ProBlogger

Favorite Pro Blogging Resources of 2004

Well it is New Years Eve here in Australia and I've been holed up in bed for the last few days with the flu. All I've really been able to do is a few short bursts of blogging and a lot of thinking about life, the past year and what is ahead (as well as a lot of coughing, spluttering and popping pills).

I got to thinking about the year that has just been and about some of the great blogs that I've discovered in recent months that have been useful on this career path. I thought I'd ask and compile a list of answers here to the question:

'What have been your most useful pro blogging resources (blogs, rss feeds, websites, forums etc) in 2004?'

What resources inspire, education, motivate, teach or support you the most and why?

Here are a few of my recent favorites (in no particular order):

Big Money Tips - This is a blog that I would love to see updated more regularly (and judging by the comments on each post I suspect I'm not alone). It's written by 'Scrivs' from 9 Rules Network who has been making a pretty decent living from his blogs (with online shops attached) through affiliate marketing and contextual ads. His archives contain heaps of worthwhile information and tips and the design of his blogs leaves my mouth watering.

Blog Business World - Wayne Hurlbert would have to be one of the more encouraging, approachable and empowering business bloggers that I've found. I like how his posts don't go over one's head but are easy to read and pretty well thought out. Wayne gets involved in others projects and is keen to share what he's learnt.

Webmaster World - The forums on this site have taught me more in the past few months about SEO, Contextual Ads and a variety of other webmaster topics than I've probably learned anywhere else online. Yes there are a few 'know it all' types on there - but there are also a lot of genuinely nice people who know a thing or two about the web that don't mind giving a hint or two. In a similar (and smaller) way Digital Point has been a valuable spot for me this past few months.

Micro Persuasion - He's on holidays at the moment but Steve Rubel's insights are well worth checking in for on a daily basis. I know I'm not the only one reading his stuff because he is regularly quoted by bloggers of all shapes and sizes. He covers everything from PR, to blogging, to participatory journalism. Looking forward to him getting back from his holidays soon (although his fill in guy is good too!).

Blog Herald - this blog is quality stuff and on my daily reads. It isn't just about business blogging but takes in a pretty wide spectrum of blogging news and always has something worth reading posted on it.

Ensight and Inside Blogging - I've become a bit of a fan of Jeremy this year. I like the creative and outside of the box approach that he takes with his blogging activities and always take notice when he posts. I also appreciate his approachability despite his busyness. Jeremy and his offsider Darren take a keen interest in not only their own business but are on the look out to work with others.

Radiant Marketing Group - Paul Chaney is another blogger that I have a lot of time for. He's pushing boundaries and working at exploring new frontiers for blogging. He's got his finger on the pulse on a number of areas and always has something worthwhile to say. I'm looking forward to what he's going to do in 2005 and am interested in collaborating with him.

Figby - I've only just discovered Michael in more recent times - largely because he's another blogger who is interested in dialogue and interaction (he's a regular commenter around here). Michael recently emailed me with his history of webmastering/blogging and has a wealth of experience in making a living online. He runs a variety of blogs and websites and is someone that I'm fast coming to respect in the closing weeks of 2004.

G'Day World - you'll probably click this link and get to a page that says 'bandwidth Limit Exceeded' which says something about the popularity of this podcast. G'day World is run by two fellow Aussie Bloggers (its nice to hear another Aussie Accent echoing around the blogosphere) by the name of Cameron Reilly and Mick Stanic. I really enjoy their podcasts not only for their accents but because they are really knowledgeable not only about blogging but other emerging media - and they don't present as up themselves - but rather come across as a couple of guys enjoying good conversation about something they are passionate about. They've got some great interviews coming up too with some standout bloggers. I'm looking forward to meeting them at Blogging Conference in Melbourne early next year.

So I've shown you mine - now you show me yours! If you want to do it in comments below feel free - otherwise blog it and leave a comment with a link to your post and I'll link to it here in the main post.

Message Cast - Live Message Alerts

I'm testing Live Message Alerts on this blog at the moment which enables you the reader to receive an alert every time I post new content. You can choose to be alerted either on you msn messenger, via email and/or to your mobile device. You have to have an MSN passport to be included in the program. The system uses my RSS feed and is currently in Beta. Let me know how it works for you if you sign up for it. You can do so via this button.

10 Emerging Trends for Bloggers to Watch in 2005

The Scotsman has one of the more useful predictions for 2005 lists that I've read over the past week or so. They write about the 10 trends that will shape 2005. I think its a worthwhile list for enterprising bloggers to consider - it might just give you a hint or two for some new directions for the year of blogging ahead. Here are the 10 trends with a few of my comments of explanation and dreaming on each.

1. Age complexity - Kids are growing up faster and adults are behaving more like kids. A number of successful blogs already tap into this - for example Gawker's Kotaku is one that springs to mind - targeting adult males with a blog about games. In fact a few of Gawker's blogs seem to be tapping into this playful zone.

2. Gender complexity - Distinctions between the genders continue to blur. Whilst I'm not sure this is just something for 2005 (its been going on for years) I've noticed in the past couple of years some interesting developments in our own community. For example I've noticed more groups for dads who are stay at home parents, there has been an increase in emphasis on beauty tips/ plastic surgery etc for males etc. I've not seen too many blogs tapping into either of these markets yet - maybe something to explore?

3. Lifestage complexity - Increases in people living alone, not getting married, not having kids. The definition of 'family' is definitely changing. Again there is nothing new about this - its been a trend of the past decade or so. I'm not sure how an enterprising blogger would tap into this one - any ideas?

4. Income complexity - (sounds like 2005 will be a 'complex' year!) - People are scrimping and saving in some areas to enable them to spurge in others. So on one hand discount supermarkets are booming but so is the market for Luxury items and the Travel industry. Luxist is a blog that is tapping into some of this with its main focus being Luxury in all its forms. Maybe another approach could be a blog about scrimping and saving?

5. Individualism - a growing desire for personalization and a continued emphasis upon 'self'. The choice that we have these days is incredible - take a walk down the isles of your local supermarket and see the hundreds of options that you have for different types of toothpaste or cola drinks. Each different variety is targeted for different individual tastes. In a sense blogging and RSS taps right into this trend. Now we no longer go to the news stand to buy a generic newspaper or magazine that we have no involvement in in what is presented to us - instead we can each tailor the news we want to read by subscribing to a completely unique mix of RSS feeds. Technology that helps people do this simply is an area that I suspect we'll see continued leaps forward in over the next year.

6. Homing - individuals and families are spending more and more time on their homes. I don't know about where you live, but the last two years have seen TV show after TV show about renovations, gardening, DIY etc. Hardware shops are booming as people jump onto the home improvement bandwagon. I've seen a few 'home improvement' type blogs around but few seem to be doing more than recording their own personal renovations experiences.

7. Connectivity - This covers everything from our increased connection to technology (when was the last time you didn't get online or connect with someone on your cell phone etc) through to the desire that people have for community and belonging (quite ironic as we're also into individualism) , through to our desire to tap into what is happening on the other side of the world. Take a look at the way the world has tapped into what has been happening in Asia this week and you'll see the advances in connectivity that we've experienced in the last few years. Again there are a lot of blogs already tapping into this trend and blogging in and of itself really is all about this. I actually think this is one of the key reasons that people both read and write blogs - there is something inside of us that wants to have a voice and to connect with others.

8. Sensory experiences - Extreme experiences are in. In the 80s and 90s I think the major focus for many people was about accumulating 'stuff' - in this decade I see a lot more people accumulating experiences. No longer is it just cool to have a great apartment filled with cool furniture - today to be cool you also have to have travelled, skydived, bungee jumped from a skyscraper, eaten blowfish in Milan, dived with sharks and circumvented the globe solo in a bathtub. Not only that - the senses are in. If you haven't read the wonderful book Lovemarks can i suggest you stop reading this article now until you've gone to Amazon and ordered yourself a copy. I would put it in my top 2 or 3 books of the year and its all about marketing in a way that engages the senses. I think its highly relevant to blogging and myself am wanting in 2005 to make my blogs a more sensual experience for my readers (does that sound kinky?).

How do we tap into this as bloggers? There are already heaps of blogs that do - for me there are opportunities in how we design our blogs but also in choice of topics. Recipe blogs, photologs, video blogs, podcasting - these all attempt to engage the senses.

9. Convenience - Multitasking, drive-through, convergence devices (ie my PDA can also be my phone, a gaming device, a camera and an MP3 player) and fast food are just a few of the ways we tap into convenience. Life is fast, we need a quick fix and we want everything now. Again blogging taps into this but I suspect we'll see more technologies emerge in the coming year that take blogging to an even higher level of convenience. People are working on ways to get their blogs readable on PDAs and mobile phones, more and more alert systems are popping up that enable your readers to be notified the moment you post - will can only increase.

10. Health - the health industry is and will continue to boom. Studies have show that people are more concerned about health and well being than ever before. The organic food industry here in Australia is booming, natural health, mineral supplements, probiotics, personal fitness etc are all industries that are getting more and more attention. Already many blogs are rising to the challenge in these areas and I suspect we'll see a lot more emerge in 2005.

So there you have it - 10 trends that Professional Bloggers might want to consider as they gaze into the crystal ball of 2005. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions of how you and others you've observed have tapped into some of these (and other) trends already. Maybe some of us could collaborate on some of them even.

Article found via €irePreneur

About.com - Megablog

What is the biggest pro blogging operation that you can think of?

If you believed the press it would probably either be Gawker or Weblogs Inc. They certainly know how to get press coverage. But whilst they are successful blogging networks there is another one that is quietly going about its business of building market share in the background with little noise or PR (at least that I've seen).

About.com is a site that many of us will have surfed by on numerous occasions after searching on Google for anything from Action Figures to Archaeology to Salt Water Aquariums. Their reach is quite staggering in terms of topic but also traffic. This is a megasite.

Actually it is a Megablog.

Yep - About uses Moveable Type blogging software to run its many pages and is in fact many blogs all running from the same domain name. All in all they actually are running 700 blogs and are currently ranked by Alexa as the 76th highest rank site online and 7000 out of ever 1 million web users find their page every day (that is like 0.7% of all surfers end up on their pages - sounds small but its massive).

Lets put that in context with a picture (I am more a picture guy than a words one). This one compares About's ranking with mega blog Gizmodo and the not so mega livingroom collection of blogs.

It actually doesn't look too bad (for me) until you look at the axis on the left and realize that its totally out of scale to accommodate the puniness of my blogs.

'According to Nielsen NetRatings, About.com is a top 15 Web property used by one out of every five people on the Internet.' (Source)

About.com uses MT to run their blogs and mainly utilizes Google's Adsense to monetize them. You may look at their site and wonder where the Adsense ads are - they are not always immediately evident - that is because these guys are so big that they are premium publishers and get special exceptions when placing ads.

This special treatment means that their adsense ads are not labeled as being from Google like the rest of ours and they get all kinds of licence when it comes to format and placement. For instance check out this page which is almost completely Adsense ads (I doubt most sites would get away that little content on a page).

About.com also uses other CPM advertisements and affiliate programs on their blogs which vary depending upon the topic.

So how do they run so many blogs? Do they rely upon a huge staff? do they have one insomniac who is completely addicted to blogging working 24 hour days? Do they rely upon volunteers? What is the deal?

Their system is quite simple really - About.com pays people to blog for them. They don't call them bloggers but rather give them the name of 'Guide'. There are around 475 of them at present. Guides are described as follows:

'About Guides live and work in over 20 countries and celebrate their interests in hundreds of topics. Guides are selected for their ability to provide the most interesting information for users, and for their passion for their subject and the Net. The selection process is rigorous -- only 10% of those that apply graduate to the live service. '

How much are Guides paid? Is it worth it? The answer is $500 per month minimum as long as they continue to grow their readership. Whilst specifics are not published on their site it is pretty clear on their information pages for potential guides that this is just a base income and that as you grow your traffic (and earn them more) there is potential to earn more than that.

About.com is not a short term thing - they started the project back in 1997 and have steadily added content every day since and now have almost 1 million pages of content.

Big stuff isn't it! I personally find it quite inspiring to see what can be done with some creativity and hard work online.

Bloggers Banned from Trade Show

Blog Your Way has picked up this interesting tidbit in an article at InfoWorld about the upcoming CES (consumer electronic show) in Las Vegas in January. Apparently no bloggers will be allowed at the event.

'The CEA spent more time qualifying attendees this year to make sure everyone in attendance has a legitimate attachment to the consumer electronics industry, said Kristen Peiffer, a CEA spokeswoman. The show is not open to the general public, and the CEA does not allow the blogging community or other independent observers to attend the show.'

I find this pretty disturbing as a blogger who remotely covers this event on one of my blogs (remotely). Whilst I was not planning a trip to cover the event this year it was something I have been considering for the future.

Whilst I can understand that they don't want their event crowded out by thousands of bloggers each covering the event from a different angle I don't understand why they wouldn't embrace some of the recognized tech bloggers. I doubt strongly that they'll be turning representatives from Gizmodo or Engadget away at the door.

What does it mean to have 'a legitimate attachment to the consumer electronics industry'? Does it mean having relationships with electronics manufacturers whereby they and even seek you out to review their products? Does it mean having hundreds of thousands of readers each month? If so I could name at least 10 - 20 bloggers who would qualify. In fact if the organizers of CES had some foresight and a few smarts I'd suggest that they go out of there way to invite and ensure that these bloggers attend CES this year because it would guarantee a lot more attention to their show.

The other point that I would make is that there is no mention of other website editors being banned from attending CES this year. I know of numerous other digital camera websites that are invited and given support in covering the show each year. Some of these sites do not call themselves 'blogs' but operate on a remarkably similar format to them.

Whilst I understand how such a decision might have been made - I think it reflects a lack of understanding by organizers of the event as to what blogging is and of what its potential is. I hope that in future years they take another look at or at least clarify/modify this decision.

New Google Feature: Sponsored Links

I just stumbled across a new (?) feature on Google - Google Sponsored Links which allows you to enter a term and then see what ads Google has in their stock pile.

The initial page that you go to looks like you've come to an error page but enter in a term in the search bar and you'll get a list of ads that they have. For example here are ads on the topic of Blog Money and here are some for Digital Cameras

The results do seems to vary depending upon your location (I get a lot of Aussie ads). This would be a useful tool for you if you're deciding on a topic for a blog and you want to run Adsense Ads. Check your keywords/blog topic on this tool and you'll see if there are sufficient ads to make it worth your time. If your keywords don't produce any ads it might be worth changing your approach or finding another income stream as it will be hard to get ads served to your blog and therefore difficult to extract any money from Adsense.

Pro Blogger Agency

Paul over at Radiant Marketing Group is considering setting his group up as an Agency for Pro Bloggers and wants the feedback of probloggers, consultants and CEO types:

'I've been thinking about turning Radiant Marketing Group into an agency for bloggers who want to find paying gigs. Serving as a rep for them so to speak. (I'd consider doing the same for blog consultants.)

What do you think? If you're a pro blogger or a consultant, especially if you're one looking for paying jobs, I'd like to get your take on this. Would you be interested in aligning yourself with an agency? I'd also like to hear from CEO-types as well as business consultants. Do you see viability in a business like this?'

I left a comment over there (and encourage you to do likewise) that expressed my interest. I know there would be a number of issues to work through for it to work, but purely speaking as a blogger wanting to earn an income from the field I know I'd be interested.

The model that I currently use for earning an income from blogging has been very much focused upon setting up my own niche blogs and earning a direct income from them. This has been pretty successful for me so far and has enabled me to give up 'my day job' - however I always argue that probloggers shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket and should diversify their blogging interests/income streams.

As a result I know I would be interested in having an agent to set up both short and longer term blogging jobs and consulting projects for me to supplement what I'm earning from my own private ventures.

The issue for many of us who set ourselves up as single person ventures (often scattered across the globe) is that to find such jobs takes us away from our core business - blogging. This is my frustration with advertising. Whilst systems like Adsense, Amazon etc are easy to use and implement and take very little time to keep running - finding private corporate advertising for your blog can be very time consuming.

I know when we ran the Olympic Blog earlier in the year that I spent days (weeks?) seeking a sponsor to no avail. In my mind it was an opportunity missed for both us as bloggers but also for potential sponsors who could have put their product in the faces of over 2 million readers in a 2 week period.

Whilst companies like Blog Ads are providing an incredibly valuable service (I use them with some success on a number of my blogs) I see a big gap in the market currently for services that represent bloggers to both potential clients but also to potential advertisers.

I've often considered setting up such a business myself but to this point have felt that my geographic location means I am not in the most logical position to best represent bloggers and be in contact with potential advertisers and employers. However I think its an opportunity worth exploring and would be keen to be involved in some way.

Support Red Cross Disaster Relief on your Blog

Those of you who are Amazon Publishers may have noticed that Amazon have made available the following button which invites your readers to make a donation to help the Red Cross with emergency assistance. It uses the Amazon Honor System and 100% of donations goes to the Red Cross Disaster Relief program.

You can donate by clicking the following button and you can obtain your own copy of this button for your blog from your Associate's Central page after logging into your Amazon associate's page.

I've also decided that in January this cause will be the recipient of my annual blogathon where I blog for 24 hours straight (one post every 15 minutes) for a cause. I ask for donations during the 24 hours and donate any earnings from advertising and affiliates generated over the day also. I'll update you more on this as it approaches but would encourage you to consider a donation in the mean time through this button.

Skweezer Update

I thought I'd update you on my interaction with Skweezer who in my last post I expressed my frustration with for duplicating the content on my blogs.

Last night I sent an email to them asking to remove all of my domains and sub-domains from their site. I explained some of my reasons for doing so.

This morning I had two replies - firstly from their customer service department asking me to confirm my desire to be removed - they will be doing so shortly (as I note they have done with Weblogs Inc's blogs already). The second email was from Barnabas Kendall from Greenlight Wireless who I want to acknowledge has been helpful in getting my sites removed from his program and who invited my feedback to Skweezer - but whom I also feel seems a little naive or deluded as to the impact his site is having on the publishers who are providing content to him without their knowledge.

I am continuing to correspond with Barnabas and am assured by him that he will be making a full statement shortly to explain further his side of the story.

My main concerns remain that:

1. That content that they duplicate like this downgrades the page ranking of my site. Google will not differentiate between my original content and their duplicated content. It will actually devalue both of our sites.
2. That I seem to be doing all the work in the equation. I research and writes (which takes hours), I host the images and they simply copy it onto their site and charge their readers for the privilege of reading it - and add their own ads to it. This is in direct violation of my (and most other bloggers) creative commons license which says that my content cannot be used for commercial purposes.

Anyway - I'll be off their system shortly and will continue to discuss this with Barnabas.

By the way - if you wish to be removed from Skweezer it is best to email customer.care@skweezer.net and put something in the subject line like 'Please Remove my Site'.

Update: Barnabas has added a response to Green Light Wireless's new Blog.

RSS Abuse, Duplicate Content and Parasite Websites

Jason has spoken out about something that a number of us have been mulling over for the past week or so - RSS Abuse. He points to Skweezer as one of the culprits that is targeting their blogs.

I've noticed a growing trend recently for sites to do this. Skweezer has pages for most of my blogs also (http://www.skweezer.net/s.aspx/2/www.livingroom.org.au/photolog/ is the one for my digicam one). Basically they are repackaging content of sites/blogs for viewing on PDAs and Phones. Not a bad idea in many respects - however they are taking complete posts and giving no real link backs. They are also stripping the advertisements from the sites also.

About the only thing that I can see on their version of my site that is linked directly back to and hosted on my site is the images. So not only are they using my content without giving me a way to benefit from what they are doing - but I'm also hosting their images.

This does not seem a fair deal to me.

The other thing that concerns me about this approach is that now there are two pages with almost identical content for each page on my site - there is duplicate content. Google does not look favorably upon duplicate content - it downgrades the ranking of sites that use it and I suspect that this practice will (and already has) downgraded the ranking of blogs that are duplicated in this way.

In a similar way sites like Excite Japan seem to be doing similar things with some of my blogs. Again check out this translated version of my digicam blog that they are running. At least in this case they are still showing my ads and so I get some benefit - however again some of the pages on this site will (and do) come up as duplicate content on Google. I know when I search on CopyScape for some of my blog posts it shows these pages - if CopyScape can see them as duplicates I worry that Google does also.

A number of people have suggested to me that my recent massive downgrade in traffic from Google is likely to at least partially be due to this duplicate content.

To be honest I'm pretty angry about this sort of thing. I'm just a nice guy trying to make an honest living from my sites - I don't have the time or energy to fight against slime like these sites who are like parasites - sucking all the goodness from what I do.

It is time some of us stood together to tackle issues like this. The latest downgrade in traffic from Google will cost me a large sum of money (six figures) over the next 12 months unless it rights itself - and if its sites like these duplicate sites that are behind it then I'm willing to fight. Is anyone else?

Update: As with Jason I'd encourage you to email Skweezer's CEO and be removed you can reach them at kperkins@gwcorp.net and cc bkendall@gwcorp.net (thanks to Jason for those email addresses).

ProBlogger to Visit US in 2005?

There is a chance that I might be in the US in June for a few weeks for holiday and maybe a little connecting with some bloggers if possible. We're toying with the idea of New York, LA, Washington and maybe even Boston.

I know a lot of you are from the US and so I'd love to hear your suggestions on destinations, things to see and do and most importantly cheap places to stay which won't suck all our worthless little Aussie dollars out of our wallet!

I'd also like to meet some of you - although we'll have to work out a way of not completely dominating our holiday with probloggers! So if you're based in the US and would like to meet, or you have any suggestions on destinateions, let me know in comments below or via email.

PS: is there any blogger conferences planned over there at that time?

The Challenge of RSS for Marketers

I've just been listening to G'day World latest Podcast interview with Mark Jones, Deputy Managing Director at IDG Communications. It is a pretty long interview - but the section that I found most interesting was his grappling with RSS feeds and Blogging as a Magazine publisher.

It is fascinating to hear both the excitement about the technology but also the frustration (wrong word?) with finding a way to measure and monetize it. One of the interesting threads of the conversation was how RSS is impacting email newsletters.

Traditionally people would subscribe to newsletters and information would be sent to them by marketers who know who they are, where they live, their age etc.

With RSS there are similarities (ie it is a permission based method of communicating information) - however the challenge comes when analyzing who is reading it. With RSS gives readers almost complete anonymity and puts the power back in the hand of the reader in terms of when and how they access the information.

This brings all kinds of difficulties for monetizing this exchange of information. Will advertisers be willing to sponsor RSS feeds when all they know is the total number of those subscribing to them? No more demographics which has been key in raising sponsorship for newsletters.

How Obvious is your Blog's Topic?

Can your readers identify what your blog is about quickly?

SEO Scoop has a good basic tip on making the topic of your posts obvious as a method of optimizing your page. I would extend this tip to the front page of your blog also.

'Go to a page on your website that you are actively promoting but are having trouble ranking. Have your mother or grandmother or some non-techy friend look at the page. Give them only about 5 seconds to glance at it. Now close the browser and ask the person what the main topic of the page was. If they can give you the correct answer, give yourself a pat on the back. If they give the wrong answer, or just have no idea, you need to go back and do some more work on that page.'

It's not rocket science - but its very true. So often I've been asked to look at blog to give advice and have found them to be so cluttered and complicated that its taken me concerted effort to even work out what they are about.

It is confession time - I'm a very lazy web surfer. If I go to a page and have to do work to understand what it is about then I generally leave within a few seconds. However if I can quickly ascertain the nature of the site and am engaged within the first few seconds I'm likely to stay a while and even come back.

56 Directories To Submit Your Blog To

Search Engines are perhaps the most popular source of traffic for most of our blogs - however its also worth working on other sources for traffic to supplement what Google and Yahoo sends your way. Directories are also a useful source of traffic so 'Text Link Brokers' provide this useful list of 56 Directories To Submit Your Blog To. Most of them charge a fee to to submit to - but some of them are completely free.

Slacker Manager pitches idea on Blogging for Charity

Slacker Manager has pitched an interesting not for profit idea to the Blogosphere with his post 'Help me lasso the Long Tail for charity'. He's certainly mentioned some great names in this call for help - if he managed to get that sort of team on board Localism could really go places. It'll be a project worth watching. Here's part of his pitch:

'The basic idea behind Localism is the same as with Gawker and Weblogs Inc, but the primary organizational difference is that Localism will organize blogs across two dimensions--geographic location and topic. So you'd find blogs about snowboarding in Canada, in the PNW, and in the alps. Blogs about mountain biking in Hawai'i, Northern California and Vermont. Blogs about surfing in Oregon and blogs about surfing in Asia. Blogs about art in NYC and art in London. Blogs about professional sports teams, since they're so closely tied to location. You get the idea--place and topic.

Like Gawker and Weblogsinc, Localism will derive its revenue through advertising. Because Localism is non-profit, ad placement purchases will be tax-deductible. Unlike Gawker and Weblogsinc, Localism won't take the majority of revenue. I'm envisioning a revenue split along these lines: 10% to Localism to cover overhead; 40% to the blogger; 50% to a designated charity. The blogger definitely needs to be paid, but I'm still not sure what the best strategy is...percentage of ad revenue, or flat fee.'

Problogger earns in excess of $5000 a month

Fortune has a fantastic article on Google that features problogger Jon Gales from Mobile Tracker (a blog about cell phones) which is a fantastic example of a blog which is being used very effectively to earn its owner/editor a decent income. Jon has recently redesigned his blog, taking it to the next level in terms of professionalism. As the article says - the major income stream for Mobile Tracker is Adsense but runs some private banner/affiliate ads also. Here's an excerpt from the article:

'Jon Gales loves Google, but not for the reason you might think. It's a terrific search engine, sure, but what Gales really likes is that Google is making him money. Gales's website, Mobiletracker.net, is a compendium of news and reviews about cellphones that after a year and a half attracts about 200,000 users a month. Google supplies the ads for the site, visitors click on the ads, and because of the site's popularity, Google sends Gales monthly checks of $5,000 or more. That's a decent chunk of change for any sole proprietor. But for Gales, the numbers are eye-popping. He's only 19 and lives expense-free at home with his parents in Tampa, posting four or five items in the course of the day while parked on the living room couch with his laptop. Says Gales: “If things keep going the way they are going, I'll be making more money than my dad next year.”'

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Is anyone else really hanging out to get their hands on a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's new book Blink?

I've had my copy on order for a month or so now and can't wait til the postman brings it. Malcolm's last book, The Tipping Point, was really worthwhile and so relevant to blogging. It was one of the books that really got me thinking about Problogging (whilst never mentioning it).

Blink is a book about 'rapid cognition' - huh? Well on its 'about page' Malcolm explains:

'When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, “Blink” is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good....

What is going on in inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?'

This sounds like a fascinating book - and as a problogger I'm very interested to get my hands on it because I've long believed that the first few seconds that a new reader arrives on your blog are incredibly crucial in whether they'll stay, read on and become loyal readers. In fact my very first blog tips (on my other blog) were related to this topic. I did a little study into how long people stay on blogs and found that the average length of stay on a blog was 96 seconds. 96 seconds isn't long - but its long enough to make an impression that lasts a lifetime.

Anyway - can't wait to read 'Blink' - its supposed to be released on 11 January!

Customize your Error 404 Page for Retaining Readership

SEO Chat has a good article on making your 404 error pages work for you to create increased traffic. Using these methods you can not only retain visitors to your site that have strayed out of your working pages but can also direct them into the areas of your site that you'd like them to head to.

'Why do you need a 404 custom page? Well, what happens when someone requests a page on your site that does not exist? Have you ever noticed that some sites give you a very nice looking page when you mistype a URL, instead of that nasty 404 File Not Found? It is easy to create a 404 custom page in IIS and Apache.'

This is a technique I'm keen to explore in the new year - let us know in comment below how and if you've used these sorts of techniques.

Copyright and Blogs - 14 Guidelines

Copyright issues are becoming more and more important for bloggers as blogging is a medium where by it is so easy to borrow, steal, copy or duplicate another person's content. I've blogged on numerous occasions about breaches of copyright that I've been on the end of.

So when I saw About.com had published 14 Copyright Tips for Bloggers my ears pricked up a little.

It is pretty basic stuff - but unfortunately 'the basics' are being ignored time and time again. The tips include guidelines for not infringing copyright but also tips on dealing with your own copyright being breeched. I'll leave you with tip 14 from their list....

'Don't be overly scared by copyright. Most people do not experience copyright infringement allegations or problems, unless they are putting lots and lots of movies or MP3s on their website. Basic common sense will mostly be sufficient to avoid problems: Don't copy too much and only copy where it is 'fair' - where you're not competing with the owner's market.'

Read more at 14 Copyright Tips for Bloggers

Should bloggers post a blog disclosure statement? - Survey

Jason Calacanis is conducting a Survey about disclosure statements on blogs and asks:

- 'Should bloggers post a blog disclosure statement?'
- 'Should bloggers accept money to blog about a product without disclosing it? (like Buzz Agents)'
- 'Should bloggers accept money to blog about a product if they disclose they are being paid? (like that Canadian company Marc Canter works for)'
- 'Would you feel more comfortable reading a blog that had an icon showing they subscribed to a blog ethics standard that said they would not mix editorial and advertising?'

Good questions which hopefully more than the 10 of us who have already answered will consider.

PS - Disclosure - Jason Calacanis is not paying me for this link up.

Small Businesses and Blogs

T.L. Pakii Pierce has a good post on Small Businesses and Blogging:

'Blogs are your tools to creating this type of customer connection through content. You will build relationships that are founded on a great level of trust as you become the authority and source of information on your topic. Blogs promote repeat visits through relevant and frequent updates. You audience will want the latest information from you and the fact that you publish regularly is reason to return. If your content is of high value then your audience will keep returning. Your audience chooses to have relationship with you and your business time and again as they come back to you for solutions to help solve their problems....'

Christmas Greetings from ProBlogger

Well we're a little ahead of the rest of the world here in Australia so Christmas has already come. Its shaping up to be a nice warm day with a BBQ/Roast lunch ahead and maybe even a swim in the pool (I know that seems all wrong for you northern hemisphere types - but its the way we do things down here).

So let me take a chance to wish you and your families a very happy Christmas.

I also want to thank the many probloggers who have been traveling the journey with me over the past couple of months here at Problogger. Its been nice to get to know many of you better and I'm looking forward to working with more of you in the new year.

I've got loads of ideas for Problogger and am looking forward to sharing more of them in the months ahead.

So have a great Christmas and we'll get back to the problogging stuff shortly!

Online Advertising to Grow 30 Percent in 2005

ClickZ has another good article with a prediction about Online Advertising that should warm the hearts of ProBloggers everywhere.

'Online advertising will grow by 30 percent next year from $7.8 billion in 2004 to $10.2 billion in 2005, a rate reminiscent of the late nineties when the medium was in its infancy, according to the Jack Myers 2005 Spending Forecast.

In contrast, Myers projects that overall advertising will grow at a more modest 4.8 percent from $181.5 billion in 2004 to $190.2 billion in 2005.

“Most offline advertising has reached a state of what I would call parity, where the major players are all spending roughly the same amount as their competitors,” Myers said. “Online is seen as the place to seek for a competitive advantage for a comparatively low amount of spending.”'

Read more at Myers: Online Advertising to Grow 30 Percent in '05

Moveable Type announce Upgrade to combat Comment Spam

Six Apart have just announced the release of Movable Type 3.14 which they have developed to fix 'the issue of extreme loads witnessed on servers under the strain of a massive spam attack.

Its a free upgrade for all MT3 users.

Seduction Blogging

Well it seems that one of the emerging focuses for blogging is 'Seduction blogging'. Yep you heard it - blogs with seduction and dating tips. Check out the Seduction Lair's reflections on Starting Your Own Seduction Blog:

'Seduction blogging seems to be a growing trend online these days, which I'm more than happy to be a part of. One of the great things about blogging on this topic is that it really does help you keep focused on improving yourself, and it also opens a forum for constructive feedback by the internet audience. I know that my game has improved a great deal because of my association with this site. In just one year, I've racked up almost 700 individual posts all about dating and seduction related stuff.'

So far it doesn't seem to have an income stream so I wouldn't clasify it as a problogger blog - but it wouldn't take much to take it in that direction. I can think of a few ways they could monetize this one!

Advertisers Target Ads to Keyword Searches of Bloggers' Names

Rick over at Business Blog consulting observes a new trend in contextual advertising where Savvy Advertisers Target Ads to Keyword Searches of Bloggers' Names:

'Steve Rubel noted that IntelliSeek is targeting ads on Google to keyword searches of Steve Rubel. Some additional quick research shows the same goes for Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis.'

Like Rick - it seems no one has yet to pounce on the amazing opportunity of advertising under the name of Darren Rowse.

Surely it won't be long.... any takers?....anyone?....errr...is this thing on?.....testing, 1, 2, 3.... anyone?

What to do When Someone Steals Your Blog's Content - Blog Plagiarism

What do you do when a site blatantly steals your blog's content? This is a growing problem for bloggers but thanks to tools like CopyScape its not hard to find them. The challenge comes when you want to do something about it.

A few days back I found this plagiaristic site which has word for word copied all 8 articles in my Adsense for Bloggers series of posts.

It especially concerns me as this is a site that not only gave no backlink to my articles (they post it as if it is original content) but they are a site that is commercial in nature and is making money off my own work.

So what should one do?

1. Contact the site concerned - First port of Call should always be to contact the webmaster concerned and politely explain to them that they are in breech of copyright and that you wish them to remove the content immediately. In 90% of cases where I've done this the content has been removed within 24 hours and there has usually been some sort of apology.

Unfortunately in this case no email address or contact details are on the site in question. You can try some random email addresses including webmaster@domaininquestion.com or info@domaininquestion.com.

2. Whois - Run a Whois check on the site concerned. There are numerous services around that do this - I use the CopyScape service and on the page in question got this information on the site. Whilst it doesn't tell much it does give one or two avenues for further action.

For example in this case it gives me a name of registrant of the site - a Haluk Bilge of Turkey and an email address halukbilge@yahoo.com) - (although its not been successful so far and I suspect its bogus or never checked).

It also tells me who the site is registered through and who is now hosting the site.

3. Contact the Site's Hosts - This is what I have now done after not hearing from Haluk Bilge of Turkey. I told the the company that hosts the site in question that it is hosting a site in breech of copyright and asked them to contact him on my behalf and ask for him to remove the content. If this does not happen I will ask the host company to remove the site as they are supporting a copyright breech. So far the company has been most helpful and is attempting to help out.

4. Contact the Site's Advertisers - What is the motivation of a site stealing content? Well they are obviously doing it in this case to earn a few dollars on the side. What is therefore most likely to get them to take some notice - take their earning capacity away. In this case the site seems to have previously advertised with Adsense (the code is in their 'view source details') although the ads are not showing and I suspect they may have been banned. They do have another advertiser who I today emailed notifying them of the site's activities which are against their rules and conditions. I asked them to stop dealing with this site.

5. Shame the suckers! - I guess that is what this post is about. Name and Shame them - expose them for the thieves that they truly are.

6. File for them to be banned from Google and other Search Engines - Next on the list of action you can take is to file a notice of infringement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Google. This has the potential to get the site in question banned from Google. Other Search Engines have similar procedures. I'm yet to go to this length with any site because by this point they have usually responded. However in this case its my next step.

7. Legal Action - I guess this is a last course of action that I am yet to take but the avenue is open to me. The Whois search gives enough to go on to start such proceedings.

I'm sure there are other methods of getting some action on copy theft - but this is what I've done so far. Feel free to add your comments, suggestions, experiences and thoughts below in comments.

PS: Dear Haluk Bilge of Turkey and owners of AllWebMoney - I'm a pretty patient and nice guy - if you're willing to remove the pages of content that I've written from your site I'm willing to remove your name and details from this post. The ball is in your court.

MSN Search Engine Beta Optimization Techniques

MSN's Search is one of the latest entries into the Search Engine market and many are tipping it to rival Yahoo and then Google in the popularity stakes for those wanting to get the best results from their searching of the billions of web pages currently online. Whilst it is still in beta - the initial reports about MSN Search are very positive.

As a blogger this is another Search Engine it is worth getting your blog optimized for to position yourself for an increase in popularity of the tool over the next year.

SEO Chat has just published a very helpful article on how to get Optimized for MSN Search. It is written by our friend - Wayne Hurlbert. Here are a few snippets:

'Achieving high search engine rankings in MSN has some similarities to the techniques already used in Google and Yahoo. As expected, the MSN algorithm has a few twists and turns for SEO professionals to navigate as well....

Perhaps the first and probably most important aspect of the MSN Search Beta is the need for good keyword rich content. Relevance of theme and topic appears to be very important to MSN, as it is becoming for Google optimization. There are also additional considerations for levels of on page keyword density that differ somewhat from Google. On the other hand, MSN seems to strongly dislike keyword stuffing, and will drop a site’s ranking accordingly....

As expected, links are important to MSN, as they are important to Yahoo, and of course to the legendarily link obsessed Google algorithm....

Clean coding is a must with MSN Search, as its spider has a strong preference for well written code....

Like Yahoo, MSN Search seems to still place some importance on meta tags.'

Read the full article at MSN Search Engine Beta Optimization Techniques'

Search Engine Strategies Chicago Recap Search-A-Palooza '04

Rebecca Lieb has a worthwhile summary of the recent Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference and expo in Chicago. One of her more interesting paragraphs is a description of some comments by keynote speaker Danny Sullivan:

'“Personal search is here,” Sullivan observed. Last year's dream is this year's reality, with the launch of more personalized engines such as A9 and MSN Search and moves like the Eurekster alliance. “Personal changed this year to memory/history, or discovery versus recovery,” said Sullivan. “There are shortcuts and direct display, like Yahoo shortcuts, AOL Snapshots, and AskJeeves' Smart Search.” All these, in some, way funnel Web results into vertical or local results. “Marketers need to get it. Marketers need to plan for it,” is Sullivan's message. Are you optimizing solely for organic Web search results? One day soon, your listing could vanish from the results screen.'

Read more at Search-A-Palooza '04

Professional Bloggers Association Developments

Paul over at Radiant Marketing Group has been talking about a Professional Bloggers Association (BPA?) for a while now - and today posts that a group of bloggers is 'going underground' to polish the concept up. I'm really interested in seeing what comes out of this although am still a little confused as to the definition they are using of Professional Blogger. As I write in his comments:

“Pro blogging' is a pretty wide term and is being used to talk about everyone from 'business blogs' to 'blog consultants' to 'bloggers who make money from their blogs directly' to 'those who provide blog tools/services' for blogging.”

I think it will be fascinating to see what they come up with and will follow with interest the emerging discussions no matter what they decide to go with.

Read more at Professional Bloggers Association Idea Moving Ahead

What do you think the idea of a Professional Bloggers Association (PBA)? Would you join? What would you like to see if focus on? What would be the benefits in your mind of banding together with other Probloggers?

Online Ad Spend Up $45 Million in October

Clickz reports that October saw another 6.5% increase in online advertising - a second month in a row with such an increase:

'Internet advertising increased by $45 million in October to reaching a total $741.2 million for the month, according to AdZone's Internet Advertising Report.

The 6.5 percent gain marked the second consecutive month-over-month increase, and the highest monthly total since April, when online ad spending reached $746.0 million. For the first 10 months of the year, total online ad spend was approximately $7.0 billion.'

Read more at Online Ad Spend Up $45 Million in October:

In a similar vain - WebPro News reports that 128 Million Visited Online Retail Sites in November.

Both are signs of the health of the wider e-commerce industry.

Christmas present from Google

It looks like Adsense have decided to send Christmas presents to some of their bigger earners this year. Its a 'Mood lighting AM/FM Radio' like the one pictured here.

'Turn down the lights. Turn on the mood music. Now, let the light show gently take you on a journey into 7 vibrant hues and passages of soothing relaxation. This AM/FM Radio with precision quality sound, LED technology, and rotating gravity switch helps you choose just the right mood. It even has a 60 minute timer.'

Reminds me a little of one of those 1980's lamps with all the fibre optic like things sticking out of it that my nana had (left).

The gift seems to be only sent to medium to high income earners with one user on the Webmaster world saying he got one having averaged somewhere in the $2,000-$3,000 range per month.

Nothing in my mailbox yet.

Source - Christmas present from Google:

Update: My Mood lit radio just showed up - it only slightly improved my mood from my other Christmas present from Google.

How To Post Photos to Blogger

One of the main complaints I hear from Blogger users about their blogging platform is the difficulty that they have in posting pictures to their blog. Photos, diagrams, graphs and other visuals can really lift a blog post so this can be a real limiting factor to using Blogger.

So - when I saw About Weblogs had posted a good tutorial on How To Post Photos to Blogger Using Hello BloggerBot I thought I should link up so that next time I heard the complaint I'd have an answer.

Let me know how you go with it Blogger users.

Google's Christmas Present - Ouch

This is a little of how I'm feeling this morning waking up for the third day with a sick feeling in my stomach.

The feeling is partly physical - I suspect somewhere in the past week of three birthday parties, one work break up party, two Christmas parties and one wedding that I ate something a little dodgy which has left me feeling queasy.

The other part of it is a sinking feeling in the guts as I look at the impact of Google's latest update upon my blogging ventures. I mentioned a couple of days back that the update was in full swing and that bloggers were reporting a wide diversity of results - some record high traffic, others record lows and still others no impact.

The main advice coming from experienced webmasters was to hang in there and wait unitl things settle - good advice which I've been taking heed of. However the news so far for this problogger isn't too good as can be seen from the following traffic graph (click to enlarge) from my Digital Photography Blog.

Of course its too soon to tell what the lasting results will be but the last two day's traffic isn't looking particularly positive. Traffic is down to around 25% of 'normal' levels and SERPS (search engine results positions) are way down. Not the nicest Christmas present Google could have given me.

Now other factors also need to be taken into account. Firstly its been the weekend the last couple of days (although you'll notice this usually only causes a small dint in traffic), secondly its the end of the year and readership tends to die in the days before and around Christmas and thirdly traffic has been pretty good this month because of Christmas itself - digital cameras are one of the hot items for presents this year so the drop off is particularly noticeable as traffic has been pretty good.

However even with these factors taken into account the update seems to have been a bit of a blow to the site. Unfortunately this is a tale I can tell you a number of times over as I look over my other blogs. Traffic down to 20 - 40% of 'normal' levels.

Of course a decrease in traffic has a corresponding decrease in earnings in most circumstances and this is the case as i look at my different income stats for the past few days. Affiliate programs and contextual ad earnings when graphed present a very similar shape to the above graph. Its not much fun to find out that your pay has been cut to 30% of what you were getting a few days earlier and to not know if it will ever go up again.

So - whilst I've recently posted some pretty optimistic posts about the potential of problogging it is worth remembering that this is a pretty fickle business. It is worth remembering that whilst you can work incredibly hard on your blogging and do what you think is best to optimize your site for good results that a lot of your success or failure lies in the hands of others and can come or go in an instant.

This is also another reminder that diversification can be a professional blogger's best friend. Put all your eggs in the blogging basket and you might just find yourself with scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Diversification can mean many things. For me it means having:

- consulting work - both blog related and non blog related
- having a 'real' job - for me I've taken on a number of other jobs and projects for short periods of time over th last few years that not only supplement my income but also give me an environment to interact with people face to face - blogging can get pretty isolating at times.
- building up traffic through other means than Google - It is easy to forget sometimes that there are other ways of getting traffic than from Google. For starters there are other search engines, there are other blogs/sites, you can build up an permission based email list, work on repeat visitors to sites etc.
- pages on a variety of topics/domains - one of the things I started to think about last year was the advantages of blogging on a variety of topics. This is smart for a number of reasons, starting with the quick cycle of trends that the world we live in goes through. Digital Cameras are huge at the moment - but they will not be quite so hot forever. Its also smart because the chances are if you're blogging on a lot of topics on different blogs that each time Google updates that some will go up the rankings and others will go down. Diversifications can help spread the losses and gains and keep your momentum going. This is why we started the Breaking News Blog network a couple of months back on a fresh domain - I'm now glad we did.

So the end of the world has not come - although combined with being ill this week it felt like one or two times in the last few days - life goes on and instead of being bogged down by the statistics I am inspired to renew my efforts in blogging to recover the losses and provide even better blogs than I have before.

Gawker Has Record Traffic in November

Choire Sicha has a round up of Gawker Media's Traffic for the month of November - the month saw an increase by 6 million page views from 23 million to 29 million (click to enlarge graph).

'Gawker had a substantial gain in November, adding more than a million page views to the previous month's total -- and growing 42% over three months previous. Wonkette did quite well, a 15% growth in November on top of a 55% growth in October. Fleshbot had a rather astounding gain of 3 1/2 million page views. Defamer has sailed by the 2-million-views-per-month level. Gizmodo continues merrily, with just about 6 million page views in November.'

On Comment Spammers

Jeremy at WebproNews has an interesting article written after meeting some comment spammers.

'One of the comment spammers asked me: “You know why we spam blogs, don't you?” And I knew the answer. They do it because blogs are easy targets and because, just like e-mail spam, it works....

Then a partial solution is fairly clear. I've heard and seen others discuss it over the past few months. The search engines needs to be smarter about reading and indexing content.
Read more at Some Comment Spammers Have Blogs Too

ecto blog: Special christmas discount!

ecto is offering a spacial Christmas discount on its amazing blogging software. I use ecto for MacOS 10.3 (windows version is also available) and absolutely LOVE it - it totally revolutionized my blogging experience when I stumbled upon it.

'With ecto you can write and manage entries for your weblog(s). The advantage over using your weblog's control panel is that you can compose entries offline and use the extra features ecto offers, such as spellcheck, creating links, attachments, and much more. ecto is designed to make blogging much more easier and yet give the users as much power as possible to manage their weblogs.'

Get a list ectos features at:

- Mac version
- Windows version

The discount is valid between 20 - 26 December and is for a limited time only - get 30% off here.

RSS and Blog Advertising Network - CrispAds

Just stumbled upon another Advertising program that has been designed specifically for RSS and Blogs called CrispAds. They promote it to bloggers as follows:

- Place ads in your blog articles when you want
- Ads also appear in your RSS or ATOM feed!
- 95% of advertiser click-thru revenues flow to you
- Get paid via Paypal at the end of every month
- Just generate code and place into blog article!
- Automated tracking system to track earnings

I haven't talked to too many people using CrispAds yet but they seem to have most of the features that a blogger wanting to ad an income stream to their blog would want. One of the main advantages that this system has over an ad network like Adsense is the ability to run ads in RSS. I'm sure Adsense is working on this feature - but it could be a while.

On the down side I suspect that it will take a while for them to find a good stock of advertisers - but its a program worth trying. Following is a sample ad to give you an idea of what they look like.

update:Coincidentally Jen at Jensense has just posted a little review on Crisp Ads also. She writes: 'But how well their ads would do when targeting non-blog keywords remain to be seen. Because unlike AdSense which contextually targets based on the page contents, CrispAds targets based on catagories submitted by advertisers, and matched up to the catagories a publisher submits for each blog. They do seem to be having difficulty attracting advertisers into the program.'

Google's Update Chaos Continues

Google's update seems to still be in full swing with chaos being reported on many sites. Check out this thread at Webmaster World to see the impact that some are reporting to their SERP results in Google and the resulting traffic effects. Preliminary results are seeing people reporting both good increases but also some pretty massive losses in traffic.

The results seem pretty diverse with bloggers that I've spoken with. Like everyone else they seem to be at the mercy of Google here and some are seeing little change whilst others are seeing both positive and negative swings.

Most of the wise advice around is that its too early to make a call on what impact Google's update is having on any one individual site. Give things a few more days to see how things settle before making any huge changes to your blog's SEO strategy.

How are things impacting your blog?

Media Buyer/Seller Wanted

I'm interested in chatting to anyone with a background in media buying/selling who would be willing to explore representing one or more of the blogs that I have an interest in.

Whilst I have a background in Marketing I do not have the time to give adequate attention to seeking advertisers for my larger blogs and am seeking expressions of interest from those with expertise in the area.

Specifically - I am interested in finding a major sponsor/s for Digital Photography Blog which had a monthly readership of 260,000 unique visitors in November and which should hit 400,000 unique visitors in December. I have previously sold banner space on this site but space has just opened up and I'm keen to find the right company to take it on.

If you are interested in selling advertising for this blog (and if it goes well others will follow) I would invite you to contact me with a brief outline of your experience and proposed strategy.

Payment for this service would be on a commission basis - ie I would be willing to share the revenue generated by you at a percentage to be negotiated.

Pro Blogger of the Year

It is that time of the year where bloggers everywhere are giving awards so I thought I'd ask the question - who is the 'Pro Blogger' of the Year?

This may not be an official award but I'm interested in people's opinions and thoughts. What blogger (not blog) would you give the award to? And why?

Would you give it to one of the high profile bloggers like Nick Denton, Brian Alvey or Jason Calacanis who are experimenting with models of earning money directly from blogs?

Perhaps it would be one of those crazy creative bloggers who truely sold themselves to blogging this year, Jeremy Wright or Darren Barefoot.

Or would you give it to someone who is enabling bloggers to earn a few dollars from their site like Henry Copeland from Blog ads or even a blogger who is working to provide a blogging tool like Anil Dash from Six Apart.

Or maybe you have someone like Doc Searls, Jason Kottke, Steve Rubel or Jeff Jarvis in mind.

Or maybe its one of the many emerging probloggers who are quietly going about their business without blowing their own trumpet.

Who would you nominate and Why? What categories would you have if you were giving problogger awards. Perhaps if there is a big enough response we'll run an inaugural problogger award early in 2005.

Google Page Rank and Backlinks Update - Coming Soon

Are you waiting for the next page rank update from Google to move up their results page and bring you a flood of new traffic? (aren't we all?) Well a little well places birdie told me last night that Google are getting close to an update - in fact a page rank update is scheduled for the days between Christmas and News Years and a backlinks update is scheduled for the first week of January (6th at this stage). Of course I'm not about to guarantee the dates - but my source generally knows what he's talking about so I guess we'll see in a couple of weeks.

Update - looks like my source was a little slow off the mark as the forums are alive with reports of an update currently under way with some saying they are seeing a big increase in traffic and others large losses. To this point we seem to be on the loss side but only time will tell. How is the update impacting your blog??

The Twelve Days of New Media Christmas

Jordon Cooper has a good post titled The Twelve Days of a New Media Christmas which is choc a bloc full of new media goodies to make any new media junkie's mouth water - 'The Twelve Days of Christmas are upon us and our trees are full of “geese a layin”, “piper's piping” and “partridges in their pear trees”. In other word nothing useful at all. Instead of braving the long return lines at Wal-Mart in the hope you can return seven swans a swimming, why not check out some of the programs and web servies listed below and have a new media new year. All of the programs help spread knowledge, ideas, or help you create some new ones.'

Blogs for Sale - How Much is Your Blog Worth?

One of the trends that I suspect we'll see more of in 2005 and beyond is Blogs for Sale. This past year saw Jeremy Wright sell his blog which proved that its possible - but the question it leaves me wondering is - 'How Much?'

How much would you sell your blog for? How would you determine the asking price?

I've done a bit of searching around on Google and so far haven't found too much quality advice. So far the main opinion I'm seeing is that you either sell it based upon one or all of the following three characteristics:

1. Domain Name Value - If you've got yourself a highly sought after domain name you might be able to sell that alone - the buyer could scrap your site and build their own. In a sense this is like selling your home that is falling down knowing that the buyer will knock it down and build something else - they're paying for the land. Domain name value can range incredibly - loans.com apparently sold for $3,000,000 for example....

2. Traffic - Most of us don't have a domain of that high a value - but that doesn't mean our blog is worthless. Traffic levels are obviously another method of determining the value of a site. Highly trafficked blogs obviously have a higher potential for earning than those with no readership. However determining the value of traffic is the tricky part. I've seen people value traffic at anything from $3 to $10 per hit per day. By this equation a blog with 1000 impressions per day would sell for anything between $3,000 to $10,000. The downfall of this approach is obviously that some traffic is more valuable than others. A blog that is personal in nature for instance might have 1000 daily impressions but they are harder to convert to income than a blog with 1000 impressions that writes on the topic of plasma screen TVs.

3. Earnings - a more logical approach to me would be to base your asking price upon current and projected earnings. To do this your blog will of course need to be earning something to start with. Again there are different opinions around the web as to how to use current earnings to assess a blog's value. Some say you should expect 6 - 8 months earnings as a price (ie a blog with a daily income of $100 would sell for between $18,000 and $25,000), while others calculate a site's value as being 2 years of current earnings (ie a blog earning $100 per day would be worth $73,000). Again this doesn't really help much as there is such a huge difference between these methods of assessing value.

I suspect we'll just have to wait and see what sort of figures are generated by sales over the next year or so. In the mean time however I'm very interested in how YOU would calculate your blog's sale asking price? Leave your thoughts below in comments.

Doc Searls responds to Blogging for Money Criticism

Doc Searls has been on the receiving end of some criticism recently after some of what he said at BloggerCon and a quote that appeared in a recent Newsweek article on blogging. Today he posts a good post clarifying his postition on problogging:

'So let me make this as clear as I can. I have nothing against making money with blogs. Hell, I'd love to make money with IT Garage, and I'm watching closely what Nick and Jason and Tony and Stowe are up to, because they're among the leaders at figuring that out. Chris Nolan, too, as a stand-alone journalist. Also Dan Gillmor. Same are Doug Kaye, Marc Canter and too many others to name here, each in their own ways.

See, I think the future of periodical publishing, and of journalism itself, will be built mostly by individual bloggers and indivdidual blogs, and by a new breed of publishers who harvest and republish (and, yes, pay for) goods from the wide open ranges where bloggers roam, and post, free. The day will come when the top print publications will be comprised of prose and pictures provided by blogs and bloggers....

Meanwhile, I still think there's more money being made because of blogs than with them. Problem is, I have no hard evidence for that. There also are not many people, besides myself and Dave Winer, who are interested in talking about it.'

Ok - I actually think that most of us are on the same page here. Whilst there are a few examples of bloggers writing off blogging directly for money as not being viable - I think its generally accepted that there are numerous examples of individuals or groups who are making a living from their blogs. Along side this I think we're also seeing individuals and groups emerge who are making a living indirectly from blogging whether that be through consulting, blog design, blog services/tools or as a result of the credibility that they build through their blog in their area of expertise.

I for one AM interested in talking about all methods of earning a living from blogging. I watch with interest many bloggers experiments and myself am involved not only in blogging directly for dollars (it brings me the majority of my income these days) but also am beginning to explore some consulting opportunities here in Australia and overseas which have arisen out of this and other blogs.

As I've argued before - 'I think the majority of money to be made from blogging probably comes from other activities on the edge of blogging and not directly from the activity of posting articles' - however there are many ways to skin a cat (is that just an Aussie saying?) - and there are many ways to make a dollar from blogging and I think we all need to perhaps just take a 'chill pill' and allow one another to experiment and do our own thing - and somewhere in the midst of it all we may find the answer for our own particular circumstances.

Holiday Visits to Retail Sites Up 24 Percent

ClickZ reports that traffic continues to be up in online retail outlets which is a good sign for many probloggers who use affiliate programs to send their readers to such stores:

'In another indication of the growth of advertising and retail opportunities online this holiday season, U.S. visits to shopping Web sites accounted for 9.7 percent of all Internet visits in the week ending December 11. That figure represents a 24.1 percent increase over the same time period in 2003, according to the latest Hitwise report.

But in targeting different retail sectors, the top three search engines appear to outperform their rivals in certain online niches, said Bill Tancer, vice president of research at Hitwise.'

Read more at Holiday Visits to Retail Sites Up 24 Percent Over 2003

Weblogs Inc revise 100 blogs in a year prediction

Jason Calacanis reflects upon the end of Weblogs Inc's first year of blogging in which they had predicted started 100 blogs but in which they will actually start approximately 75. He writes:

'However, the main reason for us not hitting 100 is that we decided to shift our strategy from niche blogs (i.e. scuba or cigars), and instead do bigger category blogs like Gadling (travel, with a scuba section) and Luxist (luxury, with a cigar section).'

Read more at Hitting 100 blogs in year one…

75 blogs or 100 blogs it has been a pretty impressive start from Weblogs Inc who are getting a real foothold on many valueable niches of the blogging market.

Feedburner Feedcount

I have recently been using Feedburner's RSS services and have found them to work quite well. A number of you now read this site via the Feedburner RSS feed (although most still track us on the old one).

In the last day or two Feedburner have added a new feature to help you promote your readership via RSS - its a little button like this one that shows how many of you are using this RSS feed to follow my ramblings.

Click it to subscribe to get the feed in order to add it to your news aggregator.

Marketers Spent $4 Billion on Search Advertising

Those of you running contextual advertising programs will be happy to hear these latest figures - 'Advertisers will spend $4 billion in 2004 by year-end on search marketing programs, and are expected to spend 39 percent more on such programs in 2005, according to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

SEMPO, a non-profit professional organization that promotes search engine marketing, issued a report today that suggests the robust market for search services will continue. The report, “The State of Search Engine Marketing 2004” covers U.S. and Canadian markets and has a number of illuminating observations.'

Read more at Marketers Spent $4Billion on Search

Blog Predictions for 2005 Buzz-Informed Predictions for 2005

Already I've seen three articles with predictions for 2005 - expect a lot more! The best of those relating to Blogging today is from Pete Blackshaw from ClickZ who writes a number of insightful predictions including one on blogs which he says will 'absorb flak, yet stay on track':

'Publishers, site managers, and even message board managers will embrace (or in some cases, begrudgingly capitulate to) RSS (define). Big brands and their sites will find the “add water and stir” nature of blog publishing tools irresistible. That will humble overpriced agencies that view platforms such as TypePad and Movable Type as more evil than outsourcing.'

Read more at Buzz-Informed Predictions for 2005

A Message of Hope for Depressed ProBloggers

Judging by my inbox this mornig it seems that my post examining whether contextual advertising is viable on a blog both inspired and depressed a few bloggers that had been thinking about running Adsense and Overture on their blogs.

In short what I was trying to show in the post was that making money from a blog through contextual advertising wasn't quite as easy as some might think - but that under the right circumstances you could make quite a lot of money using it.

In doing so I posted some tables that outlined a variety of scenarios and how much bloggers could earn.

For example:

- a site with 2,000 daily impressions and a click through rate (CTR) of 1% and 5 cent ads would earn $1 per day
- a site with 10,000 daily impressions at 2% CTR with 10 cent ads earns $20 per day
- a site with 10,000 daily impressions at 5% CTR with 50 cent ads earns $250 per day

The variety of combinations are limitless - check out the tables in this post for more on this.

Ok - so it seems that some who emailed me were a little depressed by these figures. At the lower end of the spectrum, say $5 - $20 per day isn't much is it!? True - its not. But let me share a messages from my experience that might give a little hope.

1. Blogging is a 7 days per week venture - Most traditional jobs are 5 days a week. When I first started blogging for dollars it took a while to get in the habit of not multiplying my daily earnings by 5. $20 per day is $140 per week or $600 in a 30 day month - or $7300 in a year....

2. Time for money - I have one blog that averages $10 per day in income (from a variety of sources) - its not my biggest blog and its not my smallest. A few months ago I was getting a little depressed about the performance of this site. $10 a day isn't spectacular money at all and I was considering closing it. Even my 7 days a week point above didn't lift my spirits that much. But then I asked myself - 'how much time do I spend on this site per week?' The answer I came to was that all it really took me to keep that little blog running was about 5 minutes per day. I post on average between 5 - 10 post each week on this site, mainly just links to other sites with a few comments and a short quote. $70 per week for 35 minutes work is actually pretty good income in my books - I wasn't so depressed about my little blog any more.

3. Why stop at just one? - your blog might be only earning $10 - $20 a week (if that) - its not much - but what would happen if you had two blogs earning that much? Most of us would know enough about at least two subjects to keep a second blog running. In fact most people would know enough about three or four subjects.

Another lesson I learned early in my blogging enterprise was that one blog would probably never make me a fortune and that if I wanted to be a full time blogger that I'd probably need to diversify and run a number of them. This began my journey of starting my own little network of blogs and joining with others to work in a collective. At last count I had 14 blogs. Of course some are more successful than others - some might only earn a few dollars per day but the chances are at least one or two of them will be very successful whilst the majority will fall somewhere in between. When added all together however they make a nice little earner.

4. Exponential Growth and Long term strategy - I think too many bloggers wanting to find an income stream for their blogs give up way to early. If you're not in it for the long haul you're better to give up now. What I've learned is that if you keep blogging on your chosen topic your earnings should (if not WILL) grow. There are a number of reasons for this:

- as you add new posts your blog will grow in size. If you currently have 100 pages to your blog and you add two new posts every day - your blog will be 830 pages in 1 years time.

- as you blog your site should slowly increase its page rank. Search Engines like comprehensive sites, they also like sites that have lots of inward bound links to them. As you blog and interact with other bloggers you'll find that if you're providing worthwhile content that others will link up to you. This and your increasing number of pages should increase your page rank and the number of readers coming to your page from Search Engines.

- as you blog you will increase your loyal readers. A certain percentage of those finding you from Search Engines will keep coming back to your site if they find worthwhile content and if you're smart about getting them involved in what you do. Increase this group of people and you'll increase overall traffic.

- longevity and credibility increase click value? - This is just an untested theory - but anecdotal evidence suggests to me that as your blog becomes a more credible source of information, programs like Google Adsense may actually increase the value of your ads. As I say this is not officially in any of their explanations of the program, but in talking to other publishers it is something that many of us have noticed.

Ok - so as a result of all of the above reasons - lets hypothetically say that you increase your earnings from contextual advertising by 20% every month (this will vary from blog to blog - I know of bloggers whose monthly income increases by 100%+ each month).

If your blog is currently earning $5 a day and it increases by 20% each month, in a year's time you'll be earning $44.58 per day. Add another 12 months and it will exponentially increase and you'll be on $397.48 per day! You do the calculations for another year at that growth and you'll see a figure that makes all the hard work worth its while.

Of course its hard work - and 20% growth per month probably isn't sustainable for 3 years unless you are a workaholic or have a lot of luck - but it is achievable for quite a while. The question is are you willing to take a long term view of your blogging and are you willing to work hard at adding content and promoting your blogs?

PubSub LinkRanks

PubSub LinkRanks are a useful tool that help to keep track of how different domains are being linked to by the blogosphere. They define them as:

'LinkRanks are a measure of how many pages link to each particular site, with more weight given to fresher links and to links from a wider variety of pages.'

They help you keep track of what is hot in terms of topics/sites but are also useful for tracking your own domain.

For example they will keep track of how your domain is going over a month with a little graph. For example my livingroom.org.au domain has been pretty up and down this last month in terms of inward links and has ranked anywhere from 580th to 460th in the sites being tracked. Also helpful is their list of sites linking up to your domain.

Get a full description of how LinkRanks works here.

Making a Meal of Your Blog

The Washington Post has a basic article on how to blog. One of their sections is on posting regularly with a quote from Biz Stone:

'When a blogger adds new material, it's called a post. And good blogging demands frequent posting. Biz Stone, 30, Blogger senior specialist at Google (www.bizstone.com), recommends you “post at least as much as you eat.” That's “three times a day [with] some snacks,” he says. But that requires a lot of time. So perhaps more important is to make your posts worth people's while. Jason Novak, 33, who's hosted the Washington entertainment guide LifeInTheDistrict.com since 2001, says that “what brings [readers] back is that every time . . . there's something good.” And “good” extends beyond volume, which means you'll want to avoid the dreaded “blogorrhea” -- aka incessant prattle about your jerk boss or second-rate love life.'

Read more at Start a Winning Blog (washingtonpost.com)

The Alpha Bloggers

Newsweek has an interesting article this week on the Alpha Bloggers (A list bloggers) - There is nothing too new in it although I was interested in this last paragraph - complete with a typical Doc Searls back hander swipe at a Probloggers.

'And what do the alpha bloggers get in return? Certainly not riches. Though it's possible to pick up a few hundred dollars if you enlist in the program that carries Google's ad on your site, many A-listers don't bother. “If you're into blogs to make money, you're into it for the wrong reasons,” says Searls. “Do you ask your back porch what its business plan is?” On the other hand, some alpha bloggers report better jobs, more lucrative consulting, speaking gigs and—if not groupies—a certain bit of glamour that comes from having people hang on your every word at the end-of-day reception at a tech conference.'

Call me stupid - but this is the second or third time I've heard the 'back porch' comment - and I'm still trying to work out what its Doc is on about.

Whilst I agree that blogging is so much more than making money - I don't have an issue with people commercializing their blogs or even having making money as a motivating force for blogging. To me I look at it similarly to the way I see news papers, magazine and other traditional forms of media - most of which these days must have some way of sustaining themselves. Of course there are other motivations for starting newspapers and magazines - but we don't complain that they are commercial also. Anyway - I think the debate about problogging is getting a bit old. Each to their own I say - lets just get on with blogging.

Read more of this article at MSNBC - The Alpha Bloggers

The Blogfather? Jason Calacanis expands family

Netimperative has an interesting interview with Jason Calacanis whom they label 'the blogfather'.

'The term 'exponential growth' seems almost an understatement when discussing blogs. But attempts to commercialise this new form remain thin on the ground. New Yorker Jason Calacanis, who has just launched his 62nd commercial blog, tells Alex Tanner how his Weblogs Inc aims to father the number one blog in every niche market there is.'

You couldn't really find an outlining of Weblogs Inc's strategy that was much clearer than the way it is laid out in this article....

'"Clearly there is a weakness, in that any one blog can't grow into that big a business" he says. "Our response to that weak point is to have 300-500 [blogs] in three years. We should hit 100 in our 4th or 5th quarter as a company, and that's just fine by me.

"The only threat to us is that somebody comes in and puts all their energy into one blog and does it better. However, if we're number 1, 2, or 3 in each market we're in, we have a great business."'

Sound like world domination to you? In a sense what they are doing is taking that approach - they recognize that now is an opportune time to establish a foothold in the marketplace and that the window for doing so is closing all the time as new bloggers and competition enter the market every day.

Read more of the interview at Netimperative - The Blogfather? Calacanis expands family

Is Contextual Advertising Viable on a Blog?

There has been an increasing amount of debate recently over both the ethics and viability of blogging commercially. The focus of this post is not to enter into the question of 'should bloggers add income streams to their blogs' - rather I want to examine whether it is a financially viable alternative.

I know of many bloggers who have added contextual ads to their blogs expecting to make a fortune only to discover that it can be a lot harder than it looks - on the other hand I suspect there are a lot of bloggers out there who could actually make some reasonable money from their blogging without too many modifications if they just tried. Let me show you how....

To examine the question of whether blogging for profit is viable I want to focus this post upon contextual advertising (knowing that it is only one of many ways to add an income stream to a blog). By contextual advertising I am referring to programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo's Overture.

3 Keys to Contextual Advertising Success

If you strip down what is needed to have success with contextual advertising there are three main elements that impact your earnings. To put it most simply these three elements are:

- impressions (the number of times ads will be served to your blog - ie the traffic/page views) - I've written a number of guides to how to increase your traffic including this one
- click through rate (CTR) - (what percentage of impressions will result in a reader clicking on an ad - and therefore send a micro payment your way). Getting a high CTR is dependent upon a number of things including well designed and positioned ads and getting relevant ads.
- ad value - (the amount that each click generates - which varies depending what the ad is for. This is largely determined by the topic you blog about - eg. blog about match sticks and the ad value will be low - blog about conference calls and it will be higher) - you might like to check out this post on getting high paying ads for Adsense to help you in this area.

To answer the question of whether contextual advertising will be viable on your blog you need to think about each of these areas because they each will impact your earnings. To put it bluntly - if you increase any of these elements it will improve your earnings. Conversely if any of these elements are low it will decrease your earnings.

It makes sense really if you break it down. If your blog has no readership it doesn't really matter how high your click through rate or ad value is - you'll not make any money. On the other side if you have heaps of readers but none are clicking on ads you'll not turn a profit. Likewise if you've got high readership who click a lot of ads, but the ads are not valuable you'll decrease your profits. Its all about balance.

How Much?

Ok - that is the theory - but you're probably asking - how much traffic, how high a click through rate and what sort of ad value do I need? There is no simple answer to this question as everyone's blog generates different figures - but it is possible to do some hypothetical calculations.

Anyone can do the sums. I made an excel spreadsheet a while back that helped me think this through - it is too complex to post here - but let me attempt to break some of it down below.

At 1% CTR

This first table is assuming that a blog has an overall Click through rate of 1%. The left hand column shows daily impressions ranging from 1000 to 250,000, the next column shows 1% of these - ie how many daily clicks a blog with a 1% CTR would have. The following columns show how much would be earned if clicks were valued at an average of 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents or 50 cents.

Impressions	Clicks	$0.01	$0.05	$0.10	$0.50
1,000	10	0.10	$0.50	$1.00	$5.00
2,000	20	0.20	$1.00	$2.00	$10.00
3,000	30	0.30	$1.50	$3.00	$15.00
4,000	40	0.40	$2.00	$4.00	$20.00
5,000	50	0.50	$2.50	$5.00	$25.00
10,000	100	1.00	$5.00	$10.00	$50.00
50,000	500	5.00	$25.00	$50.00	$250.00
100,000	1000	10.00	$50.00	$100.00	$500.00
250,000	2500	25.00	$125.00	$250.00	$1,250.00

At 2% CTR

The next table is the same except for a blog with a 2% Click Through Rate (which is generally accepted as around the average for most sites displaying Contextual ads).

Impressions	Clicks	$0.01	$0.05	$0.10	$0.50
1,000	20	0.20	$1.00	$2.00	$10.00
2,000	40	0.40	$2.00	$4.00	$20.00
3,000	60	0.60	$3.00	$6.00	$30.00
4,000	80	0.80	$4.00	$8.00	$40.00
5,000	100	1.00	$5.00	$10.00	$50.00
10,000	200	2.00	$10.00	$20.00	$100.00
50,000	1000	10.00	$50.00	$100.00	$500.00
100,000	2000	20.00	$100.00	$200.00	$1,000.00
250,000	5000	50.00	$250.00	$500.00	$2,500.00

So a blog with a CTR of 2% that has 5000 daily impressions and ad value averaging at 10 cents per click will earn $10 a day whilst one with 50,000 impressions at 5 cents per click will earn $50.

At 5% CTR

Lastly we'll do the same exercise for a blog of 5% CTR. It might sound high but its not unheard of for highly targeted sites to achieve this sort of rate or higher.

Impressions	Clicks	$0.01	$0.05	$0.10	$0.50
1,000	50	0.50	$2.50	$5.00	$25.00
2,000	100	1.00	$5.00	$10.00	$50.00
3,000	150	1.50	$7.50	$15.00	$75.00
4,000	200	2.00	$10.00	$20.00	$100.00
5,000	250	2.50	$12.50	$25.00	$125.00
10,000	500	5.00	$25.00	$50.00	$250.00
50,000	2500	25.00	$125.00	$250.00	$1,250.00
100,000	5000	50.00	$250.00	$500.00	$2,500.00
250,000	12500	125.00	$625.00	$1,250.00	$6,250.00

Hopefully these tables will give you some idea of the potential of Contextual advertising like Adsense and Overture. One of the cool things about looking at it this way is that you can see a variety of ways of making good money. You can actually make as much money with a small readership on a good paying highly targeted blog as you can on a site with massive readership but a low paying topic. Of course without giving it a go you'll never really know what sort of CTR or Click Value you'll get.

A common question people ask in Adsense forums is 'how much is your average click value?' Unfortunately to answer this question would violate Adsense regulations - all I can really say is that it varies greatly between sites depending upon the topic being blogged about. It can range anything from a cent right through to dollars (some report clicks of $50+). Of course the higher the click value the harder it is to get impressions due to competition - so sometimes medium ad value terms can be a better bet unless you have a very high page rank.

The tables above should hopefully provide a little inspiration for some but also a reality check for others. Making money using contextual advertising is NOT easy money. To have a blog with a high level of impressions, good CTR and ad value takes a lot of time, energy, patience and a bit of luck (you might like to use my Adsense for Bloggers Series to help you improve these different aspects of your blog's performance.

So is it worth it?

All in all my advice to people wanting to experiment with Contextual advertising is that its worth a shot. You'll never know what sort of return it will bring unless you apply and add the code to your site. Don't go into it expecting the world - when it comes down to whether it is viable it all comes down to your own opinion of the value of your time - the purpose of your blog - your willingness to put in the hard work and time to grow it. Each of us can only answer that question for themselves - and I answer the question of whether blogging is profitable using contextual advertising with a 'YES'.

Posted by Darren at 06:13 PM | Comments (3)

InsideBlogging - The Blog Inside InsideBlogging

Bloggers Darren Barefoot and Jeremy Wright have joined forces in a blogging consultancy relationship going by the name of 'Inside Blogging'. Of course all good blog consultants can never have enough blogs so they've stared an InsideBlogging Blog to give readers the inside word on their new venture. Should be an interesting read - especially if they keep up their high quality linking policy (I found it because they referred to Problogger).

Another blog goes on the old News Aggregator!

2005 Australian Blogging Conference - more details released

The 2005 Australian Blogging Conference website has updated a few more details of the event to be held in Melbourne on either 18 or 25 February at a venue still to be confirmed.

The cost will be $150 for a full day including lunch and refreshments. Its a bit more than I was expecting but I guess if they are flying in a guest speaker they have some big costs to cover.

The schedule of the day covers the basic topics you'd expect - I was expecting a few electives or workshops to choose between but that is probably a bit optimistic if its just a small crowd coming. I'd of course like to see a session on blogging for dollars with some discussion around models for making money from blogs - but perhaps I'll have to save up and go to one of the US conferences next year to get that kind of topic.

Still not sure if I'll be going to the Aussie conference - I think its a good idea but I guess I'll wait and see if the content/speakers are worth the $150 cost.

Should You Use Targeted Keywords in URLs

'Should You Use Targeted Keywords In URLs?' - This is actually a question I've been asked on numerous occassions by bloggers wanting to optimize their blogs for Search Engines. The theory is that if you are writing a blog about matchsticks that your ranking will be higher if you domain name has 'matchsticks' in the URL.

Nice theory - but does it work? Has anyone tested it?

It seems that now we can back the theory up with a test run by WebProNews who found that at least in the case of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN that keywords in URL do help.

So how does this impact the way we blog? In my mind there are a number of take home messages in this:

1. Pick your domain name wisely when starting up a blog. I learned this the hard way with one of my blogs which I started on the run one day and later changed the focus of. I now have a blog with a domain name that barely relates to my site - DOH!

2. Try to configure your blog so that keywords of individual posts feature in the permalinks of each page. For example you'll see that this blog uses the title of each individual post in the URL. When I swapped to this method of setting up my URLs I noticed a 30% increase in traffic inside of a week to my blogs - it really does work.

3. Keywords in URLs are not the be all and end all. I mentioned in point 1 that I have a blog that doesn't have appropriate keywords in its URL - I should also mention here that that blog is my most highly visited blog and earns more than all of my other blogs put together. The message therefore is to take a balanced approach to Search Engine Optimization. Keywords in URLs are just one of many (some say hundreds) of factors in getting your blog ranked highly on google.

3 Reasons why Content is Still King

By Nick Usborne

Back in the late nineties, the phrase ‘Content is King’ was repeated and repeated and repeated by site owners and marketers alike. The belief was that the more content you had, the greater the number of visitors you would attract. Of course, the content had to be well written, relevant and easy to find. Many sites built very successful businesses as a result.

And then something happened.

Big money from venture capitalists burst onto the scene. Suddenly nobody was talking about content. (Where’s the big investment return on ‘content’?) Instead the attention went to businesses that came up with some kind of unique ‘technology solution’.

Then the dotcom bubble burst.

And here we are.

Is content still important? I think so. People don’t talk about it as earnestly as they once did, but I think that original thinking was very sound.

Here are three reasons why you should be creating more content on your site:

1. Content increases conversion rates by keeping prospects on your site.

When prospective customers arrive at your site, they like to ‘dig deep’. They look for all the information they can find before they feel confident enough to commit to that purchase. Whether you are selling banking, subscriptions, noodles or digitals cameras, people want to know what they are buying.

If you don’t give them all the information they need, they’ll find someone else who does. Perhaps they’ll try epinions.com, consumerguide.com or mouthshut.com. Or maybe they’ll just do a search on Google.

The point is, if they can’t find the information they want on your site, they’ll try somewhere else. And as soon as they leave your site, the chances of their returning is fairly slim.

And that’s very bad news for your conversion rates.

2. Content differentiates you from your competitors

What differentiates your noodle site from every other noodle site? Most businesses have a number of direct competitors and all too often there is very little to truly differentiate your products or services from theirs. You may have some marginal distinctions, new offers or price deals. But at the end of the day, a noodle is a noodle.

So how do you differentiate your site? You do it with content. You make your site an absolute magnet for anyone who is serious about cooking pasta. You provide the best recipes, you deliver the best advice, you seek out the most interesting and useful facts about noodles.

When you do that, your products may not be that different from anyone else’s, but your site is. It has become different because it becomes known for being the number one resource for cooking great pasta.

3. Content is great for search engines and inbound links

Here’s something we already know. The search engines love content, especially when it is substantial, updated and relevant.

So do your homework and make sure your content pages have SEO-friendly titles, headlines and body text.

In addition to being attractive to search engines, great content also attracts inbound links. The better the information, the more the number of sites that will want to link to you.

In conclusion...

Creating great content for your site, and newsletters, is still a very smart thing to do. It’s good for your customers, good for your conversion rates, perfect for search engines and does a great job of separating your site from your competition.

Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocat of good writing. You can access all his archived newsletter articles on copywriting and writing for the web at his Excess Voice site. You'll find more articles and resources on how to make money as a freelance writer at his Freelance Writing Success site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

Priya Shah writes on Search Optimization for Blogs:

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog."

Priya Shah publishes an internet marketing ezine by day and doubles as a Blog Maniac by night. Blog Brandz is the legitimate offspring of her affair with the blogosphere.

Web Design in 2005 - Predictions

I've been very aware since starting this blog that the design I've got here is terrible. One knows by looking at it that whilst I might make a living from blogging that my skills do not lie in the design area (I usually get someone else to do it). However this blog was started purely as an experiment and on the spur of the moment. As a result of the growing readership here I've decided that I'm going to do a design update in the month ahead - any volunteers wanting some free publicity for their design work are free to submit their ideas - but in the mean time I might check out this article from Forty Media that has a great article making some predictions about Web Design in 2005.

Some of the predictions they make include:
- Minimalism is out; detail is in.
- Retro/Swiss/Euro is out
- The pure 5-piece website (header, menu, sidebar, content, footer) has worn out its welcome; designers are more willing to vary from the standard.
- Color of the year - Brown. Lots of bold colors this year (maybe my color choice is ok after all?)
- Arial dominates as the body text typeface for the year; despite much disdain for this overused font, it provides some needed relief from the overuse of Verdana.
- The chronological aspect of blogs is downplayed; new ways to search content become popular.

The Definitive Secret to SEO Revealed

Whilst the last article focused upon what NOT to do in SEO 'The Definitive Secret to SEO Revealed is a much more positive article that focusses upon what one SHOULD do. It is a comprehensive article and well worth the read if you're interested in climbing the Search Engine results rankings.

I don't much go in for hype, and heaven knows the title to this article smacks badly of it, but I honestly believe the title is nonetheless accurate. There really is a Secret to SEO. And I'm going to tell you what it is. I doubt it's going to set the world on fire, however, because knowing the secret probably won't give you immediate mastery of search engine optimization. Knowing and mastering are two different things.'

Read more at The Definitive Secret to SEO Revealed

Eight worst search optimization techniques

SEO Chat has another good article today outlining eight of the worst SEO techniques:

'Some webmasters and SEO companies will use any means they can think of to get a high rank in search engine listings. That's not always a good idea. Krissi Danielsson gives a detailed list of eight search engine optimization techniques you shouldn't use, and why you shouldn't use them.'

Read more at Eight worst search optimization techniques

Who is Your Blog's Customer?

I have a business coach who is helping me think through my blogging business. Its actually been very helpful so far even though he has very little experience of blogging. Part of the process has been me teaching him about the medium so that he's able to help me structure what I do for maximum profit.

Last time we caught up he asked me a question that to this day I've not been able to fully answer.

'Who is your customer?'

If we are to treat blogging as a business this is a question worth pondering. Who is your blog's customer?

There are a number of ways of answering this question - and it may be that all are partially true....

1. Readers - the first answer that sprang to my mind was that I was aiming my blog at readers. Without them any blog aiming to make a few dollars would soon go out of business. They are an essential ingredient for blogging for dollars - however in most examples of blogs that make money the reader actually parts with no money of their own - or not directly anyway. A few blogs rely upon readers making donations or paying subscriptions for access to certain areas - but by and large the reader need not and does not part with any cash. So in their purest form they are not necessarily a customer.

2. Advertisers - Well if we're looking for people that give us money in order to define customers then advertisers are perhaps the most obvious choice. Most bloggers making money directly from their blogs utilize some sort of advertising system whether it be a pay per click system, an affiliate program, private sponsorship or impression based banner ad systems. Without the incoming cheques, gift certificates, direct debits etc from these organizations we would also lose the ability to blog for dollars. However in most instances the relationship between advertisers and bloggers is rather non dynamic. In my mind a customer relationship is usually a little more initiated by the customer than is my experience with advertisers like Google. Google doesn't really tell me what it wants - I simply give it a bit of space on my page and let it do the rest.

3. Other Bloggers - Another key relationship for many pro bloggers is actually other bloggers or news sources. As I've pondered this question over the past few weeks I have realized that these relationships are perhaps as important as the ones we have with our readers and advertisers. In a sense my fellow bloggers are customers - and also perhaps suppliers (I never promised this article would be easy to read did I?). How so? Well an exchange happens when you link to another blogger or news source. You get information (a quote, an idea, content) and they get readers.

For instance earlier in the week when I linked to a Business Week article about Blogging (along with virtually every other blogger I read) I quoted the article and in a sense got myself a little free content from my site. In exchange I linked to Business Week and hopefully sent them a few readers and gave their page rank a boost (maybe). The same was true (in reverse) a week or so back when Slashdot linked to one of my posts and sent me tens of thousands of visitors in a few hours and in the process used a little of my content to provide their readers with something to read also.

I'm increasingly seeing strategic relationships form between bloggers that look a lot like customer/supplier relationships. I can think of one blog in particularly that has fairly exclusive and mutually beneficial relationships with a handful of other blogs - I suspect this will become more common in the future.

I'm not sure that 'customer' is the best description of any of the above parties. I think I'd rather see them as 'key relationships'. Similarly Search Engines are another party worth developing a relationship with. Of course I'm using the world relationship pretty loosely here - its hard to get buddy buddy with a monster like Google or Yahoo - but they are defiantly worth considering as one thinks through strategy. In a sense they are something of a 'supplier' - supplier of that precious commodity of readership.

Enough Rambling from me - your turn now. Who do you see as your Blog's Customer - or Key Relationships?

Google Testing Animated Ads

Yesterday I missed another change to Adsense - it seems they will be testing animated image ads - here is what they say on their site:

'We'll be accepting animated GIFs from a small test group of advertisers, and you'll be able to display these ads on your pages! The new ads will still adhere to the 50KB size limit...'

Blogger Idol

Earlier in the year I ran a blogging experiment by the name of Blogger Idol on one of my other blogs. It was a fun way of connect bloggers together to all write on a common theme each week. Over 150 bloggers signed up for weekly emails with a suggested theme. It took a bit of energy and time for me to run it but it was well worth it as I met some great new bloggers from around the globe.

The benefits of participating in the Blogger Idol experiment were numerous.
- A free and easy way to promote your blog
- Builds page ranking as your blog is listed on the Blogger Idol weekly pages as well as other bloggers pages if they vote for you
- Discover other quality bloggers
- Stimulation for post topics (sometimes we all get bloggers block and need a starting point).

Participating bloggers ranged from personal blogs, to business blogs, to photologs and even a couple of political blogs.

We took a break from the project a few months back but have decided to get it going again as of today. This time it will all run on its own domain/blog so as not to dominate this one. If you're interested in joining the project head over to Blogger Idol and join in on week 1's topic of 'All I want for Christmas....' Entries can be anything from stories, photos, essays, rants, poems, quotes - whatever. Creativity is encouraged.

You can also submit a topic for future weeks and sign up for the weekly emails announcing new themes.

The Cancer Blog - Weblogs Inc

Weblogs Inc have launched yet another blog this time focusing upon health care. It is the Cancer Blog. it is an interesting move by the team at Weblogs Inc to move in this direction.

Leading the charge as the editor of the blog is a medical resident, Leonardo Faoro - so there is someone at the helm who should have at least some good knowledge on the topic which is reassuring - the legal issues of blogging on medical topics are ones to keep in mind when setting out in this direction and I would suspect that they will have to walk a fine line between reporting news and giving advice or endorsing treatments.

I think this is a good move by Weblogs Inc (and it will provide a valuable service) although I do not think that it is being done all because they want to educate people on the topic - it is worth keeping in mind that different forms of cancer are some of the highest paying keywords on Adsense (whose ads this site is heavily using) and that this is a commercial venture also.

No more beer, drugs, tobacco or weaponry for you!

If you're using Adsense to bring an income stream to your blog about alcohol, tobacco, weapons or prescription drugs then it might be time to find a new advertising method because in part of the latest update on Google they have moved to ban such topics.

They have also re emphasized that you must not give any incentives for your readers to click on your ads - in any way whether they be financial or point-based programs.

New URL Channel Feature on Adsense

Adsense forums are buzzing this morning over a new feature added to the Adsense program in the last few hours that allows publishers to track their statistics without adding code to pages. You simply add the URL of the site, directory, category and they will provide statistics for that part of your blog.

For instance if I want to track the earnings from the Adsense category of this blog I would simply set 'http://www.livingroom.org.au/problogger/archives/adsense/' as the category. Previously to track categories on blogs would mean a lot of tricky coding that I'm not sure I have the time, energy or skill for.

The only unfortunate part of the new features is that they have only made an extra 10 channels available to publishers which means the benefits will be limited. Still - its a useful tool.

The Ten Commandments of Keyword Selection

SEO Chat has an interesting article on Keyword Selection which may be helpful for some bloggers wanting to generate quality income around targeted keywords:

'Is your website getting a lot of traffic, but not a lot of sales? Maybe you need to take a look at the keywords you're using. Praveen Viswanath walks you through keyword selection process, and sums it up with ten keyword selection commandments to help keep you on track.

A term or a phrase used by a searcher to find information on a particular topic is called a “keyword.” “Keyword selection” is the process of scrutinizing different prospective keywords to select the right ones for your campaign. It is the stepping stone to your success in the Web world. Find the right keyword, and you strike gold. Make a mistake, and you've just punched yourself in the face.'

Read more at The Ten Commandments of Keyword Selection

BlogTalk Downunder - Another Aussie Blogging Conference

It looks like there will be yet another Aussie Blogging conference in Australia next year - this time in Sydney between 20 - 21 May.

As with the Melbourne conference that we mentioned a few days ago, there are not many details yet but the fact that there are two groups talking about such an event is promising for bloggers downunder. My only wonder is if they should combine their efforts and put on a bigger and better conference together.

I hope to get to both events.

Learn more at Learning Technologies: BlogTalk Downunder

The Business Of Blogging

Business Week Online has an interesting article on The Business Of Blogging. It is pretty basic with the usual quotes from the usual probloggers - but its another example of how blogging for dollars is becoming more main stream.

'Now advertisers are realizing there is a market emerging in the blogosphere. Already, the growth in regular online advertising, estimated to be about 35% this year, will far outpace the spending increases for any other sector of the media world. Add to all this the fact that about 11% of Internet users today are inveterate blog readers, and the blogging scene starts to get mighty compelling for marketers.

Don't expect a repeat of the dot-com rush that inflated the Web bubble of the late 1990s. “This is a long game, with lots of ebbs and flows,” says Henry Copeland, founder of media-buying firm BlogAds. Blogging isn't about to lead to vast wealth anytime soon, says Copeland, but he does expect “more money to [flow to] more authors as smart advertisers bypass publishers and pay authors directly for their audiences.” BlogAds is placing ads on 50 to 100 blogs a day for up to 20 advertisers, including Sharp Electronics Corp. and Walt Disney Co. Just six months ago, the firm served 20 blogs for about 10 advertisers....'

Read more at The Business Of Blogging

Weblogs Inc Introduces Luxist

Weblogs Inc have just announce their latest blog Luxist - a blog that promotes itself as obsessively covering luxury products. They write about everthing from clothes, to gadgets, to jewelry through to cars.

Their income stream will be much the same as other Weblogs Inc blogs and includes Adsense and private advertising.

How to Grow Your Blogging Income

Dan Harper asked in the comments of my post on No Money in Blogging? for more comment on the 'growth factor' of blogging. He asks:

'How long would a new blogger see slow growth for? What do you think that factors are here, any advice on speeding the growth up?'

Good questions - I guess in many ways they are the Million Dollar Questions so to speak and ones that many would like 'the answer' to.

Unfortunately there is no one answer to speeding up the growth and earnings on your blog. There are however a number of things to consider that I've previously written about but which tend to get lost in the archives on this site. As a result I thought I'd outline some of the more popular and helpful posts that I've written below:

- Get your Adsense equation right - In my Adsense for Bloggers series of posts I talk about the Adsense equation for Success which put simply is:

Adsense Revenue = Traffic Levels + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads + Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads - Work on those four aspects of your blog and I guarantee you'll see earnings growth.

- Get readers for your blog - sounds pretty basic really - but its not. I wrote a short series on this task. Read Part A at Finding Readers for your Blog. Get more tips on this topic in our Blog Promotion Category

- Add Income Streams - Adsense is not the only way to earn money from a blog. I wrote Blogging for Dollars some time ago now to outline some other options. Some will work better for some blogs than others - but there are plenty of options.

- Write Quality Content - Some of the tips I've written to help with your content include - Keep it Simple - Make it Scannable - Work on your Titles

- Understand your Readers - I wrote a series of post earlier in the year on Blogging for Change which attempts to get inside the head of your reader in order to help you write quality content. If you understand the what is going on in their head as they come across your blog you're in a better position to be able to take them on a journey.

Of course there are plenty of other tips and helpful articles in archives which have been organized into the categories of:

Design | Promotion | Adsense | Revenue | Content | Search Engines | Tools | News | General Tips | Case Studies

MSN get on the Blogging Express - or have they missed it?

Paid Content has a good Round-up of MSNs launch into Blogging. Maybe I'm just overly tired after a big week at conferences but I'm over all the writing about it. I'm not sure how much impact MSN will have upon blogging - at least in the short term.

2005 Australian Blogging Conference

Just found a site for the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference. Not much in the way of details of a time and place yet - except to say that it will be in Melbourne sometime in February 2005. Suits me fine as that is my home city and apart from two days February is looking very empty in my diary so far!

I'll be interested to see how it all unfolds in terms of content, turn out and its success.

9 Ways To Make Your Website More Presentable

Sanjay Johari writes the following article which is as relevant for bloggers wanting to make their blogs more presentable as any other webmaster.

Your website works as your spokesperson presenting the message you wish to convey. Thinking in terms of this
analogy often helps you to look at your website from a different angle and make visitor-friendly changes.

Imagine a situation - you have to make an announcement about an exciting event or an opportunity. You have appointed a spokesperson to make a presentation on your behalf to an audience consisting of invitees, interested persons and on-lookers. How would you like her to perform? Your website should do the job of a real, living spokesperson. Following considerations will make your website more presentable.

1) Main Theme - The presentation in the above example has been organized for a particular occasion. Similarly each webpage should be built around a particular theme. It doesn't help if too much information is given on a webpage on seemingly unrelated issues.

2) Fast Opening - You would certainly not like your spokesperson to be late and make your audience impatient.
When a visitor clicks URL of your webpage or is redirected there, the webpage should open real fast. Your webpage gets just a few seconds to engage your visitor's attention. You would like your visitors to spend those few seconds looking at your webpage rather than waiting for the webpage to open.

3) Appearance - The spokesperson should have pleasant appearance and should wear a welcoming smile. This is to ensure that the audience is not put off even before start of the presentation. Your webpage should have a pleasant, inviting appearance to attract your visitor. If spokesperson is very gorgeous looking, she will distract attention of the audience from the real issue. Your website should avoid loud graphics and distracting colors so that the visitor remains focused on the main theme.

4) Make Text Interesting - You would like your spokesperson to use clear, flowing language, keep the audience interested and gradually lead them to the main theme. The presentation should be interactive, made lively by stories, snippets etc. Monotonous speech should be avoided. All these ideas can be incorporated while designing the website. The text should be broken into small paragraphs of 4-5 sentences or less, subtitles should be added for clarity, key words should be made bold. These are some ideas to make text more readable. Often a visitor will see only titles and subtitles. Therefore on their own the title and subtitles should convey the basic message.

5) Highlight Benefits - Other methods can be used to make the audience interested. The audience is really interested in what benefits they will derive; therefore this point should be highlighted sufficiently. The visitor to a
website is interested in what is there for her. The potential benefits to the visitors should form a part of the main theme. This is an important consideration and cannot be over-emphasized.

6) Free gifts or Bonus - The audience attending the conference can be given gifts - after all they are investing there time for the presentation. The website can also offer several incentives to the visitors and lure her to visit again and again. Free ebooks, subscription to newsletters, links to related resources, articles and additional information are some of the simplest incentives that can be offered to the visitor.

7) Anticipate Questions - When a question is put up to the spokesperson, she should accept it with understanding showing that she had been expecting the question and was prepared to answer it. This approach will re-assure the audience as they develop the feeling that “everything has been taken care of”. While designing a website anticipated questions should be compiled and answers should be provided. It may be helpful to provide separate pages displaying common questions and answers.

8) Testimonials - After the end of the presentation, very few people are likely to sign-up immediately. Those who are still interested after the presentation would like to take some time to decide. They are likely to seek additional information and confirmation of the information already provided. The spokesperson should clearly spell out how easy it would be to get any further information. Visitors to the website often re-visit several times before they take any decision, particularly the decisions involving money transaction. Testimonials and endorsements appearing on the website are very effective in getting a favorable response from the visitors.

9) Follow-Up - During a presentation it is common practice to register the names and other details of the
participants. This information can be used to follow-up with them by sending further messages. The website should be used to perform a very important function of capturing names and e-mail addresses of interested persons for following-up with them.

Thinking of website as a spokesperson adds a human dimension with which we are more familiar. Reviewing your website from a new angle can reveal ways of improving it.

About the Author:

Sanjay Johari is an engineer with vast industrial experience. His website contains information, ebooks, articles, opportunities and other resources for home based business. Visit his website at: http://www.sanjay-j.com

Mailto: articles@sanjay-j.com

Monetizing Blogs

In stark contrast to the last post, Jasen Dowdell at marketing shift predicts that Bloggers will start to get more and more attention from Ad agencies. He predicts:

'- Ad agencies will seek out A-List bloggers who have strong relationships with other A-List bloggers to head up their blog placement departments.
- Someone will step up and create a blog taxonomy that shows the key players in specific blog verticals. This will identify the “people to know” if you want to succeed with your blog pr campaign.
- Large PR Firms and Ad Agencies will spin off subsidiaries dedicated to blogs to increase their relationship with bloggers and appear to be experts in blog product placement and blog pr.
- Blogs will continue to increase their focus on specific areas whether these are niche verticals or niche subject areas.'

Read more of this interesting (and hopeful) article at Monetizing Blogs

No Money in Blogging?

Steve Smith from EContent writes that there will be no dollars in blogging in 2005 for bloggers or networks (like Gawker and Weblogs Inc) who are directly blogging. He writes:

'The wild and wooly blogosphere itself will not make money for many, including blog networks like Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc. Nevertheless, blogs are already proving to be powerful audience retention devices for known media brands. Some B2B sites report that up to 10% of daily traffic now goes to columnist blogs. Blogging is less a business model than a thoroughly compelling communications model that keeps users coming back two and three times a day more effectively than standard content refreshes. Accept it and get sponsors for it.'

This is the second such article I've seen arguing this this week (the first was here).

Once again I wonder if Steve is perhaps being a little short sighted with this statement. I acknowledge he says this approach will not make money for many - leaving things open for a select few to make money blogging - but I would argue that quite a few have already stumbled upon formulas for making money directly from blogging and that 2005 will see the number of those making a living directly from the medium explode - likewise I predict that we'll see those already taking this approach start to earn some very big money. In fact I think 2005 will see a number of bloggers earning $1 million and over. If they're smart they will probably keep these figures to themselves - but it will happen - if not next year it will happen in 2006 for sure.

As I talk to pro-bloggers and reflect upon my own experience in two short years I've noticed that the trend is a for a very slow start to levels of earnings - but that there comes a tipping point where the growth becomes exponential. Most bloggers exploring the income side of blogging give up before the tipping point however and never see the reward for their efforts. Of course it is not just a matter of time and patience - it takes some smarts, hard work and a little luck along the way.

Update: Steve Rubel spotted this same article and has a few things to say on the topic also. I particularly agree with his observation about the lack of overheads for bloggers. My biggest overhead is my own time. The opportunity cost of me putting my time into another job or business is significant because I choose to blog virtually full time - however apart from this I have virtually no expenses apart from a small ISP, hostings, design and home office costs.

Update: Wayne at Blog Business World has also entered the discussion and writes - 'As blogs become more deeply entrenched, within both the mainstream media and the mainstream consciousness, money will flow naturally in their direction. If other companies discover the power of blogs, as an advertising vehicle that returns highly targeted buyers, you can be absolutely certain that savvy marketers will put their cash into blogs.'

American Roulette

American Roulette is an interesting case study of a blogger using the medium to make a few dollars. Its written by a 'professional casino cheater' who gives thoughts on casinos and gambling. The site isn't highly monetized at this point - Income streams so far seem limited to Amazon affiliateship and another affiliate program - but if he can get his traffic to a high level with a topic like this he could be making some serious money.

Interesting concept - its a quirky enough topic that its likely to get some interesting link ups like it did today from Boing Boing.

JenSense - it's all about the AdSense...

JenSense will be a blog to watch if you're using Adsense as it is run by 'Jenstar' who is a legend in Adsense forums where she is a moderator and guru. I'm putting this on in my RSS tracker as we speak - sure to be some useful tidbits in this one for all of us using Adsense - whether old hands or newbies.

Online Retail Traffic Surges on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday

Clickz reports that 'Online Retail Traffic was up on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday - 'The market share of U.S. visits to the online shopping category was up 27 percent this Thanksgiving Day over Thanksgiving Day last year. Shopping visits on Black Friday this year were up 24 percent over figures for Black Friday a year ago.'

This is no surprise to me as I have done a bit of an informal survey of my problogging friends via MSN the last couple of days and found that most of them report increases in earnings from affiliates and contextual advertising over the last week - including Thursday and Friday. Those who especially saw gains were those blogging about consumer products. Whilst traffic on personal and political topics was down for most - those with a topic mix focusing on electronics, toys and other gift ideas have found their traffic and income stream surging in the past week.

Price Rise Fuels Online Ad Increase

'Online advertising grew 2.5 times as fast as overall U.S. advertising in the first three quarters of 2004, according to data released by TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

Online advertising in the U.S. totaled $5.59 billion for the first three quarters of this year, up 25.8 percent over the $4.45 billion measured over the same time period in 2003. That growth was well ahead of the year-over-year increase of 10.3 percent in overall U.S. ad spending to $102.47 billion from January through September, from the $92.90 billion spent in the same time period in 2003. The figures come amid other signs of stabilization within the online advertising market in recent weeks....'

Read more at Studies: Price Rise Fuels Online Ad Increase

Blogs - Diamonds in the Rough

Richard Zwicky writes that 'Blogs are Diamonds in the Rough

Blogs are a potential diamond in the rough for your businesses marketing effots. The material posted on an ongoing basis to blogs are a veritable gold mine of insights for readers, provided by business leaders, market leaders, innovators, philosophers, marketers, political commentators, and many other opinion makers who never before have enjoyed such easy access to a simple and unmoderated public forum in which to share their opinions, ideas and insights....'