So, the T shirts are finally here. It does feel great to be able to touch something that has existed in your thoughts for quite a while, doesn’t it?

In our last post we talked about how you could get your hands on one of The MAG T-shirts. But at that time, to be honest, I wasn’t very sure how well the T shirts would turn out to be, I was even a bit worried that we had announced the contest without waiting for the T-shirts to actually arrive. What would happen if the T shirts failed to get printed in time?

But all those fears were put to rest as soon as I donned one of the T-shirts. The T shirt looked good, even though the grey shade of the T shirt is a bit lighter than whatwe had originally planned for. But,all said and done, it seems pretty nice. Here, I will refrain from saying anything more about the T-shirt and let you be your own judge.

If you like you can tell us what you think of them. We will be glad to hear from you,and we will be happy to hear your suggestions to make them  better next time.

As to how you can get one of these babies, just read our previous post.

Till next time!

Tags: T shirts

In 2008, we had hoped for a Google Page rank of 3, or 4, or even 5 for The MAG.  But for some reason, the PR actually fell from 2 to 1, and it had been 1 for the past three months.

Looks like Google today decided to make some changes to the Page Ranks. With these changes The MAG got back its PR of 2. I know it’s nothing spectacular, but celebrating every positive development, however small it is, is an important part of growing. And we do hope to continue growing in the future, with your support, of course.

For quite some time now, we had been using NeverBlueAds affiliate advertsising network for The MAG. But, the results haven not been that good. I am sure it has nothing to do with the quality of the NeverBlueAds site, because I have always been satisfied with whatever services they offered. I think it was a case of mismatch between The MAG’s readership, and the types of ads served by NeverBlueAds.

Today, I decided to take the ads off. In fact,  I have taken almost all kinds of advertising off The MAG, and kept only an ad block by Project Wonderful . This is also on an experimental basis, and if it is also not able to deliver , it will be soon gone too.

Happy New Year 2009!

Last six months have been good for The MAG! We have seen an increase in the number of contributors, registered members, as well as readers. But, there is still a long way to go.

In my last post, I had set out a list of targets for The MAG. Unfortunately, The MAG has not been able to meet all of those targets. While Alexa ranking of The MAG has become better, the new year brought with it a fall in Google page rank for The MAG. Though these numbers are not very important, yet, as I said before in an earlier post, the better these numbers get, the better we feel about The MAG.

So, in 2009, we are going to keep up with our efforts to get the numbers to the next level. But, our focus will not change from what it has always been - quality writing!

Targets and goals are wonderful things to have. Without goals and targets, one can keep on working hard but not reach anywhere. Everything natural on this earth has a purpose, so there is no reason why something man-made should not have a target too.

The MAG also has a clear objective, which I hope to share with all of you some day.

But a journey can become tedious if we focus only on the destination. Sometimes the destination can seem so far away, that hope abandons us, and despair sets in. To avoid that, it is important that we break our journey into parts, or, in other words, create smaller objectives and targets which will go a long way in helping us to get where we want to reach.

For The MAG, there are a set of targets that we hope to achieve within the next two months. Some of these targets are :

1. Achieving an Alexa Rank of below 100,000
2. Increasing the Google PR from 2 to 3, or 4
3. Increasing the number of RSS feed subscribers from 50+ to 100+

I have chosen the above as targets, because of one simple reason : these are numbers, and hence can be measured. Increasing them is no guarantee of a site’s quality, yet it will be good to see these numbers increase.

I will deal with the subject of how you can help us in achieving these targets in subsequent posts. Watch this space…

The MAG has had a blog for quite some time, but if you have been one of those who have checked it out often then you would have noticed that it was not being updated often.  So, the question that arose was : “Does The MAG even need a blog?”

I asked this question to many of the readers of  The MAG, and also to many contributors, but a clear-cut answer did not emerge. Some said it was a good idea, while others felt that it was not yet time to start a blog.

I feel that The MAG needs a blog. The need for a blog arises because the blog is a good medium to talk about what is going on at The MAG; it is a place where we can let our hair down, discuss things, and hope some of the readers come up with ideas that beat ours. After all, the best part of being online is the speed at which things change.

Talking about speed, it is also imperative that if there is a blog, then it is updated as often as possible.  So, it will be an endeavour from here on to update this blog as often as possible. In that context, I think it will be a good idea if we have many contributors to the blog too - that will help by addindg a dash of variety to the blog. So, if you are interested in writing for the blog, feel free to drop a comment.

Till next time!

Tags: Beginning, Blog, The MAG