Written on December 31st, 2004 at 09:12 am by Darren Rowse
About.com - Megablog
What is the biggest pro blogging operation that you can think of?
If you believed the press it would probably either be Gawker or Weblogs Inc. They certainly know how to get press coverage. But whilst they are successful blogging networks there is another one that is quietly going about its business of building market share in the background with little noise or PR (at least that I’ve seen).
About.com is a site that many of us will have surfed by on numerous occasions after searching on Google for anything from Action Figures to Archaeology to Salt Water Aquariums. Their reach is quite staggering in terms of topic but also traffic. This is a megasite.
Actually it is a Megablog.
Yep - About uses Moveable Type blogging software to run its many pages and is in fact many blogs all running from the same domain name. All in all they actually are running 700 blogs and are currently ranked by Alexa as the 76th highest rank site online and 7000 out of ever 1 million web users find their page every day (that is like 0.7% of all surfers end up on their pages - sounds small but its massive).
Lets put that in context with a picture (I am more a picture guy than a words one). This one compares About’s ranking with mega blog Gizmodo and the not so mega livingroom collection of blogs.
It actually doesn’t look too bad (for me) until you look at the axis on the left and realize that its totally out of scale to accommodate the puniness of my blogs.
‘According to Nielsen NetRatings, About.com is a top 15 Web property used by one out of every five people on the Internet.’ (Source)
About.com uses MT to run their blogs and mainly utilizes Google’s Adsense to monetize them. You may look at their site and wonder where the Adsense ads are - they are not always immediately evident - that is because these guys are so big that they are premium publishers and get special exceptions when placing ads.
This special treatment means that their adsense ads are not labeled as being from Google like the rest of ours and they get all kinds of licence when it comes to format and placement. For instance check out this page which is almost completely Adsense ads (I doubt most sites would get away that little content on a page).
About.com also uses other CPM advertisements and affiliate programs on their blogs which vary depending upon the topic.
So how do they run so many blogs? Do they rely upon a huge staff? do they have one insomniac who is completely addicted to blogging working 24 hour days? Do they rely upon volunteers? What is the deal?
Their system is quite simple really - About.com pays people to blog for them. They don’t call them bloggers but rather give them the name of ‘Guide’. There are around 475 of them at present. Guides are described as follows:
‘About Guides live and work in over 20 countries and celebrate their interests in hundreds of topics. Guides are selected for their ability to provide the most interesting information for users, and for their passion for their subject and the Net. The selection process is rigorous — only 10% of those that apply graduate to the live service. ‘
How much are Guides paid? Is it worth it? The answer is $500 per month minimum as long as they continue to grow their readership. Whilst specifics are not published on their site it is pretty clear on their information pages for potential guides that this is just a base income and that as you grow your traffic (and earn them more) there is potential to earn more than that.
About.com is not a short term thing - they started the project back in 1997 and have steadily added content every day since and now have almost 1 million pages of content.
Big stuff isn’t it! I personally find it quite inspiring to see what can be done with some creativity and hard work online.
Written on December 30th, 2004 at 11:12 am by Darren Rowse
Bloggers Banned from Trade Show
Blog Your Way has picked up this interesting tidbit in an article at InfoWorld about the upcoming CES (consumer electronic show) in Las Vegas in January. Apparently no bloggers will be allowed at the event.
‘The CEA spent more time qualifying attendees this year to make sure everyone in attendance has a legitimate attachment to the consumer electronics industry, said Kristen Peiffer, a CEA spokeswoman. The show is not open to the general public, and the CEA does not allow the blogging community or other independent observers to attend the show.’
I find this pretty disturbing as a blogger who remotely covers this event on one of my blogs (remotely). Whilst I was not planning a trip to cover the event this year it was something I have been considering for the future.
Whilst I can understand that they don’t want their event crowded out by thousands of bloggers each covering the event from a different angle I don’t understand why they wouldn’t embrace some of the recognized tech bloggers. I doubt strongly that they’ll be turning representatives from Gizmodo or Engadget away at the door.
What does it mean to have ‘a legitimate attachment to the consumer electronics industry’? Does it mean having relationships with electronics manufacturers whereby they and even seek you out to review their products? Does it mean having hundreds of thousands of readers each month? If so I could name at least 10 - 20 bloggers who would qualify. In fact if the organizers of CES had some foresight and a few smarts I’d suggest that they go out of there way to invite and ensure that these bloggers attend CES this year because it would guarantee a lot more attention to their show.
The other point that I would make is that there is no mention of other website editors being banned from attending CES this year. I know of numerous other digital camera websites that are invited and given support in covering the show each year. Some of these sites do not call themselves ‘blogs’ but operate on a remarkably similar format to them.
Whilst I understand how such a decision might have been made - I think it reflects a lack of understanding by organizers of the event as to what blogging is and of what its potential is. I hope that in future years they take another look at or at least clarify/modify this decision.
Written on December 30th, 2004 at 10:12 am by Darren Rowse
New Google Feature: Sponsored Links
I just stumbled across a new (?) feature on Google - Google Sponsored Links which allows you to enter a term and then see what ads Google has in their stock pile.
The initial page that you go to looks like you’ve come to an error page but enter in a term in the search bar and you’ll get a list of ads that they have. For example here are ads on the topic of Blog Money and here are some for Digital Cameras
The results do seems to vary depending upon your location (I get a lot of Aussie ads). This would be a useful tool for you if you’re deciding on a topic for a blog and you want to run Adsense Ads. Check your keywords/blog topic on this tool and you’ll see if there are sufficient ads to make it worth your time. If your keywords don’t produce any ads it might be worth changing your approach or finding another income stream as it will be hard to get ads served to your blog and therefore difficult to extract any money from Adsense.
Written on December 30th, 2004 at 10:12 am by Darren Rowse
Pro Blogger Agency
Paul over at Radiant Marketing Group is considering setting his group up as an Agency for Pro Bloggers and wants the feedback of enternetuserss, consultants and CEO types:
‘I’ve been thinking about turning Radiant Marketing Group into an agency for bloggers who want to find paying gigs. Serving as a rep for them so to speak. (I’d consider doing the same for blog consultants.)
What do you think? If you’re a pro blogger or a consultant, especially if you’re one looking for paying jobs, I’d like to get your take on this. Would you be interested in aligning yourself with an agency? I’d also like to hear from CEO-types as well as business consultants. Do you see viability in a business like this?’
I left a comment over there (and encourage you to do likewise) that expressed my interest. I know there would be a number of issues to work through for it to work, but purely speaking as a blogger wanting to earn an income from the field I know I’d be interested.
The model that I currently use for earning an income from blogging has been very much focused upon setting up my own niche blogs and earning a direct income from them. This has been pretty successful for me so far and has enabled me to give up ‘my day job’ - however I always argue that enternetuserss shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket and should diversify their blogging interests/income streams.
As a result I know I would be interested in having an agent to set up both short and longer term blogging jobs and consulting projects for me to supplement what I’m earning from my own private ventures.
The issue for many of us who set ourselves up as single person ventures (often scattered across the globe) is that to find such jobs takes us away from our core business - blogging. This is my frustration with advertising. Whilst systems like Adsense, Amazon etc are easy to use and implement and take very little time to keep running - finding private corporate advertising for your blog can be very time consuming.
I know when we ran the Olympic Blog earlier in the year that I spent days (weeks?) seeking a sponsor to no avail. In my mind it was an opportunity missed for both us as bloggers but also for potential sponsors who could have put their product in the faces of over 2 million readers in a 2 week period.
Whilst companies like Blog Ads are providing an incredibly valuable service (I use them with some success on a number of my blogs) I see a big gap in the market currently for services that represent bloggers to both potential clients but also to potential advertisers.
I’ve often considered setting up such a business myself but to this point have felt that my geographic location means I am not in the most logical position to best represent bloggers and be in contact with potential advertisers and employers. However I think its an opportunity worth exploring and would be keen to be involved in some way.
Written on December 30th, 2004 at 08:12 am by Darren Rowse
Skweezer Update
I thought I’d update you on my interaction with Skweezer who in my last post I expressed my frustration with for duplicating the content on my blogs.
Last night I sent an email to them asking to remove all of my domains and sub-domains from their site. I explained some of my reasons for doing so.
This morning I had two replies - firstly from their customer service department asking me to confirm my desire to be removed - they will be doing so shortly (as I note they have done with Weblogs Inc’s blogs already). The second email was from Barnabas Kendall from Greenlight Wireless who I want to acknowledge has been helpful in getting my sites removed from his program and who invited my feedback to Skweezer - but whom I also feel seems a little naive or deluded as to the impact his site is having on the publishers who are providing content to him without their knowledge.
I am continuing to correspond with Barnabas and am assured by him that he will be making a full statement shortly to explain further his side of the story.
My main concerns remain that:
1. That content that they duplicate like this downgrades the page ranking of my site. Google will not differentiate between my original content and their duplicated content. It will actually devalue both of our sites.
2. That I seem to be doing all the work in the equation. I research and writes (which takes hours), I host the images and they simply copy it onto their site and charge their readers for the privilege of reading it - and add their own ads to it. This is in direct violation of my (and most other bloggers) creative commons license which says that my content cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Anyway - I’ll be off their system shortly and will continue to discuss this with Barnabas.
By the way - if you wish to be removed from Skweezer it is best to email customer.care@skweezer.net and put something in the subject line like ‘Please Remove my Site’.
Update: Barnabas has added a response to Green Light Wireless’s new Blog.
Written on December 29th, 2004 at 05:12 pm by Darren Rowse
RSS Abuse, Duplicate Content and Parasite Websites
Jason has spoken out about something that a number of us have been mulling over for the past week or so - RSS Abuse. He points to Skweezer as one of the culprits that is targeting their blogs.
I’ve noticed a growing trend recently for sites to do this. Skweezer has pages for most of my blogs also (http://www.skweezer.net/s.aspx/2/www.livingroom.org.au/photolog/ is the one for my digicam one). Basically they are repackaging content of sites/blogs for viewing on PDAs and Phones. Not a bad idea in many respects - however they are taking complete posts and giving no real link backs. They are also stripping the advertisements from the sites also.
About the only thing that I can see on their version of my site that is linked directly back to and hosted on my site is the images. So not only are they using my content without giving me a way to benefit from what they are doing - but I’m also hosting their images.
This does not seem a fair deal to me.
The other thing that concerns me about this approach is that now there are two pages with almost identical content for each page on my site - there is duplicate content. Google does not look favorably upon duplicate content - it downgrades the ranking of sites that use it and I suspect that this practice will (and already has) downgraded the ranking of blogs that are duplicated in this way.
In a similar way sites like Excite Japan seem to be doing similar things with some of my blogs. Again check out this translated version of my digicam blog that they are running. At least in this case they are still showing my ads and so I get some benefit - however again some of the pages on this site will (and do) come up as duplicate content on Google. I know when I search on CopyScape for some of my blog posts it shows these pages - if CopyScape can see them as duplicates I worry that Google does also.
A number of people have suggested to me that my recent massive downgrade in traffic from Google is likely to at least partially be due to this duplicate content.
To be honest I’m pretty angry about this sort of thing. I’m just a nice guy trying to make an honest living from my sites - I don’t have the time or energy to fight against slime like these sites who are like parasites - sucking all the goodness from what I do.
It is time some of us stood together to tackle issues like this. The latest downgrade in traffic from Google will cost me a large sum of money (six figures) over the next 12 months unless it rights itself - and if its sites like these duplicate sites that are behind it then I’m willing to fight. Is anyone else?
Update: As with Jason I’d encourage you to email Skweezer’s CEO and be removed you can reach them at kperkins@gwcorp.net and cc bkendall@gwcorp.net (thanks to Jason for those email addresses).
Written on December 29th, 2004 at 11:12 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers to Visit US in 2005?
There is a chance that I might be in the US in June for a few weeks for holiday and maybe a little connecting with some bloggers if possible. We’re toying with the idea of New York, LA, Washington and maybe even Boston.
I know a lot of you are from the US and so I’d love to hear your suggestions on destinations, things to see and do and most importantly cheap places to stay which won’t suck all our worthless little Aussie dollars out of our wallet!
I’d also like to meet some of you - although we’ll have to work out a way of not completely dominating our holiday with enternetuserss! So if you’re based in the US and would like to meet, or you have any suggestions on destinateions, let me know in comments below or via email.
PS: is there any blogger conferences planned over there at that time?
Written on December 29th, 2004 at 11:12 am by Darren Rowse
The Challenge of RSS for Marketers
I’ve just been listening to G’day World latest Podcast interview with Mark Jones, Deputy Managing Director at IDG Communications. It is a pretty long interview - but the section that I found most interesting was his grappling with RSS feeds and Blogging as a Magazine publisher.
It is fascinating to hear both the excitement about the technology but also the frustration (wrong word?) with finding a way to measure and monetize it. One of the interesting threads of the conversation was how RSS is impacting email newsletters.
Traditionally people would subscribe to newsletters and information would be sent to them by marketers who know who they are, where they live, their age etc.
With RSS there are similarities (ie it is a permission based method of communicating information) - however the challenge comes when analyzing who is reading it. With RSS gives readers almost complete anonymity and puts the power back in the hand of the reader in terms of when and how they access the information.
This brings all kinds of difficulties for monetizing this exchange of information. Will advertisers be willing to sponsor RSS feeds when all they know is the total number of those subscribing to them? No more demographics which has been key in raising sponsorship for newsletters.
Written on December 29th, 2004 at 09:12 am by Darren Rowse
How Obvious is your Blog’s Topic?
Can your readers identify what your blog is about quickly?
SEO Scoop has a good basic tip on making the topic of your posts obvious as a method of optimizing your page. I would extend this tip to the front page of your blog also.
‘Go to a page on your website that you are Actively promoting but are having trouble ranking. Have your mother or grandmother or some non-techy friend look at the page. Give them only about 5 seconds to glance at it. Now close the browser and ask the person what the main topic of the page was. If they can give you the correct answer, give yourself a pat on the back. If they give the wrong answer, or just have no idea, you need to go back and do some more work on that page.’
It’s not rocket science - but its very true. So often I’ve been asked to look at blog to give advice and have found them to be so cluttered and complicated that its taken me concerted effort to even work out what they are about.
It is confession time - I’m a very lazy web surfer. If I go to a page and have to do work to understand what it is about then I generally leave within a few seconds. However if I can quickly ascertain the nature of the site and am engaged within the first few seconds I’m likely to stay a while and even come back.
Written on December 28th, 2004 at 10:12 pm by Darren Rowse
56 Directories To Submit Your Blog To
Search Engines are perhaps the most popular source of traffic for most of our blogs - however its also worth working on other sources for traffic to supplement what Google and Yahoo sends your way. Directories are also a useful source of traffic so ‘Text Link Brokers’ provide this useful list of 56 Directories To Submit Your Blog To. Most of them charge a fee to to submit to - but some of them are completely free.
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