ProBlogger

New Gawker Media Blogs Launch

Gawker Media today are releasing two new blogs (currently password protected but about to go live). They are Gridskipper, a travel related blog, and Lifehacker, a blog about software downloading and time saving.

Both of these new blogs already have corporate sponsorship (Sony for Lifehacker and Cheaptickets for Gridskipper).

MediaDailyNews writes: 'Lifehacker will include software download recommendations and content about spam filters, virus killers, spyware, search engines, e-mail applications, Internet phones, and general productivity tips. It's a counterpart to Gizmodo, Gawker Media's blog that reviews consumer electronics, but will be written in a less snarky style than sister blogs Gawker, Defamer, and Wonkette, said Gawker Media Publisher Nick Denton....

'In a statement on its Web site, Gridskipper proclaims itself “the decadent travel guide,” and describes its mission as: “Scouring the world for discount flights, chic hotels--and pretty people.” Andrew Krucoff, a former guest writer on Gawker and Fleshbot, will edit the site, which will focus on urban travel.'

Making chunks of change from Blogging

There is a good basic article over at Emerging Technology - Discover Magazine about how people are making money from their blogs. Its a good summary of the emerging trend of bloggers to monetize their blogs and largely focuses upon the Adsense method and whilst most ProBloggers won't learn much from it it will probably wet the appetite of bloggers wanting to experiment with this growing desktop industry.

'Why should we care about such small change? Because most of us, whether we recognize it or not, have a passion about something. Maybe you’re an armchair astronomer or a guy who restores 1964–65 Corvettes. Maybe you follow cricket religiously or know more about the Battle of Antietam than academic historians. Or maybe you can wire a home theater system in your sleep. That wisdom may be genuinely useful or interesting to other people, yet chances are you’ve never shared it with more than family and friends.

Now that expertise has a place to go. Bit by bit over the past 10 years, the Web has erected a global platform for personal wisdom. Services like AdSense—along with other advertising outfits, including one called Blogads, which focuses exclusively on blogs—are simply the final plank. You can now compose, design, publish, promote, and make money from your writing without ever leaving your desk.'

Read more at This is not a dream: You can make a chunk of change by writing a Web log

How to Research a Profitable Blog Topic

A while back when I asked you what you'd like to ask professional bloggers in my upcoming interview series MM asked:

'I want to know what kind of research they did before they jumpstart a new blog. How do they gauge the "marketability" or earning potential of a new topic?'

I'll ask the question when I start my interview series (first interview will be released this week) - but thought it was worth attempting an answer here also from my own perspective.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The best research that I've ever done on a topic for a potential blog is this...

I get a hunch, I take a guess and start a blog.

I start a blog, I watch the traffic levels and I watch the earning levels. If it does well I keep doing it. If it doesn't do well I stop doing it.

It isn't really rocket science - but it works! Yes there are tools that you can use to research a potential topic and some people put a lot of time, energy and thought into it - but my experience is simply to take an educated guess and give it a go.

The beauty of blogs is that they are really so cheap and simple to start up and have very little in the way of overheads. Just yesterday I had a fully functioning blog up and running within 90 minutes (with a little help from a friend who will run it with me).

So far I've run most of my blogs on just a couple of domains which makes starting new ones even cheaper and easier. There are some costs of this approach which I live with the consequences of, but the benefit is that you start a new blog with a good chance of being picked up quickly in Search Engines for virtually no cost at all (except your own time). I know that three days after I start a new blog with this method that I'll be listed in Google and MSN - sometimes its even quicker.

Tools to try: In terms of what tools I use to do research and firm up my 'hunches' - the main thing I do is punch in the search term at Overture which gives me an indication of what advertisers are paying for ads on the keyword on contextual advertising systems and how many people are searching for the term. If it looks like a lot of people are looking for the word and advertisers are paying reasonable levels for the ads you could be onto a good thing.

Other Factors?: Of course the other factor to consider is how many other webmasters and bloggers are already producing sites for that term. You can get an indication on this simply by searching for the term in Google and seeing how many responses come up. Alternatively you can use a tool like WordTracker that gives you this information and rates the chances you have at going for the keyword.

You'll never never know unless you give it a go: Put all that information together and you have an 'educated guess' - then its time to test and see. Put a blog up (don't put too much effort into it until you know if its paying off) - get it indexed by the search engines - give it some quality content - give it some time and track the results.

If it gets some traffic then put more effort into it by giving it a cool design and writing more content - if it doesn't take off just let it sit there and die. I generally leave my unsuccessful attempts online because they do earn a few cents/dollars per day and it all ads up - and you never know - one day it might actually take off.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogger Blogs

Wayne has been posing hard til it hurts over at Search Engine Journal where he's just written a series of excellent Seach Engine Optimization (SEO) posts on optimizing your Blogger Blog. It is a series in four parts (so far):

- Search Engine Optimization and Blogger Blogs Part One
- SEO & Blogger Part 2 - Search Engine Power of Blogs
- SEO & Blogger Part 3 - On Page Blog Optimization Techniques
- SEO & Blogger Part 4 - The Link Power of Blogs

The techniques that Wayne talks about and observations that he makes are good solid SEO strategies that are proven to work - not only on Blogger blogs but on other blogging formats and normal websites. It is easy to be overwhelmed by SEO strategy - I know when I first started looking into it I was totally confused but it is well worth doing a little research and having some of the basics in your mind as you blog. Don't become obsessed by it - but be informed and where you can use the basics to enhance your chances of being ranked highly by the search engines.

Update: Wayne has also posted this series in full on his own blog at Optimization for Blogger Hosted Blogs

Third Party Blogging - Charge Out Rates

Today I received another email from a company wanting to know how much I would charge to write a blog for them. It seems to be a semi regular (and increasing request that I get). I'm very interested in developing and maintaining blogs for others but am at a bit of a loss as to know how much such a service is worth. I know a number of readers of this blog do this type of work and was wondering if you'd be kind enough to give the rest of us (or just me via email) a hint at what the going rate is for this type of work?

Do you work it out per hour, per post, per week, per visitors generated, per % of revenue generated or some combination of the above?

I know how much I can make from one of my blogs but how much would you charge to blog for someone else? Feel free to leave a comment below either anonymously or with your details or shoot me an email with anything (specific or general) you'd like.

Make Money off Your Blog

Washington Post has an article today about making money off a blog. Their tips are pretty predictable and basic and centre around Adsense, Blog ads, Affiliates, Donations and Merchandising. Nothing too new there but interesting to see another article about blogging (pro blogging at that) in a bigger news outlet. They write:

'You pound on the keyboard each day, broadcasting your unalloyed truths to the world (or at least to friends and family) via your blog. Unfortunately, earning such singular authority demands serious time and energy, and what begins as a hobby can quickly start seeming like Job No. 2 -- sans paycheck. But haven't you heard? You can turn your Web log into a digital cash cow. Simply choose among these techniques (but keep in mind that it's not all free money -- come tax season, Uncle Sam gets his fair share).'

Read more at Make Money off Your Blog

Tell me what you want, what you really really want

ProBlogger is entering into a time of change. I'm approaching my 500th post on the blog after a few months of writing and the time has come to up the anti and take things to the next level in terms of design, content and focus.

As part of this I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on how ProBlogger can better serve you in your commercial blogging ventures.

The basic goal of what I want to do is to help others discover ways of making their blogging profitable. I believe that there are many avenues for adding an income stream to blogging and more and more examples of such blogs appear every day.

So how can I resource you more? I would value you taking a moment or two to either email me or leave a comment below. Here are some topics and categories that I've focussed upon in the past, let me know which you like and would like more of and which you'd just wish I'd shut up about:

- Content Tips
- Case studies
- Interviews with ProBloggers
- Design Tips
- Blogging News
- Reviews of Revenue programs
- Tips on how to use Revenue programs
- RSS News
- Podcasting News
- Search Engine Optimization Tips/News
- Blog Ethics
- Blogging Tools
- Business/Corporate Blogging
- Affiliate Programs
- Blog Consultants

I don't have time to come up with a proper survey but take a moment if you are interested in what I do to help me improve it. Any other topics that you want to see covered or suggestions on what would make ProBlogger better would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The Entrepreneurial Blog Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman over at GlennLog has just posted a link to an audio (and visuals of his powerpoint) at Business Blogging Summit which currently really enjoying listening to. His main headings were.

• Obsess
• Exhaust
• Report
• Choose
• Expand
• Earn
• Populate
• Perform

Let me just mention a few points he makes within these topics that resonate with my experience in Entrepreneurial Blogging over the past 18 months. The following is a combo of Glenn's thoughts which I'm adding to and giving a few examples of:

Glenn talks about the importance of archives - your archives (which you accumulate over time) are almost as important as the daily posts you write. How true. If I was just relying upon my new posts for making a living from my blogs I'm sure my wonderful wife would not still be letting me refrain from a 'real job'. Similarly to the graphs Glenn showed my statistics reveal that whilst home pages are usually the most popular pages on sites that overall it is the archives that do the best traffic wise. For example only 30% of todays traffic to this site entered ProBlogger via the front page. 70% came in through the back door to individual pages (some of them quite old) on my blog. Archives rock!

Voice - when you sound authoritative you (without pretending to be something that you're not) you actually begin to fill a space on the topic you're talking about and people actually begin to look to you for comment/expertise. This is is one of the interesting phenomenon's about blogging and I guess the internet in general. We've all read something on the internet at one time or another and taken the words we see there as an authority. One example that comes to mind was when I wrote a post one day about the upcoming release of the movie of the Matrix 2. I commented on some of the themes that I saw in it that might be relevant to spirituality. A month later I took a call and was interviewed as an expert by a reporter from the New York Times. I was quoted in the NYT a few days later - but the ironic thing was that to this day I'm yet to see the movie. It is quite scary really that one can become an expert about something they have little knowledge or experience of but it illustrates a point.

Links don't bring Bucks - Original content is key. It is easy to link to other sites but what brings you repeat traffic is quality original content whether that be scoops, reviews, interviews, opinion etc. This is also my experience. At Digital Photography Blog the post that get the most traffic by far are the reviews and tutorials that we right ourselves. Other than that it is the stories that we break (scoops) and our resource pages that do best. Whilst I do use a 'link' approach in most of my blogs the posts that get the most traffic are always the original content. Links are important to me as they do give your readers a more rounded and fuller exploration of a topic - they also do add to your credibility (ie show that you have a handle on the topic).

Find an Empty Spot - Whilst it is difficult to find a topic where no one is blogging there are numerous ways of finding 'empty spots'. Find a site you want to be like, if they don't have an RSS feed you might actually have an opportunity on your hands. The importance of empty spots was drummed home to me in the putting together of our Athens Olympics blog. Two months or so before the games started I did a search for sites dedicated to the games - I found very little in the way of quality sites and no blogs at all. I knew that BBC, NBC etc would enter the market but decided to get in before them and put together a comprehensive coverage. Two weeks later the new blog was in the top 3 results of Google for most Athens Olympics search terms and by the time the games started (and numerous other bloggers were just entering the market) we had over 2500 pages indexed in Google (and added another 2500 or so over the two weeks). Whilst NBC and BBC saw much more traffic than us due to their referring TV viewers to their sites through their on screen advertising we constantly outranked them on Google and saw 2 million readers find us during the games fortnight.

Persevere - It takes time. The longer you stay in a space (as long as its not dying) you'll grow along with the industry. This is very very true. It takes a long time to build a reputation, page rank, inbound links. You may not feel like you're growing your blog but if you persist (and work hard and blog smartly) you should see good growth. My site statistics have ups and downs but over time it is clear that things are on the improve.

Expand - One blog is good - are many blogs better? Glenn is testing this at the moment. Really getting more niche oriented in his blogging about WiFi. It is interesting that this trend continues to increase - however Weblogs Inc is also doing some more 'general' type blogs at the moment. I'm a big believer in this and not only have numerous blogs on one industry/topic, but also across a number of them which is part of my diversification strategy. Its vitally important in my opinion to have your eggs in a number of baskets to cover the ups and downs that you will face in your entrepreneurial blogging ventures.

These are just a few of the topics Glenn covered in his excellent presentation - I'd highly recommend you download the full audio file. If anyone out there knows Glenn and can do an introduction with me I'd love to feature him in one of our interviews in the next few months with ProBloggers - let me know if you can do the intro.

The Benefits of having a country Top Level Domain

Lee Johnson has a good article pointing out some of the Benefits of having a country Top Level Domain ie a .uk, or .au domain name:

'Most of the large search engines will give you a higher search ranking for a site that has the tld of the searchers country. For example, if someone from the United Kingdom is performing a search for widgets, a search engine will often rank widgets.co.uk higher than other sites selling the same product but only have a .com tld.

Having a country specific tld will also allow you to be included in a lot of great country directories that stipulate that your domain name has a certain tld. Getting your site into these directories can be a great way of improving your search engine website rankings as these are 1 way links from authority sites for your chosen subject. These kind of links are graded much higher than reciprocal linking...'

Lee goes on to share other benefits also. It is an interesting question and one that I've often considered. My main livingroom.org.au domain now hosts a number of blogs - and there have been some definite advantages of this approach. i do rank very well on google.com.au but on the other side of things there are some costs worth considering of having a more localized URL.

If you're blogging about a global topic the .au can cause problems both in search engines but also with 'the look' of the URL. I've had a number of people write off my blogs because they are not a .com or .net or .org. However overall my approach is that if you write good content, interact with other bloggers and optimize your blog well you should do ok no matter what its URL.

I'm interested in others opinions on why you have or haven't gone for a more localized domain.

Make Money for Recommending Movable Type

It looks like Six Apart are moving toward an affiliate program where people recommending Movable Type will get a commission from anyone buying a license.

'Many of you recommend Movable Type as the weblog platform of choice to your customers or clients. With our new reseller licenses, you'll be able to make money each time you sell a copy of Movable Type. We're planning to offer generous commissions for all of you who offer software and services on top of the Movable Type platform.'

There is no ETA on when the program will go live yet.

Source: Six Apart Professional Network Overview

Bloggers Sell Advertising Space on Ebay

The Mobile Technology Weblog is another blog that is using Ebay to help them earn an income from their blog by selling advertising space on it. They are currently up to $41 for a 120 x 90 banner (for a month) after a couple of days of the auction. I'm sure others have done this (I've definitely seen non blog type sites do it) but its a good idea and worth a try.

'TJ and I came up with a pretty cool idea recently, which I think is unique - but I'm sure we'll find someone who'll claim it's been done before :-)

Why not auction off advertising space on blogs on eBay? So I placed an ad this morning to sell off the ad space you can see on the top right of the blog for a month. You can see it - and bid on it! - here.

It's a bit of a punt, but if it works, it could be a great way to connect advertisers with bloggers, which is what eBay does so well. And if it enables bloggers to be rewarded for their work, I'd be delighted.

If you're a blogger reading this, I'd really appreciate a link to this post - the more people see it, the more likely it is to work and the more likely it is that it'll start something big for all of us.'

I was actually pondering the other day whether an auction type version of BlogAds might be a viable method of selling ads. For example if instead of bloggers setting their prices (guessing at market value) and hoping that an advertiser comes and pays that much - if Blogads added the option to have an auction for your ad space. This way advertisers would have a little more say in the setting of the price as we as the blogger would find the true market value of our sites. Just an idea - one that I hope who ever uses it will give me 10% of the earnings from!

A Professional Bloggers Workflow

Tris has a great post over at Qumana Blog about Qumana and professional blogging. Ok its a bit of a sales pitch for Qumana (which I've heard some great things about - just wish they'd release a Mac version) but its an interesting glimpse into the workflow of a Professional Blogger who is actively writing on 10 or so blogs on a variety of topics.

I have an extremely similar workflow - I tend to use Ecto and Bloglines which I suspect works pretty similarly to the system Tris has up and running. I'd love to see a more integrated approach though in the future - imagine a tool like Ecto or Qumana that also tracked RSS! I know Bloglines has a blog feature but its pretty basic. I'm sure we'll see developments in this direction one day.

After reading what Tris has to say you can come back here and read about my workflow in my A Day in the Life of a Problogger.

Staying Motivated with your Blogging - Work with Others

Susannah at Buzz Marketing has a great post on Staying Motivated with your blogging which is well worth the read. Regular posting is an essential part of blogging for profit - I know I can go a week or so without noticing too big a drop in earnings - but if you're trying to build your readership and income regular and interesting posting is absolutely essential. Of course this takes discipline and motivation. Susannah has a good list to help you get motivated for the year of blogging ahead.

I do most of what she suggests in her list but another thing I've done a bit of lately is work with others on posts and projects.

I find that blogging can be a lonely process at times - for starters most of my friends think I'm crazy and give me the strangest look when I answer the 'what do you do?' question with 'I'm a blogger' - but I also find that blogging can be quite an isolating process - staring at your computer all day, researching, writing, reflecting etc. Whilst as an introvert I do enjoy time alone I also find that too much of it leaves me feeling rather lifeless and unmotivated.

Recently I've started initiating relationships with a number of others with the view to entering into some common partnerships. I find that when I do this it can be quite inspiring and energizing.

So find yourself a blogging partner - it might be another blogger, or it might just be one of those people that gives you one of 'those' looks when you mention the word 'blogging'. You see someone who is new to the medium comes at it with a fresh approach, their own passions and interests and might just help you discover something new about blogging.

By the way - I'm seeking collaborators at the moment for blogging ideas and projects. I hope to have a bit more time this year to work with some of you - so if you have a project that you think might be mutually beneficial to us both let me know and we'll see where our conversation leads us to.

Adam Curry to Launch Podcasting Network

Fortune reports that Adam Curry of MTV fame is planning to start up a podcasting network in the months ahead:

'Later this winter Curry and partners plan to launch a podcasting network, offering an edited selection of the web's best dispatches and tools for neophytes to create their own casts. Just as blogs have challenged mainstream media, Curry predicts that podcasts will take on radio and satellite. “With podcasting, people can tune out the world and listen to whatever they choose,” says Curry. “In a way we're really looking at the dismantling of the monoculture,” he says. Guess it's a good thing he's not at MTV anymore.'

Read more at Technology - Podcasting: From MTV to MP3 - FORTUNE

BlogTshirts.com - Now you can wear your favorite blogs.

I just stumbled on another way you can make a few dollars from your blog - this time directly from your readers - its by starting your own clothing label! Ok - maybe not your own label but you can have your own T-Shirts. Check out BlogTshirts.com which lets bloggers sell T-shirts without the hassle of having to make or send them and simply by letting others do all the hard work of inventory etc. I know there are other places you can do this online but this is one of the first I've see that is targeting bloggers! Its a service run by Dan Sherman.

'Are you a blog reader? Show your fondness for the blogosphere by wearing your favorite blog on a t-shirt.

By wearing a blogTshirt, you not only show the world your awareness regarding the future of news delivery, but you also support your favorite bloggers. Each blog owner receives $10 per t-shirt purchased with their blog on it.....

Everybody wins. You get a cool t-shirt, bloggers earn money to support their nasty blogging habit and we here at blogTshirts.com can make enough money to retire to the Bahamas. (Don't worry, we'll keep blogging and making t-shirts.)'

So the question I have is this (and its not deep) what should the slogan be for ProBlogger's T-shirt?!? I'll take nominations below. If I use your nomination I'll buy you a free T-Shirt.

I'm not sure how many of you my wonderful readers are going to rush out and buy a ProBlogger blog but I'm sure there are plenty of other blogs that this would work better with. At earning $10 per sale its worth a go if you have a lot of avid/obsessive fans reading your blog.

The 2005 Business Blogging Awards - Voting Time

Looks like voting is open in the The 2005 Business Blogging Awards and I'm surprised to find ProBlogger in the Best overall Blog category. i wasn't sure what their definition of a 'Business Blog' was but perhaps I'm one after all. Anyway you can go here to vote and to surf through some excellent examples of business blogging a wide variety of topics. If you're looking for the category we're nominated in start scrolling and don't stop til you stop. The best 'overall' blog is 'underall' the others....sorry - I couldn't resist.

Update: Voting has been suspended due to some irregularities with the system - seems that votes were accumulating very quickly (ie one vote sometimes came up as multiple votes). Thanks for the 11,000 people who voted for me (joking). System should be back up again shortly.

The Business Blogging Field Guide - Types of Business Bloggers

The Social Customer Manifesto has a great series going at the moment titled The Business Blogging Field Guide which goes beyond the usual 'what is a business blog?' question and describes six different types of business bloggers - giving examples of each:

The Tour Guide
The Recommender
The Maven
The Customer Advocate
The Do-er
The Fromage Grande (still to come)

How Personal do you Get on your Business Blog?

There is an interesting dialogue going about how personal you should get on your business blog over at CorporateBlogging.Info and public (MIND). Hans wants to know more about Fredrik - Fredrik doesn't want his blog to go there.

'As Hans Henrik says, I try to keep this site focused on blogging and related communication discussions. I'm not doing it primarily to be read, even if that's fun and stimulating. I'm doing it to learn. I work that way. If I read stuff I forget it. If I read stuff and write about it, I'm able to transform it from information to knowledge. And with a journalistic background no other writing than that in public really counts.

Writing more about my background, my family, views and opinions on other matters -- that wouldn't fill any purpose from that perspective. In my corporate blog (Swedish only) it's somewhat different, because there I have other purposes.

That's one part of the answer, the individual part of it. In more general terms I think - as a blog reader - that it's not very interesting to get too much personal stuff. If I read a blog to, say, find news and discussions about web design I couldn't care less who the blogger had dinner with the night before. I don't want to know that.'

He also wonders if it might be a cultural thing that highlights the difference between how Europeans differ from Americans in their business blogs.

It could also be a personality thing I guess. I personally have some boundaries about what I will and won't blog about on my different blogs - however would probably be a little more open to revealing a little about myself on most of my blogs. I am someone who is drawn to real people and not just information.

I like blogs that have a photo somewhere on them of the person and that give some indication of who they are, where they are, what they do with their time etc. I also like humor in blogs and enjoy a good story every now and again. I guess it is a personal choice - but I wonder what you think? How much do you reveal about yourself on your blog? Do you have boundaries about what you will and won't post about?

Visualization of Blogs

Anjo is doing some very interesting work on Visually representing blogs. The picture to the left (click to enlarge) is a partial visualization of Scobleizer over a year. Anjo describes what you're looking at by writing:

• Size of a blob is determined by the number of words in the post. Bigger blob, more words (in fact: every pixel represents one word).
• Colour of the blob is determined by whether there are links to others (grey), links from others (green) or no links (red). All with respect to a community of KM bloggers determined by Lilia and Stephanie

It is an interesting first implementation of this visualization system - well worth checking out. Read the rest here. I'll be interested to see what else emerges.

RSS Advertising More Superior Than Email - RSS Spam to Follow?

Marketing Rampage with Blogs has an interesting post that argues RSS Advertising outperforms Email advertising.

'Pheedo ran the campaign for 6 weeks and from their results, RSS feeds outperformed the best click through rate in email by over 26% as compared to the industry average of 8.7%.'

It is an article that both excites me (as someone just beginning to test the theory) but also scares me a little. You see email advertising became the bane of my existence for many years with the advent of Spammed Emails - I'm just wondering how long before we see the same vast quantity of Spam RSS feeds bouncing through our news aggregators.

I already regularly see what I consider to be RSS spam in my bloglines aggregator - junk posts that appear again and again day after day on the search terms that I follow. I wonder how much longer before this practice becomes so wide spread that I give up using the search for a keyword function of Bloglines.

NYT Online Advertisign is up 32% Online Ad Revenues Up 32 Percent at New York Times Co.

ClickZ reports that Online Ad Revenues Up 32 Percent at New York Times Co. its not a blog - but I figure its representative of what is happening in the wider online community.

'Advertising revenue for The New York Times' online unit increased 32.2 percent for December 2004 compared with December 2003, driven by strong growth in display advertising and all classified advertising categories.

That robust online performance contrasts with the almost flat advertising revenue growth company-wide. Total advertising revenues across all of the Times' media holdings increased 2.2 percent to $187.2 million in December. For the year, the Times reported total advertising revenues up 3.5 percent with $2.19 billion.'

Google testing 'new' user activated ads on Adsense

The Adsense community are in a bit of a tizz at the moment over testing of a 'new' ad feature whereby readers get to choose their own advertisements. In actual fact this is not a 'new' testing that Adsense are doing at all - I observed it back in October on one test site that I watch - if only they'd been reading ProBlogger! :-)

See some more of the current discussion and observations at:

- Webmaster World - Site visitors able to tweak Publishers Adsense blocks
- Inside Google - Google Testing True User-Specified Ads
- SEO Round Table: Google Beta Tests New AdSense Ads

- Jermy Zawodny - Google's Per-User Adsense Tweaking
- pc4media - Search Adsense Ads from your Website

CSS Vault is Sold for Five Figure Amount

Big Money Tips today announced that he's sold one of his flagship blogs - the CSS Vault.

'When I created the CSS Vault I didn't even plan on making any money from it let alone sell it. Things just happened to work out the right way in the end. Dumb luck. Later this week I will go more into detail the reasons for selling as opposed to keeping it from a business perspective.'

As usual with these types of sales the amount has not been revealed except to say that it was a five figure money - between $10,000 and $99,999.

This is the second such public sale for a blogger in the past few months with Jeremy selling his back in September. I'm sure its something we'll see more of but I am still left wondering how does one make the decision as to how much to sell their blog for?

Estimating what the Big bloggers earn from Blogads

Right Wing News has done some estimates on what they think some of the bigger blogs are making from Blogads on a weekly basis. The estimates are rough and they admit they are probably over estimates as Blogads do take 20% in commissions and it doesn't take into consideration advertisers buying long ads (which are usually discounted) and it wouldn't take into consideration the free ads that some bloggers use. On the flip side of course, these numbers are conservative in their overall earnings as many of them use other advertising also such as Adsense, affiliates, private ads etc.

Having made all those disclaimers this is an interesting analysis. Here are the top 10 on this list of estimates of Blogads weekly earnings (check here for their complete list):

Daily Kos:$6800
Talking Points Memo: $2900
Instapundit: $2125
Eschaton: $2000
Andrew Sullivan: $2400
Hugh Hewitt: $1500
Political Animal: $1430
The Smirking Chimp: $1350
Wonkette: $1150
Political Wire: $1100

Shady or Superior Adsense Integration?

Big Money Tips points to an interesting use of Adsense on a site. It is a fine line as to what these guys are doing with their third ad on the page which is very blended into the site and almost invisable at a first glance (there are three ads on the page - all quite different in their presentation). As Big Money Tips writes - is this superior or shady use of Adsense?

Searches on "Blogs" and "Blogging" up by 10% on Yahoo

Yahoo Buzz Reports that blogging has continued to climb the most search for words rankings:

Blogging continues its march on the mainstream. It's considered essential to consume a steady diet of weblogs to keep up with what's hot on the Web. Searches on “blogs” and “blogging” are still surging and both are up over 10% over the past week. We've seen political blogs, MP3 blogs, and food blogs all spike at various times over the last half-year. '

Read more at Yahoo! Buzz Index - Buzz Log - Blog-o-riffic!

A List of Business Blogs

Over at the Blogathon last week the guys at Inside Blogging generously commissioned me to come up with a list of as many 'Business Blogs' as I could find. I thought I'd post the list here also as its relevant to this blog. See below the list for my struggle to define 'business blog' which will partially explain the odd collection I've assembled here so far which includes numerous businesses that blog but also a few blogs about business (if you get my distinction. I've tried to keep the more pure ones (ie businesses that blog) in the top end of the list.

• Northfield Construction Company - Northfield Construction Company's blog for news and updates.
• Wool Winders - a great blog of a Knitting Salon.
• Signs never sleep - Lincoln Sign Company's blog.
• The tinbasher blog - a company blog to help customers learn more about Planters Direct and its parent company Butler Sheetmetal.
• Rococo - the blog of Rococo Software.
• Nooked - the blog of Nooked, a service helping companies with their RSS feeds.
• Conference Calls Unlimited blog.
• Stonyfield farm blog - another great example of a business using a blog - Stonyfield farm.
• GM Blog - the much publicized 'Fastlane' blog from GM.
• Cape Science Weblog - the blog of Cape Science, a Web Services Developer Community.
• BizNet Travel's Blog.
• Ofoto Blog - the blog of Ofoto - a service of Kodak.
• Air Conditioning Contrators of America - the blog of an association of Air Con Contractors.
• Boeing's new blog - the blog of Randy Beler - Vice President for marketing at Boeing.
• Ford Mustang Blog - a group blog with contributions from various Ford employees.
• Jewel Boxing - a blog documenting the process of starting an online business (Jewel Boxing) from scratch.
• American Marketing Association - another association blog.
• Capulet Communications - A weblog about professional communication from Capulet Communications.
• Security Awareness a blog for Winn Schwartau's Security Awareness Company.
• RealBlog - Blog of Tom Hanna - Real Estate Agent.
• Ohio University Library - the Business Blog of a library.
• File on Business Blog - Blog of File on Business Solutions.
• Bplans Blog - a blog on business plans by a business planning software company: Palo Alto Software.
• 800-CEO-READ - blog of book supplier - 800-CEO-READ.
• Trademark Blog - a blog from the law offices of Schwimmer and Associates.
• Big Blog Company - a company blog of a blogging company.
• About Product Weblogs
• Skybox by Maytag
• Prospect Research Blog
• Perception Analyzer
• trade show industry
• Shared Space
• Cool Business Ideas
• Trader Mike
• The Barter Blog
• Real lawyers have blogs

Additions to the list:
- Cudgeland - A blog about Weddings and party-planning from the folks at Cudge (suggested by Mark).
- Paper-Source - with 5 staff blogs (suggested by Mark).
- Benjamin Christie - Australian Chef Consultant
- Vic Cherikoff's Blog - of Vic Cherikoff Food Services and Dining Downunder
- Atomic Books
- Blog Kits Corporate Blog
- Innovation Tools
- English Cut - an English Tailor's Blog

Other Lists of Business/Corporate Blogs
- Corporate Blogging - European Corporate Blogs - this is actually another list of 'corporate blogs' from Europe which I figured I will list instead of listing each of the many blogs on it. Suggested by the globally minded Hans.

As i mentioned above - I struggled a little with the creation of this list (which I invite you to add to in comments below) because of the term 'business blog'. How should we define it?

There are many ways one could answer this question. Broadly speaking it could be defined as any or all of the following:

1. a blog that has content on business topics (ie marketing, PR, advertising, real estate, law, finance etc)
2. a blog that has a direct income stream and that is a business in and of itself (ie through advertising or affiliate programs)
3. a blog that promotes a person and thereby opens up opportunities for them to earn an income in some indirect way (eg as a consultant, speaker etc)
4. a blog that is attached to a business either as a promotional/informational too or as a tool to enhance that business in some other way. It may not be an income earner in and of itself but it is a dynamic part of a business (eg an internal blog between staff or a customer service blog to keep clients up to date on progress of projects etc).

So which one is it - or is it all of the above - or something else....

I tend to define it more as the last point - businesses that blog (but am not too hard and fast on this). However having defined it this way I had a difficult time finding too many businesses engaged in blogging (apart from blog consultants, blog tool providers etc).

I could have linked to hundreds and hundreds of blogs from the first three categories (and have included a few) but finding blogs that were more attached to existing businesses were harder to find. I suspect this is partly because some of these blogs are internal and therefore private blogs, but I also wonder if despite all the talk and articles that are going around the blogosphere at the moment about business blogging whether there is actually a lack of working models already in place.

It is early days for business blogging but and I do see its potential but perhaps at the moment there is more 'talk' about business blogging than there is actual action. I'm sure this will change and I'm looking forward to seeing this list of business blogs grow. Feel free to submit your suggestions below in comments.

Business Blog Summit Live Commentaries

I'm sure there are many people blogging live from the Business Blog Summit. Seeing as though those of us who are not there don't seem to be able to participate in any other way (no feeds and the IRC channel is just full of people not there asking the two that are what is going on no) I thought I'd start to compile a list of bloggers that are doing some live commentaries (or at least making a bit of noise from within the heart of the conference) of the sessions. Feel free to add yours if you're doing some:

- Jeff Barr's Blog - some pretty comprehensive summaries of each session so far
- Common Craft (who has also set up a wiki for the conference)
- The Blog Post
- Chris Pirillo
- Daren Barefoot
- Will Pate
- Ratcliffe Blog
- Buzz Marketing With Blogs
- Qumana
- Blogosphere News

I'm sure there is more - will keep adding them as they are found

I have to say that so far in reading the commentaries that the depth of topic covered is not quite what I expected so far. Perhaps its hard to convey it in writing but its a little more on the 'entry level' side of things in the first few sessions - I guess this is understandable as an introduction to a conference. I'm yet to stop in my tracks as I read and go 'wow'....rewind....got to read that again! Maybe its that I just got up and need another coffee but perhaps this conference is aiming more at those beginning their business blogging journeys? Interested in the opinions of those who are there.

I am very much looking forward to hearing about the session on 'The Entrepreneurial Blog: Monetizing Your Interests' by Brian Alvey and Glenn Fleishman later today though - should be some good information in that.

Waiting for Blog Business Summit News

Is anyone else feeling they are missing something by not being able to get to the Blog Business Summit?

One of the things I love so much about blogging is that it is such a global medium and so accessible to such a large proportion of the world*. This particularly appealed to me as an Australian who loves to communicate and network with other fellow enthusiasts in my fields of interest from around the world - but who finds himself with a limited capacity to travel regularly. In most cases blogging has crossed the borders brilliantly but on occasions it unfortunately does not.

Conferences such as the Blog Business Summit are one time when I feel the isolation the most. There has been talk of a couple of Aussie blogging conferences in the next few months but I'd really love to get to Seattle this year to put faces, voices, handshakes to the names and ramblings of a few of my favorite blogs. There is nothing like those face to face encounters to take your online friendship and working relationships to the next level.

I was hoping that there might have been some sort of audio or even video feeds from the event but at this point it doesn't seem like there is any. I'll have to live vicariously through blogs themselves or the IRC channel that Robert Scoble has put up.

Anyway - enough of my whining - I'll be keeping up to date with the latest through some of these blogs no doubt:

Paul Chaney
Todd at A Penny For
Business Logs
Scoble
Steve
Common Craft
The Blog Post
Tom Peters

*I know that it doesn't really cross all economic divides as its still a pretty middle and upper class thing with it being essential that you live in a location that has access to the internet and a computer - however there are now bloggers in most (if not all) countries in the world.

Trend Watching Websites and RSS Feeds

One skill that I think is vitally important for Professional Bloggers is the ability to keep up to date with the latest trends. So much of blogging is being able observe and even anticipate what people are interested in or looking for and providing appropriate content to meet there needs in a timely manner. Trend watching is therefore something we should either be actively doing ourselves or at the very least outsourcing to someone else to do for us.

In many regards almost every blog being tracked on my RSS feed list is a vital part of my trend watching but I also read quite a number of other specific trend sites to help me keep my finger on the pulse. Some of the more recent sites that I watch daily that specifically are looking at the latest trends in a number of industries are as follows (I've included RSS feeds of those that have them but unfortunately most dont seem to have caught onto that trend yet!:

- Small Business Trends - which as the name suggests keeps an eye on the latest trends and influences of the global small business market (RSS).
- PSFK - a collaborative trend spotting site run by a number of bloggers from around the globe (RSS).
- Trend Central - Tracking trends across topics of Lifestyle, Style, Entertainment and Technology (no RSS).
- Herman Group - Trend Alert - looking at trends across a number of fields in this weekly column (no RSS).
- Trend Watching - A blog-like site with trends from around the globe across a number of fields (no RSS).
- Google Zeitgeist - Tracking what people search for on Google (RSS)
- Yahoo Buzz Index - Tracking what people are searching for on Yahoo (RSS)
- Trends in Japan - Tracking the latest fads in Japan across different areas (no RSS)
- Trend Report - Mainly Consumer trends (no RSS)
- Trend Mag - Tracking a variety of trends (no RSS)

I'm interested to know what trends you watch for your blogging and what online (and offline) sources you use?

Expectations of a Professional Blogger

I recently asked readers for questions for my upcoming interviews with Professional bloggers. Bobby Masteria asked:

'Ask long time probloggers what have been their fears, hopes and expectations.'

It is certainly a question I will ask in the interviews I do - but I thought I'd also answer it here for myself. I'll start in this post with some of my 'expectations'.

The last two years of blogging has been a whirlwind for me. I've learnt so much and seen so many changes in the blogosphere. I sometimes find myself staring in a daze at my powerbook's screen wondering what the next year or two will bring. As I've said before - my mind boggles at where we are headed as a community of bloggers and I hardly know where or how to begin in describing my expectations. Let me give a few:

1. Blogging Tools and Services continue to grow. You would not believe how long it used to take me to write and format a blog post. Back when I started (just over two years ago) I used Blogger which for its time was a good system - but as a Mac user it was very time consuming as formatting had to all be done in long hand (ie I had to put in all of the tags for bold, italics, links etc). These days I use a wonderful tool by the name of Ecto (yes I do tend to rave about it) which has cut my blogging time down to a fraction of what it was. I discovered Ecto just before the Olympic games which was very fortunate for the upkeep of our Athens Blog. At the peak of the games I was able to add 15 - 20 posts an hour using Ecto (mainly just quotes from and links to news articles from around the web). It also enabled me to write and save posts for later uploading from anywhere (as long as I had my laptop handy). Not only that I now write my posts in 'What you see is what you get' mode which makes formatting and uploading pictures a breeze.

Ecto is just one of many such systems out there which are making blogging more automated and a joy to do. Take a look at Technorati's new Tags for another exciting development.

I suspect that the next 12 months will present us with tools that we can not even imagine that will take our professional (and hobby) blogging to an even higher level.

2. Professional Blogging will Boom. This is not really a prediction but rather is an observation of what is happening already. Even since starting ProBlogger I've noticed an upswing in the usage of the term 'problogger', 'professional blogging' etc. More and more articles are being written on the topic (both for and against it), groups of pro bloggers are beginning to form and self organize, bloggers are starting blog consultancies, larger companies are starting blogs and it seems that even small hobby bloggers are exploring ways of finding revenue streams for their blogs. The spectrum of bloggers exploring the commercial aspects of blogging was always going to happen but it seems that the momentum is really starting to build.

3. The Rise of the Parasite Blogger - With the developments in blogging and RSS technology many of us who are attempting to make a living from blogging are noticing a disturbing trend in sites that attempt to hijack feeds and blogs content for their own commercial gain. I'm not talking here about taking a quote and giving an appropriate link to an article you may have written - rather I'm talking about sites who simply reproduce whole articles, and even whole blogs on their own domains with no permission and often with little or no acknowledgment of the source of the content. I expect that these parasite sites will increase in number and devious means and that there will be a need soon for some sort of a central body to represent the rights of individual bloggers who want to protect themselves from the exploitation of their work (which has the potential to be quite harmful).

This post was originally posted on Blogathon.

Podcasting Consultants

Last night I fell asleep thinking of Podcasting - ok I know that is a twisted and screwed up thing to admit but its true. I was pondering the podcasting business model question and starting wondering what business applications podcasting could have. When it comes to blogging the business blog is said to be the 'next big thing' - as a result blogging consultants are popping up everywhere - so in what ways might the humble podcast be used in business and when will we see the first pod consultant?

That is about as far as my pondering got - I'd been out with some friends at the pub and it was late and I was slurring my thoughts a little. Anyway - this morning I start running through my morning RSS rounds and find Cameron might just have answered the question about podconstultants - it could be him. He's just written a post titled - My first podcasting client?

'I don't want to say too much at this stage, but over the last couple of days I've been having a VERY interesting conversation with a senior manager from a tier one US company who is interested in engaging my services to help produce an internal podcast for a certain segment of their staff around the world.

The idea is something like this:

This company has thousands of people around the world all doing the same job. It's a difficult job and one not really appreciated by other members of the team. So this person has been appointed to bring these staff from around the world into a community. Get them talking, listening, sharing, debating.'

Very interesting.

Just saw this one also. Its an official podcast of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists . We'll see more of this I guess.

Pro-Bloggers Website

The Professional Bloggers Association has just put up their website. Great name - they've chosen Pro-Bloggers.

PicturePhone.com For Sale - $1 Million Start Bid

Do you want to buy a domain name? Got a spare $1million dollars? Then PicturePhone.com might interest you! It isn't a blog and therefore isn't quite relevant here but I couldn't resist linking up.

You see PicturePhone.com will be auctioned off to the highest bigger on January 31 to the highest bigger and the bids will start at $1million. Check out their terms for the auction at PicturePhone Domain Name Auction.

Seeking a Podcasting Business Model

Listening to a good interview with Mick and Cameron from G'day World on a Podcast with the Blog Herald. Of particular interest to me was their comments about finding a business model for podcasting. I won't quote them directly here (editing out the 'vulgarities' that some complain of..hehe) but they suggest that they'd like to look at doing a similar thing to the guys at Weblogs Inc with podcasting - ie provide the infrastructure for a stable of podcasters who each produce quality podcasts on their own areas of expertise.

Sounds like a great idea - I am fast coming to see the benefits of the podcast both as an addition to a blog but also as a medium in its own right.

The challenge is to find ways of paying for it (it has a lot more overheads than the average blog) but I suspect that this wouldn't be too hard once they become a little more widely listened to.

Mick and Cameron talk about how their latest interview with Scoble was downloading 2000+ times in a couple of days. Sounds to me like their product is getting to a level where some smart advertiser should jump on board and test the effectiveness of promoting their product or service through their next big name interview.

Weighing Up the "nofollow" Attack on Comment Spam

Is Google's latest attack on Comment Spam going to hurt Bloggers as much or even more than the Spammers themselves?

Google already have the support of some pretty major bloggers and blogging tools including.

- Brad Fitzpatrick - LiveJournal
- Dave Winer - Scripting News
- Anil Dash - Six Apart
- Steve Jenson - Blogger
- Matt Mullenweg - WordPress
- Stewart Butterfield - Flickr
- Anthony Batt - Buzznet
- David Czarnecki - blojsom
- Rael Dornfest - Blosxom

MSN and Yahoo have also agreed to the system making it a pretty big deal.

A number of people have asked for my opinion of this new development. I've written some initial reaction here previously before it was announced and have similar feelings now.

Whilst I applaud the efforts to eradicate comment spam I'm not convinced that this is the way forward and worry that whilst it MAY help to combat the problem, it will not stamp it out and in the process it will be bloggers themselves who are penalized. Let me reiterate what I've already written on the topic....

1. Yes some bloggers will use this system (some like TypePad users will have no choice). I'm considering implementing it for the good of all but am not rushing to do so immediately.

2. I'm not convinced this will stop spammers. I suspect that there are thousands of blogs already out there that will not update their software and therefore will not implement this sytem. Spammers will continue to spam blogs because it is so easy to do with automated bot programs - they will do so in the hope that a certain percentage will still end up on blogs without the rel="nofollow" tag.

3. Legitimate commenter will lose the value previously gained by leaving comments on others blogs. I do not and have not ever left comments on others blogs for the gain of my own blog in Search Engine rankings - however I have no doubt that my comments have been beneficial to my ranking. My concern is that with the introduction of this system that my backlinks will tumble in the Search Engines (along with any other bloggers that take the time and energy to comment on others sites for genuine reasons).

One of the things that attracted me to blogging in the first place was that it was so interactive. Bloggers actually gained so much not only by writing a blog but interacting with others. This system takes a little bit of that interactivity and mutual benefit of commenting away.

As I've written previously - I leave around 10 legitimate comments per day on others blogs (I think I'm pretty average in this way). I've been blogging 2 years - thats over 6000 links to my blogs that potentially could disappear from Google. You do the math and work out the cost to your blog. I know this is a selfish way to look at things and I do hold it in tension with the benefits of decreasing the links to spammers sites - but I wonder why legit sites that work to build up the blogosphere should be the one's to suffer because a few abuse the system.

Whilst I understand the motivation for Google and other SEs and the big blogging software producers to put this system in place I wonder what the cost will be to the blogosphere and what the gains will be?

Will it kill off spammers? Maybe, but probably not. Will it decrease the profile in search engines of legit bloggers? I fear it will.

All in all I'm torn by this latest development and wonder if there might be another way?

Update: John in This is Not a Solution to Comment Spam points me to a good post with similar sentiments over at TheMiddle's The Spammers have Won

Update 2: Six Apart have announced their plans to roll out plugins for the rel="nofollow" strategy. Typepad users will not have to do anything it will all be automatic (looks like they don't get a choice whether they want to use it or not), MT users can download a plug in here. WordPress users can download a rel="nofollow" plug in here.

Figby also has a good report on the new anti-spam links making some good points. I especially like:

'Dishonest webmasters will use this attribute to game the system. I’m not quite sure how, but they’ll find a way. One obvious way is to set the nofollow attribute on all external links, to prevent precious PageRank from leaking out of their sites. Whether this does any good or not is debatable, but they’ll do it anyway, and it’s bound to confuse the already-strained algorithms that produce PageRank.'

askDaveTaylor has a good explanation of the new system and writes:

'And, finally, is it going to work? I dunno. There are some definite problems with this strategy, not the least of which is that it means that if my friends and colleagues pop by and post an erudite comment - or write their own article that trackbacks to mine - I would like to give them some of my PageRank goodness, but now I can't. You're all throw into the 'spammer scum' box, like it or not. Also, having it as an add-on is like Microsoft solving security problems with a system patch: it only works if every single person installs it and in this case, I'm sure that even three months from now there'll be a statistically significant percentage of MT, WordPress and other self-hosted Weblogs that will not support "nofollow", and as we've learned in the last few years, spammers are happy to send out a million messages for a handful of positive responses.'

Arstechnica writes - 'Publishers online now have the ability to point to websites and companies they don't particularly like without artificially inflating their Page Rank, simply by inserting this special attribute into the link. As with any sort of change like this, 20% of people might initially take advantage of this paradigm shift, leaving 80% "unprotected." Fortunately, many companies responsible for hosting a majority of online blogs are involved and may push the number of initial participants well above 50%. Only time will tell if Google.com has done irreparable harm to how we think of searching and linking or if they're heralding a new era of cooperation and online publishing.'

Update 3: Buzz Marketing weighs into the debate writing - 'links are links, and if spammers spam, people will still click.  Page rank won’t grow as much for the destination URLs, but they’ll still get traffic.  And for spammers who are trying to simply deface or plaster their message around, this does nothing.'

See the Link Condom for a funny commentary on the NoFollow system

Jeremy writes - 'it’s not going to “stop” comment spam. It just changes the economics and metrics. The reality is that one of the apps I’ve seen can spam 1 million wordpress and / or movabletype blogs in 5 minutes. At those economics levels, only one person needs to click, only 10 blogs need to not be using the “nofollow” for it to be worthwhile. This solution is akin to saying “net identity solutions will solve email spam", which is false. Knowing who people are is step one. Knowing that their intent is malicious is step 2. Being able to do something about it is step 3. Having a central authority is step 4. This little piece of Google’s doesn’t actually solve any of those, and it treats all commenters with equal disdain, which is sad (if understandable).'

Anil from MT posts an interesting post answering some of the negative feedback that has been leveled at this new system.

Danny Sullivan gives an extended response to Anil's response (last link) responding to the Link Condom (link about last link... phew). He writes - 'What is clear is that nofollow will NOT stop blog comment spam. Not at all. Don't believe it? Then right now, all bloggers can stop making use of blacklists, registration schemes and other tactics used before nofollow emerged. Sit back and see if the spam goes away. It won't. Nofollow is a nice new tool that we can use, one that as I've said many times before is welcomed for giving us choice and more options, but it's not a magic bullet. Well, it's a magic bullet for one thing. It now lets the search engines say to bloggers, we gave you want you wanted, stop blaming us for the problem!'

This post originally was posted at my Blogathon site.

Update 23433 - (I lost count) - A number of bloggers have developed little buttons to put on your site to let your readers know if you use NoFollow or not. Some are in other languages but you'll get the gist. Check them out at:
- No NoFollow
- Contra el No Follow
- ¿ Todos los buscadores contra el spam ?
-     nofollow, nofollow free and follow buttons

Why Topical Feeds Are The Future of RSS

Read/Write Web has an interesting post predicting that the killer application for RSS will be to track Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds rather than to track individual blogs or news sources.

'One of the reasons I think this may eventuate is that blogging is and always will be a minority sport (as I've referred to it in the past). The killer app for RSS probably won't be geared towards the current ranks of bloggers and geeks. When RSS hits it big, it'll be because 'normal' people start using it - your Mom and Dad, Frank from Marketing, Jessie from Payroll, Dave from the local dairy. They won't be bloggers. They won't be interested in writing or podcasting or anything like that. All they'll want to do is track news and trends that are relevant to them.

Tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results - using, you guessed it, RSS! Google will probably be the front-runner (see this video for a hint to the future - thanks twdanny for the reminder), PubSub will be another, current players like Bloglines and Technorati will be in amongst it, and who knows who else.'

If my own personal use of RSS feeds is anything to go by I think Richard is onto something here. You see I use Bloglines as much for tracking topics as I do to track specific news sources. For instance I have a search feed for 'digital camera review' which points me to numerous relevant articles each day. I also track a variety of Topix categories using RSS. Of course this is partly because I'm sourcing information for my blogs - but when I tell non blogging friends (and I do have a couple who do not blog) about RSS and how they could track news on their personal interests they are generally fascinated. They have no interest in tracking blogs (even mine!) but if they could find the latest information on their passions they will get themselves a news aggregator as quick as.

I suspect that RSS will always be used to track individual news sources (I'll always do it) but topical tracking is certainly an area that will boom.

The Importance of Good Headlines for RSS

Poynter Online has a great post about the importance of having a good headline in your RSS feed.

'But what do I do with headlines like "Dramatic change" (which turned out to be about a change in the government's attitude toward immigrants) or "An unfinished story" (this deals with the U.S. inauguration). And these are just a couple of random picks from a Norwegian feed I read last night. Both those headlines belong in a newspaper or on a website, where there is room for a picture and a blurb. They have no place in my RSS reader. Or in my mobile phone's WAP reader. Because I can't even make up my mind if I'm interested.

With RSS and WAP, more and more journalism relies on headlines alone. So they better be good. And they better be informative.'

This is so true. I've actually done some tracking of the most popular posts on this site for those reading my RSS feeds and have noticed that it is usually the simple, clear and informatively titled posts that get the most hits. Yes occasionally I'll get a little clever, humorous and cryptic and come up with a title that tries to be intriguing, witty or mysterious - but more often than not the simple ones do much better.

Of course I show the first few sentences in my RSS feeds also (not that everyone chooses to view them) so your opening line is also vitally important to getting people to read on.

I've touched on this topic previously in a number of posts includeing:
- Titles are Everything
- Get to the Point
- Blogging for Change - Rejection to Attention

Google to Revamp Adsense and Adwords Program

Silicon Valley Watcher writes that Google are getting ready to announce some big changes to their Adsense/Adwords program which will be of interest to many bloggers using the system.

'As this is being writtten, about 1800 Google marketing people from its offices around the world are at an internal sales conference at a secret location in San Francisco, being briefed on a completely revamped Google Adwords/Adsense program and other new features.

The text ads business is crucial to maintaining Google’s pace of growth and its share price, which reflects high expectations for the dominant search giant. But Google offers few tools to advertisers to let them control where their ads appear and on which web sites. Similarly, web site publishers have virtually no control over what types of ads Google sends their way. This has caused some shifting to competitors such as Kanoodle that offer such controls.

That's why the revamped Adwords/Adsense will provide a suite of tools that provide greater control, management and monitoring data to advertisers, to better target their sales messages.'

I'll be watching any announced changes carefully as Adsense has been a major part of my earning strategy on my blogs - hopefully the changes not only benefit the advertisers but also are worthwhile for publishers.

'For the first time, the search giant will provide its advertisers with an application programming interface (API), which will enable them to link their computer systems with Google and control parts of the mammoth Google ad delivery system. The API will allow advertisers to self-administer the delivery, the timing and the price they will pay for their text ads.'

How AdSense Premium Publishers Boost their CTR by 500%

Have you ever wondered what the benefits of being a premium publisher on the Google Adsense program are? Google don't say to much about it on their website. You have to achieve '5 million search queries or 20 million content page views a month' to qualify, which puts most of us out of the race but we can dream can't we? Anyway - the official line is that the benefits of being a Premium Publisher are:

• Google sales representative and account manager
• Flexible ad formats
• Advanced filtering
• Optimization assistance
• Additional monetization options
• Enhanced technical support

It all sounds pretty general and I've often wondered what the specifics are. Today I spotted a short post by Gary Stein who shed a little light on what one premium publisher (Topix) is doing to boost their earnings on their home page by 500%. The long and short of it is that they are able to track your movements across the site's different channels and serve up ads that relate to where you've spent the most time. So instead of their Home Page (which is a collation page of loads of general news) showing up 'general' type ads it shows up ads which they have a pretty good idea that you'll be interested in because you've previously searched for it.

So in a sense the ads are not contextual in the strictest sense (ie they are not relevant to that page's content but are reliant upon your surfing history - Behavioral targeting advertising. I wonder if this is the type of feature that Google would consider making available down the track to its average user? Obviously it would be in their best interests, and those of their publishers and advertisers, to see click through rates go up by 500% across the board. However I guess they also have to balance it with the reaction of the end user who may not appreciate having their surfing tracked in this way.

Source of original information: AdSense Premium Publisher: Boost CTR

Professional Blogger Association - Some Observations

I'm really happy to see the caliber of Professional Bloggers Association's Founding Team Members - whilst some have critiqued having such an association I'm pleased that it seems to be moving ahead. They've named a board and voted on office bearers which is a good first step and now have a lot of work to do to get it up and running.

This might seem like I'm having a go at them, I'm not in fact I've offered my full support and assistance in any way I can a couple of times now. I believe in the ideas of pro bloggers coming together - however I would give one initial observation of the group that have kicked this thing off.

Whilst Paul mentions that they are international in their scope I'm left wondering whether this is really just a north american association. Yes they have Hans on the team (and there could be another European or two in there that doesn't say so on their bio) but the vast majority of those on the founding membership list are from the US with a few from Canada.

Ok - let me critique my own observation.

• Of course this is only a founding membership list and it would make sense to have the initial group clustered together to help with the logistics of setting up the process.
• Yes the majority of pro-bloggers probably do live in the US.
• The founding membership needs to be of a high caliber/profile - again the US and Canada has a lot of pro bloggers that fit this bill
• Yes it would make good business sense that pro bloggers in a region would want to network together.....

I understand and affirm all these things - however would suggest that blogging is a medium (and pro blogging as a subset of it) that crosses all borders, genders, ethnicities, skin colors and ages. I'd guess I'd like to hope that a group that seeks to represent, support and advocate for such a diverse group of people will take some steps to reflect its diversity from the ground up.

Anyway - its early days for the PBA and I honestly am looking forward to how it unfolds. I'm still interested to know how they will define 'professional blogger' (which will probably answer my pondering of whether I will join or not).

Like I've said before '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 personally have a pretty wide definition of Professional Blogger - anyone who earns (or attempts to earn) a significant part of their income from their blogging, whether that be directly from their readership, from their consulting clients, from their advertisers, from their business (ie it is a job or part of their job), from the sales of books that came about out of their blogging etc....

I qualify the statement with 'attempts to earn' because everyone starts somewhere. I think Problogging is partly about a state of mind. I also say 'significant part of their income' because I don't think it includes the many hobby bloggers who have an ad or affiliate button or two on their blogs and make a few dollars every now and again.

One of their first tasks I guess will be giving some scope and boundaries to the group. I'll be watching on with interest.

Update: Have been pondering this a little more this morning and wondered if another addition to the core team might be a Pro Blogger who makes money directly from their blogs. I guess I'm thinking about Nick or Jason type or one of their offsiders. The spread of people on the initial team covers everything from consultants, to PR bloggers, to marketers, to bloggers associated with businesses that blog, to blog tool/service people - but not seeing too many actually doing the magazine style thing....just another thought....

Returning to Blog Ethics

Jeff Jarvis is taking another stab at the blogging and ethics question and this time tries to take a different approach -'Some of us have been looking at this ethics question the wrong way: The starting point is not to impose a code of ethics on a medium but instead to understand the ethic of the medium -- and its community -- as it exists: What are bloggers already telling us about their ethic?'

He then goes on to identify 6 ethics which I quite like:

': The ethic of transparency: We believe that our public deserves to know about us and our perspective to better judge what we say.
: The ethic of conversation: We do not believe in one-sided lectures. We believe conversation leads to better understanding.
: The ethic of humanity: We believe this medium lives at a human level while old media lives at an institutional level.
: The ethic of the link: We believe one of our key jobs is to link our public to other voices and to source material so they may judge themselves.
: The ethic of correction: We believe it is vital to correct errors quickly and openly.
: The ethic of immediacy: We believe that the fast spread of information is will yield better information.'

Blogathon - 24 hours of Blogging for the children of the Tsunami

Thanks for all those who stopped by the Blogathon yesterday. With your help we raised close to $1000 USD (still tallying it up). Of course its not too late to make a donation so that could go up some more.

I wrote a number of Pro Blogger related posts over there which I'll tranfer to this blog in the next few days. Til then its back to a semi normal blogging day (although don't expect too much deep thought - after 24 hours of straight blogging I'm feeling a little out of it today.

Pitch me Your Posts

This time tomorrow I will have been blogging for 7 hours straight in my blogathon to raise money for the Tsunami appeal, I'll have added around 30 entries and I just know that I'll be starting to wonder where the next 70 will come from.

So this is a call for the most interesting post (or two) that you've written on your blog in the past few days. Leave a link in comments below and if I find it interesting (and if I don't get hundreds submitted - unlikely) I'll link up to it with some comments. Might be a good way to promote your writing and get your blog noticed by a few more readers.

Journalism's Critique of Blogging - A Great PR Tool

Interesting piece over at What Next Blog looking at the way the Wall St. Journal and New York Times are Still Dissing Bloggers.

'It went on to create tension by saying that "Bloggers push stories and theories that make big media look slow, defensive or part of some far-fetched conspiracy." Noting that "competition is rarely welcomed by the incumbents,", the article admitted that "it can help make them better."'

I actually think that the more they critique blogging the more successful they will making it.

In my early days of blogging I had a little blog that hardly anyone ever read - it had a readership of 10 to 20 a day (which I thought was pretty decent!), mainly just my family and one or two friends. I wrote mainly on issues of spirituality and faith.

However one day I created a bit of a stir by posting about how I'd visited a local Mosque's open day. This was the first day that 'Greg' appeared on my blog. 'Greg' (I do not know if this is his real name) was offended by my visit and subsequent post and made it his business for the next month or six to be my personal troll. He commented on anything and everything that I wrote.

An interesting thing happened though - whilst Greg's critiques, arguments and dissing were aimed at hurting me they actually were the reason that my blog became quite prominent in the community of bloggers that I was attempting to become a part of.

Greg sealed my popularity one day by surfing to around 100 blogs in this community and leaving a comment accusing me of being a "F#@$ing muslim loving, liberal". Thankfully he did so with a link back to my blog.

The next day my traffic was in the thousands with the link ups. 99% of the traffic was supportive of me and many remain readers of that blog today. The dissing not only energized me and motivated me to write more - but it also intrigued many potential readers and drew them to what I was doing. I could not have publicized my blog any better if I'd done so myself. Of course I wrote a big post thanking Greg for his help and have not heard from him on my blog since.

Now I'm not arguing that we all find ourselves trolls, or pick fights with one another - but I would argue that whilst the blogosphere might seem under attack from time to time that there might be some truth in the old adage - 'any publicity is good publicity'.

BlogMine -Content, Clicks, Cash!

Another blog revenue stream has been announced - this time its BlogMine.com whose motto is 'Content, Clicks Cash!' Their main service is 'GoldRush'.

'GoldRush makes you money. It analyzes the blog's content and provides text ads targeted to your content and your audience. No need to worry about irrelevant ads showing up in your blog and feeds.'

Once again - it is a contextual system which rules out those of us using Google's Adsense.

This is the third such system to be announced in the last month or two. We've already seen two very similar services announced in Chitika and Crisp Ads. I'm yet to really see many bloggers using them and have not heard any tales of success (or failure for that matter) on them.

Google to Kill Blog Comment Spam?

Steve Rubel points to a rumored announcement of a system of blocking Google's bots reading your comments - thereby taking the incentive for comment spammers to leave comments.

'But since then several bloggers have reported that Winer was testing a new Google linking mechanism that might put an end to blog comment spam by omitting all links from its PageRank calculations that have a rel="nofollow" attribute tag. This would change the economics behind why people comment spam popular blogs - to boost their Google search rank. If this is true, it would certainly be welcome. Stay tuned.'

I'm all in favor of any such system - but suspect that if it is left up to bloggers to insert the code into their own templates that it will only ever be used by a certain percentage of the blogosphere and as a result there will always be some incentive for comment spammers to continue on their merry spamming ways. Maybe if such a system were to be included in all future releases of the big blogging systems it would help combat the problem more. Bring it on though I say - I'm sick of the morning ritual of cleansing my blogs from the filth.

Of course there will be a cost of blocking Google from Comments also. A cost to legitimate bloggers who interact with other legitimate bloggers. In the same way that spammers comments will no longer promote them in Google - legitimate bloggers will lose backlinks from comments and slip in their Google rankings. Search engine ranking is very dependent upon backlinks to your blog - if many of us were to review our backlinks we'd find that a lot of them come from our own comments. I do not leave comments for this purpose - comments for me are about connecting with other bloggers and exchanging ideas - however a side benefit of doing so is the way it increases profile in Google. I leave around 10 comments per day on others blogs - over two years of blogging this is over 6000 links to my sites. If these were to disappear I wonder what impact it would have. I suspect that if this system were to be implemented on past comments that many bloggers would see a corresponding slip in their SERPs. I guess there is a cost to every gain in life.

Technorati Tags for Dummies

Everyone is talking about Tags at the moment. With the launch of Technorati's new Tag service it is no wonder that they are because it is a technology that has the potential to change the way we find and interact with one another's content. Rather than rewrite what has already been written on the topic I thought I'd provide you with a list of excellent resources that have already been written on Technorati Tags. Feel free to submit your own suggestions and articles on Tags below in comments. Here are some of the better posts and resources on tags that I've found so far:

- Technorati has an information page on Using Technorati Tags - 'Think of a tag as a simple category name. People can categorize their posts, photos, and links with any tag that makes sense.'

Sifry writes that Tags are still in beta - and that ' there are kinks to be worked out, and missing features, too. For example, we still miss some tags here and there, especially for certain weblogs, due to some post detection issues. We're working on that. In addition, we will be providing RSS feeds so you can subscribe to your favorite tags. We're also working on ways that anyone can participate and be included in the system, keep your eyes on this space in the near future.'

- Corante has an excellent article on Technorati tags: (Take 2) with some good introductory remarks and some observations and guesses about how the technology will unfold - 'Just slap a tag on something and now its value becomes social, not individual. As these tags are added willy-nilly, two issues arise: We want to get more value from them and we want to work out the scaling problems — it’s one thing when there are 30 things tagged with “weasels” and another when there are 300,000. A site like Technorati, which already gets its value as an aggregator, is in a good position to innovate around both issues.'

- View from the Isle by Larix Consulting writes On Technorati tags...another folksonomy - Why is tagging important? Well I think the explosive popularity ofFlickr anddel.icio.us really show us why. People like to categorize things and like to read about/see pictures/bookmarks from people who are also interested in these things. It is another extension of social networking. And it will be the next wave to expand the blogsphere and make it even more useful.' Tris also considers Tag Spam which could not be far away.

- How to Blog for Fun & Profit has an excellent introduction to Technorati TAGs - ''Tagging represents a new way to filter and categorize the web even further than we already can. But it also represents a new level of viral socialization. Technorati.com has implemented a new tagging service which makes use of Flickr and Del.icio.us.'

Naptsterization writes about Tagging at Technorati, Flickr and Del.icio.us - 'What I'm wondering about is how quickly the spammers will figure this all out, and use it to their advantage. Currently, even though I block comment spam across my blogs, and know that Technorati, Feedster, PubSub et al, as well as Google, don't log comments or at least comment links because of the spam problem, the comment spammers try ever increasingly clever tricks. They might leave 500 comments in a hour (like I wouldn't notice) each with a different IP address, a different URL they want linked to for google juice, a different return email address, different products.'

Jeff Jarvis in Tag me writes - 'I want a plug-in that lets me add tags to posts as easily as I add the less flexible categories. Better yet, I'd love a smart plug-in tied into a network of Technorati/Flickr tags that suggests tags to me.' - Here Here - I want a plug in like that too!!!

Technorati Tag Plugins, Tools and Bookmarklets

- Oddiophile has developed a bookmarklet that automates the writing of Technorati Tagging Code.
- John Jottings has a short piece on using Technorati Tags in Movable Type
- WordPress Plug ins has developed a Technorati Tag - WordPress Plugin
- Drunk and Tired has some useful ideas and code for Blogger Users wanting to use Technorati Tags
- Jabberwocky has developed a plug in (version 1) to help WordPress users use Technorati Tags
- Notebook has this handy little bookmarklet that allows you to search Tecnorati's Tags

Blogger asks to be removed from Bloglines

Saw this interesting post over at the The Trademark Blog where he explains why he has asked Bloglines to remove his RSS feed from its service.

'It was brought to my attention that a website named Bloglines was reproducing the Trademark Blog, surrounding it with its own frame, stripping the page of my contact info. It identifies itself as a news aggregator. It is not authorized to reproduce my content nor to change the appearance of my pages, which it does. In response to my inquiry to Blogline's CEO as to whether they sell advertising, he indicated that they 'are not currently running advertising.' Nevertheless, the Blogline's home page currently is soliciting 'targeted advertisements.' I would also assume that Blogline is accumulating commercially-useful mailing lists (its privacy policy appears to allow it to sell information). The privacy policy also has a provision entitled 'mergers and acquisitions' clearly allowing it to sell its lists.

Thus, in my view, Bloglines' reproduction of my site is a commercial derivative work. Bloglines has agreed to remove my site from its service and I thank it in advance for its cooperation....'

I wrote last week that Bloglines would be walking a fine line if they put ads on there service - I suspect we might see more of this type of thing - although at this point I suspect that its a mistake to ask to be removed as Bloglines is a major player when it comes to RSS which is increasingly being used by readers to read blogs.

I would agree with Scobleizer who writes 'if you don't want your full posts reprinted somewhere else, don't put them into RSS. That's one reason most commercial sites don't include full content in their feeds.'

Bloglines is just one system that uses RSS - Scobleizer is write in suggesting that the only real way to get around other sites publishing your full posts is to either disable RSS altogether on your site or only allow it to publish excerpts. I find excerpts is a good way forward because it exposes your content to potential readers but also gives them reason to visit your site.

Why ((Insert Occupation Here)) Should Blog

There seems to be a recent spate of articles being written that argue the case for why different occupations 'Should Blog'. Here is just a few that I found in just a few minutes.

- Why advertising, marketing and PR pros should blog
- The 6 Top Reasons Marketers Should Blog
- Seven Reasons Why Business Should Blog Now
- Why Small Businesses should blog
- Why corporate boards should blog
- Why ministers should blog....
- Why MP's Should Get Blogging
- 10 reasons why should a politician blog
- Why postgrads should blog
- Why Journalists Should Blog
- Why sociologists should blog
- Why Authors Should Blog

- Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs - almost makes the field but just needs to get a 'should' in there.

It is a good list - but there are a few missing articles I suspect. How about:

- Why Teachers Should Blog
- Why Accountants Should Blog
- Why Academics Should Blog
- Why Hairdressers Should Blog (well why not!?)
- Why Plumbers Should Blog

So here is my challenge to you (it is part of my 'Blogger Idol' project for this week). Write a “Why <<Insert Occupation Here>> Should Blog” article on your own blog. Then head over to the Blogger Idol Blog and leave a link in the comments section to your article. I'll add my favorite ones to the list in this post.

Update: Here are some of the new ones added so far: - Why Stay at Home Mothers Should Blog
- Why PhD Students Should Blog
- Why Writers Should Blgo
- Why Journalists Should Blog

Will Podcasting Make Money ?

pc4media has a good post examining the question of Will Podcasting Make Money?

Blog Ethics, Transparency and a Raging Debate over Blogging for Money

I've been busy the last few days preparing for and speaking at a conference so have missed the big blow up on the payment of bloggers as consultants by Howard Dean last year. The story has brokens'
Read more at Orcinusbroken recently and bloggers everywhere are having their say about Blogging ethics, transparence etc. I thought I'd link up to a few of the emerging conversations on the topic. Just to name a few:

- Zonkette: Financially Interested Blogging

- HughHewitt.com - On “Black Blog Ops,” Conflicts and O'Reilly
- 'BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis - Media on Media
- Orcinus - Ethics Indeed
- John Kerry 2004 - The Best Supporters Money could Buy
- Slate - Blogging for Dollars
- Secure Liberty - Bloggers On The Take
- Powerpundit: The Transparency Of Bloggers

- Captain's Quarters - Kos, Teachout, Williams, Lauck, Van Beek
- Instapundit.com - January 13

- Instapundit.com - January 14

- Hullabaloo - Those who can, Blog;, Those who Can't, Teachout

Mapping the Readership of your Blog by Location

Where are visitors to this page?
(Auto-update daily since 29-Dec-04)

A few weeks ago I added a little feature to my side bar which produces a world map with little red dots all over it to represent where the visitors to this page are located. Different sized dots represent different amounts of hits. You can see a larger map of my readership here. Its a pretty simple tool and you could get the same information from most stats packages but I'm a visual kind of guy and like to see where you are all from. They also do maps of regions like North America, Europe, South America (might need to work on the readership there), Africa (ok I'm not appealing to the African bloggers much am I), Asia and Australasia.

Its showed me a few interesting facts - for example I seem to have a bigger readership in Perth (western Australia) than I would have expected (either that or someone is obsessed with me there and is just constantly hitting refresh). I was also surprised by the number of European readers as the vast majority of comments on this site come from North Americans.

Anyway - its a fun tool that I thought other might like to have a play with.

I'm taking Questions....

Just a reminder that on Thursday (20th) I'm blogging for 24 hours straight in my annual blogathon to raise money for victims of the Tsunami. I'll be asking for donations on the site during that day and hope to beat last year's $540.

Last year the main reason I got to 112 posts in the 24 hours was that I had a whole heap of questions from my readers to answer. People asked about my blogging (tips, experiences etc), others asked about life in Australia, about my personal life or story, others just asked random wacko stuff etc.

I'm taking questions again here in comments below. You can ask anything and I'll do my best to answer anything (within reason).

I'm also taking your suggested links, articles, blogs, sites that I can blog about during the 24 hours - if you have any funny, interesting, insightful or bizarre links for me feel free to leave them below. I'll attempt to give you a link when I answer your question or use your suggestion to make it worth your while.

Otherwise - tune into my blogathon blog on Thursday for all the fun and shenanigans. I'll try to limit the toilet humor this year to under 4% of the posts - unless of course I get desperate because you don't help me out with some links below!

PS: I'm still looking for a sponsor/s for the blogathon site and am open to offers. I will sell space on the site in return for your donations to the cause so make a donation and get a little free publicity at the same time (I'll sell you text links, banner space, editorial space - anything to help the orphans of the Tsunami). Your links will remain on the site for a whole year for whatever price we agree on - not only good exposure to readers but also a boost to your blog's page rank. Please consider a donation or sponsorship at the site.

Pro Blogger's Errors

Jason has an excellent post on The Zen of Delegation which I'd highly recommend for anyone considering following Weblogs Inc's footsteps with multiple blogs on a network.

Of particular interest are the three mistakes that he's learnt over the past year or so. These are valuable lessons, two of which (I'm not paying anyone yet) that I've recently started to learn also - or are at least grappling with myself on a smaller scale.

'Error one: Most writers want to get a revenue split. WRONG! Most writers want a steady pay check.

Error two: One domain name (i.e. www.weblogsinc.com) with sub-domain names (i.e. http://apple.weblogsinc.com) is better then multiple unique domain names (like http://wwwEngadget.com, http://www.autoblog.com, or http://www.tuaw.com). WRONG! Stand-alone domains do better.

Error three: One common design for all blogs is more appealing to advertisers and users because it builds trust and familiarity. WRONG! People love a unique look and feel above the benefits of a standard design.'

I'm really finding Jason's blogging so useful at the moment - one of the reason for which is illustrated right here - he's being increasingly transparent and real about his blogging (either that or I've only just started having an ear for it). I find that the mistakes people admit to and talk about are much better learning tools than the 'how to...' posts that we see popping up all over the web every day. I've always seen errors and mistakes as opportunities and am glad Jason is willing to not only learn from his but also share with the rest of us what he's learnt.

Read more at The Zen of Delegation (or “How to avoid the ‘bus’ issue”)

Ok - so onto his errors.

1. As I said - error one is not something I have any experience with at present but its a good one to know. I would have also thought that a share of the profits would have been more motivating for a blogger but I can also see why a steady income would be attractive. Perhaps some combination of incentive by profit levels and base income would work well. Anyway - will file this one away til the day I employ.

2. This is something I'm learning the hard way. If I could do it all over again I'd take a different approach and set up each blog on a different domain. Whilst there are some benefits of domain sharing (I'm certain it helps with the initial launch and getting ranked in Search Engines - my new blogs get picked up and indexed on Google in two days) it has its drawbacks which I now suffer the consequences of I'm sure. The problem is that once you're established on a domain its very hard to move your blog to another (easy to do logistically but difficult to keep traffic levels and page ranking up). I'd love to hear from anyone who has tried to do this though - any hints?

3. Again this is not one I have any direct evidence of but is something I personally prefer when I'm surfing the web. I am a visual person who is drawn to sites that are interesting to look at. I don't mind sites that have some consistency or similarities to others but my preference is for uniqueness in my blogs. This can of course be somewhat expensive or time consuming unless you're a design wizz but its worth the effort. I'm currently working on making my blogs more unique - expect some changes here at problogger shortly.

Bottom Up Blogging vs Top Down Culture of Business

Also in the Enterprise Blogging article was this gem of a paragraph which sparked my imagination - it's about one of the barriers to blogging for 'top down' cultured companies and the 'bottom up' nature of blogging.

'A potential problem is that blogging does not fit with the corporate culture of many organisations. If an enterprise values a “top down” approach, then blogging, with its emphasis on freedom and open access, may not be a useful tool: “bottom-up organizations use blogs” says Jay Cross; for him, “... blogs are the leading edge of the social software movement that's propelling the bottom-up, self-organizing reformation of versatile businesses. A bottom-up organization values the collective work of individuals over top-down authority; it supports cooperation and co-evolution in lieu of command and control. Instead of telling people what to do, it provides the networks that enable them to do what they want to do”'

Enterprise Blogging

Free Pint's feature article this issue is on Enterprise Blogging. They look at the different ways that blogging could be and is being commercialized and suggest the following enterprising applications for blogging:

- 'Blogs can be useful sources of information for business'
- 'Blogs can be used for communication'
- 'Blogging can be a tool for project management'
- 'Blogs can be used as a competitive intelligence tool'
- 'Blogs can be used for marketing'
- 'Blogs have been promoted as a tool for knowledge management and knowledge sharing'
- 'Customer service is an area in which the potential of blogging is being explored.'
- 'A blog can be used as a newsletter'

It is a good list for businesses to consider.

Read more of this article at FreePint Newsletter 174 - Business Information, Enterprise Blogging

The Highs and Lows of the Professional Blogger

The last month has been both an exciting and difficult time for my blogging business. Whilst I've started numerous news blogs and seen good growth in traffic in them my more established and larger blogs have suffered from Google's latest update and are yet to show any signs at all of recovering. As a result my daily income from blogging has plummeted to 30% of what it was sitting at for this time last month.

Despite the massive drop in traffic every one of my blogs (except the newest few which are yet to be indexed) jumped in page ranking and now sits between 4-7. So the news is mixed and to be honest the roller coaster ride is taking its toll somewhat on me.

Somedays I find myself with high energy levels - working hard on writing quality content, developing partner relationships with other bloggers, coming up with ways to diversify my blogging and other days I wonder if its worth the long hours for the benefits gained. I'm still earning a full time wage (around the average Aussie wage) for my efforts, but while the next google update could see things return to the heights that they were they could also see another fall in traffic. I'm not complaining.... really I'm not (although it sounds like it doesn't it!) - I've always taken the attitude that I'll surf the blogging wave for as long as I can - each day is a day more than I ever expected it to last!

Having said that - this type of existence is not always easy - it makes planning for the future difficult - like any small business owner would find. The highs are high and the lows are low - the life of a problogger.

Yesterday whilst feeling pretty gloomy about my blogging and trying to motivate myself to reach my 25 posts per day goal (I made it, but only just) a friend emailed me to tell me that he'd spotted a mention of my sites in an Aussie computer magazine. In the front they have a column where they track the highest traffic sites in Australia and my livingroom.org.au domain (which hosts a number of my blogs including this one) came in at number 1 for one of the 'personal sites' category. The stats came from HitWise who measured our traffic as accounting for 16.18% of the whole 'personal sites' category. Whilst I felt a little guilty about topping the category because technically my domain hosts a few different sites I then looked at number two on the list and realized that they host over 2200 sites and number three is the blog of one of Australia's biggest Newspapers.

I don't know how they measure their traffic and I'm not sure if my blogs truly deserve to fit into the 'personal' category (apart from them all being written by one person...) but the news gave me a spark of hope that perhaps what I've been building is a little more significant than I'd been thinking. Of course the Australian market isn't huge, but I'll take any glimmer of hope at the moment.

So we soldier on!

What are the Ethics of using RSS feeds?

I've been watching a site for a while now that both intrigues and concerns me - again because it is using the content of a blogs for its own personal gain - without asking permission from the publishers concerned. I've been wondering how to respond to this site and am yet to go to them directly to raise my concerns and would like your opinion here first.

The site is Gadgets99. They promote themselves as a source for gadget news and are basically a site that tracks a collection of technology blogs via their RSS feeds. They collate these feeds by category and by blog. It is a handy service I'll admit (hence it intriguing me), however it does concern me also as the site is of a commercial nature and is using the content of bloggers to generate an income without their permission.

I know this because they track one of my blogs without having ever contacting me. They also use the RSS feeds of some other more prominent sites like Gizmodo, I4U and Bios Magazine.

The page dedicated to my blog is here. Now to be honest my feelings about being featured on this site are mixed - they obviously recognize that the site is full of useful information and they do acknowledge my site as their source and even give some links back to it (unlike others that I've seen who try to pass off stolen content as their own).

Actually if the summary page was where their service stopped I'd probably be pretty find with it - there are no ads on it and it is professionally produced. However they don't stop here.

Instead around half of the links on the summary page link to my site but the other half have further pages for each post like this one which gives a short extract from my post and then a link to it - however the link is not prominent and is under some ads from Adsense.

The other concern that I have is that they have an RSS feed for my RSS feed. Huh? Check out their RSS feed page which lists the RSS feeds of 14 blogs. Well you'd think they were the site's RSS feeds - but not they are actually Gadgets99 RSS feeds that link back to pages like this one again complete with ads and a small link back to their site.

As I said - I'm not completely opposed to the idea - to be honest I'm still getting my head around it. They are not stealing large quantities of content with no acknowledgment of source. They are providing some links back to my site. They are only using extracts. However they are using an approach that I worry about a little about and am seeing more and more sites using.

Where are the appropriate boundaries for using other people's RSS feeds or content? How would you feel if they were using your RSS feed?

RSS Feeds: Full posts or extracts?

Another tip from Leave It Behind's Building a Better Blog is to 'Syndicate your Entire Post'. Brian writes:

'Again, in the never-ending effort to ensure happy readers, be sure to syndicate (i.e. send) your entire post through RSS. I follow over 75 weblogs (which is probably a low number on average). With the amount of time it takes to keep up with the constant stream of information, it is a great benefit to be able to read each post in its entirety without a separate trip to the browser. I know it is especially tempting for businesses to try to drive traffic to their site by forcing readers to visit the website in order to read the full article, but inevitably I end up unsubscribing from those sources instead.'

I thought this would make an interesting discussion. what are the benefits and costs of syndicating full posts? Do you?

Whilst Brian gets frustrated with only excerpts making it to RSS feeds I actually get frustrated with full posts. I use Bloglines and like to be able to see as many headings and excerpts on a page as possible. I track over 300 feeds and find myself skimming over and even removing feeds that are too long. I guess it depends how long your articles are - but is there a risk in frustrating your readers by publishing full posts in your RSS feed?

Are there other possible costs/risks in publishing your full RSS feed? Here are a few that come to mind:

- As Brian observes in the above quote - do you risk having readers never come to your blog? I guess it again depends upon your motivation for blogging. If you are writing purely to inform your readers than this doesn't matter - but if you're trying to monetize your blog it may be more beneficial to drive traffic to it as income streams from RSS are yet to really pay off in my experience.

- Do you run the risk of having your content hijacked? Over the past couple of months I've noticed more and more sites popping up that use the RSS feeds of blogs as their own content. It is pretty easy to do and something that concerns me on some levels. One of the ways of protecting yourself from this type of content hijacking is to limit your RSS feed to an excerpt. I have a feeling that whilst there are only a few sites using RSS for their own content at the moment that it will be an increasing issue for bloggers in the future.

What are your thoughts on publishing an RSS feed? Do you publish full posts or just extracts? What is your reasoning for doing so.

Rhythmic Blogging

There is a good collection of blogging tips over at Leave It Behind's Building a Better Blog with a few tips that I've not seen on too many other similar lists. I like this one:

3. Publish During High Traffic Times

If one of your desires is to generate traffic, try to publish during high traffic hours. Many people scan weblogs.com and other services (including TypePad and many TypePad member sites) for recently updated weblogs. Also, publishing during prime waking/working hours will give other writers time to comment, link, or respond to your post. A brilliant post in the middle-of-the-night will often get buried by the morning rush of fresh content.

I've found this to be true also - especially in the last 6 months with the rise of RSS feeds for some reason. There are periods of the day that I notice seem to bring a flood of traffic and posting in the middle of them can be very beneficial. It is a matter of being aware of the natural rhythms of your blog and exploiting them for your own benefit.

However having said that - its also important not to flood your blog with traffic all at once because you risk burying your posts in one another. I know sometimes I get on a roll and could easily post 5 or 6 posts within 5 minutes of one another to the same blog. In such instances I generally save half of them as drafts and slowly release them every few hours - a nice constant rhythm of posting should give your blog every chance of a nice constant influx of readers throughout the day.

Choosing Complimentary Colors for your Blog - ColorMatch Tool

Have you ever struggled to select a color scheme for a blog? It's pretty obviously looking at the disaster that I've designed here that I do!

So this ColorMatch tool is going to be very handy!

It is designed to help you select a 6 color palette for your blog. All you have to do is select a main color that you like using the slider and it will do the rest and come up with 5 complimentary colors. What could be easier?

Update: Michael from Figby has just posted a comprehensive list of these sorts of color matching tools for the design impaired. There are 14 in total - quality stuff!

Understanding Adsense Statistics

There is a good post over at Webmaster world titled A few notes on Adsense stats where one user of Adsense writes some definitions of terms used in and lessons learned interpreting Adsense statistics. It won't be much use to long term Adsense users but might be helpful in discerning what you're looking at for Adsense Newbies.

Chitika Contextual Advertising Launched

It seems that there is yet another contextual advertising system being launched that is specifically targetted at bloggers. It is called Chitika and promises to motetize your blogs and your feeds using contextual ads. They offer all the main formats of ads and seem pretty sstandard in terms of design and layout. They pay publishers 30% of any revenue raised from a click on the ads. This sounds low but there is no real way of comparing it to Adsense who does not publish the percentage that they pay out.

It looks quite similar to Crisp Ads - neither of which I can really test without removing the Adsense program from my blogs (Adsense forbids you using any other contextual advertising on your blog concurrently with it).

As always - I'm keen to hear your opinion on this ad program - write us a review and we'll publish it with plenty of links back to your own site.

InsideBlogging - The Blog Consulting Company

Leave it Behind has 10 useful tips for building a better blog. Here are the titles of each section:

1. Use Categories
2. Use Titles
3. Publish During High Traffic Times
4. Syndicate Your Entire Post
5. Click Your Own Links
6. Develop an Authentic Voice
7. Tell Us Who You Are and How to Contact You
8. Don’t Be Afraid to Promote
9. Comment on Other Sites and Your Own
10. The More You Write, the More You’ll Have to Write Write About

Found via Inside Blogging

Bloglines Revenue Models - A fine line to walk

I missed this snippet of a post by Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher late last year where he talks about the business model (income stream) for Bloglines in the future:

'Eric was interested in the business model behind Bloglines. Not accepting my usual stock answer of “Volume!”, I detailed that we will integrating highly targetted contextual advertising into Bloglines next year, or “Adwords on Steroids” as Eric puts it (I like that description!). To reiterate what I told Eric, when we do start to roll out advertising, we will be very sensitive to user feedback, and we will be looking to our users to help guide us in this area.'

It will be very interesting to watch the rollout of such a system of ads for a number of reasons. Firstly I'll be fascinated to see how their users (RSS subscribers) react to seeing ads appearing in or around their RSS feeds.

But secondly I'll be interested to see how publishers react to it.

Some might argue that it is no different to Google putting contextual ads on the results of their search results - but I think it goes a step further. It depends completely upon the format and positioning of ads, but I suspect that they will have to be very careful and will probably get accused by some (many?) publishers for breaching copyright.

If a blog's post is published on Bloglines in full and they slap a contextual advertisement do they breach creative commons copyright licenses (like the one on this site) that say that content cannot be used for commercial gain by anyone but the owner of the content? How will they get around this? Some possible approaches might include (none of which I could really see working):

- a revenue sharing agreement with publishers (this would be incredibly tricky and virtually impossible to implement due to the vast numbers of sites that they track)
- placing ads well away from the actual RSS feeds and not making them directly contextual to the feeds (this will cut down the profitability of the ads)
- running an RSS advertising service like Feedburner who are trialing putting ads in RSS feeds where they offer publishers a system of contextual ads in their feeds. Bloglines would take a cut of any revenues - in someways similar to the way Adsense works (again very complicated knowing number of publishers they would have to offer this service to).

Again - I do not know what Bloglines are proposing but I suspect they have a very fine line to walk with the introduction of ads. If they'd set a system in place from the beginning they would probably have more chance of success - but to bring in ads now could create problems. It will be an interesting one to watch.

Blogger traffic soars due to tsunami

'Traffic to Blogger.com leaped 73 percent (to 1.3 million unique visitors) in the week after the tsunami hit Asia, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. '

Read more at CyberJournalist.net: Blogger traffic soars due to tsunami

Depression News Blog Launched

I'm really pleased to announce a new blogging project that I've been working on for the past few days - Depression News - a blog that will report the latest news and information about the symptoms and treatment of Depression. It is still in beta but is at a stage where I'm happy for people to start to use it.

Over the past 10 years in my work I have encountered many people who suffer from depression and have always had an interest in seeing them reach their potential in terms of health. In more recent years I have had more personal confrontations with depression and have always kept an eye on the latest news on treatment and studies into it. I am also passionate about advocating on behalf of those who suffer from depression or mental illness.

It seemed natural to extend this personal interest in the topic into a blog where others could benefit from my own research.

I have felt a growing urge within me in recent months to look for ways to extend my blogging in a direction where it not only is about making me money or satisfying the consumeristic urges of my readers to have the latest gadget - Depression News is one of the responses that I'm making and is an project that I hope to repeat many times over in the future as I develop my blogging.

Depression News is being hosted with the Breaking News Blog collective and uses Word Press as its backbone. I am funding it (and hoping to raise a few dollars for a local mental health charity) using Google's Adsense and Amazon Affiliateship at present but am also open to other forms of sponsorship. The design is based upon one from Cre8d design but tweaked quite a bit in CSS by me.

I hope that you or someone that you know finds it a helpful resource. I'm open to it becoming a group blog if others wish to join in with some posting. Just let me know. Your comments suggestions on design and features are also welcome in comments below or via email.

Can Blogging Produce a Passive Income?

Business Opportunities points to an article over at About.com on Passive Income that is worth a read. I think most of us would like to get to a situation where we could say our income earning is somewhat passive:

'Passive income, on the other hand, is income that does not require your direct involvement. Some kinds of passive income you may be familiar with include owning rental property, royalties on an invention or creative work, and network marketing. If you want to earn more, work less, and have a decent retirement, you're going to have to start creating income streams that do not require your direct involvement. Whether you're just starting your business, or you've been running it a while, the sooner you start thinking about how you are going to shift your business model to create more passive income, the sooner you can achieve personal and financial freedom.'

The question I've been asked a number of times by friends is whether my blogging strategy is one in which I'm building a passive income?

Its a good question which I'd like to answer in the affirmative - but am beginning to see that I can not. When I first started blogging with a commercial mindset I had lofty dreams of my blogs getting to a point where they would be able to earn me an ongoing large amount of money - Passive. My hope that blogging would enable me to not only give up my day job but that it would enable me to give all of my time to community and charity projects that would benefit others (my true passion).

Whilst this is still my dream - I've since begun to see that my blogs will never reach such a status - they will always require someone to work on them to some level. The web is an increasingly competitive marketplace with new sites that will compete with mine being added on a daily basis to the internet. In order to compete long term there will always be a need for fresh content, new designs, upkeep of comments/forums etc.

I suspect if I let my blogs go in terms of upkeep that within a month or two I would see a downturn of income. It might be slow at first but I suspect that with most topics over time the income levels would drop off. In order to keep things moving forward I currently give at least 6-7 hours per day (7 days per week) to my blogging. I can see a day coming where I'll be able to lesson these hours, but at this stage there is little passivity about what I do.

Having said this I hope to increase the passivity of the income I earn from blogging in a number of ways in the years ahead. I'd like to be able to be in a position in the next 12 months to employ others to write and upkeep some my blogs on my behalf. Secondly I suspect that more and more tools will develop in the coming years that will increase the automation of posting to blogs. Already my ability to post large numbers of posts in a day has increased with some of the tools out there. It is getting easier to find and write quality content quickly and this will only get better.

I also suspect that with time (and as I add more and more content) that the natural passivity of the income generated with increase.

Companies that Fire Bloggers

The Bloggers' Rights Blog is compiling a list of companies that have fired, threatened, disciplined, fined or not hired people because of their blogs.

I'm sure it is a list (currently of 28 companies) that will grow a little more in the years ahead.

Blogathon 2005: Blogging for Victims of the Tsunami

I believe that Blogging can make a difference not only to the hip pockets of those doing the blogging but the wider community. This is your chance to join me in such a project.

On Thursday 20 January I will be blogging for 24 hours straight with at least one post every 15 minutes to raise money for victims of the Tsunami. I'll be blogging at this blogathon site and would like to invite you to be a part of the project.

You can support the project in a number of ways - either by a direct donation, sponsoring the site (I'll leave your ads up forever!), by helping promote the project or by helping me out with content or proof reading.

I'm particularly seeking some marketing/PR savy bloggers to help get the word out through the blogosphere about the project as the more who hear about it and visit the site the more we'll be able to raise through donation or via sponsorship.

I'd also love someone with some design skills to design me a little button to promote the blogathon that I can give to other bloggers to put on their sites. Doesn't have to be anything too amazing - if it could just say something like 'Tsunami Blogathon' or something similar. Any takers?

I'm attempting to make the project as transparent and accountable as possible so that 100% of all money raised goes through to our chosen charity who are doing some great work in the Tsunami affected areas.

Please don't hesitate to contact me as soon as possible if you have any ideas or would like to lend a hand to the project.

Why Comment Spam is Dangerous to Our Blogs

Comment Spam is a terrible thing. I feel like I'm constantly fighting a battle against the slime that leave unsolicited, irrelevant and often degrading comments filled with links to disreputable sites on my blogs. It comes from the automated bot spammers but also from the small blogger who think that a comment like 'nice site' with a link back to their site is any better. I delete them all and add them to a blacklist.

There have been mornings that I've logged onto my blogs after peaceful night's sleep to find thousands of comments on my blogs. It can be down right depressing - especially when you think you've finally installed that tool to stop spammers in their tracks only to find that they've found a way around it.

However I fight on. You see I believe that if we don't delete and fight comment spammers then we'll do ourselves a disservice. Comment spam left unchecked can not only bring your own site into disrepute and degradation, but I believe it can also decrease your site's standing in Google and other search engines and that in the end we all suffer from it.

This morning I was doing some surfing and I thought I'd stop by Blog Search Engine to see what was happening there. I ended up on their blog and was really disappointed by what I saw. It wasn't that the blog hasn't been updated for a few months (that is their prerogative) but it was the 142 comments on the last post - all of which (bar one that I could find) were spam to poker, finance and drug sites. Unfortunately this was the tale to virtually every post on their blog - between 80 and 160 spam comments everywhere you look.

Whilst I can understand the frustration of dealing with spam I worry for Blog Search Engine when I see the way they've let their blog go. I worry for them on a number of levels:

1. Comment spam damages reputation - Imagine a first time surfer's reaction to stumbling upon their blog (like I did this morning) to seeing some of the links that their site now points to. I've had a number of emails over the years from readers of my blog that have found comment spam on my site (which slipped past my detection) who expressed disgust and concern over what they'd read. I doubt they've ever come back to my sites.

2. Comment spam could damage Search Engine Rankings - You see the evidence is pretty clear that Google decreases the page ranking of sites that link into dodgy sites. They frown on a variety of systems including some link trading programs and I suspect the day will come when they find a way to combat comment spammers by adding them to their disreputable site's list (if they havn't already) - when this day comes, those of us with masses of links to them will no doubt suffer.

I've also noticed that lot of comment spam links are broken links. This also doesn't help your site with search engines. They dislike broken links and if you end up with a site full of them then you'll be penalized.

It also concerns me that there is anecdotal evidence surfacing in forums that comment spam works and that a growing number of sites that do it are rising in the search engine results. This worries me because for every site that goes up, a site must go down. There can only ever be 10 top 10 sites for a search term. Your site will suffer as a result of this tactic of search engine optimization. The day will come when a site you're proud of and have put a lot of legitimate hard work into will fall a place, or two, or ten in the search engines because another site run by spammers rises above it. If you don't fight spam you're part of the problem and you will suffer the consequences along with the rest of us.

3. Comment Spam hurts the blogosphere - I want to argue that bloggers not only have a responsibility to their own blogs but to the rest of the blogosphere. If a site allows comment spammers to overrun them it is like saying to comment spammers that they have won and they can continue to do what they do. If one site doesn't deal with it the spammers win and they will continue to spread their filth across the rest of our blogs.

I can just imagine how many dead blogs are out there which are filling up with comment spam and it makes me quite ill to think about it.

I would suggest that if you're going to allow your old blogs to die that before you do you either delete the whole blog or that you disable comments on it. Otherwise you'll just be adding to a growing problem that is going to impact us more and more.

Tips and Suggestions for Launching a Successful Blog from the Evangelical Outpost

The Evangelical Outpost has a great series of posts on How To Start a Successful Blog that might be worth checking out if you're towards the beginning of your blogging journey. His tips cover the topics of:

Part I - Before You Begin
Part II - The Beginning Bloggers Toolbox
Part III - How to Become an A-List Blogger
Part IV – The Art of Marketing Your Blog
Part V - Owning a Micro-Niche
Part VI – Three Essential Elements of Blog Design

I particularly find part IV useful as he explores the idea of owning a micro niche which is an approach that I myself subscribe to in most of my blogging. Rather than blogging on a wide variety of topics it is much easier (but still not simple) to establish a reputation in a smaller niche with a blog.

Some of his other posts on blogging are also quite insightful including How to become a Higher Being (a look at the top ten blogs on the ecosystem) and How to get linked by Instapundit (a look at who Glenn links to and how to get his attention).

The Risk of Blogging a Scoop

Apple's recent decision to sue fan site Think Secret for publishing rumors (which look like they were too close to home) about an upcoming Apple product got me thinking this week about where I as a blogger who rights about technology would stand with regards to publishing such information. On a number of occasions in the past two years of blogging I've been given significant information on yet to be released products including specifications, names and even photos.

Some of this information comes from within companies, others from anonymous tips and sometimes they are from mistakes companies have made in publishing pages on new products too early. Its a real buzz when you get such a scoop but what are the ethics of it? Just as an important question is what are the risks involved with such scoops? Is it worth publishing such information if we could be sued? As smaller operators could we even afford to foot the legal bills for such legal action?

This week I received an email from an employee of Samsung who requested that I take down information that I had posted on my Camera Phone Blog on three 'concept phones' (or phones in development) that Samsung had not officially launched. I did not obtain the information or pictures that I posted illegally, but rather from another site that had published it (with links back to them).

I considered my options and ended up deciding to remove the content of each post and replace it with an explanation of why I had done so for readers. My decision was not really based upon my relationship with Samsung or because they asked me to - but because I could not afford to take on the expense of a legal bill for leaving the information online.

Whilst I can understand Apple and Samsung not wanting technical details of their unreleased products appearing online I am left wondering if it is actually in their best interests to take such an approach with publishers. Whilst I'm committed to reporting news in an objective non biased manner - I wonder what will linger in the back of my mind next time I come to review a Samsung camera or phone. I wonder what suing one of their most comprehensive fan sites (which has tens of thousands of avid apple fan readers) is doing for the publicity of Apple this week?

Jason Calacanis has an open letter on his blog to Apple after the Think Secret debacle which sums up some of my own thinking on the matter:

'You’ve worked the public into a frenzy over your products, and we as the press are covering that enthusiasm. Your employees and partners send us tips all day long, and we as journalists cover those tips. That’s what we do!

Sometimes those tips pan out, most times they don’t. It’s all part of the pop and circumstance of the technology industry.

Don’t you think it’s fun that everyone is playing this game of cat and mouse? Don’t you appreciate that people are so obsessed with your work that they launch a site called Think *Secret*? Most companies would love to have this attention, and your response it to sue the press that feeds you?

If you want to sue someone sue your employees who send us the leaks, or your partners who tip us off. They are the ones who sign agreements with you not to talk—not us!'

What is your opinion on this topic? What would you do if asked by a company to remove content on an unreleased product?

Long Term Blogging Builds Credibility

Holy Weblog Batman! T.L. Pakii Pierce is writing some great articles these days! His recent one on Cracking Credibility & Why Internet Marketing WILL Change is worth the read and talks (as the title suggests) that credibility is an essential element of effective blogging.

Blogging is not a silver bullet solution - it takes time to build an audience, time to build relationships and time to build credibility as a source of information that people will keep coming back to. Its common sense really. T.L says it much better than I do:

'When you consider the cost of blogging and the return on your investment, the ROI of blogging is phenomenal...BUT...it comes at a price.

But doesn't everything?

The price is that you must commit to a relationship that will require ongoing attention. Blogs will amplify your message and your reach in a powerful way and at near zero cost when compared to other means of reaching a market with your message. But the price of relationship is the need to continually connect with your market and develop your social network in order to build an authentic and authoritative voice that can be trusted.

This is an extremely important message to receive and digest for newbie marketers and newbie bloggers especially. You cannot approach blogging thinking you will set a up page and sell tons of items. You have to properly prepare a message that helps carry your product to a targeted niche audience....'

The rest of the article is excellent - but for me this is one of the major pieces of advice that I give new bloggers with dreams of fame and dollar signs in their eyes - it won't happen over night! Are you willing to work hard on your blogging, for a long time? Are you willing to slave away at something with the risk of being ignored by the blogosphere? Are you willing to make blogging a daily part of your life?

Credibility doesn't happen quickly. Think about those that you respect the most in your real life? Why do you see them as credible, respect worthy people? I can't answer for you, but for me its simply that over time I've seen behavior from them that consistently impresses and assures me that they are people of character who not only speak the truth but who live it. It takes time - I don't trust just anyone in real life - it has to be earned - and in the blogosphere this lesson is also true.

I wrote a few months ago that:

'Unless you have an absolutely brilliant concept or strike it incredibly lucky it will take you time to build your blogging up to a position where it earns you a decent income - even then you still need a bit of luck, many hours in front of the computer and a few intelligent strategies in place to make it worth your time. I spend at least 30 hours a week blogging - I treat it as a full time job - if I'm not willing to put substantial hours into it why would I expect it to reward me with a substantial monetary reward?'

So take a long term approach. Build your blogging over time and remember that a constant daily posting approach builds over time into something quite substantial. It will build you a substantially sized blog - but more importantly it will build the size of your credibility.

Are Explicit Copyright Notices Necessary for Weblogs and Web Pages?

Dave Taylor answers the question “Are Explicit Copyright Notices Necessary for Weblogs and Web Pages?” and writes:

'This means that you do not need to have an explicit copyright notice for you to have a legally enforceable copyright, as long as your name appears on the work as an author. Anonymous material is covered too, but you can read about that yourself if you're interested.

The US Copyright Office clarifies how the Berne Convention applies to U.S. Copyright law: “The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U.S. law, although it is often beneficial.

Continuing to quote from the Copyright Office: ”Use of the notice may be important because it informs the public that the work is protected by copyright, identifies the copyright owner, and shows the year of first publication. Furthermore, in the event that a work is infringed, if the work carries a proper notice, the court will not give any weight to a defendant’s interposition of an innocent infringement defense—that is, that he or she did not realize that the work was protected. An innocent infringement defense may result in a reduction in damages that the copyright owner would otherwise receive.“'

Good answer which is what I was advised by my own legal investigations. Dave goes on in the article to write about what makes a good copyright notice. Well worth the read.

:: w.bloggar :: version 4.0 released

PC users might be interested in the latest release of :: w.bloggar :: which has just been released.

:: w.bloggar :: acts as an interface between you and your blog, acting as a post and template editor. It allows offline editing (of course you have to connect eventually to update your blog).

The latest version (4.0) supports MovableType advanced post options and new tools like WordPress, SquareSpace, B2evolution etc. Get a full list of the update changes at their What's New page.

Looks like a good system - but unfortunately I'll never know as I'm a Mac man and they have not and will not ever release a version for me. Instead I use ecto which supports both Mac and PC users. If w.blogger is anything like ecto I'm sure its a very useful tool!

I'd be interested to hear from w.blogger users - how do you find the new version? - write us a short review of the interface and I'll gladly publish it here or link to it on your blog.

Word Press - Web Application of the Year

ars tecnica has just announced its awards for 2004 and has named WordPress as Web application of the year.

Let's face it. Blogs are in fashion, and why not? Vanity knows no bounds, and there are some people who actually do something productive with theirs. From the influence of blogs on the coverage of the US presidential elections to every random teenager who has problems with their partner/parent/teacher/cat, blogs are out there allowing your most intimate feelings to be shared with random people at wifi hotspots. WordPress is the most prominent rising star of weblog software, completely free and with a large and active community. Styles, plugins and hacks are readily available, with problems such as comment spamming being addressed far more rapidly than competing applications.

I have to agree - WP is moving forward very quickly and is a highly useable application for blogging. I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops in 2005.

New Adsense Format in Testing - 7 Ads per box

It looks like the people at Adsense are trialing a new format of ads again. Actually its not completely new - the size is the normal wide skyscraper (160 x 600) but the difference is that they are trying 7 ads in it rather than the usual 5.

The font is smaller and there is no URL on the design. I found it on one of their tester sites, sitemeter which runs Adsense ads on their stats pages (like this one).

Adsense have tested numerous formats on these pages and only some of what I've seen trialed there has ever gotten through to the rest of us so don't count on seeing it as an option too soon - but you never know.

I've included a screen shot of this skyscraper (left - click to enlarge) because these tests always last too long.

What do you think of the new format? Theoretically it should increase the click through rate for ads as there are more chances of ads being relevant for readers - however the font is smaller which decreases the chances of users seeing them.

The other initial thought I have is that most of my pages already have two ad sections per page and Google struggles to fill them both already as it is. I worry that if I moved to a 7 ad format whether the other ad section would more often than not be empty.

I guess we'll find out how useful the format is by whether they offer it to us.

Breaking News Blog Collective FAQ

Fredrik over at CorporateBloggingBlog takes a look at our new Breaking News Blog Collective and writes:

'I like the idea of developing the group blog concept and “collective blogging” is an interesting thought. But what on earth does medical research have to do with Jessica Simpson? Or credit cards with MP3-players (unless you use the first to pay for the second...)? And why can't readers subscribe to the collection of blogs with one feed?'

I appreciate the critique of what we're doing but wonder if I communicated clearly what we're hoping to do with the collective when I announced it. Let me make a few points to try and clarify things a bit more:

- I agree with his observation that the spread of topics are quite eclectic and largely unrelated to one another. This is intentional as it represents the interests of the bloggers who write for us (who are a rather eclectic and interesting bunch).

- The reason we don't offer an RSS feed that follows all the latest posts across each of the blogs is for the exact reason that Fredrik states - the blogs cover such a wide variety of topics that it would be a very strange individual that would want to follow them all (I know I wouldn't - because some of the topics I have little no interest in). Rather each blog has its own RSS feed which is clearly identified on each blog.

- We chose to use the word 'collective' to describe us instead of network for a number of reasons but perhaps the word causes some confusion. By collective we don't mean that we'll necessarily all be working collectively on projects (each blog is run by an individual or in some cases in the future a defined group). The word collective was chosen because there is an element of revenue sharing and commitment by members to promoting one another's blogs.

- Why didn't we choose the word 'network'? Well it may actually be a better word - however in my mind I was wanting to differentiate ourselves a little from the other emerging blog networks out there like Gawker and Weblogs Inc. Not because we don't like what they do - they are inspirational - but because we operate a little differently to them. From what I can see they are owned by an individual or small group of individuals who engage bloggers to write for them. The model we are currently operating with (and it may change as we experiment) is one where a small core group of individuals started BNB but where the ownerships of blogs is actually held by the bloggers themselves who each contribute back to the collective a percentage of their earnings for shared costs.

- The central home page may also be causing some confusion for some. A number of people think that that page is a blog in itself - its actually not and is made up up the last few entries of each blog in the collective to give an example of the topics we're covering. This central page is not intended to be the only thing that people read and it is not expected that it be the dominant focus of the network - rather our hope is that each blog will be the focus and that the central page is just a reflection of what is going on around the collective. I suspect this page will change and evolve as the collective continues to grow.

Having said all that we're still experimenting, exploring and creating on the run. It is not perfect and we're open to feedback. Things are growing fast and we're hoping the collective will emerge and evolve into something worthwhile for all involved. I'd be interested in your critiques, reflections and suggestions.

Weblogs Inc announces SCM Wire

WeblogsInc have announced another blog (seems to be a weekly occurrence now) called SCM Wire which is dedicated to supply chain management. Its currently in beta but is functioning well. They describe the brief of the blog as:

'The Supply Chain Management Blog is dedicated to reporting on and exploring the world of the industrial and consumer supply chain, including purchasing and procurement, distribution, logistics and traffic, e-commerce, outsourcing, customer relationship management, and a bit of operations management. We’ll also touch on some supply chain related general management and business topics such as human resources, negotiation, and training and development. Supply chain management is one of those less than glamorous topics and professions that seemingly works in the background. But, it is the glue that holds business together. We all experience it on a daily basis....'

Not sure I'll be adding this one to my RSS feed but its sure to tickle someone's fancy and by the little digging around that I've just done on what 'Supply Chain Management' pays on contextual advertising I'd say it'll be a pretty worthwhile venture for Weblogs Inc.

Bill Gates on Blogging

Gizmodo got a bit of a scoop with a face to face interview with Bill Gates. They've posted the first part of the interview which largely focuses upon blogging. Here's a snippet:

'I think blogging is super-important and we've got to do a lot more software. The phenomena for us is we've got in beta this MSN Spaces thing, and it lets you leverage everything you do around Messenger—that's your buddy lists and those relationships—to set up blogs, and who has access, and who gets notified. We've got up over a million people [who] set up blog sites.'

Adsense isn't for all Blogs

MediaDailyNews has a great article that describes a situation where running Adsense didn't work out for one blogger who wasn't happy with the type of ads being served on his politically conservative blog.

'Maloney pronounced Thursday on his site that Google's contextual ad service, AdSense, was “not ready for primetime.” He complained that Google routinely sent ads that weren't meant for his conservative audience. One ad, for instance, asked readers: “How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?”--referring to the voters who re-elected President George W. Bush in 2004.



“I could live with the occasional mistargeted ad, but it seemed that a vast majority of the ads were inappropriate for large segments of this site's audience,” Maloney wrote Thursday on his site. “I could even live with the many ads that highlighted positions different from mine, if some of them weren't so downright insulting.” Maloney cited ads that sold T-shirts labeling Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and President Bush “asses of evil,” and “Hillary for President” ads. Maloney since withdrew from AdSense.'

It is a good reminder that whilst Adsense can serve incredibly relevant ads at times that it is an automated service that does not have the ability to discern opinion, sarcasm, tone or the points of arguments or debate.

Keyword Identification Tool - NicheBOT

Thinking of starting a new blog but you don't know what keywords to target? NicheBot might be a tool worth checking out. Its a very useful tool that helps you to identify keywords that:

1. are being searched for
2. don't have too many other sites competing for the same keyword

To use it simply enter in a keyword that you're considering targeting - I'll choose 'MP3 Player' for our example as its something I'm kind of interested in. After a short wait they'll come back to you with a result page like this which has some very useful information (well it gets me going!) - the results are made up of the following pieces of information which they glean from Google and Word Tracker

- Phrase/Keyword - they suggest a whole heap of keywords that are related to the one you've chosen that you might want to consider targeting
- Count - this column tells you how many people searched for this term in the last 60 days (I'm a little dubious about the actual numbers here - I suspect that digital cameras were searched a little more for than 6,965 times in the lead up to Christmas - but the results look like they are relatively accurate in relation to each other). Update - the FAQ page says this number is only 'The total number of times the keyword phrase appears in the Wordtracker database over the past 60-days' and not a live statistic.
- Pages - shows how many pages Google has listed with any or all of your keyword (which gives you a good indication of how much competition you have).
- Comp. - shows you how many pages are listed on Google with your exact keyword (even more useful).
- Ratio - calculates how many sites there are for every search. The lower your number here the better your chances of succeeding in being competitive for this keyword.

So with my 'MP3 Player' example - the results show that there is ALOT of competition for my initial keyword - but it illuminates a number of other options that I might want to target like 'mp3 player reviews', 'mp3 portable players' or 'sony mp3 players'.

Its not a perfect tool - but definitely handy.

update: Search Engine Journal has a good article on The Power Of The “Niche” - Choosing Keywords People Actually Use that shows the usefulness of a tool like this one. They write:

'Keywords and keyphrases are the search words and terms Internet surfers use to find the products, services or information they are looking for.

Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your search engine optimization (SEO) program is critical to its success. The right keywords drive targeted traffic to your website - prospects that are ready to buy. The wrong keywords attract web visitors that are not likely to purchase your products and services - wasting everyone’s time and your money.'

I need your help Bloggers

I need your help. Truly I do - but it won't cost you much - in fact you'll probably get something out of it if you do.

In the next months I've decided to interview a number of Pro Bloggers about their blogging ventures. These are bloggers who are currently making (or attempting to make) an income from the genre of blogging. Some are doing it by writing blogs on niche topics, others are blog consultants, others are providing blog tools or services to bloggers.

I've already lined up a few of the interviews with some prominent and soon to be prominent (I think) bloggers but I need your help (is there an echo in here?).

What would you like to ask pro bloggers? What is your itch that we can scratch for you? What do you need to know to take your blogging to the next level? You might also like to suggest who you'd like to see interviewed and I'll add them to my hit list.

Leave your questions, ponderings, wonderings and suggestions in comments below either anonymously or with your details (I'll credit you in the interviews).

Did I mention that I need your help?

Quiz Time

It's Jeremy's fault that I spent the last 10 minutes doing this but I'm a sucker for a good online test.

My nerd rating is 9 - They say I'm definitely not nerdy and might even be cool! Can someone please tell my wife?
My geek rating is 153 - Digital Ace - although I was penalized for being a Mac user.

Six Apart to go Public?

Dave Winer believes that Six Apart's motivation for buying is LiveJournal is about Six Apart wanting to go public:

'In all the speculation about the deal betw Six Apart and LiveJournal I haven't seen what surely is the motivator. Six Apart plans to go public. The market will value SA based on its ability to generate profits, and it will likely do so in proportion to the number of users, the theory being that they can sell things to the users, so the more users, the more they can sell. The more users the more value. LJ has a lot of users. So the founders of LJ get SA stock, and the shareholders of SA get more users, and value of the combined companies goes up and the day of the IPO gets closer.'

Chat with me on MSN Messenger

I have had the fortune of chatting on MSN messenger today with a couple of my Problogging heroes and thought I'd like to connect with more in this way in 2005. So - with much trepidation I'm going to let you know my MSN Messenger ID.

It's daziii@hotmail.com

Please note - this is not an email address I use or check - EVER. But if you'd like a chat please feel free to add me and message me to say hi (it might be worth introducing yourself in your first message and saying you are from this blog as I occasionally get a few 'nutters' msg me out of the blue who I tend to block pretty quickly).

Of course some times are beter to chat than others so don't be offended if I'm a bit slow to respond - I'll get to you eventually but sometimes when I'm multitasking it takes me a few minutes to finish up a stream of thought (or a stream of blogging as they case will probably be).

Do Internal links boost Search Engine Ranking?

Interesting thread over at 'Self Starter's Weekly Tips' forums - Do Incoming links from the same URL have less weight than incomeing links from a different domain? was the question that started the thread off.

The advice is good - and can basically be summed up as follows:

Internal links within your blog are good for a number of reasons:
- Firstly they help your readers navigate around your site. A well thought out menu or relevant links within your posts to other post on a similar topic will help you retain your reader for longer and send them deeper within your site.

- They help Search Engine's robots to navigate your site and hopefully to get every possible page indexed. If you have a site map page or an archives page that links to every page on your blog this helps the SE's robots index you more comprehensively.

- It seems that most Search Engines (like Google for instance) do give some weight to internal links when it comes to ranking your pages.

However internal links are not the be all and end all when it comes to SEO
- I suspect that Google are decreasing the value/weight of internal links. There is a number of other people that I respect who believe that the last few updates to Google's algorithm have had something to do with this - and that pages with a lot of internal links have actually seen their search engine page rankings (SERPS) decrease. I don't think internal links are penalized - but rather have been given less value. Its just my opinion.

- External links are more important to SEO. If you want to build your blog's ranking and SERPs then it would be a better use of your time to look for external incoming links from other relevant sites than to plaster your own blog with internal links.

Blog Ads seeks Sales Person - Blog Job

Blogads.com is looking for a sales person. Their advertisement reads:

'Blogads.com ,a fast-growing ad network focused on bloggers, is seeking entry-level salespeople and assistants.

We've got offices in Carrboro, NC and Budapest, Hungary and have been featured recently in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal.

You must be an articulate, personable, pop-culture savvy, hyper-literate, ambitious media maven. You've got to love communicating. You are decent at math and enjoy science. You want to make money AND grow.

You will service existing clients and research and sell to prospective advertisers. You'll analyze advertising trends. You'll stretch and grab and pull in all sorts of unexpected directions. If you want the status quo plus 7%, don't apply.

If you are interested, please e-mail a resume and a short cover note explaining what you think makes blog advertising special. Extra points if you already blog.'

Apply for the job at Sales person for blog ad network

Breaking News Blog Collective is Launched

One of the projects that I've been working on with a number of others over the past two months is Breaking News Blog. Put most simply, the Breaking News Blog project is a collective of bloggers who are each focussing upon a niche news topic. There are currently 17 blogs that are live on the network in four general themes of Technology, Health, Sport and Entertainment and Lifestyle. The latest post from each blog in the collective are presented on the central Breaking News Blog home page but each is an independent blog in its own right at:

Also hosted by Breaking News Blog is the Blogger Idol project.

Bloggers in the collective write about areas of personal interest and expertise. Of course there is a financial element to what we do (income stream is largely Adsense, Amazon and other affiliates) but we're not only interested in the big dollar and are looking forward to some projects in the months ahead that will make a difference to the wider community that we are a part of.

The collective has only been live for a couple of months now but we're already starting to see some reasonable results as our page ranking builds in Search Engines and as we build relationships with other bloggers and find ourselves on the receiving ends of incoming links. Of course some blogs do better than others but across the board we've seen significant growth each week since going live.

Breaking News Blog is not one for a lot of media spin - as a result we've not been talking it up of late but rather are quietly working on building quality sites with useful content. In fact we've been working so hard on our sites that we've forgotten to 'officially launch' and publicly announce to the blogosphere that we're here - so consider us launched - tadarrr!

We are interested in developing relationships with other similarly themed blogs or websites (contact me if you'd like to develop either a sponsorship or link partnership with any of the above blogs - we have page ranks of 5 or 6 on most of them currently).

So stay tuned for further developments - more BNB blogs will be added in the weeks and months ahead. Each blog has its own RSS feed so subscribe to those that interest you and let us know what you think of what we've done so far.

Six Apart buy LiveJournal - Its Official

Live Journal have just made the news that Six Apart are buying them out official at Big news... Six Apart and LiveJournal! They attempt to answer the 'why' question with the following reasons:

'Our companies are more alike than different.
We both use Perl.
Together we form super robot that's stronger than the sum of its parts.
Super robots can fight super companies.
They respect us, we respect them.
We have a number of features they don't.
We have experience with making “inward-facing” community sites, whereas their sites/products tend to be “outward-facing”. They want some of that inward-facing action.
Because we're awesome.'

Six Apart also make the announcement official:

'Six Apart, makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, today announced that it has acquired Danga Interactive, Inc., the operators of the popular service LiveJournal, for an undisclosed amount of stock and cash. With the acquisition, Six Apart solidifies its position as the industry's recognized leader in weblogging software across all markets, and LiveJournal can continue its rapid growth trajectory under Six Apart's umbrella. As of today, the combined user base of both companies exceeds 6.5 million users, with thousands more added daily.'

Mena has also some interesting comments on her blog:

'Brad's initial question -- an expected one -- was “why does Six Apart want to acquire Danga (LiveJournal)?” The answer was simple; “Many of our weaknesses are LiveJournal's strengths and many of LiveJournal's weaknesses are our strengths.”'

Using your Visitor referrer logs

Wayne posts a useful tip on using your Visitor referrer logs in your statistics package over at Search Engine News Journal.

'Visitor referrer logs are valuable records to examine, from time to time. In my case, and probably yours too, the visitor logs get more than one peek a day. Admit it. It’s not just an exercise in ego or vanity to read your visitor log records. In fact, it might be the nicest thing you can do for the interests of your regular and new readership.

In the referrer records, there are probably indications of the keywords and phrases that discovered your blog. Everyone who uses a search engine types in a search phrase in the hope of finding some relevant information on the subject.'

Read more of this article at Visitor referrer logs: Keeping in touch

The Importance of User Feedback

Michael has a great tip on The Importance of User Feedback over at Figby.com:

'In retrospect, the conclusions seem obvious: Assuming you want as much feedback as possible from readers, you should make it as easy as possible for them to reach you. You may need to experiment with different comment forms, link locations, or link text to get the best response. Your readers are probably happy to help improve your site—they just want to do it with a minimum of effort.'

Jeremy C. Wright - Fired for Blogging

Another blogger has joined the growing number who have been fired for blogging. Jeremy Wright of Ensight Was Just Fired for Blogging 'divulging company secrets'. Its not a nice feeling - I've know a couple of bloggers who've been through the same thing - not nice at all. However in both cases that I know of the saga has actually led to them moving forward into new areas. One of them actually got a new (better) job via the publicity of his sacking.

So Jeremy - my thoughts are with you and the sting of this news - however hang in there - use it to your advantage as you've used so many other opportunities in the past. Lick your wounds (take your time on this bit - its important to take stock) and Blog on!

Tsunami Imacts Blogging

Guardian Unlimited has a good article on the impact that the Tsunami has had upon blogging titled - Blogs' new place at the media table:

'Blogs have, of course, been only a tiny part of the tsunami story. But the tsunami may have a profound effect on blogs. These self-published sites have played a huge role in the telling of the horror that struck – and continues to strike – south-east Asia, and it seems inevitable the impact of their role will reverberate on long after the disaster, and subsequent relief effort, have faded from our newspapers and TV screens. More after the click...

The impact for blogs? It lies in the new reach they have gained. They were already doing quite well – a survey just published in the US finds that eight million adults had blogs in the US last year, and that their readership had jumped by 58% in 2004. Probably driven by the huge popularity of political blogs in the runup to the US presidential election, the Pew report says: “By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture....”'

Adsense/Adwords Changes are Coming - 1 Merchant ad per Page Rumored

It is rumored that on January 12 there could be changes in the air for bloggers using Adsense. Actually the changes would start with Adwords (the other side of the Adsense coin). You see it seems that Advertisers using the program will be told tomorrow (or in the next few days) that there are changes coming into effect on the 12th. The big change is this:

No longer will Google allow more than one ad per page for the same affiliate program. Presently a number of the ads on any one given page could actually be sending clickers through to the one merchant program but this will all come to an end next week. The results of this change will definately impact publishers using Adsense to monetize their sites - however the debate is still out as to what impact it will have upon our bottom line.

Some theorize that this move will see a flood of affiliate advertisers leave the program in favor of other methods of earning a dollar. The result would be less ads in Google's stock and less competition for keywords which would result in a drop off of click values.

However other are arguing that the impact will be quite the opposite. With less spots available a bidding war might open up between some affiliate advertisers seeing keyword prices increase.

Whilst I'd love to see the second of these options come to pass I wonder if it will. You see most affiliate advertisers have a finely tuned operation going. They take out ads on Adsense for affiliate programs that pay out more than it costs them to advertise. As a result of this there will be a limit as to how high they will be willing to bid on keywords. If the bidding goes too high they cut their margins and there is little point making the bids at all.

Jen over at JenSense.com has yet another theory: 'However, if Adwords/AdSense get together on this and allow one advertiser per keyword per merchant on the search side, yet allow as many advertisers per keyword per merchant on the content side of things, this could actually result in more advertisers opting into content. If they cannot afford the bid price in search, advertisers would still have the chance of getting click throughs in content, where it could be more affordable if all the advertisers are not trying to outbid each other for a single spot in the serps.'

Whatever the case it will be an interesting change to watch and one which could make or break Google's Adsense program for 2005 as it has the potential to alienate both publishers and advertisers.

BlogKits BlogMatch Network

I'm interested in the launch of a new program that will attempt to match bloggers with adertisers - BlogKits. It seems to be what I've been suggesting is needed from what they write in their News Release:

'“Until today, bloggers primarily embraced tools such as Google Adsense or Henry Copeland's BlogAds.com to generate revenues,” said Jim Kukral, Blogging Guru and founder of BlogKits.com. “While both excellent solutions, the fact remains that both of those tools rely on a blogger's ability to generate large amounts of web traffic for any real income opportunities, leaving 99% of all blogs out in the cold.”

The BlogKits BlogMatchTM Network will allow all blogs, even those without high levels of visitor traffic, the no-cost opportunity to earn revenues in a multitude of ways by matching them with advertisers/marketers that care more about reaching the right target audience, not just necessarily the biggest one, and not necessarily through only traditional methods like banner ads.'

What they seem to be offering is a listing of blogs for Advertisers and Marketers to approach for a variety of sponsorship arrangements. As a blogger they invite you to submit your blog to the network by filling out a form. Then you add a small piece of code to your blog so that they can track your traffic levels and I guess will contact you if an Advertiser wants to develop some sort of partnership arrangement. Seems pretty simple and worth a go.

26 Steps to 15,000 visitors a day

Jon from Flamin Tiki has a great common sense article filled with useful tips on building up your blog titled 26 Steps to 15,000 visitors a day. I would second everything he writes - although would want to qualify that the 15,000 visitors per day promise depends a little o the topic that you choose. You could do every step suggested with a non searched for topic and never have any visitors - so choose carefully. Otherwise its a great list which should give new bloggers plenty to work on.

SEO Scoop suggests that Google is in a state of chaos

SEO scoop notes what many of us have been suspecting for a while - that Google is in a state of chaos. I'm not sure I'd describe it as chaos - but the past month has seems some odd and unexplainable results including:

- Search for the word “Yahoo” on Google (without the quotes), and it returns less than 40 results. Yes you heard that right. Less than 40 results.

- The PageRank and Backlink update that began on December 31 has still not finished spreading across the datacenters. In fact, some datacenters that had the new information yesterday have reverted back to the old information today.

- The PR update was strange in that a lot of people received higher PR on their interior pages than they did on the home page - without having more backlinks to the interior pages

- Many people lost rankings in the last few weeks for undeterminable reasons. That in itself would not be anything out of the ordinary, but coupled with the above strangeness, it may actually be a part of the whole weirdness being seen.'

Read more of SEO Scoop's Observations

Six Apart to buy Live Journal

Om Malik has just revealed that Six Apart are about to buy Live Journal. This would definitely Six Apart up a notch when it comes to competing with Google's Blogger as it would take them to 6.5 million users.

'Folks have been predicting a big year for mergers and acquisitions in 2005, and we are starting the year with a bang. I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is a mix of stock and cash, and could be announced sometime later this month, according to those close to the two companies.'

Gawker Media seeks Corporate Intern

Gawker Media are looking for a Corporate Intern. Of course no sooner had they made that announcement than they'd asked for no more applicants as they'd been flooded with expressions of interest from eager bloggers from around the world.

Categories and Search Engine Optimization

I would add another point to the last post on why Blogs are Popular with Search Engines and comment that it is not only page structure that works well but often overall site structure. The fact that many blog systems like Word Press and Moveable Type allow bloggers to categorize their posts can actually help Search Engines spider blogs and give them authority.

I get quite a few hits to the category pages of my blogs. For instance, one of the more popular entry pages from search engines on this blog is my Adsense page. This is not because loads of people directly link to this page (I can only find one external link that does) but it is because that particular page is keyword rich (ie the word Adsense is all over it ) - not because I've rigged it that way but just because its in virtually every title and first sentence of each post. It is also a page that is linked to from every page on this blog in the menu.

One of the disadvantages that I see with Blogger blogs (without hacking them) is that they do naturally come with a categories option. Instead posts are only archived according to date which means that they miss some of the benefits outlined here.

Why Blogs are Popular with Search Engines

Corporate Blogging Blog writes a very good article about why blogs rank well in Search Engines. Of course one of the big reasons is links - one of the major features of blogging is the interlinking between blogs of a similar theme or topic. If you write good content on a particular topic it is likely that you'll attract inward bound links from other relevant blogs - this of course is one of the major ways that a Search Engine like Google or Yahoo decide how to rank sites. However Frank argues that there are other reasons in addition to links that make blogs attractive to search engines including:

- Keywords, key phrases

- Straight to the point
- Each post's page structure
- Coding
- One subject per post
- The blog site's information structure
- Links then...?

Frank expands each point well and his argument makes perfect sense. In fact they are more than common sense some of his points can actually be built upon as a strategy. Learn from what he's saying. For example - 'one subject per point' - the temptation is often to write 10 points on each post that you do. The smarter way to approach it would be to write 10 posts - each with a punchy title and content that tightly focused upon one point. You're more willing to get picked up and ranked highly by search engines using this method than by a long general essay.

Blogs for business

Electronic Business has a good article introducing some of the concepts around Business Blogs (and Wikis), especially highlighting some of the internal ways that blogs can be used to communicate within a business.

'Forget about all the hype you've heard about blogs (a.k.a. Web logs) as the latest outlet for personal journalism. It turns out they also have a remarkable ability to aid communication in business, whether within internal workgroups or among external chains of suppliers and partners. For an industry such as electronics—where relationships are far-flung and time-to-market pressures require fast communications—blogs can bring a new agility to the workforce....

Gomes suggests, blogs work best internally as a knowledge management tool, because information can be made so easily accessible.'

Find Your Future Google PageRank

So we know Google are doing a page rank update - on some data centers the results are not showing yet. Are you impatient and want to know what your blog's page rank will be? You might find this future page rank predictor tool useful.

Future PageRank from SEO tools looks at a variety of data centers around the globe and checks to see if there is any discrepancies.

For example - this blog is currently showing a page rank of 3 on Google.com - but after checking the tool it seems that a page rank of 6 is on the way which would be a nice thing.

It seems most of my blogs have had an increase in page rank which is a nice feeling (one even seems headed for a page rank of 7 - up from 6) - however the backlink update of the last two weeks was not so positive and SERPs and traffic have suffered terribly (see attached graph which is an example of the decrease in traffic over the past few weeks on the blog with the page rank of 7).

So whilst the updates don't seem to be final I'm left in a strange place - page rank is on the improve but traffic levels remain at an abysmal level.

And still we wait - assured by more experienced blog/webmaster friends that time will tell and that things will improve.

In the mean time the Future Page Rank tool will be a handy one.

A similarly useful tool is Datacentre Quick Check which has a good option for checking both page rank and backlink numbers of different datacentres. This one shows the same results in terms of page rank as the above tool and indicates that different data centres still have an array of bank link numbers - ie the back link update doesn't seem to be over yet.

Publisher Driven Advertising

John Battelle also has a great column over at Technology Review that puts forward an idea called Publisher Driven Advertising (PDA). It is an alternative to the traditional approach to advertising where advertisers hold much of the power in the relationship between audience, publisher and advertiser. John argues that with the interactivity of the internet that an alternative economy is emerging that rebalances where the power lies in this interaction.

Of course the recent trend in online ads has gone to pay-per-click (PPC) which John argues is the first step to moving to a PDA economy. PPC represents a significant shift where 'the advertiser pays only when the ad performs—when someone clicks on the ad itself. Second, paid search networks “disaggregate” advertisers from publishers—that is, advertisers no longer purchase space on the publisher’s site but instead pay for keywords.'

Battelle takes PPC a step further and suggests that the next move to PDA could be something like:

'Next, imagine that, instead of buying into PPC networks or specific sites, advertisers release their ads onto the Internet....

Because an Internet-based ad is already a little piece of software, it can be tagged with information about its target audience, how much the advertiser is willing to spend to reach that audience (and how much each click will cost), what kind of websites are acceptable or forbidden (such as porn sites), and any number of other attributes. Most important, each ad could communicate with a “home” application that tracks its progress and status.

Once these tagged ads are let loose, publishers could simply copy and paste them into their own websites. Through connections to their home sites, the ads would report which publishers have pasted them where, how many clicks they’ve received, and how much money is left in the advertiser’s bank account. The ad propagates until it runs out of money. If it is working, the advertiser simply fills up the tank with more money.'

He goes on to suggest that it is weblogs that could be the key to such a system working.

As I read the column I find myself agreeing with much of the reasoning - but also wondering why it sounds so familiar. Then it struck me - in some ways what he's suggesting is actually a fusion of what I've experienced in using Adsense but also affiliate programs.

In the case of affiliate programs like those run by Clix Galore, LinkShare.com and Affiliate Sensor (all of which I use on a variety of sites) it is the publisher who makes the decision about which companies, products and services that they will promote. The 'advertiser' simply advices (through a third party) what their conditions are (ie payment, products, banners etc) and allows publishers to grab and insert simple code into their sites.

The difference I guess in what John is talking about is that most affiliate programs don't pay you for a click through, but rather pay you for a confirmed lead or an actual sale (and they usually pay you a little more than you'd expect from a click - although harder to get).

The main downside of what I've experienced of affiliate programs to this point is that they can be rather cumbersome to set up and implement. The advantage of most PPC programs is that they are fully contextualised. This means using a program like Adsense on a blog can be as simple as adding one piece of code to a template (which should ensure reasonably relevant ads on most pages), affiliate programs can be a lot more work for them to be as effective. To get the best results with them they usually require deep linking within your content, on a manual basis (to ensure their relevancy to the content) rather than just a one off placement in a side bar.

Another Look Ahead at 2005

Some of the predictions for 2005 in John Battelle's Searchblog are worth a read for pro blogging types looking into the crystal ball. Here is a taste of the first three:

'1....We'll all work on figuring out ways to stick to our principles and get paid at the same time, however, I expect that things might get more contentious before they get better, and 2005 may be a more fractious year in the blogosphere as we evolve through this process.

2.... It will get harder to innovate before it gets easier. We'll all be surprised by the lack of what we consider “progress” in the RSS/Blogging world, and expectations of major publishing revenues will not materialize as quickly as perhaps we think they should. However, we'll in fact be making huge strides in understanding the path forward, it just won't seem like it....

3. There will be two to five major new sites that emerge from “nowhere” to become major cultural influencers along the lines of the political bloggers of 2004. One of them will be sold to a major publisher/aggregator for what seems like a large sum of money, driving the abovementioned #2 and #1...'

Read more predictions for 2005 at John Battelle's Searchblog: A Look Ahead

Google on 60 Minutes - Adsense Publishers to Profit?

Online Business Opportunity is predicting profits will result for Adsense users after the 60 Minutes show on Google tonight in the States. They say watch out for a rise in earnings due to:

'- The price per click will rise across all products and services
- AdSense advertisers will be earning more money due to this rise in click prices
- A less sophisticated group of advertisers will be spending money without proper tracking and ROI calculation'

I'm not sure there will be much noticeable difference but will be interested to track it and am keen to get my hands upon a copy of the episode.

Translating Blogs

The Multi Lingual Blog (Blogos) has an interesting post examinging Translation in the Blogosphere.

'Now that millions of individuals around the world are being empowered, if that’s the right expression, by blog software to file reports from sites that the news media cannot always reach, or expose and share their personal lives in interesting new ways, or engage in intense discussion about issues of moment, far from the exclusive institutions of the nation state, the language barrier suddenly looms up like a wall of ice from the sea of words. How can we free the meanings encoded in those alien tongues?'

This is another of those 'gap areas' where I see opportunity for some enterprising person or group to provide some tools that would be snapped up by thousands of bloggers around the world who want to expand the reach of their sites (whether they be purely hobby blogs or professional ones).

I've previously experimented with free translation software like Babel Fish or Google's Translation Tools - but I've never been completely satisfied with them. I've recently seen a number of bloggers who have people translate their articles by word on a voluntary or paid basis - but this is a slow and arduous task.

The other end of the spectrum is how to monetize your translated pages. Many advertising programs will not allow you to put your ads on non english sites. Adsense now has a number of languages available for its ads, but it can get quite tricky to set them all up if you have multiple versions of the one page.

I'm keen to hear how others have tackled the issue of translating their blogs? Have you seen good models of it? What tools work for you? What don't? Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below - share the knowledge so we can all improve our work.

Why Blogs Can Boost Your Business

Blog for Fun and Profit (who has posted some good articles over the past month or so) has a good post on 5 Important Reasons Why Blogs Can Boost Your Business here is Reason 1:

'Your Markets Are Getting Smarter, Faster, And More Organized
With all the attention blogs and RSS has gotten in 2004 it is a sure bet that blogs will be even bigger news in 2005 as we move forward with defining more effective business uses for blogs. This one thing is for sure, thousands of blogs are created every day. The last statistic I've seen quoted by Technorati.com is that 23,000 blogs a day are created which is equal to about 1 blog every 3 seconds that joins the World Live Web....'

Continue reading 5 Important Reasons Why Blogs Can Boost Your Business

Update - They've just added another 5 reasons why blogs can boost your Business

The State of Blogging in America - Stats Released

The Pew Internet and American Life Project have announced study results into the state of American Blogging. Get the full PDF study here. Some of their results include:

- 8 million American adults say they have created blogs (around 7% of the population);

- blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users (ie around 32 million American blog readers);

- 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online;

- 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs;

- 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

Interesting results that fit pretty well with the anecdotal evidence I collect from conversations here in Australia also. Most people still don't know what a blog is - but when you dig a little you find that many people have actually been reading them without knowing what a blog actually is.

'Some demographics. Blog creators are likely to be:

: Men: 57% are male
: Young: 48% are under age 30
: Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home
: Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more
: Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
: Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees

None of this surprising: It's a profile of early adopters. That was the profile of internet users a few years ago but today, internet users are better reflecting the country. This is the profile of internet creators; this, too, will go more mainstream. But the effort required to create will always separate those who instead read. And the reading numbers are growing even faster as the audience for blogs explodes:'

Blogs go Mainstream.... Again

The BBC announces that Blogs are taking on the mainstream - 'Web logs or blogs are everywhere, with at least an estimated five million on the web and that number is set to grow....

But this year the focus has been on blogs which cast a critical eye over news events, often writing about issues ignored by the big media or offering an eye-witness account of events.

Most blogs may have only a small readership, but communication experts say they have provided an avenue for people to have a say in the world of politics....

US research think-tank Pew Internet & American Life says a blog is created every 5.8 seconds, although less than 40% of the total are updated at least once every two months.'

Looks like its that time of year again when all the articles come out to predict that this is the year of the blog.

Google PageRank Update Under Way

As we predicted a couple of weeks ago - it seems that Google is now doing a PageRank Update. As with the back link update a week or two back this will take a few days (a week or more some suggest) to settle down. Google have chosen to do these updates over the Christmas break which of course is good for some as its traditionally a quiet period - however it makes it difficult to discern how their new results are impacting your blog.

Good luck all!

Blog Herald Predictions for 2005

The Blog Herald have just predicted their Predictions for blogging in 2005 which make interesting reading (although the first three they admit they've been predicting for a couple of years now).

Anyway - some of the predictions are quite relevant for those wanting to make money from blogging so they are relevant to problogger - particularly predictions 5,6 and 7.

5. Blog advertising will boom - YEAH bring it on!
6. The better blogs will be purchased - I agree - we've talked about this a few times at How much is your blog worth and Blog Farming
7. Other will pool their resources - ie we'll see more networks for bloggers emerge to compete with those like Weblogs Inc. Again I agree and have seen a few examples of this recently. They've got some catching up to do though!

Read the rest of the list at The Blog Herald Predictions for 2005

The 2005 Business Blogging Awards

Jeremy and Darren over at Inside Blogging have decided to hold the very first 'Business Blogging Awards' which is already causing some excitement on a number of business blogs that I saw on my rounds today. They are accepting nominations here until January 24 at which time a panel will whittle down the number in each category so that voting can begin on January 26 (ends Feb 9).

This is a great project as it will identify and highlight some quality bloggers and will lift the profile and standard of business blogs everywhere.

They have a massive 33 categories for you to nominate your favorites in and are even open to you suggesting more! This is going to be fun. Get over there and nominate your favorites now!