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.