Written on May 22nd, 2005 at 07:05 am by Darren Rowse
Selecting a Niche Market for your Blog
Computer Toaster has a helpful article on selecting a Niche Market for Ecommerce (update: the link is now dead so I’ve deleted it) which whilst not written for bloggers has some useful tips on how you might go through such a process of choosing a niche for your next blog. It’s one of those ‘free articles’ - but one of the more useful ones I’ve seen recently if you’re looking for good basic information on this topic.
Update: the link in this post is now out of date - but on the same topic you may be interested to read my post - How to choose a niche topic for your blog.
Written on May 21st, 2005 at 11:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Should New Blogs Have Ads?
Jacob asks Should New Blogs Have Ads? He has decided not to put ads on his new blogs for two main reasons:
- Not much money - it takes time to build readership and in the mean time it doesn’t really earn much
- Bring in the Audience - ads can put off a potential audience. When you’re working on establishing yourself you want to give your visitors as few reasons as possible not to come back
Both are legitimate arguments that are well worth taking into consideration when you start a new blog.
I however take another approach to Jacob:
1. Not much money is better than no money - of course this rule can’t be applied to everything (I’m not obsessed by money) - but in general its true. A dollar a day from a blog isn’t really much in the scheme of things - but over a year its $365 - and if you had two or three blogs it’d be $730 or $1095. If someone were to offer me any of these amounts I’d take them. I have a few blogs that earn very little per day - but when I add them together and look at them over a longer period of time they add up to be significant money.
2. Don’t change the Rules halfway through the game - have you ever been playing a game with someone only to have them change the rules midway through? It is a pretty frustrating thing. This is a risk you take if you start a blog with no ads and then suddenly transition it to one that has numerous ads. It won’t impact all of your readers but it turn off some. Jacob talks of keeping his blogs ad free to attract readers until they get to a point when he’ll put the ads on. Problem is at that point - any readers he’s attracted by having an ad free blog are likely to leave - and some of them could leave badly (I’ve seen some nasty fights over ads being added to a site where community has been built on a commercial free site).
3. Adding ads later can mean a redesign - these days when i start a new design I think as much about where I want potential ads to go as where I want other aspects of the blog to be put. I attempt to think ahead about where ads will go immediately but also where they could go down the track if the opportunity arises for different types of ad campaigns. I’ve noticed in working with a couple of bloggers recently that they initially designed a blog that was ad free - but when they came to put them on they did not have any spaces suitable. This meant redesign which took time and money. This could have been avoided with a bit of forethought and by simply building ads into the initial design.
For me what it boils down to is knowing the purpose of the blog and setting it up that way. For some blogs it is just not suitable to run ads - that is fine - for others the purpose is commercial and in those cases in my mind it makes some sense to allow them to be commercial in nature. In these cases there are different degrees in how disruptive the ads can be - but with a little subtlety and clever thinking you can produce a blog profitable but well designed blog.
Written on May 21st, 2005 at 05:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Search Engine Optimization Secrets
Adrian at Be A Design Group has a good post on Search Engine Optimization Secrets which is a good, non hyped, well thought through and easy to read post full of good common sense Search Engine Optimization goodness. He gives five tips (and writes a bit on each):
- Don’t Fake Your Content.
- Avoid Flash
- Start a Blog
- Search Engine Optimization Isn’t Magic
- Link Management
Written on May 21st, 2005 at 04:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Following Blogtalk Downunder
I’ve been following Blogtalk Downunder at Michael Specht’s blog - wish I were there.
Written on May 21st, 2005 at 04:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Jeff Jarvis - enternetusers
If you’d like to see an amazing example of a enternetusers who has used blogging to open up some amazing career opportunities take a look at this post by Jeff Jarvis who is quitting a job to take on some more amazing work - all of which he says have opened up for him as a result of his blogging:
‘Blogging has changed my career and opened all these doors. I’ve learned a tremendous amount (or think I have) about the future of the press thanks to the conversation I’ve had here with you all. So thank you. I will continue the conversation and continue learning and changing my old ideas about media until somebody pries my laptop off my cold, dead lap.’
Jeff is a wonderful example of someone making a career from blogging in a way that is not just about writing and selling ad space.
Written on May 21st, 2005 at 10:05 am by Darren Rowse
The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization
A few days ago I was moaning to a mate about the fact that despite thousands of inbound links and a page rank of 6 - enternetusers.net is still yet to rank highly for many of it’s relevant search terms in Google - as a result I rarely get any traffic from Google on this blog. Even for a term like ‘Blog Tips’ (something I write about a lot) I only ranked around 60th on Google.
My friend asked a simple question that made me realize how blind a blogger can be when they stare at their own blog all day and lose objectivity. He asked:
‘What is in the title tags of your blog?’
As soon as he asked the question I knew how stupid I’d been. This is a question I often ask other bloggers but had not asked myself!
The title tags of my front page had been ‘enternetusers: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. A good descriptive term - but not including some of the key terms that I was wanting to get hits on - particularly ‘Blog Tips’.
NB: your ‘title tags‘ are what appears between <title> and </title> in your blog’s templates. This title comes up at the top of your browser when viewing a page and comes up in search engine results as the title of your post.
After banging myself on the head a few times for my stupidity I decided to do an experiment - I changed my title tags on my home page to ‘enternetusers Blog Tips: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. Just a tweak really - the inclusion of two words. I set this up and waited to see what would happen.
The graph above (provided by digital point’s keyword tracker) tells the story better than I can with words. My search ranking for Google on the term ‘Blog Tips’ went from 65th to 10th in two or three days. On MSN I went from 40th to 1st. (the red line is another of my blogs which has always ranked highly on Google for ‘Blog tips’).
Now the term ‘blog tips’ isn’t the most lucrative term in the world and doesn’t bring in hoards of readers - but it is better than what I was doing with Google and it illustrates a point - your title tags are very powerful when it comes to optimizing your blog in Google (and other search engines).
I recommend that on your home page you have a title that incorporates your blog’s name and your main keywords. On individual pages I always recommend that you make your title the title of your post - which should of course include keywords for that post. I also include my blog name on individual pages on enternetusers as I think it could intrigue people on Search engines to come and have a look. On some of my other blogs I just use the post title without the blog title.
So on my post ‘Does Blog Design Matter?‘ my title is ‘Does Blog Design Matter?: enternetusers Blog Tips’
I’ve still got a long way to go with Google - my individual pages are not getting very high rankings at all - I suspect that they may have sandboxed me - but making sure your title tags are optimized is another step towards getting ranked and something I’d encourage all bloggers to consider.
Update: Another side benefit of changing your title tags to include your keywords is that you’ll find other people link to your blog using your title tags in the link. Yesterday I noticed two other blogs did this - rather than linking to me as ‘enternetusers’ they linked as ‘enternetusers Blog Tips’. This is good news because search engines look at the words that people link to you with in order to work out what your page is about and how highly to rank you for those terms. This should all help my ranking for those words.
Written on May 21st, 2005 at 09:05 am by Darren Rowse
Less Options Equal More Clicks? Yes… and No
Paul writes a great post at Less Options Equal More Clicks? where he ponders a number of factors of blog design and how they impact ad performance. He particularly explores the idea that if you give your readers less options to click on (ie links out of your site) that they are more likely to click your ads.
There is some real truth and wisdom to this statement - it’s pretty logical if you think it through.
However when I took a look at my Adsense statistics this afternoon it struck me that the pages that I have that have by far the best CTR are perhaps some of the most cluttered pages that I have on any of my blogs. They are page with other text ads, links into the rest of my site, links to affiliate programs and links to my competitors. Logically speaking these pages should not be performing as well as they are - but they do!
Ok - so if I’ve found a good thing - the way to get a hight CTR - shouldn’t I just replicate that on every one of my blogs and watch the cash roll in?
I wish it were that easy. You see I’ve tried that. On a number of my other blogs I’ve attempted to replicate the design and ad placement from this successful format - the results were disappointing and proved to me that every blog is different. Some blogs perform brilliantly with ads placed inside content, others do better with ads in a side bar, others seem to go brilliantly with ads around the comments section - some do well with competing links, some do better on pages with no other options but to click on the ads.
A couple of days ago I mentioned that Adsense seemed to be offering personal optimization of Adsense ads. I decided to sign up and emailed in a request for them to look over a couple of my sites. Today I got my reply - an email with a few suggestions. They were pretty basic - standard responses that showed that they had looked my sites over, but that didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. However the interesting thing was that they recommended that I move my best performing ad!
He said to me that they found on most sites that the type of ad I was using in this position would perform better if I moved it.
The problem is that I’d already tried the position that he recommended and that it did only half as well in that position and format.
The take home lesson is that whilst many of us make suggestions of what we’ve found to be successful - and whilst there are some general principles that usually come into play - there are no real rules. Every blog is different and needs to be experimented with and just as importantly have its results tracked.
Written on May 20th, 2005 at 05:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Wanted - 12 (or more) Good Bloggers
In 15 days I will be on a plane headed for warmer places - a much needed holiday.
It’s been a big year for me - transitioning into full time blogging (although maintaining some other part time research work this past few months) - moving house - exploring new business ideas and making connections with some wonderful people around the world through this blog. Whilst there are a lot of exciting things going on for me at the moment I’m feeling pretty worn out and this holiday has come at just the right time.
I’ll be away for 4 weeks. This of course leads me to ask the question - what do I do with my blogs? I’ve written about this at least once here at enternetusers and have been pondering what to do. I’ve decided the following:
My main blog Digital Photography Blog will be maintained by a friend who I’m going to pay to run it for me at a lighter level than normal. He should be able to keep it up to date with at least one post per day and to cover any major developments.
I’ve teed up some great bloggers for here at enternetusers who will each contribute once a week (or more). You might even find this blog is more Active than normal. None of these people are getting paid with anything more than a link back to their own blog for each post.
The remainder of my blogs I’d like to invite contributions for. If you’d like to play with one of my blogs while I’m gone then I’d love to have you on board. I’m not expecting heavy posting levels but would love to get at least 2 or 3 posts per week if you can manage it - just to keep the blog up to date and ticking over. The posts can be news, tips or opinion pieces - I’ll suggest a source or two that you might want to keep your eye on if you don’t know where to start. If you’re interested read on and then contact me to let me know which you want to do - I’ll probably limit authors on each to two per blog.
I can’t really pay anyone (most of these blogs are low income earners at present) but each post you do will give you a link back to your own blog (which should help with Page Ranking a little as all my blogs have a page rank of at least 5 - 6) - also if you have a relevant post on your own blog I’m happy for you to link to it from your posts (within reason). I’ll also highlight your blog here with everyone else that contributes in a thank you post.
Don’t feel under any obligation to say you’ll do one - but if you’re interested in contributing I’d love to have you on board. If it works out and you enjoy blogging on these topics I’m open to the possibility of people staying on as permanent authors after I get back from overseas - if this happens I’d be willing to move to a revenue sharing system for the relevant blogs.
The blogs I’m looking for contributers for for the month of June are as follows (I’ve put updates next to each of how many spots are left):
Camera Phone Zone - two positions still available
UAV Blog - one position still available
SEO Blog - positions filled
Personal Finance News - positions filled
Robotics Blog - two positions still available
PDA Blog - one position still available
Laptop Blog - one positions still available
Depression Blog - positions filled
Paris Hilton Watch - positions filled
Secure Instant Messaging - two positions still available
Content Management News - positions filled
Printer Blog - two positions still available
Pharmaceutical News - one position still available
Update: I’m quite amazed by the response. Most popular with the personal finance and SEO blogs which I’ve actually increased my limit from 2 to 4 on (and have still had to say no to a couple of people). There are still a few spots left if you’re interested. Thanks to all for their kind offers and suggestions.
Written on May 20th, 2005 at 05:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Does blog design matter?
One of my favorite new bloggers is Peter Flaschner who today asks the question - Does blog design matter?
I first reviewed the design of Technorati’s top 10 blogs a month or so ago. At the time, I came to the conclusion that design didn’t really matter all that much. I figured that within a couple of months though, with the fantastic growth rate of the blog world, design would start to matter. This is based on the belief that given the choice between two sources of equal quality content, people will choose the better designed site.
In a medium where many argue ‘content is king’ I would argue that its queen is design. This is not just the case in blogging but in many aspects of business. I live in a suburb where there is a local strip of shops. There is a huge variety of stores, cafes, restaurants and offices there but most of them are fairly run down with quite a few old ma and pa stores that probably haven’t changed much in the past 15 - 20 years. But things are changing - the suburb is becoming more popular and gradually new shops and cafes are creeping into the strip of shops.
It is amazing to see the difference between the old and new shops - whilst the old one’s are dark and dusty the new ones are well lit, classy, clean and are very 2005.
Both types of shops sell the same stuff - but given the choice of a fresh and hip place or a dingy musty smelling one - I know where most shoppers are now heading. Aesthetics, sensuality and emotion are key in communication and are all things that a well designed blog can evoke.
Update: Interestingly (and perhaps I’m arguing with myself here) I was also reflecting this morning about how News Aggregators have changed the design equation somewhat.
As I surfed through my bloglines feed this morning I realized how much of an equalizer it was to see virtually all of the content presented to me in black quite and blue. The most amazingly designed blogs going around were reduced to the same level as some of the most appallingly designed blogs that I’ve ever seen. Could the news aggregator be quality content’s saviour!?
Update: Flyte has a great comment on this post - ‘The discussion of content versus design in blogs is like discussing what makes a rectangle bigger: height or width?’
Written on May 20th, 2005 at 02:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Rich Bloggers
Duncan challenges a statement made by Adam L. Penenberg in an article in Wired News that ‘no one has gotten rich off blogs in the West’. I tend to agree with Duncan on this one and wonder if Adam really thought through this statement before sending his article off for publishing. It seems to me to be a bit of a throwaway line at the end of an article - but is something I know not to be true.
I was speaking this morning with a blogger via IM who in a year has built a quality single blog from scratch that now is on track for a $200,000+ year in 2005. This blogger (who wants to remain anonymous for fear of his niche being flooded) is still in his late teens and I’m guessing feels very ‘rich’ right now.
This is a story that I’m hearing more and more regularly. The figures vary ($200,000 is the most I’ve heard for a year from a single blog run by a single blogger) but the sentiment is the same - people feeling very ‘rich’ - not just financially but in so many other ways.
Of course Adam is probably looking for blogging millionaires - something no one has really gone public about achieving yet. I guess its early days for ProBlogging - however if someone hasn’t already quietly achieved the 7 figure income I suspect it won’t be that far off.
PS - having said all that - Adam’s article is actually worth a read - its about a young Hong Kong blogger who is building his own network of blogs in the model of Gawker Media.
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