Written on June 30th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 11:06 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense add Referral Program Channels
AdSense publishers who use referrals heavily will be happy to know that AdSense have added the ability to track referral results with channels. This has been a long time coming and something that I’ve heard quite a few complaints about.
URL channels don’t work so you’ll have to set up custom channels instead. This means going through your blogs and changing the referral unit’s code to do this but in my opinion it’s worth it if you’re running the same referral products on multiple blogs as you’ll be much better informed about what is and isn’t working.
More information at Have a track attack with new referral channels (Inside AdSense Blog)
Written on June 30th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Mistakes
Brian at Copyblogger has a nice post over at his blog titled Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog? in which he unpacks some common mistakes of bloggers and gives some ‘prescriptions’. His mistakes (he writes more under each):
5. Do you write for search engines instead of people?
4. Are you doing what everyone else is doing with their blog in your niche?
3. Do you agonize over writing a great post, only to slap on some hastily-concocted post title that all but guarantees hardly anyone will read?
2. Do you hope to make money with your blog, and yet rattle on excessively about your personal life, your dog, your goldfish, and your recent appendectomy?
1. Do you use user-unfriendly RSS options that you bury at the bottom of the page, and leave out an email subscription option altogether?
The post reminds me a little of mine on 10 Steps to Guarantee You’ll Never Make more than 0.14 cents per month with AdSense.
Written on June 30th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Aaron Brazell
The Ethics of Profile Peddling
Profile Peddling. I don’t know that it’s really a word but I don’t really honestly know what else to call it. It is the practice of opening up accounts at supporting services such as Flickr or MySpace in order to funnel traffic to a blog or website. It’s been a common practice of search engine optimizing firms for a long time.
SEOMoz writes on this topic today and raises an interesting ethical question: Is it unethical to use this kind of “profile peddling” to enhance a bloggers own profile? The question is further complicated when you think that an unhappy competitor could completely infiltrate your web presence with negative publicity by using profile peddling to funnel negative publicity your way.
What do you think?
Written on June 29th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 03:06 pm by Darren Rowse
The Impact of AdSense Ad Positioning
Seth Godin has written a post on SquidBlog about their experiment at Squidoo with moving AdSense ads from the right hand column to a more central position. As you’d expect, and as we’ve talked about here at enternetusers many times, the click throughs went up significantly (it tripled).
But that’s not the only benefit that Seth noticed:
‘But the surprising result of the AdSense move is this: content-based clicks went UP, not down. I think I understand why, and it goes to my third point, which is a hunch, not based on data:
Having competitive products in your AdSense ads actually helps you, not hurts you.
When people get to a website, a whole bunch of things have to happen before they take out their wallets and buy something. A lot of those things have to do with trust and meaning and understanding and confidence. The vernacular of your site, the story it tells, the way it makes me feel (insecure? safe? confident? panicked? stupid? engaged?) is probably the single most important element in turning a stranger into a friend before they have a chance of becoming a customer.
So, Google AdSense ads across the top increase confidence. They’re recognizable and safe for the surfer. They make it clear that there are alternatives. They demonstrate confidence on the part of the site builder….’
I think it’s an interesting lesson and I’d be interested to see if the changes they’ve noticed are sustained (sometimes once ad blindness kicks in things change again with AdSense).
I also think that this would vary from blog to blog and publisher to publisher. I find that ads have a significantly different impact upon a site both in terms of click-through, traffic, blog interaction (comments) on different sites. The key is to test and track results to see what impact they have.
Written on June 29th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
Using Digg to Improve Your Content
I’ve seen (and written) a lot of posts about how to get posts picked up by social bookmarking sites and what to do when it happens, but one of the things that has struck me recently is that another opportunity often presents itself when a site like Digg links links to a post you’ve written.
Let me use a recent example to illustrate.
Yesterday I posted a post in anticipation of 4th of July celebrations on how to photograph fireworks which was fortunate enough to get picked up by LifeHacker and as a result was Dugg heavily (or maybe it was the other way around - update - it then got BoingBoing’d - what a day - even with a large server allowance I almost went over! It might be time to upgrade that if I have any more days like this).
The most obvious benefit of this was the traffic that followed from Digg (7000 visitors in the first hour alone) as well as the secondary linkups that came as digg users blogged about the post also. It was a nice thing to wake up to.
But as I looked over the comments on the digg thread linking to my post I was reminded of another benefit of having a post exposed to tens of thousands of people. While digg users can be pretty harsh when they don’t like a post there is also an incredibly wealth of knowledge among them.
Amidst the 10,000+ people who viewed my post today - a certain percentage of them know a thing or two about photographing fireworks and a certain percentage of those people left comments on the digg post with their own suggestions, often with points that I hadn’t included on my original post.
This happens every time I’ve had a story high on digg and what I’m doing these days is to include the suggestions and tips of digg users as an update to my original posts.
You’ll see now on my fireworks post that I’ve got an ‘update’ on it with a series of quotes from digg users and a link back to the thread so that people can see who wrote them.
In doing this I not only enjoy the traffic from digg but improve the quality of the posts that I’ve written - which after-all is the ultimate goal of my blog.
Written on June 29th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 09:06 am by Darren Rowse
The Biggest Lie About Blogging
Anne Handley has been asking experienced bloggers a simple question - What’s the Biggest Lie About Blogging? - the response has been most interesting and well worth the read.
I love Jeremy’s list at the end - 40 lies in all. Here’s a few of his:
1. Blogging’s just a fad.
2. Always maintain a hostile relationship with your audience.
3. Don’t ever admit you did something wrong.
5. Don’t have a personality if you’re blogging for business.
9. Without open comments, it’s not a blog anyway.
12. Fast is better than right.
13. It’s impossible to make money blogging.
22. Competitors will steal your ideas.
23. You need to be able to write to blog.
32. Too many people are already blogging; you can’t cut through the noise.
33. You have to be an A-List blogger or there’s no point.
34. The best way to get attention is to attack, attack, attack!
36. Bloggers are good looking, funny, and are the life of any party.
Head over to Anne’s post and tell her what you think are the biggest lies about blogging.
Written on June 28th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 09:06 am by Darren Rowse
Amazon UK Test ‘Self-Optimising Links’ - Beware AdSense publishers
I’ve just noticed that Amazon UK’s Affiliate program is beta testing a new type of ad called ‘New Self-Optimising Links’.
They describe it as:
“Self-Optimising Links feature products chosen automatically based on the content of your site. To create Self-Optimising Links simply modify the template and appearance elements and copy the resulting code on to your site. With Self-Optimising Links, you do not need to chose which product, product line or even keyword that best fits a page. Our algorithm will take care of reviewing your site and selecting relevant product offerings. At present we are offering Self-Optimising Links as a BETA to our Associates.”
While this will be welcomed by heavy affiliate program users it is something to be careful of if you’re an AdSense publisher as using these ’self-optimising’ links means you’re using a contextual way of serving ads - which from my reading of AdSense breaks their TOS.
Update - speaking of Amazon and contextual ads, David just sent me an email telling me about another service that will serve Amazon affiliate ads to your blog - contextually. It’s called TicTap Contextual Ads. in short - they scan your page and find Amazon products to match. They put their own code in the fourth ad and you get the others.
As with the Amazon UK beta above keep in mind that TicTap is contextual and in it’s default mode it cannot be used with AdSense (or YPN from what I can work out). There is a way of making it non contextual according to TicTap’s FAQ page by switching off the contextual nature of the ads (similar to what Chitika did before changing their default to non contextual) - but you might want to double check with AdSense.
Written on June 28th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 06:06 am by Darren Rowse
Maintaining a Blog/Life Balance
Wendy Boswell has written a great piece over at Lifehacker on How to get things done working inside and outside the home where she talks a little about her approach to work life balance as a home based worker.
I think that what she has to say is great and would be well worth reading for most aspiring full time bloggers (and seriously addicted part time ones). It’s very easy to allow blogging to overtake one’s life - the computer just sits there in the corner of your home tempting you to come have a look at what’s happening on your blog:
- calling to you to come see who has been commenting…
- dangling the carrot of checking your latest stats…
- making you wonder how much your earnings are up to for the day…
- drawing you to it to write just one more post…
- making you nervous about whether the server is holding up after that link on digg…
There’s something quite addictive about blogging that most full time bloggers have to face at one time or another. It’s probably some mix of the allure of being the center of attention, mixed with the excitement of the chase of the story and readership, mixed with way it can open up doors to new friendship and opportunities.
But there comes a point where many bloggers need to think about creating healthy boundaries around it in order to maintain other relationships, work on our physical well being and to just have a life.
I know many bloggers don’t struggle with the work life balance in the way I’m describing (in fact some are quite the opposite to the point that life crowds out blogging) but over the last 12 months I’ve met a number of bloggers who have seriously worried me in terms of their blog obsession (”blogsession”).
Creating a healthy blog/life balance is important and for me includes:
- having days off
- taking longer vacations
- having times during the day that are set aside for family
- setting time aside for exercise
- prioritizing time for face to face interactions with people
- developing other hobbies
- setting limits on how late you’ll stay up and when you’ll go to bed
This all sounds basic common sense stuff - but as a blogger whose been close to burning himself out (and having seen a few bloggers who have) I think it’s worth saying. In addition to these things saving your sanity, relationships and health they’ll also help you to sustain your blogging.
Have you ever struggled with maintaining blog/life balance? What strategies do you have in place to keep things balanced?
Written on June 28th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
Adsense Testing Ad Units Mixing Images With Text
A number of AdSense publisher have been reporting seeign a new type of AdSense ad over the last 24 hours or so.
The ads in question seem to be happening in the narrow skyscraper ad unit (120×600) and consist of normal text ads with a 90×110 image at the top (as pictured - image source).
I’m yet to see the ads live so am not sure whether the image is an actual ad or whether they are just an attention grabber (from the screen captures they seem to be just images/attention grabbers).
IF they are just attention grabbers then I’m a little confused as previously AdSense have asked publishers to ensure that images near ads be separated from the ads with a border but now they seem to be testing putting images in ad units - and images that don’t really have any relevance to the ad itself from what I can see.
Read about these new ad formats that AdSense seem to be testing at:
- Digital Inspiration
- Dot Ref Blog
- Google Operating System Blog
- Digital Point Forum
- Webmaster World Forum
Update - it seems that these ads are also appearing in 120 x 240 ad units also.
Publishers are also telling me that the images do link to something but that they do not know what (as they are too nervous to click them as they are their own ads and don’t want to get in trouble).
Update 2 - I’ve just heard from another publisher that the images link to a separate page with a list of AdSense keywords on it. I’m not sure what this means exactly but am interested to see these ads in action.
Update 3 - Jen says these beta ad units are called vertical images and that the image acts similarly to ‘link unit’ ads.
Written on June 27th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 08:06 pm by Darren Rowse
A - Z of Professional Blogging
Just a quick note to thank everyone for their suggestions in the A - Z of Professional Blogging post earlier today. I’ve since updated the list with numerous more suggested blog tools and platforms and there are now over 130 listed. Keep your suggestions rolling in.
I’ve not added everything suggested as there are some I’m not completely sure of in terms of usefulness, relevance and recency (and a couple were emailed that I’m pretty sure are blog spam tools) but most look quite good and I’ve found a new new tools myself.
Thanks to for those who’ve linked to and bookmarked the post of different social bookmarking sites. I’ll try to keep the list up to date in the weeks and months ahead.
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