the Sam Jackson College Experience

Hey everyone, as is readily apparent, I haven’t made very many updates this summer. I’ve been having a pretty good time in San Francisco with Google, and will try to share some photos of non-confidential fun.

In the meanwhile, in the interests of testing out my employer’s neat products, here is a Google Voice call widget which will let you give me a call and leave me messages, in case somehow you read my blog and are too intimidated to leave so much as a comment (please!) but are less fearful of actually calling me. Anyway, go have a ball. Please don’t make your number private, because it will discourage me from calling you back if you leave an unintelligible voicemail. : )

Greetings, readers! I’m sorry to have left everyone hanging over the summer. I was in Washington, D.C. working as a policy intern for Google, which was fascinating and a lot of fun. Now that school is back in session I have lots more to write about, once again, so will be resuming my more regular schedule quite soon. I’m currently in the midst of shopping period, frantically trying to take as many classes at once to pare down my list from 200 possible courses to about 4.5-5.5 credits worth of coursework. I’ll keep you all posted!

As usual, I am very very very happy to answer any and all questions, so please send them my way – comment here if you have something you’d like me to specifically write about. Thanks!

I was recently having a little debate with Diana over at the Digital Natives blog about how best to manage online identities as a teenager, inspired by Lifehacker’s recent post about managing digital reputations. My main point of agreement was about ‘becoming the source’ for information about yourself, and how important it is to maintain a high-profile place for positive information control. I do that very well with this website–google ’sam jackson’ and you’ll see I’m the fourth result–but right before I saw Diana’s post, I had decided I wanted to cover some other bases.

It’s midterms time here at Yale, and while some people like to go out and shop or buy things to de-stress some, I opted for another route: buying a few domain names. I went to gratuitous lengths to try to acquire a few I’ve been negotiating over for ages, with continued failure. But I did go ahead and buy www.SamuelAJackson.com and www.SamuelABJackson.com. I remain bitter that I don’t have the funds to acquire samjackson.com, or samueljackson.com, etc.

I wish I had been a little older–or a lot wiser–when I was younger, because I would be a lot richer now for my domain purchases if that had been the case. But, in case anyone is ever searching for my full name, I now have some good insurance. These wouldn’t really rank, of course, and I will just have them redirect back here for now. Still–pays to try to cover as many angles as possible, and it’s really pretty cheap. Certainly a much lower down payment now than there will be later, if you have to try to buy a domain off someone or do damage control from high-ranking bad PR.

For a good place to start investigating how to control your public identity online, check out both that lifehacker post and danah boyd’s musings on the subject last fall.

Hello everyone! I just made a nice direct advertising page. Please consider advertising on the site today. You’ll support my college education and the site while getting great exposure. I’ve taken down the Google AdSense ads (yay!) but want to replace that revenue… with direct ad sales! They could look like the sample unit you see in the sidebar, or something entirely original! It’s really supporting a good cause, because college is really expensive.

Here’s what the new advertising page (http://www.samjackson.org/college/advertise) looks like. If you are interested, please contact me; if you know someone who might be, let them know (you can click the “share this” link to e-mail, facebook, etc)!

Are you interested in advertising on the Sam Jackson College Experience?

If so contact me either through this form or by e-mail @ sam [at] samjackson [dot] org to discuss rates. You can spend a little or a lot! Many advertising units are possible for your campaign, but conventional banner sizes like 160×600 and certain buttons like 160×160 are especially easy to implement. RSS ads are also possible (reach a regular readership of 150+ readers), as are sponsorships in general or of specific posts.

I’m also looking for people and organizations looking to help co-sponsor a scholarship; contact me if you are interested.

You should advertise because it will help you to…

Feel good knowing that you are helping to support my college education! It’s really, really expensive. Really.

Reach thousands of unique visitors each month! Strong organic traffic also means that many visitors are looking for resources that your advertisement could provide; the blog is automatically available in 14 different languages. More opportunities to drive traffic to your site!

Reach highly targeted audiences!

• Many current and prospective students read my blog, forwarding articles to friends as well and posting them on Facebook, College Confidential and other similar sites. The same people looking to hear about my take on college applications and Yale University might be the ones you want to recruit.

• Interested in reaching higher education marketers, admissions professionals, teachers, and other players? My blog is respected and well regarded in the higher ed blogosphere:
  • Andrew Careaga calls it “a service to all of us in the higher ed marketing business.“
  • Christian Long says it has “dramatically inspired college admissions folks to take notice“
  • Bob Johnson says “I like [it] because I agree with so much of what he says.” and that “Paying attention what Sam writes will let you focus more closely on students who will actually attend your school.”
  • Karine Joly says my witty and fresh style “offers a rare glimpse at the mind of our elusive prospective students“
  • TargetX calls my blog “good reading” and me “wise-beyond-my-years.”
  • I’m also on the radar of Michael Stoner and too many others to list!

    
    These students, experts and professionals value my blog for my insight, commentary, and the same expertise that brought me to present at the College Board Forum in New York City in October 2007 and to create a webinar for Higher Ed Experts this past summer.

Still not sure if you want to advertise, sponsor, or otherwise support me and my site?
Contact me and we can discuss some options which might work out well for you!

One thing I have always wanted to do is make good use of my split audience. There are students and admissions officers / higher ed professionals–why not have them both work together for mutual benefit? What would really be great would be if the latter group pitched in to co-sponsor a scholarship, which would be awarded to someone from the first group of readers after a public contest which would solicit student opinions about the college admissions process. A promising student gets some money for college applications / college costs, sponsors get good PR, and everyone gets to learn from the exchange.

Anyone interested in contributing? Drop me a line through the contact form or sam [at] samjackson [dot] org. If we could get just a few sponsors– individuals and/or companies or websites could donate $50-100–that would be a nice $500-1000 award right there. (Believe it or not, I had been sitting on this idea for a while and only just today came upon AdmitSpit’s plans to have a sponsored scholarship — I originally started this post only planning to talk about my blogging revenue situation, but figured I’d go one step farther!)

The real income from blogging comes indirectly. This blog has helped me to gain exposure and net great job opportunities. It’s hard to quantify all that. Still, I make a little on the side from the ads that I run. I wish I did not have to run them, but sponsorship offers have been few and far between and. The last major offer that I received, in 2006, would have amounted to the total revenue I made for 2007–in about one month. But I turned it down because I saw it as a conflict of interests and wanted to maintain good integrity (so I could get those other indirect opportunities–right?).

I’m often asked how much money I make blogging, and my answer is usually “enough to support the site’s expenses, with a little left over [which I save for college].” Sadly, my meager revenue comes no where close to paying for college. It wouldn’t even cover books from these past two semesters. Let me put it this way: My total blogging revenue for 2007 represents approximately 1.6% of my total cost of attendance here at Yale for the year, less Yale scholarship. My most profitable month on record (this past January, 2008) occured when I hardly posted at all, so advertising revenues are clearly tricky. My blog is very niche which makes it tricky to connect with advertisers, although I think I do have a pretty awesome niche with some great readers. Short term goal: ditch AdSense and replace it with some sponsorship blocks. Oh well! We continue to hit records for subscribers and readers (and ad revenue) so by the time I graduate who knows where we’ll stand?

Advertisers, sponsors, readers–thoughts and feedback from everyone is welcome, here or by e-mail.