Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 08:08 am by Darren Rowse
CarbWire For Sale
Anyone in the market to buy a successful blog might be interested in the sale of CarbWire - a blog (with a PR of 6) about everything Low Carb. Site Forums has the details of the sale for interested buyers:
Revenue details:
Google AdSense brings in several hundred dollars a month, $350 in June. This is primarily without updating, I can’t stress enough how more attention would make this site more popular/profitable. The click through rate is high, but thanks to TOS I can’t reveal that publicly. Because the ads are for food the CPC is relatively low.Avg. monthly pageviews: 65,000
Traffic details:
See SiteMeter Traffic has been a steady 60-70K page views a month (about 30K unique), but is higher when there is fresh content. We have not been able to update the site often as other projects have taken up our time. If someone started posted regularly, every couple of days even, the traffic could easily balloon….
Read more at SitePoint Forums - CarbWire
Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 05:08 am by Darren Rowse
Strategic Blogging - Vision and Goals
This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series.
Vision
Having answered questions about why we blog (mission) and setting some boundaries for our behavior in doing so (Values) it’s now time to be a little more concrete in our big picture thinking. Where are you headed with your blogging? More specifically:
What is your objective for your blogging in the next three years?
Now three years might seem a long way away (and perhaps one or two years might be a better time frame to set objectives for in the ever changing field of blogging) but look beyond the near future and ask yourself questions about vision.
We’re now narrowing down the mission that we have into some more measurable and specific things to aim for in the long term. Don’t get too specific (we’ll get there) but make it concrete.
For example - your mission might be to make a living from blogging but your vision for three years time might be to be a full time blogger that need not do any other work.
Make your objective/s (don’t come up with too many) big enough to be inspiring but realistic enough to be achievable. They should probably come out of or at least relate to your mission.
Take some time to plot some longer term objectives for your blogging.
Goals
For each objective that you’ve mentioned you now should be breaking things down into smaller achievable goals. Perhaps this strategic plan is a little pedantic here and adds too many steps (hence I’ve added Vision and Goals together) but the basics of what we’re doing with goal setting is breaking down the big picture into smaller achievable parts.
In setting goals you might like to ask:
How will we know we have achieved our objective (vision)?
For each objective there will probably be multiple goals that signal it has been reached. For example if the vision is to be working full time in blogging in 3 years the goals might be to ‘quit from current job’ (once a certain earning level from blogging is reached), be earning $XXXX per month regularly by a certain time.
In a sense we’re breaking down our objectives into bite sized parts that can be ticked off one at a time as they are reached as stepping stones to a larger vision.
Read the rest of the Strategic Blogging Series.
Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 12:08 am by Darren Rowse
Strategic Blogging - Values
This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series.
Having thought about our mission (or why we blog) it’s time now to turn our attention to the values that we have that help to shape how we’ll achieve our overall mission.
There are many means to an end and many ways of achieving a mission. For instance if your mission is to make a living from blogging you could do so in many different ways ranging from blogs that rip off the content of others, to blogs that are purely original in content, to blogs that explore topics of purely a ‘family nature’ to blogs that are quite explicit and ‘adult’ in their nature etc.
These decisions come out of our values as a blogger.
What values determine our behavior?
Our values will come out of many different places including our family, culture, experiences and perhaps even personality type. They are worth naming in the early days of our blogging as there comes times in the life of any Blogger when the temptation to step outside the boundaries of behavior that we believe in comes a knocking. Having previously named (privately or even more powerfully - publicly) these values helps us to resist the temptation in the heat of the moment. Values are also important in helping others understand how or what we blog.
So what are the values that shape your blogging behavior? What are the boundaries that you’d be not willing to cross? What are the topics you’d be not willing to blog about? How will you treat those around you (other bloggers, your readers, suppliers of information etc)? Take a few minutes to write a list of the values that you want to shape your blogging. These might include things like:
- I value the work of others and when I build upon it I acknowledge them
- I don’t blog about anything sexually explicit, gambling, drugs or concerning Harry Potter
- I create an environment where everyone can have their say without fear of censorship
- I respect the privacy of others in my blogging and don’t reveal private conversations or contact details
- I only publish fact and will state if I’m speculating
- If I make a mistake I publicly acknowledge this and correct it
- I will always make it clear if I’m benefiting from something that I write
- I value people and will not blog about them in degrading ways
Of course such a list will always cause discussion and debate simply because one person’s values will vary from another person’s values. In a sense we’re talking ethics here.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to write up a set of values like these as a public blogging value statement of manifesto to promote the type of blog/s you’re keeping and to give your readers permission to keep you accountable to what you’re on about.
With your mission and values in place you’ll be ready for the next stages of actually mapping out how you’re going to move forward in your blogging.
Read the rest of the Strategic Blogging Series.
Written on August 1st, 2005 at 07:08 pm by Darren Rowse
T-Shirt Competition - Entries Closed
I’ve just closed the T-Shirt Competition Entry period and will begin to sort through the 60+ entries that have been received. I’m really pleased with the wonderful array of entries which display some true creativity from readers of enternetusers. A big thank you to all who’ve participated.
It might take us a few days to get to a decision on the winner - we’re toying with the idea of narrowing down the field and then allowing readers to vote on their favorite (although I’m not convinced about voting plug-ins and poll systems which in my experience can be rigged).
The other option to put the voting in the hands of the readership is for us to narrow down the field to 5 designs and then make all 5 available for purchase. The winner would be the design that sells the most in the first week or so of sale.
I guess ultimately that would decide which is the most popular without much chance of it being rigged.
What do you think of that? Does it sound fair?
Written on August 1st, 2005 at 02:08 pm by Darren Rowse
31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 1
Well the 31 days to a building a better blog has officially started with a couple of blog tips already posted here at enternetusers (see my first two posts on Strategic Blogging - more to come later today).
As I posted a couple of days ago when I announced the 31 days project I don’t want to be the only person writing Blog Tips as I believe if we all participate we’ll learn so much more. As a result I invited you as readers to participate by:
- leaving comments on posts with your own experiences
- asking questions for other bloggers to cover in the comments of this post
- posting your own blog tips on your own blog and letting me know about them so I can link up
Within minutes of this call for participation I received emails from readers who had already posted their own tips. Here are the first of what I hope will be many links to blog tips in the next 31 days.
- Paul Short at Blog Logic has written a post with 5 Blog Traffic Tips where he covers press releases, following other blogs, paid advertising to name just three of his tips.
- Jon at Smart Money Daily has a tip titledbattery for phone in which he looks at one’s motivation for blogging professionally.
- Dominic Foster has decided to use enternetusers’s 31 days Project to make over his blogs - following the tips he reads here and on other blogs during August. He’s going to document what he learns as he goes. It’s a great idea and hopefully something that others will do also as they read on.
Head over to these links and interact with the authors. Please also considering writing your own Blog Tip and letting me know. I’ll post a posts similar to this each day of the 31 days that I receive tips. Hopefully it’ll not only help us all learn a little more about blogging but it will give those who write the tips a little free publicity in return for their hard work.
Written on August 1st, 2005 at 11:08 am by Darren Rowse
Strategic Blogging - Mission
This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series.
13 years ago when I started studying my Marketing degree the focus of many of my first year lectures was ‘Mission Statements’. I remember writing mission statement after statement - to the point where I started to dream about them. It was obvious that my lecturers through they were a pretty important starting place for any good business venture.
Whilst perhaps ‘mission statements’ are not quite as much of a buzz phrase as they were in the early 1990s I still see asking questions around mission as a worthwhile task - especially when it comes to blogging.
‘Why do you exist?’
This is the key question that my friend’s strategic process asks in the area of ‘mission’. I don’t think it’s asking us to ponder the meaning of life - it’s not quite that deep - but it does ask a business (blog) owner to try to get back to the basics of what they are on about.
‘Why do you blog?’
Take a few minutes (or better still a few hours or even days) to ponder this question. What is it that you blog for? What are your core motivations? Be honest as you answer this question because it’s important to nail it down as much as you can as everything else comes from this.
Some blogging ‘missions’ might include:
- ‘I blog to make a living’
- ‘I blog for recreational purposes - to help me relax’
- ‘I blog as part of my plan for world domination’
- ‘I blog to keep a record of the life and times of me’
- ‘I blog because I want to help others’
- ‘I blog to because I’m lonely and want to connect with others’
- ‘I blog to pick up cute girls/guys’
- ‘I blog because it’s fun’
- ‘I blog because I want to build profile - I want to be known’
These are just a few examples that come to mind off the top of my head. Some of us will have simple sentences, for others our reasons for blogging might be a little more complex and combine a number of things.
One person’s blogging mission will be differnt from anothers - there is really no right or wrong here - behind each blogger there is some sort of mission whether it’s deep, shallow, silly, smart, selfish or altruistic. The task now is to name yours.
To identify these missions is very helpful because knowing why we blog then helps us to work out how we should blog to best reach our mission.
So what is your mission? Why do you blog?
This is not a question about measurable goals or strategies and your answer probably shouldn’t be too blog specific yet (ie don’t write one for each of your blogs if you have more than one) - rather get at your motivations and big picture hopes for your blogging.
Read more posts in this series at Strategic Blogging Series.
Written on August 1st, 2005 at 10:08 am by Darren Rowse
Strategic Blogging
NB: this is the first in a series of posts on Strategic Blogging. The following posts in the series are - Mission - Values - Vision and Goals - Issues, Present Reality and Future Direction - Strategy - Action Plan
Over the past year I’ve been meeting with a business coach who has been helping me to look at my blogging as a business rather than just a job. One of the things that has become evident to me is that good sustainable businesses don’t usually just happen by accident.
Instead they take planning, strategy and intentionality.
So as part of our 31 days to building a better blog series I thought it would be wise to start by talking about some big picture issues. Whilst these first few posts may not be as practical as some that will follow in the coming weeks - I believe that thinking through the issues that they contain could be the difference between a good and a great blog.
I know that for some this type of talk will be frustrating - words like mission, vision, values and strategy are not where you’re at - but humor me please. You see I believe that if you get these things right you’ll find many of the other tips that I share later in this series to be much more powerful as you’ll be able to use them in much more focused and effective ways.
Over the next few posts I’m going to lead you through a strategic plan process that a friend of mine gave me to think through another (non blogging) project that I’m working on - I think it’s highly relevant for ProBlogging and hope you find it helpful.
In each post I’m going to give us a little homework, a few questions to ask that hopefully will help you to think through the issues at hand. Feel free to answer them in private or to even think out loud in comments after each post.
As I post each post in this mini series within the larger 31 days to a better blog I’ll post links to them here as a central place to see the whole process.
I hope you enjoy.
The posts in this series are:
Written on July 31st, 2005 at 09:07 pm by Darren Rowse
AdSense Optimization Webinar
If you’re a user of Google’s Adsense you might be interested in another webinar that they are hosting that looks at AdSense Optimization. They describe the webinar as follows:
‘An hour-long seminar on AdSense implementation techniques that can boost revenue. The program will cover ways publishers can use ad formats, colors, and positioning – as well as new AdSense features – to improve the performance of AdSense. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions during an open Q&A session.’
Sign up here.
Found via Blogs Blog
Written on July 31st, 2005 at 03:07 am by Darren Rowse
On Blog Depression
The Nonist has a public service pamphlet on blog depression that I suspect a few visitors of enternetusers might need to read:
‘there is a growing epidemic in the cyberworld. a scourge which causes more suffering with each passing day. as blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans, the form has matured more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. this debilitating scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it’s dark touch. we’re speaking, of course, about blog depression….’
Of course it’s not something I’d need to read…. hmmmm….. what is it that they say about admitting problems being the first step to recovery?
Written on July 30th, 2005 at 04:07 pm by Darren Rowse
Bloggers For Hire
Jim Turner has just let me know about a new blog he and others have started titled Bloggers For Hire - where it seems they are looking to provide companies interested in setting up corporate blogs with bloggers and bloggers interested in blogging for a living with companies. It looks like early days so far but its a service that there will be an increasing need for.
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