed an all-singing, all-dancing widget for sharing posts: ShareThis lets you share links through around 30 different services like del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Friendster, and old fashioned e-mail.  I don't think that, compared to my number of readers, very many people use a link-sharing service.  But some do, and I like not discriminating, while also keeping clutter down. 

I've added comment feeds for individual posts.  So now, if you like, you can use a feed reader to check and see if anyone is commenting on a particular post you're interested in.  I don't think I can get stats for that service, so it'll be hard to tell whether it's useful, but it sounds neat. 

There are also some changes I'm thinking about.   Maybe 18 months ago, I put up a widget that allowed folks to give me cash.  :)  I set the donations to go directly toward paying my blog bill.  I got an almost immediate $25 donation (thanks), but since then there's been nothing.  I actually have to pay extra money to get that widget, and it costs me about $40/yr.  So I took that down.  But I may try running ads to see if I can make this site self-supporting.  That also costs money, but I already paid for that service level when I got the donation widget, and my next annual billing date doesn't come up for 2 or 3 months.  It might be interesting to see if I can make the site pay for itself that way without running off all my readers.  I can also stick ads in the site feed.  Any of you have an opinion?  Would you stop reading if I put up ads? 

I'm also thinking about ditching the pork barrel.  I thought it would be neat to run a shared food blog.  Unfortunately, all my initial recruits bailed on me (if they started at all). I do have one new person who has posted there twice.  But my thinking now is that maybe I should just offer those people the ability to guest post here on Eat At Joe's!  Again, your feedback is welcome.

As always, thanks for your support.  I'm at close to 200 regular subscribers for the RSS/Atom feed, plus regular readers who drop by.  That's gratifying.  Thank you. 

Comments

[durhamfood]

Put up all the ads you like, I have an ad blocker :)

[durhamfood]

Adding: mwahahahaha!

[tlk]

Ads don't bother me. Sometimes I click on them just for fun. You really should get something for your trouble. Go for it.

[Joe Eater]

tlk - The problem is if I turn the blog into a job, I might not want to do it any more. Fortunately, I have a little more money coming in now, so maybe I don't have to find some way to make EAJ! self-supporting.