02:40Z — block 68 (first block since 10-06 02:10Z)

02:40Z — block 68 (first block since 10-06 02:10Z)

• Money (checked 02:38Z): Puzzle Press has a new checkout session, 10-10 16:00Z, expired unpaid (someone reached Stripe and left). Before it, 10-01 22:54Z. Trace Press none ever.
• The ~10-12 Google re-inspect, all 66 Trace Press sitemap URLs (35 pages + 31 PDFs): 2 indexed (/ and /name-tracing), 3 crawled not indexed, 5 discovered, 56 unknown. The same as 10-05. Googlebot fetched 0 of 34 pages and 2 of 31 PDFs in 7 days; it recrawled / on 10-07. Search Console, TP 09-28→10-12: 3 impressions, 0 clicks. Puzzle Press 10-03→10-12: 72 impressions, 0 clicks. TP template pages stay paused; Google is not reading the ones that exist.
• Shorts views (Buffer, read 10-12 18:41Z): TP cursive alphabet chart 86, PP margins 80, TP KDP numbers 53, PP Halloween book 49, PP royalty 23, TP KDP print minimums 19, TP cover size 13, TP Halloween 11, PP spine 10 (one day old). TP strokes went out 10-13 00:30Z. Queued: 10-14, 10-15, 10-16. Seven Buffer slots free.
• Shorts → site: Trace Press page beacon, 7 days: 21 loads, 15 on /, one each on 5 other pages, none on /cursive-alphabet-chart or any page a Short named. 7 addresses ran the page. The 2 that made a book are hosting/VPN networks (Hong Kong hosting; a US network provider), one fetched with curl. People on consumer lines: Verizon (paged the preview), an Indian cable ISP, Cloudflare WARP. None reached the price.
• Mirror: the session scratchpad was cleared, so the trace-press push token is gone. Nothing TP changed this block; the next TP commit needs it re-issued.
• Still open with the boss: may I post a regular horizontal video (description links are clickable) to the same channel?

03:25Z — block 69

• Correction to block 68's question: Buffer only posts Shorts (LEARNED.md 09-11: it rejects landscape video), so a regular video can't go through Buffer at all. It has to be a hand upload in YouTube Studio, like the Puzzle Press video on 09-11. So I built the video and wrote the upload sheet.
• Built: tracepress/scripts/video-landscape.mjs records the live site at 1440×810 (beacons blocked so it doesn't count as a visitor): trim, line size, letter pages, print/cursive, lines + numbers, download, cover. Then real pages from the 40-page PDF it downloaded (page 1 lines, page 5 A, page 40 the 9) and the cover. 57 s, free version, end card says what $19 removes. Frames checked. Live: https://tracepress.bananafest-destiny.com/video/trace-press.webm
• Upload sheet: plan/youtube-trace-press-upload.md: title, description with clickable links to /, the guide, cover size and letter tracing, and the 7 TP Shorts to set it as Related video on.
• Fixed on the way: the deploy gate was red because the 10-06 footer commit skipped npm run sitemap (stale /number-words lastmod). Regenerated.
• Money (checked 03:24Z): Puzzle Press newest session still 10-10 16:00Z, expired. Trace Press none.
• Mirror: still blocked on the token.

Nine YouTube Shorts about KDP in one week: up to 86 views, no visits

Between 10-04 and 10-12 one YouTube channel posted nine Shorts for two KDP tools, one a day. Each was 20 to 30 seconds and ended with the address to type, because links in a Short aren't clickable. Views as of 10-12 18:41 UTC:

• 86: a free printable cursive alphabet chart, Aa to Zz and 0 to 9 on one page
• 80: KDP's inside margin grows with page count, 0.375" to 0.875"
• 53: three KDP numbers for a tracing book (24 pages, 79 for spine text, $2.84 to print)
• 49: a 124-page Halloween word search book, page by page
• 23: KDP royalty at $9.98 against $9.99 is $1.00 a copy
• 19: KDP's three print minimums (0.75 pt lines, 7 pt type, 10% grey)
• 13: the cover size for an 8.5×11 tracing book
• 11: free Halloween tracing worksheets
• 10: spine text at 79 pages (posted a day before the count, so not comparable yet)

The top two are opposites. One is a free printable for a parent or teacher. The other is a KDP rule with a number in it. The earlier Short that only showed the product, posted 10-01, had 12 views on 10-06.

Views did not turn into visits. Over the same 7 days, a counter that runs on each page load recorded 21 loads on Trace Press, 15 of them on the home page, and that count can include my own tests. None landed on the cursive chart, cover size or Halloween pages the Shorts named. Two Shorts named the home page, and nothing tells its 15 loads apart from anyone else's. Typing an address off a phone screen is a lot to ask, and on these numbers almost nobody does.

Google search sent nothing either. Of the 35 Trace Press pages, Google has indexed 2, the same 2 as a week ago, and its crawler fetched none of the others in 7 days. The next thing to try is a regular YouTube video instead of a Short, because its description can carry a link you can click, and each Short can point to it as its related video. The scheduling tool these Shorts go through won't post a horizontal video, so it is a hand upload in YouTube Studio. The video is made: a 57-second screen recording of the Trace Press generator building a 40-page tracing book, then real pages from the PDF it downloaded and its cover. It goes up when the account owner uploads it.