Written on November 14th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:11 pm by Darren Rowse
Add a Technorati Avatar to Promote Your Blog
Zen Bliss submitted the following reader quick tip (in fact this email from Zen Bliss inspired me to do this ‘reader quick tip series’):
Hi Darren. I read your site regularly - it’s a great resource for tips. Here’s one of my own, along the lines of getting more traffic to your blog.
It’s a very simple tip that will take mere seconds to implement, and can really benefit you in the long run. Ready for it? … upload an avatar to your Technorati profile. Many, many site authors who ping Technorati do not have an avatar. When a Technorati reader is scanning through pages of blog headlines, the avatars are so few and far between that the blog posts that are accompanied by them really jump out at you.
PS from Darren: I think this is a good simple tip that I’ve found to work also. I know when I added an icon to my Technorati account that I noticed a jump in visitors from the site. Nice one Zen Bliss.
Written on November 14th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:11 am by Darren Rowse
How to Fine Tune Your Blog for Christmas
“What are you doing for Christmas?”
I was a little shocked to be asked that question last week by a friend. It’s usually a question that gets asked in the last week or two leading up to 25 December as plans are made with family and friends for the day’s celebrations. I’m not sure if my friend is just super organised - but the question got me thinking not only about what I was personally doing for Christmas and the end of the year but what I was doing on my blogs.
You see there are only 42 days til Christmas and when you’re running an entrepreneurial blog on a topic with some sort of a consumer focus 42 days isn’t that long to make sure you’re ready if you need to make significant changes to your blog.
Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to run a series to help readers fine tune their blog for the holiday season.
But before I get into the ‘how to stuff’ - let me explore the ‘why’.
Why would you need to tweak your blog for the holidays?
Let me start by saying that you may not need to do so. Some blogs will already be well optimised for the holidays (either intentionally or by accident) while others won’t have a commercial nature that could be capitalised at this time of year. But for those of you who do do have entrepreneurial blogs read on for two reasons why this time of year can be more profitable for some bloggers:
1. Readership Changes
While I’m a firm believer that the holiday season (and for me, Christmas in particular) is about much much more than making money - it is a time of year when people do tend to go shopping. As a result - if you have a blog that is on a topic that people go shopping for you’ll be well positioned (or could be) to make a little extra income in December. This is largely for two reasons:
- Traffic - Many product related sites experience an increase in traffic for the six or so weeks leading up to Christmas as a result of an increase of people jumping online to research gifts (for others and for themselves). For some the increase is dramatic while for others it is a gradual thing.
- Mood - Another factor to consider is that the ‘mood’ of the traffic you do have is often different at this time of year. People are quite often in the mood to spend. They have a list of gifts that they need to buy for their friends and family and when they come across something on that list they’re more likely to take action. They’re often also in a ‘researching’ or investigative mood as they consider the gifts they want to buy, look at the alternatives available and are looking to compare prices - as a result they are more likely to investigate relevant ads and even make purchases.
2. Advertiser Changes
Another change that often happens in the last quarter of any given year is that the competition among advertisers to have their ads seen increases. I’ve found that even on blogs where there’s not much change in traffic that earnings can increase just because advertisers are willing to pay more to put their ads in front of your audience. It’s really a demand and supply thing - advertisers are willing to pay more for the privilege of showing their ads to your readers who they know are in the ‘mood’ to buy.
This is a niche by niche thing as some are obviously more relevant to the Holiday Season. I’ve already noticed a slight bump in what advertisers seem to be paying on both the AdSense and Chitika (aff) ad networks.
The combination of the changes in readership as well as changes in what advertisers are willing to pay can lead to significant improvements in earnings in the next couple of months. The exact period varies from blog to blog but generally things improve over November up until the day or two before Christmas (with some blogs doing well into the new year as they capitalise on online sales).
Why start fine tuning your blog now?
Most bloggers won’t really notice the changes ramp up until December when the Christmas rush really starts - however there are some good reasons to be fine tuning your blog right now!
- The Web is Slow - while in most aspects the internet is a very immediate medium there are some things about it that take time. One of these is the way that sites are indexed by traditional search engines. The changes you make to your blog today can take weeks (and sometimes longer) to be reflected in Google and other SEs. If you want to have your blog optimised for traffic in a month you will need to make the changes now.
- Time for Testing - some of the tweaks that I’ll be suggesting over the coming days will need testing. There are no ‘rules’ that work on every blog and so I always suggest that when you make changes to things like advertising programs that you track the results you get from changes and continue to tweak things as you go. This takes time to do and so if you want your blog to be running at its peak at the end of the year you need to do the work now.
- There’s no time like the Present - some of the improvements that I’ll suggest over the coming days could help you increase your earnings in the short term. Good ad optimisation will help your December earnings but it should also help tomorrows totals - so you’d be silly to only make the changes in the month and miss the benefits of the short term also.
- Silly Season Busyness - if your life is anything like mine the end of the year can be a crazy period. Here in Australia this is accentuated by it being Summer (with lots of distractions) but the end of the year brings it’s own pressures that can distract you from optimising your blog later. Do it now while you can.
I’m sure others will add more reasons to get your blog in order now ahead of the next few months - we could talk about ‘why’ for a long time. But in my next posts I’ll turn my attention to the crux of the matter - ‘How’.
My aim for this series is to keep the following posts fairly practical with suggestions along the way of how to make changes. Keep in mind that every blog is different and there are no ‘rules’ that work across each one - so experiment and track your results as we go.
A lot of it will be familiar to long term readers - but hopefully it’ll be a helpful refresher that leads to a profitable couple of months.
Tomorrow we’ll start with a look at the most popular advertising systems being used by bloggers - Adsense.
Written on November 14th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 06:11 am by Darren Rowse
Fasten Your Seat Belts…. The Next Two Weeks Could Get Bumpy!
The bags are packed, my new email set up seems to be working, the laptop, laptop spare battery, ipod and digicam are all charged, passport and tickets have been checked 20 times, ipod is full of tunes and video clips for the 21 hours flying time ahead and blogs have advance posts on them to cover the next two weeks of traveling.
I think I’m ready to leave for Toronto for 10 or so days of b5media meetings.
If you happen to be in Toronto (or close to it) there is going to be a Mesh meetup that I (and a few other b5 bods) will be attending at:
The Irish Embassy Pub
15 November - 6pm
What’s Going On at enternetusers While I’m Gone?
While I’m away enternetusers will continue to tick over. In fact it could be busier than normal (as is usual - my blog tends to improve when I go away and hand it over to others). As always - I’ve over prepared for my time away!
Here’s what you can expect over the next two weeks here at enternetusers.
For starters there will be two series running at the same time (at least one post on each per day):
I’ve been talking this up for the last couple of days and asking for reader submissions.
This series will be short, sharp and to the point ‘quick tips’ from readers on the topic of blogging. I’ve had 70 or so tips submitted (thanks everyone) and have had to cull the list down considerably in order not to overwhelm you all. I’ve tried to select tips on a variety of topics and from a variety of readers. Keep in mind that the tips come from readers of all levels of blogging experience - some will be more basic and advanced than others.
I’m hoping to compile all 70+ reader tips into the one resource when I get home - so if you’ve got a quick tip you want to contribute feel free to send it in (but do it according to the guidelines set out in this call for submissions or I will not be able to include your tip).
This is a 13 part series which covers an array of topics that will hopefully help entrepreneurial bloggers tweak their blogs in order to have a more profitable Holiday Period.
In the 13 parts we’ll take a look at a range of topics including:
- Why you’d want to fine tune your blog for Christmas
- AdSense Tips (a mini series of posts)
- Chitika Tips (a mini series)
- Affiliate Programs
- Writing Content
- SEO
Some of it will be familiar to long term readers but hopefully it’s a series that will provide helpful reminders and a little inspiration to get your blog in order for the end of the year. I hope you enjoy it.
Other Posts - I’ve also pre-written a few extra posts that will go up over the next couple of weeks and have a couple of other bloggers who have written a post each.
I’m sure I will also do a little blogging from Toronto - mainly covering any breaking news relevant to ProBlogging types.
All in all it’ll be a rather full couple of weeks here at enternetusers with over 40 posts already queued and ready to go!
Please bear with me a little in terms of comment moderation. Obviously the 24 or so hours that I’m in transit (and the recovery sleeps) could mean that your comments get stuck for a little bit but I’ll ‘release’ them as soon as I can.
Written on November 14th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 01:11 am by Darren Rowse
Thanks to enternetusers Partners
This month enternetusers welcomes four new partners through the Performancing Partners Ad network. Thanks to these partners I’m able to dedicate more time into the running of enternetusers.
As a special thank you enternetusers’s Partners I’d like to introduce each of them to you
5 Star Affiliate Programs
Monetize Your Site. Earn More Revenue! Your leading source for top affiliate programs and resources.
5 Star Affiliate Programs Forums is a hive of activity when it comes to affiliate marketers. Their forums is a rich resource and a place to find new affiliate programs and learn how to use them.
Also check out their main page and blog.
Performancing Firefox Editor
Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.
Performancing for Firefox was developed by Performancing.com, the worlds largest organization of professional bloggers.
Cyn.in
Partner with cyn.in and profit from every customer or partner that you refer to us
cyn.in (pronounced: ’sign-in’) is an enterprise bliki service that allows teams, companies or communities to create, manage, organize, store, version, search through, collaborate & discuss upon, share and publish any kind of information or data. cyn.in can manage all your rich content, audio, video, images, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, drawings, archives and any type of files.
Presell Page Man
A service for getting your marketing pages (presell pages) hosted on established authority web sites.
Working with top experts in the fields of search engine-optimization and marketing industry as well as web publishers Presell Page Man created this new marketing brand dedicated to and only to creating and brokering your hosted marketing content to authority websites.
If you’d like to become a enternetusers Partner get full details here.
Written on November 13th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 03:11 pm by Darren Rowse
Lisensa - Copyright Management Solution
A problem that I’m increasingly hearing bloggers voice is that they are finding other blogs (or splogs) blatantly ripping off their content in ways that violate their copyright (scraping, no attribution, republishing feeds and putting ads on them etc).
Lisensa is an interesting new service for bloggers calling itself a copyright management solution that is something between BlogBurst and Creative Commons.
They allow bloggers to set up a copyright licence that outlines the permissions that you’re willing to give other publishers and then allows you to set up a licence and charge other publishers for the privledge of republishing your content.
Basically they are automating the conversation between the copyright holder and commercial purchaser of content.
Lisensa takes 10% of any earnings generated and there is no other fees for bloggers to pay.
It’s an interesting concept although I’m wondering how many people looking for content will actually have the honesty to use it. The thing I like about BlogBurst over this model is that they are Actively seeking opportunities for republishing. Lisensa may do this down the track also but don’t really indicate that they will to this point.
found via TechCrunch
Written on November 12th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 02:11 pm by Darren Rowse
Reader ‘Quick Tips’ - Update
Yesterday, on a whim, I asked readers to submit their blogging ‘quick tips’ hoping to get a few quality short guest posts for the next couple of weeks here at enternetusers while I’m traveling. I did expect quite a few submissions - however the response has exceeded my expectations.
As I write this I currently have just under 50 submissions on a wide variety of topics.
Submissions are still open - but please read the guidelines in the previous post before submitting. Particularly - be aware that I’m not asking for links to your previously written posts but asking you to submit actual new posts to be published on enternetusers (ie this isn’t a group writing project).
I’m really impressed with the quality of tips that are coming in so far. Like Shawn says in comments on the last post - the cool thing about this is that while most of the tips are not exactly ‘new’, the cool this is ‘hearing new people say them in different ways’.
I said in my last post that I’ll only accept submissions until Monday and we’ll keep this timeframe on it (although I may do a second round at some point in the future).
While I’ve already got too many tips to use in the next two week break - I will attempt to use as many tips as possible even after I get back.
I’m also toying with the idea of compiling all of the tips submitted into a free resource for all readers to enjoy - I think many would find it helpful.
So keep your ‘quick tips’ coming in and thanks to everyone who is participating!
Written on November 12th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:11 am by Darren Rowse
Placeless Office Tools
I’m always interested in how people manage their virtual offices as someone who has multiple partnerships with people all around the world.
Running a business with people you’ve not met (or rarely physically get together with) is definitely a challenge but the the large range of Web 2.0 type services always being released there are increasing amounts of ways to make it work - the only problem is the the large number of services available and working out which option to choose.
Gina at LifeHacker put together her Essential tools for the placeless office which is a nice compilation of her favorite tools in running LifeHacker with a team of editors who’ve never met. It’s a nice list.
I’d be interested to hear what tools others use to connect with coworkers?
Written on November 12th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 01:11 am by Darren Rowse
Improving AdSense CTR with Video
Eches Blog has an interesting post on Improving CTR by using Video next to Adsense by pointing to a site that uses AdSense Ads like this next to YouTube video clips:
It’s a strategy that makes sense and I’ve long wondered why YouTube themselves (now owned by Google) have such poorly positioned AdSense ads (usually running up in the banner position).
I’m not convinced that ads next to video will be highly lucrative but on a page where there is video it does make sense to have it in the vicinity of the point of focus of the page (the video).
I guess the question to ask is whether AdSense allows such a placement?
The rule for images seems to be that there needs to be some visual barrier between ads and images to make it obvious that they are not one and the same thing - I suspect it’d be similar for Video - although a video does have different visual controls around it that do make it pretty obvious that they’re not the same thing.
I suspect that as video becomes more and more popular on blogs and websites that we’ll see more and more innovations with ads around videos.
Written on November 11th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 10:11 am by Darren Rowse
Submit Your Blogging ‘Quick Tips’
Have you learnt something about blogging that you’d like to quickly share with the rest of us?
Next week I’m heading to Toronto for b5media meetings and to meet my fellow management team for the first time - but while I’m gone I’d like to feature some ‘quick tips’ from readers as guest posts.
I’ve actually prepared a longer series of posts that will start next Monday or Tuesday but would love to intersperse it with a few short and quick blogging tips from you. They can be on any blogging related topic. For example:
- blog tools you’ve found helpful
- blog promotion tips
- writing blog posts
- blogging techniques
- finding stories
- SEO tips
- how to get started etc
I won’t be able to publish everyone’s - but if you’ve got a quick tip to share I’d love to publish it with a link back to your blog. The tips need to be under 150 words in length (I told you they had to be quick) so no long essays or complicated posts please. Obviously the more helpful the better.
Send them to me via my contact form (at the bottom of that page) and include
- your name
- your blog’s name
- your blog’s URL
- your tip’s title
- your ‘quick tip’ - (update: the actual post you want me to post - ie this isn’t a group writing project where I’ll just link to your posts - I’m after guest posts to go up on enternetusers)
I may slightly edit tips (spelling, grammar and perhaps tweaking titles) but largely they’ll go in unedited so make sure you’re happy with it before sending.
If you’d rather share an anonymous quick tip then you’re welcome to do so also.
If you’ve got more than one - feel free to submit them (maximum of 3 at this point).
As I say - there will undoubtedly be more submissions than I can actually use so please don’t be offended if yours isn’t selected but I’ll try to use as many as I can over the two weeks that I’m away.
PS: Please see comments below for an answer about whether these should be new or previously posted tips.
PS II: I leave on Tuesday so will have to close off submissions on Monday. You can submit them after this but as I’ll be on the road I’ll be less likely to add new ones after that - unless I’m stuck in an airport or something and am looking for something to do.
Written on November 11th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 01:11 am by Darren Rowse
ReviewMe Launches
Yet another service has launched today that enables bloggers to write sponsored posts in return for a payment from advertisers. This one is called ReviewMe and has been talked about for a couple of weeks now in the wake of much of the controversy around PayPerPost.
Reviews cost advertisers a minimum of $40 but the cost is actually different for each blog’s statistics (ie Alexa ranking, Technorati ranking etc). The ReviewMe site says that bloggers will earn between $20 and $200 per post.
Bloggers are required to disclose that the reviews that they write are sponsored posts and they are not required to write positive reviews of advertisers products or services.
Review me is owned by Andy Hagans - a blogger who will be familiar to many enternetusers readers.
While I’m still not a massive fan of sponsored posts (I can see a place for them when the products being reviewed are relevant to the topic of the blog - but many sponsored posts that I’ve seen bloggers posting using PPP are totally out of context of their blog’s topic) I think reviewMe seems like a better concept than the alternatives at this point.
PS: no this is not a paid review of ReviewMe - even though they’re offering some nice coin for reviews of their service.
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