Dita Always Higher

Web statistics are an amusing and instructive game. I often stop and watch the tables full of figures saying how many people come to my web site and which pages they visit, and the bulleted maps showing from which part of the world visitors arrive. Sometimes I find strange and unexpected things, for example a particular visit concentration from South Korea, from Turkey or Mexico.
One of the most interesting is the search statistics page offered by Google Sitemaps, showing which keywords visitors use to reach the website from the search engine. Many arrive on the web site simply searching “stylettos” and that's normal, but, apart from this, the most loved and most clicked is always her, Dita. Few months ago I published a blog about Dita Von Teese, and since then the fans of the famous pin-up, wife of rockstar Marilyn Manson, come everyday numerous.
Then I say: Do you want Dita? I'll give you Dita! Here's the YouTube video of a long television interview on French channel Antenne 2, where the Queen of the Burlesque appears in all her splendor, shot from several angles, absolutely elegant and well heeled.

There Is Something About YouTube

The recent purchase of extremely popular video web site YouTube by Google for $1.65 billion in stock is probably one of the biggest news to date in the internet world. The site, which was started by three 20-somethings last year, is a free video warehouse that allows users (something like 100 million a day) to upload or download movies. Rumors emerged that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end. Sequoia Capital, which funded YouTube with $11.5 million, earned more than 40 times what was invested in a company founded in February 2005. Other news report of CBS, Vivendi-Universal and Sony BMG joining a new branded channel on YouTube to deliver featured content.
On the other hand News Corp-Fox, which owns MySpace, the first YouTube competitor in the web video market, didn't hide sort of unease about Google's move, given the recent agreement for hosting Google ads on the famous social networking community. Last weekend, subtle changes occurred on MySpace’s homepage and user pages to make MySpace videos much more prominent and accessible. The default user profile page now has a video section that automatically displays a video if the user has one uploaded.
In other words the web video world is exploding, and the "viral" video technology invented by YouTube is the engine of this explosion. What's this "viral" stuff? It's the ability of embedding any YouTube video in a blog or web site just as simply as this...

Google AdSense and STYLETTOS Italy

But now a good piece of news: I finally found the way to monetise this web site adequately. I don't even remember where I got the idea, I tried to place Google Ads on the site and I discovered that IT WORKS! I can make in one week more than I earned in three years with other affiliate programs. And this I believe without weighing too much on this site's character, but on the contrary adding useful and interesting contents and features.

It is to be admitted that whoever invented this is a genius, those Google guys found the Columbus' egg, or if you prefer the chicken with the golden eggs. The idea is simple and brilliant at the same time: after creating a search engine which everybody must pass, and setting up a system that displays ads that are relevant with the search, they extended this system to third parties, addressing to every single web page and blog that signs-up with the program the most appropriate ads in a completely automated way. Doing so Google encourages web sites development, redistributing to the publishers part of the revenues, which are paid by the advertisers with an auction system that is quite complex and fully automated as well.

It's a milestone of a new age: somebody perfectly understood Internet's nature, which is not one-to-many but many-to-many communication, and found the way to intercept this traffic for commercial purposes with efficient services and a sophisticated artificial intelligence technology. Try and see, just browse the pages of this site to realise that the addressing can get on every page the most relevant ads, even if there is still some weird combination. The system is pay-per-click and these ads are very likely to be visited and so to bring revenues, because they just comply with what visitors are looking for. In my opinion the main advantage of Google AdSense, compared with usual affiliate programs, is that you don't need that the visitor buys something to get the commission. It's more or less as being paid just to bring people window-shopping.

Not Just Another Shoe Site

Many years ago, when I started surfing the web, I remember I tried to type "high heels" in Altavista, and, to my surprise, I discovered a world, a large community of people sharing the same interest for shoes. I read somewhere a statistics according to that fetish sex is one of Internet's most popular topics in the field of softcore porn. After all, also the success of this site demonstrate this. I've lost count of shoe web sites. Either fetish oriented or just fashionable there must be thousands. STYLETTOS Italy Portal, now a recognized and appreciated resource, collects all the best links in the field. I started some time ago with a short selection, then, due to good response, the page has been constantly widened, to the extent of a true branch encyclopedia, divided into three pages. Designers' page has always been the most comprehensive.

The original idea by STYLETTOS Italy was that of creating a bridge between fashion and fetish world, but nowadays there's not a big difference between fetish sex shops and fashion designers' sites, and these ones realise sometimes even better the most extreme voyeuristic fantasies.

I think this web site is different from all the others. Not because it's not voyeuristic (in fact it is very much) but here you won't find something you can see in every other shoe site: real shoes. The main feature of this site is a gallery of snapshots taken from the digital models I made. But looking carefully you'll find also REAL shoes...