I suffer from blepharitis. Its an eye condition that makes the lids of my eye become sore and red unless I regularly wash them out with baby shampoo (yes, its as disgusting as it sounds).

There is no cure and no other treatment available. And because I’m lazy I can sometimes go weeks without treating my eyes in the right way. This can lead to incredibly sore and tired eyes – not good for someone who stares at a screen for up to 10 hours a day!

For anyone out there in the same boat as me I offer these simple tips:

1. WASH YOUR EYES! Do it at least every other day. Even when they don’t feel like they need it, they do, trust me.
2. WASH – YOUR – EYES! (see point 1).
3. Use eye drops sparingly. Remember its your eye lids NOT the eye itself which is at fault. Eye drops work in the sort-term but they are simply combating the fact that your dry and inflamed eye lids are scraping away at your eye balls.
4. Get some Optrex ActiMist™ Eye Spray its not cheap at £15 per bottle but its really helps as a ‘quick fix’ before you need to use your eyes for driving or going to the cinema for example.
5. Blink, often. You need to BLINK a LOT to keep your eyes moist. Most blepharitis sufferers don’t blink as often as they should. My eye doctor told me I needed to FORCE myself to blink once every few seconds, every now and again. It really does help.
6. Take eye breaks – I play video games, work on a screen and watch TV for hours every single day. My eyes hate me for it. Taking a break to read something or just to rest your eyes is the best advice I can give – the only problem is I don’t follow it.

Of course, every blepharitis sufferer should know at least some of these facts. But if you are new to the condition OR if you aren’t taking the right actions for your symptoms then this advice should help.

Seriously – If you feel sleepy, depressed, stressed or worn down chances are its just the blepharitis kicking in. There have been weeks when I’ve simply let slip my treatments and have felt like I’ve suffered from a constant hangover with no cure. After a few days of treatment I feel anew, like I can SEE and THINK clearly again. Imagine one of those great mornings when you’ve had the BEST nights sleep ever and the sun is shining though the window.

Cheesy I know, but true.

Note: I am not a clinician or medically trained in any way. I’ve had this condition for almost 5 years now and I still suffer badly. Do not think any of these tips will cure you, they may not even help in more drastic cases.

Of the many projects I have tried to get off the ground in the last 12 months Cover Art Review was one I was quite excited about.

The idea of the site was simple. I would open up a submittable form where users could come along, upload pretty album covers and then spend there days commenting and rating on the content to there hearts content.

Quick to market, quick to the grave

It didn’t take much work either. Built on WordPress (of course) with a modified free theme from the guys at WooThemes coupled with the TDO Mini Forms plugin meant I got things off the ground after about 2 days work (it also took about 3 hours to grab a few decent ‘starter’ album covers and upload them of course, but this could be considered testing).

Once finished I ‘launched’ the site with a few tweets and word of mouth to some of my friends.

I also hoped that Google would do most of the legwork and send users trying to find album covers (for downloaded music) as I had stuck to all the recommended SEO tips for each item.

I hoped that building a small community would be easy, I thought.

The site would pretty much manage itself! I thought.

I could earn money from affiliate sales on iTunes and Amazon! I thought….

Hope is not a marketing tool

I was wrong, oh how embarrassing. Since its launch in June Cover Art Review has faltered.

In fact, it was pretty much DOA. There hasn’t been a single upload from a site visitor in months. The Google Analytics are frankly too embarrassing to bring up and the only comments are from a couple of friends who I asked to test the site for me!

The lesson here is simple. Community sites such as Digg, Reddit and smaller neich varients like Share A Logo! and DesignBump require a lot of care and attention. You can’t simply wash your hands of them once the coding is done and hope people will take up the responsibility of making the site work, you need to make sure they come back for more.

I treated Cover Art Review like it was a client project. I did the work then walked away only to come back months later and see I’d wasted my time.

And so..

Its not all bad. I still feel the site has merit and should be updated and re-marketed at some point. I’m just too busy to take it on right now.

And after a 2nd look at the market I doubt this site will ever reach the visitorship levels I hoped for, I just need to scale back my ambition before wasting more time on this.

Besides the site costs me nothing to run so I won’t be taking it down any time soon.

If anyone would like to know more or get invovled in the Cover Art Review site feel free to leave a comment…