Written on May 6th, 2005 at 08:05 am by Darren Rowse
The business of blogging and MetaFilter
Good little article in the San-Francisco Gate on Business Blogging and Small companies promote themselves through Web logs. It has features friend of enternetusers Paul Chaney and a good list of examples of small businesses that are using the humble blog as a part of their business plan.
Found via MetaFilter who are having a little discussion about blogging (thanks for the link whoever put it up) - and who are a highly visited blog which has a few revenue streams itself. I’ve often looked at this blog and wished I could get my hands on it to optimize it better - especially its Adsense Ads. I suspect that with a few simple tweaks we could significantly increase its earning potential.
Written on May 6th, 2005 at 02:05 am by Darren Rowse
What’s Wrong with Blogging
I once heard of a debate between a Christian group and a Pagan group - it could have been a pretty un-constructive rant like event where one group tells the other group what’s wrong with it and visa versa - everyone would have gone home with the same opinions that they came with - however this debate was different.
Each side was told to prepare arguments against their own religion/faith perspective. The Christians had to say what they didn’t like about Christianity, what they felt uncomfortable with and had to deconstruct and poke holes in their own framework for thinking. The Pagans had to do the same for paganism.
The result was fascinating - rather that the two groups coming away with reinforced hatred of and anger towards the other the event was incredibly constructive. Both groups found that they learned not only a lot about the other group - but about their own perspective.
Ok - so why am I telling you this on a blog about blogging? Have I mistakenly posted this here instead of on my Spirituality blog?
No - I”m actually wondering if it might be a helpful exercise as bloggers to do something similar.
Let’s talk about what we don’t like about blogging. What are its weaknesses? What are its limitations? How would you construct an argument against blogging?
Lets learn something about Blogging by deconstructing it for a bit. Put the boots in readers - lets kick it about for a bit - time for a bit of a bitch session!
The rules are simple - you’re not allowed to say ANYTHING positive about blogging in comments below (or feel free to respond on your own blog and leave a link below so we can find it). There are no wrongs and rights - everyone’s critiques of the medium are valid.
Go on - I know you want to - lets lay into Blogging!
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 11:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Critiquing the Critiquing of Weblogs Inc
Jacob has an interesting critique on Weblogs Inc - taking a close look at the topic and posting frequency of some of their blogs. He particularly takes aim at two factors:
1. Lack of Updating - Jacob notes that the Digital Radio blog Droxy has only one post in the past month and that the outsourcing blog has one post so far this year. There are others that I’ve noticed over the past few months have had some pretty irregular bursts of posting (and not posting). Whilst I’ve had similar thoughts to Jacob about the inactivity of some of their blogs (I guess it doesn’t look good for the network to have something inActive?) I can also see why it may have happened. There are a number of factors that could have come into play:
- Author Issues: WIN’s blogs rely upon a large stable of authors to keep their blogs running. In my limited experience with network blogging I know that authors being humans (well most are) means they will often bite off more than they can chew. You just have to look around the wider blogging community and you’ll quickly find that a large percentage of blogs that start out with passionate, excited, confident, wide eyed bloggers don’t make it past a few months of blogging (sometimes its only days before they die). In a stable of 70+ blogs there are sure to be a few authors who pull the pin on their blogging (or at least pull back to a trickle of posts) as a result of disillusionment, busyness, life situation (sickness, babies or other changes), distractions or even laziness. This leaves the WIN team in a sticky position of either having to find another author, let the blog remain inActive but live or killing it off.
- Lack of Content: I’ve started a number of blogs over the past year or so that I thought would be a breeze to write - but soon found that there just wasn’t enough content or news around to sustain them. In these cases I actually don’t have a problem with less frequent posting. After all there are no ‘rules’ on how often blogs should be updated - the posting rhythm of each blog will differ depending upon a number of factors - some are daily, some weekly and perhaps its ok for some to be monthly. Of course a blog with a date showing the last post is months old doesn’t exude freshness or authority to readers.
- Lack of Return on investment: Some blogs just don’t perform. They don’t get indexed by search engines, readers don’t click with the author, ad values are poor, Adsense doesn’t have ads to serve - whatever the case - sometimes they just don’t work. This can breed disillusionment. It can also take you to a place after giving it a real go of giving up which is probably a smart decision in many cases as there might be other projects that would be a better return on investment.
I’m not making excuses for WIN (after all its really none of our business is it?) - but these might be some of the reasons a small number of their blogs become a less Active than others.
2. Money Grabbing Blogs - Jacob argues that some of the blogs that WIN has their name on seem to be purely about making money. He uses the Mortgages blog to illustrate this (and mortgage ads are renowned for being good payers). Once again I can see where Jacob is coming from completely - this is probably one of the most inspiring blogs in WINs stable - for me.
I guess that’s the point though - for me its boring and useless (mainly useless because I’m in a different country) - but I’d argue that obviously for some its not. Really what it comes down to is letting the market decide what is a valid topic for a blog or not. Whilst most of those searching the internet don’t require the type of information on some of WINs blogs - there are obviously some that do - and if they don’t I suspect it won’t be long until they close this blog down for lack of feasibility.
I guess this is the point of niche blogging in many regards. A magazine design blog is not going to appeal to the masses - but for at least one person (Pariah S. Burke - its author) it obviously is something of interest (and by the comments which are being left on every second post - it seems that a handful of others are into it too).
Will it be a huge money spinner? Probably not. Is it a good move for WIN to include it in their stable of blogs? I guess thats for them to decide as they look at their goals and objectives as a network.
I’m not trying to give Jacob a hard time here - he’s a great guy who is pretty cluey when it comes to making a living online - I’m just trying to look beyond the obvious critique and put myself in the shoes of the big players. It’s pretty easy to pretty easy to knock the high profile blog networks - but sometimes I think we’d learn more by getting in their shoes than always taking a shot at them.
I’m interested in others opinions - anyone from WIN who wants to respond and shed a little light on this is more than welcome to do so.
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 10:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Web Accelerator and Page Rank?
There has been a lot of talk around the blogs today on Google’s new Web Accelerator but one of the unique perspectives I’ve seen is an essay by Mike Lambert titled PageRank 2.0. Mike explains the lack of income stream attached to the Web Accelerator by speculating that it will actually help Google to more accurately rank pages in a climate where inbound links are less and less reliable for ranking the page rank of a site (due to spam).
‘Instead of using a random surfer model, Google can use a real surfer model, based on the aggregate web traffic of the people using their Web Accelerator. They can discover /exactly/ how the Google Juice should flow in the real world.’
The Google Web Accelerator Privacy Policy says could support this theory as it includes the statement - ‘When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers receive and log your page requests…’
It’s an interesting theory - and one that I’m sure will be debated by many for some time to come. What do you think?
Update: Check out some of the following discussions going on in forums - all in all the reaction to the Accelerator is NOT positive:
Also check out Inside Google’s take:
‘The privacy implications are staggering. Google can now know absolutely everything. If they thought Gmail created a mess when the Gmail ad thing went down, its going to look like a stubbed toe next to this. The hell will rain down on Google over the following weeks, you better believe it.’
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 03:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Meeting James Farmer
I had a morning coffee today with a fellow Melbourne blogger, James Farmer who blogs at incorporated subversion.
What an interesting and far reaching conversation (well we stuck to blogging - but there was a lot to say) as we discussed everything from Educational Blogging (his main focus), to the BlogTalk Downunder conference (I really want to go - just working out if it is going to work out in the craziness of the next few weeks), to Multi Authoring Weblog tools (stay tuned for a post on this) and to miscellaneous topics in between.
I love meeting bloggers, especially those with a niche focus like James - I always come away with a new perspective, ideas and approaches to my own niche/s.
I think I need to do this more.
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 01:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Adsense Stats Delays - Don’t Panic
I thought I’d post something about this as I’ve had 4 emails and a few IM’s about it in the last couple of hours. Adsense stats seem to be experiencing delays and have done for at least the last 4 or 5 hours. You’re not the only one if you’re noticing this.
My advice: have patience. This happens from time to time. Often it is associated with changes and updates with the program - sometimes these changes are public ones, sometimes they are not. Such delays usually only last a few hours but I’ve seen them last up to 12 or so.
Don’t panic - previously such delays have not meant changes in earnings - they continue to count your clicks and income and update them later.
Update: And its back… (or at least has updated to some extent)
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 08:05 am by Darren Rowse
Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts - Part II
This is the second part of a post on extending the life of Evergreen posts. Take a look at the first part here.
Related Articles - Many Bloggers use a ‘related articles’ feature in at the bottom of each of their posts. In most cases these are automated links from a plug in. WordPress and Movable Type both have such plugins available.
Once again such a strategy is good for both getting readers to go deeper within your site and for your search engine optimization.
Deep linking within posts - Similarly deep linking is an effective strategy. To actually refer to previously written evergreen posts within an article (where relevant) is another strategy that you should consider. This could be more effective than a ‘related articles’ feature simply because you have a bit more control about their positioning and the links that you highlight. Also people are more likely to take an ‘in content’ link recommendation than an automated one - it will also mean that the links is a highly relevant one - which SE’s tend to like.
Site Maps and Highlighting Categories - Whilst these may not specifically increase the profile of Evergreen posts - highlighting other key pages on your site (categories especially) helps to generate repeat page views and assists the Search Engines in indexing your blog. What you should be aiming for is that a reader or SE bot should be able to navigate to any page on your blog within two or three clicks. The simplest way to do this is to have your categories listed in your sidebar or menu and to use a pagination system (the little numbers at the bottom of this page that lead you to different sets of older posts).
What I’m really highlighting here are different ways in which you can interlink your site whilst highlighting your key pages.
So take a surf through your archives and make note of the underrated evergreen posts that you find and consider finding places on your blog to highlight them. You might be surprised what impact it has.
Feel free to share what strategies you use to highlight your evergreen posts in comments below.
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 07:05 am by Darren Rowse
Who Is Darren Rowse?
Fluff Post Warning: Everyone is doing this (ok - not everyone) but a few of my favorites bloggers including Jeremy and Arieanna. Using this little tool you can work out who or what you or your blog is - according to the web. Here’s a few of the things that it said I am:
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Full list is here - small things amuse small minds.
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 04:05 am by Darren Rowse
Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts - Part I
Last week I wrote about the nature of two types of blog posting in Evergreen vs Time Related Posts (or posts that are long lasting in their relevance and appeal to readers versus posts that are time or event specific). I wrote that each can be profitable forms of blogging - but I failed to give any tips on how to get the most from your Evergreen Posts.
One of the best ways in which you can lengthen the longevity of your posts and take them to ‘evergreen status’ is to be smart about how you integrate them into your blog.
Let’s look at how most blogs operate.
- You write a wonderful post with evergreen potential and hit ‘publish’ - your post appears in the prime position of your blog - front and centre where anyone coming to your blog will see it. At this point it will be read by virtually everyone who comes to your home page.
- You write another post an hour, day or week later and your evergreen post begins its decent down your page. You might allow 10 posts on your blog’s main page and so after 10 new posts it slips away into another blogging dimension - your archives.
- At this point your post drastically reduces its chances of ever being read again in large numbers - it is out of site to your readers and because its no longer on your main page the chances of search engines sending traffic its way decrease also.
So what is a blogger to do? Is there a way (short of letting your main page contain 100 posts - and slowing to a crawl) of keeping your wonderful post in the spotlight?
I’d like to suggest that there are a number of ‘in house/on blog’ strategies that smart bloggers use to increase the life of their evergreen posts (note there are also off blog strategies that I won’t go into here). Let me outline a few before I invite your opinion:
Use Sidebars and Menus - One of the tips that I shared with my newsletter subscribers a couple of weeks ago was that the most popular articles on this blog are the first four items in the menu at the top of this page - What is a Blog? - Blogging for Dollars - Adsense for Bloggers - How Much do I earn?
Highlighting these key posts in this way (they appear on every page on this blog) has a twofold impact:
1. Firstly they are in front of my readers. Anyone coming to this blog has a reasonable chance of spotting these articles and quite a few click through.
2. Secondly because these posts are linked from every page on this site - the search engines are smart enough to work out that these must be key articles for this site. Whilst internal links are not as powerful as those coming from other sites - they do seem to count for something. If you highlight your key articles in this way you increase the chances that they’ll be given a higher ranking in the Search Engines next time their bot spiders your site.
Of course you don’t have to highlight them in a menu like I have, other bloggers do a similar thing in their side bar, sometimes even using a title like ‘key articles’. (Peter Flaschner calls them ‘most popular articles’, Paul Scrivens calls them ‘featured entries’). You’ll want to be a bit selective with this strategy - choose too many ‘key articles’ and you’ll just end up with clutter and confusion.
Read the second part of this mini series.
Written on May 5th, 2005 at 01:05 am by Darren Rowse
Follow up Posts
Wayne writes a good post on the topic of follow up posts:
‘Returning to a previous ongoing controversy or concept, provides a useful and interesting source, of blog post ideas. Often your longer term readership will appreciate finding out more information on an idea previously presented in your blog.
Blog SEO efforts are also enhanced, by picking up previous themes or topics, and running with them in several new directions.
Followup posts are ideal for political, legal, and sports blogs. Each those blog categories is ideally suited to continuing column ideas. Most regular readers will be very intrigued as to how the initial case, policy, or game under discussion, was resolved.’
Nice post again Wayne I’m sure I’ll write more about this - in a later post…
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