These two weeks I have surprised myself by being able to write rather constantly, which is a definitive improvement over previous one and half year absence. Kick-start for such a U-turn in my ways was a fun little contest called Blogging Idol, you really have to go and check the logo on Daniel’s site. The contest is about increasing the RSS subscriber count during one month. Well, I didn’t even have RSS-subscription button, so I added one and now I seem to have two loyal readers

I haven’t done anything special to explode my numbers, except writing few posts and adding a call to action (subscribe to my feed) to couple of posts. Still, I am really happy to my development, this has done lot of good for the site already, and looks like I can keep it going. Future plans regarding the contest are to post regularly and nothing more. Oh yeah, having run the site for years without any monetization, I acted on a whim (John Chow’s post about Kontera) and added Kontera contextual advertising on the site. It will probably take a year to earn enough money to cover domain cost. I don’t even dream about

There has been one major setback though, before this recent revitalization, site got about 50 unique visitors per day, but now with my sudden burst of new content and selective dead link cleaning… I’m close to zero search engine visitors. Goodbye organic traffic from Google, luckily Yahoo traffic still remains. Oh, go figure. So, time for the next log home post.

Which company is the best American log home manufacturer? I’m playing with an idea of representing an American log home company here in Finland. I know this is tough market, because half of world’s biggest log home companies come from Finland. Still, I believe that American rustic log homes have a suitable and distinctive style, which is hard to imitate. Log cabin rental business is growing by leaps and bounds in Lapland and rental companies need specialties to compete efficiently.

American log homes have character
That’s true, say what you will, but American log homes are one of a kind, bit like American cars - big, bulky, powerful and cool. Unfortunately, American car manufacturers are in a bit of a trouble, markets cry for efficient cars and companies can’t deliver. Let’s hope the log home industry understands to jump the energy efficiency bandwagon and doesn’t just lull itself into thinking that people will buy those dream log homes no matter what. I’m all for dreams but if we can’t afford them, then we just have to change our dreams. Anyway, back to the topic.

Local competition in Lapland

Now, here is a photo of competition. You will see this sort of new log homes and log cabins in ski resorts of Lapland. Good thing with this style is that it reads log home all over it. However, like most Finnish log homes, design is so Scandinavian that it starts to lack character. This kind of Scandinavian-styled log cabin will surely loose against rustic American log home. The victory prize is yet another happy family of overnight renters. So, any recommendations? Please, just type it down to comments.

Here are the linkdonaters for Kiva:

De Stichting Werkgroep Urgenta
Log Cabin Directory
Leavenworth Washington Real Estate

Blog about your blog

The first linker is a non-governmental organization, called The Urgenta Foundation. Following is an excerpt from their website: “The Urgenta Foundation is a Dutch non-profit volunteer charity organization (NGO) engaged in community development aid to Eastern European developing countries like Romania and Moldova.”

As you can see, this is a perfect match as through Kiva one can micro-finance projects in Eastern Europe. I know this might not bring much added value for those of you that are surfing this site because of log homes, but I promise it will remain the main focus of the site.

Ok, one dollar going for Kiva and 999 more pending, deadline being the last of February. Then it is time to change the project. Let’s see how much we get to donate in links and in money.

I must disappoint you, because there is no specific and right way to get a log home or log cabin. However I try to demonstrate how to build a log home. I will show the process from the start to finish and explain the details and motivation. There will be pictures, video, articles and interviews that document the whole project from the idea to the finished log home.

I am able to do this, because it’s me who is going to build the log home. Time frame is staggering because I have reserved three years for the whole project, starting from the beginning of the year 2007. I don’t know how many of you will have the patience to follow the progress or the lack of it, but I publish the information here anyway.

I remember the first time that I was dealing with Americans. Whenever I met people on the street that I knew, they said, “Hi, how are you doing?” I stopped there in the middle of the road “Well, now that you asked…” but they didn’t stop neither looked back they just kept on walking to the opposite direction. I wondered why they pretended to be interested but then just walked away?

That above memory came to my mind when I was reading an article at Seth Godin. He tells an example about corporate communication that sets expectations high. If you listen to the customer but don’t act accordingly, you will leave them standing on the street wondering whether to keep on walking or running after a real communication.

For few times I have sat in a development meeting where customer feedback has been the topic of the day. Just as many times the conclusion of those meetings has been that we need to change our marketing communication to better fit the image that customers have on us. We promised to deliver in seven days, but too often the delivery was few days late. Solution: we started to talk about two weeks as a delivery time. Problem solved. My experience is that customer feedback rarely changes business operations.

I made one tiny mistake that stalled my log cabin project in which I used Honka log cabin kit. Now you can avoid making the same simple mistake.

We had this log cabin kit at warehouse, waiting for the day when our building license would come. Finally that day arrived and we were set to go. In a matter of couple of weeks the foundation stood proud and tall. We made it by our own hands, such a beautiful moment. It was time to start stacking up the logs, just open those airtight packages and walls are up in no time.

But wait… there’s something funny with the logs, looks like they are longer than our foundation. Some feverish measuring and foundation is exactly what it says in the blueprints. However, our logs are some fifty centimeters (about 20 inches) longer than they are supposed to be. What the…? Log cabin kit mill had made a friendly gesture and gave us more than we ordered for. To their defense I must say that they had a note inside the plastics, which read that logs are actually longer than in the blueprint… INSIDE the plastic covers, great! So my advice to you is to check your merchandise before long-term storage.

We sorted this unexpected difficulty with three pillars, which came to support the other end of the log cabin, like this:

I seem to be in a downward spiral into the world of charity. I was reading Seth Godin’s post about smart non-profits and an idea came to me (surprising, I must confess). What if it would be possible to push Google from that passive “don’t be evil”- philosophy towards “do good”- philosophy? They could introduce an improvement into adsense, which would enable us to earmark a share of revenue to some fitting non-profit organization. We could just mind our own websites and adsense beneficiary would… well, benefit.

Now, about that list of 59 smart non-profit organizations. I support Kiva.

Even nobody has been enthusiastic enough to take part into my link charity drive I’m still going to introduce a new category that highlights various charity organizations. I don’t know how I’m going to go about with this, but it could be something, which combines blog carnivals and linkdonating. Anyway, first I’ll follow through my current linkdonating project, and I’ll go from there.

All these people have linked to One House At A Time:

None yet.

Edit: this was January’s project and nobody notified me about their links to One House At A Time, hence no links here. February project is already doing bit better.