Written on April 24th, 2005 at 11:04 am by Darren Rowse
Pro Blogger Qualities - Open Mike
What would be your top 5 qualities for a Pro Blogger to have (in order of preference)?
Discuss below in comments if you like or write about it on your own blog and leave a link below.
Written on April 24th, 2005 at 04:04 am by Darren Rowse
Google’s Record Earnings and the Blogger
With the recent reports of Google’s massive surge in profits ($369million) for the first quarter of 2005 I can’t help but wonder how much of it is due to bloggers like us.
Of course its a little arrogant of us to take all the credit - after-all they do have a few good income earners out there that are not blogging related - but a large part of their earnings is obviously from Adsense which is increasingly appearing on every second blog. This ABC News article says that most of the income is from text ads:
‘Google makes virtually all of its money from the text-based ads that are tied to online search requests. The company gets paid each time one of the links are clicked on Google’s home page or hundreds of other sites that display the ads.
The text-based ads, which are priced using an online auction system, are becoming more expensive. Advertisers bid an average of $1.75 per click in March, a 6 percent increase from February, according to Fathom Online, a research firm.’
Interesting. $1.75 per click is the average earning? I wonder how much of that $1.75 per click goes into the publisher’s pocket? If my 20 blogs are anything to go by we’re not getting much of it.
Of course no one really knows (outside of Google) what percentage goes to advertisers (or even if we all get the same revenue share as one another) but it does make you wonder how it gets split up - I wonder when the day will come when a Google employee is convinced to spill the beens and leak that kind of information.
Looking at my own Adsense stats for the first quarter - I’d say I’m doing ok. Whilst I didn’t have a six fold increase in what I earned from Google I did have a 300% increase in monthly earnings from January to March. Not a bad return (although the poor figures at the end of December make it look a little more impressive than it actually was).
In a semi related idea - wouldn’t it be fun if instead of paying cash to publishers that Google issued stock options!?
Written on April 23rd, 2005 at 02:04 pm by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Taglines
Thanks for all those who submitted ideas for a new tagline for this blog. As a number of your advised - the ‘Helping Bloggers Earn Money’ line is probably worth keeping - it sums the site up in so many ways and to change it would be to go against my own advice to make it clear what you’re blog is about to new visitors.
Having said that - some of the suggestions were very good and I’ll use them in different ways. I’m thinking of putting a rotating quote from readers on the side bar at some stage - also some of them would make excellent T-Shirts (but would anyone want to buy one?). I thought I’d highlight the suggestions made here - for a bit of fun. Feel free to add more in comments.
Here they are:
Danger Stevens suggested:
- enternetusers - adsense can buy coffee
- enternetusers - lighting a fire under your non-blogging ass
- enternetusers - explaining blogosphere acronyms since 2004
- enternetusers - because $1.23 a day is a good start
Uffe suggested:
- enternetusers - online goldmine
David Strommer suggested:
- enternetusers.net - Show me the Money!
Jon suggested:
- “enternetusers.net - Blogging for Money”
- “enternetusers.net - On the Money”
jim suggested:
- enternetusers.net - Enriching Bloggers
- enternetusers.net - Helping Bloggers Help Themselves
Duncan suggested:
- enternetusers: even in bleak city you to can make a quid online
- enternetusers: the best way of dealing with the rise in interest rates
- enternetusers: money isn’t everything, but it did help me buy my house
- enternetusers: why should Google keep all their money?
Jarkko suggested:
- ‘The harder you blog, the luckier you get’ (adapting Plato)
- ‘Always blog right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest’ (Mark Twain)
Nicole Simon suggested:
- enternetusers - making passionated bloggers even better’
Written on April 23rd, 2005 at 10:04 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers has left the Building
Monday is a public holiday here in Australia (and New Zealand) - its ANZAC day where we remember the troops that have died over the years from our countries in war. Its a pretty massive holiday here in Australia - getting bigger every year.
I’m headed down the coast with some friends for a couple of days - back on Sunday night in time to go to the football on Monday.
So talk amongst yourselves on some of the previous posts if you wish to get a enternetusers fix while I’m gone. There will also be a couple of posts which I’ve already written go off over the next 48 hours to watch out for.
Otherwise - have a good weekend. The enternetusers has left the building.
Written on April 23rd, 2005 at 08:04 am by Darren Rowse
Does Professional Blogging = Non InterActive Blogging?
I’m always fascinated by the approach that different bloggers take when it comes to interacting with their readers and other blogs. I’m not going to name names but this week I’ve had a number of email correspondences with editors/owners of three medium to large blogs (bigger than any of mine) that have highlighted the variety of approaches that people take to this.
In each case I’d emailed them to notify them of stories that related to their blogs tipping them off to a development that I thought was relevant to their blogs - I included a short statement summing up the story and a link back to where I’d posted about it. I don’t normally do this with many bloggers - but all three ask for such tips on their blogs with links to contact forms or email addresses to help us to do so (I’ll qulaify now that none of these blogs are on the topic of blogging - its unlikely that anyone who regularly reads this blog has anything to do with any of these).
So how were my tips received?
• Blog number 1 - had an automatic reply that emailed me an acknowledgment of my tip, thanking me and letting me know that they read all such tips but that they receive too many emails to reply to all. I heard nothing more from them but they posted the story with a link back to my blog (and two others who had submitted the same story).
• Blog number 2 - emailed back a personal thank you from the editor who explained that they already had the story and were posting about it with another source. He thanked me for the tip and asked that I keep submitting them as it was tips like mine that kept his blog a cutting edge blog.
• Blog number 3 - emailed back asking me to remove him from my email list because he gets too many emails each day. He told me he follows my blog via RSS and doesn’t want to be barraged with my emails.
Now before I go on, I’ll admit to some frustration with Blog number 3, I’ve tried to build a relationship with this blog for months by linking to them, asking how I can help them with their stories better, seeking to work with them etc. My reasons for doing so are partly selfish ones - it would be to my advantage to have a positive relationship - but they are partly genuinely wanting to connect and build them up because I think they do a great job in their niche and I’d like to support what they do.
I do understand the demands that this blogger must face - their blog is popular, read by many thousands each day and must get a lot of ‘tips’ from people like myself. The demands are great upon them and it must be frustrating on some levels.
However I’m also a little shocked by the response. Partly because the tone of the email was so blunt (bordering on rude) - but partly because one of the things I love about blogging is that for the most part bloggers are so willing to share information, work together and build relationships. Even the fiercest of competitors in a niche often work together in co-operation for the mutual good of both.
I’ve been pondering Blog number 3’s response for the past 24 hours - waiting for my initial reaction to subside before I posted something i’d regret. I’m still a little peeved but most of the sting of it has gone (life’s too short).
The concern that I have is that as Entrepreneurial blogging continues to grow that exchanges like the one I had this week will become more and more common. I don’t say that because its happening regularly to me (99% of my interactions with other bloggers are warm and engaging) but I worry that as the pressure of running a business increases that some bloggers will sacrifice some of what blogging was built on - community, relationship, generosity and transparency - in order to build their businesses.
I’ll be honest and say that I’ve been tempted to do this myself (and may have actually responded like Blogger 3 also at times). As my blogs have grown over the past few months that I’ve had a lot more requests from other bloggers for wanting to connect, work together, ask questions or give tips. I live with a growing tension that I cannot possibly respond to everyone who emails and still keep the quality of my blogging up - I feel Blogger 3’s frustration some days.
However I don’t believe that just because blogging has become a business for me that I have to suddenly switch into non-interActive mode. It is the one on one and personal contact that blogging is built on that is a key to its further success and growth. Its also a strong belief of mine that in addiction to being rude, to react like Blog 3 is also not a good business move. Guess what the chances of them getting links from me are in future? Yes I’m not that important to them, but take this approach with enough bloggers and readers and you’ll start to see the results of your aloofness.
As Professional Bloggers I’d like to hope that we can live and grapple with the tension between running businesses and keeping the values of blogging alive and that we can answer the question of whether Professional Blogging = Non InterActive Blogging with a resounding NO.
What do you think?
Written on April 22nd, 2005 at 05:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Google is Updating Page Rank - Future Page Rank Tool
The word on the street from those who watch such things is that Google are currently doing a Page Rank update. These things tend to take a day or two to sort themselves out but there are a few tools that can help you work out what your page rank might end up at. Here is one such tool from SEO Chat.
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If this is an accurate measure I’m pretty happy because it indicates that enternetusers.net has finally been given a page rank and goes from a PR of 0 to a PR of 6.
Update: There are a few discrepancies using this tool by the looks of things. You might also like to check your page rank using Page Rank Check or Data Centre Check.
Written on April 22nd, 2005 at 01:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Guess the Blog Topic - Topic Revealed
The challenge was to Guess the Topic of the Blog simply by viewing the last month’s statistics.
The guesses began honing in on the right answer almost immediately with two bloggers actually suggesting the right topic within hours of the competition starting.
Congratulations to Jamie and PFBlog who both hit the nail on the head but suggesting the blog could be about American Idol.
The Blog in question is American Idol Blog which is part of the wider idolblog.com network of blogs dedicated to three idol shows (Australian Idol, American Idol and New Zealand Idol).
The idolblog phenomenon started back in November of 2003 when two friends of mine, Rachel and Regan, in New Zealand saw what happened when I started blogging about the first Australian Idol series on one of my personal blogs. My posts generated massive visitors as I did weekly opinion pieces on the show.
Rachel and Regan started to dream of a blog that would be solely dedicated to the idol shows and started idolblog up in the lead up to the first NZ idol series. They started the blog on another domain but were asked to move it by the producers of NZ idol (the start of the show being quite difficult with them). Luckily I had already registered idolblog.com and they were easily able to swap it over (if only I’d negotiated a % cut of earnings in return for the domain instead of just gifting it to them!).
The blog was a massive success and Rachel and Regan became quite famous in NZ, regularly appearing on television, radio and in News Papers as experts on the show. Idolblog became something of a household name and their traffic towards the end of the series got quite out of control large with 8000 visitors a day.
The site is a combination of blog commentaries of each show, news and opinion pieces as well as a very Active forum area (idol fans are obsessive). They also run very popular polls which are usually pretty good indications of who will be eliminated each week.
The next idol series that they covered was Australian Idol’s second series when they ran a similar site with some Aussie writers commentating on the show. Traffic grew into the 11,000+ per day range.
More recently they’ve been blogging on American Idol. Not actually living in the US has presented some challenges for Rachel and Regan but as you can see by their traffic graph they’re actually doing pretty well with the show still a few weeks out from the grand final when traffic usually peaks.
Income Streams - Idolblog has a number of income streams including Adsense, private ads, impression based ads, affiliate programs with Amazon and iTunes. I suspect that the next season of NZ idol (just announced) will see the blog attract some very decent advertising through ad agencies who watched the site’s success last year and will want to capitalize on it. Idolblog was generally accepted by most fans of the show as a better resource than the official site.
Technical Specs - Idolblog utilizes PMachine to run it.
Idolblog.com is a wonderful example of what can be done using blogs to build community around a common obsession. It’s also a great example of how to build profile using a blog - Rachel and Regan are now well positioned to start other NZ blogs of a similar nature and have successfully launched partnerships with a number of other TV programs and production companies to build blogs.
Written on April 22nd, 2005 at 10:04 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Networks and How they Split the Cash
Fascinating article over at oir.org on how editorial lines are blurring as bloggers’ salaries are tied to traffic. I’m not sure how I missed it when it first came out - but I’m glad Duncan mentioned it.
The article looks at a number of models that blog networks and multiple author blogs are using to pay authors and focuses upon the growing trend to tie payments to traffic levels.
Gawker has a complicated sounding system with a ‘per post’ payment and then a bonus system that is based upon traffic levels. The system rewards increases in traffic but sounds a little stressful for editors. One of Gawker Media’s writers comments on the system there:
‘According to this writer, a blogger with high traffic growth can “accrue a lot of potential money.” The problem is that the bonus is “banked” and the entire sum can’t be taken out in one month, leaving it to drop as the traffic drops in future months. To make it even more complicated, traffic bonuses are weighted according to a multiplier depending on the subject matter of the blog.
“There’s a maximum withdrawal per month,” the writer said. “So you could actually make $50,000 in traffic bonuses per month, but you could only take out $5,000 or so. But by the time a few months have gone by, your traffic could have trended downward, and it could have eaten up the traffic bonus you had earned. … It makes sense for Nick, but it makes all of us really uneasy.”‘
Weblogs Inc on the other hand takes a simpler approach. After testing a 50/50 split system with authors they’ve moved to a flat fee system where authors are paid a negotiated amount per month (between $100 to $3000).
‘”We’ve separated the concept of pay and traffic as I think it can be very dangerous to link the two,” Calacanis told me via e-mail. “The biggest problem with traditional media is that they are always chasing ratings, which is an extension of their 10Q [earnings report]. People are coming to blogs because they are NOT playing the ratings game! What difference does it make if a blog gets 10% or 20% traffic [spikes] if it alienates the core audience by playing the ratings game?”‘
Jason Calacanis says that the money making part is his responsibility at Weblogs Inc and he’d rather his authors spend time writing quality content rather than chasing the big story. Having said this I’m sure the level of payments (there is a big variation between $100 and $3000) at Weblogs Inc is somehow tied to traffic - even if indirectly in accordance with the earnings level of the blog concerned - no doubt other factors like numbers of posts etc are tied into agreements.
As an aside (and not mentioned in the article) are other networks which all seem to take variations on the above approaches.
9rules network (which is in the process of launching) - hasn’t made it clear exactly how it will pay bloggers but indicates that bloggers take the majority of earnings.
Shiny Media - again I’m unsure of their model and despite some serious searching on Google am yet to find anything. They do seem to be open to offers for bloggers to join - but no mention of compensation. I’m hoping to catch up with their team in London in June so might get more of an idea then.
Creative Weblogging is another network who share revenue with their bloggers - their FAQ page states that the split is 60/40 - with authors taking the 40% cut.
Back to the article - its another fascinating glimpse into the world of the bigger networks which as per usual leaves me with mixed feelings of inspiration and relief. Inspired by the levels that can be achieved with blogging and relieved that I’m not the one doing all that negotiating with authors and can simply just ‘Blog On’ and know that at this point 100% of my earnings end up in my own pocket (less the half I have to give the government - but that’s another issue).
I’d love to hear your opinions and experience in working with networks as bloggers. I know that many of you currently blog on one of the above networks (and others) and I’d be interested to hear your opinion on what the best method might be.
Written on April 22nd, 2005 at 09:04 am by Darren Rowse
Business Week Starts Blogging
Welcome to Blogging Business Week.
Steve Rubel points to their new blog and and articlethey’re running on Blogs which certainly puts blogging in a favorable light.
Written on April 22nd, 2005 at 09:04 am by Darren Rowse
Adbrite and Feedster Announce Partnership over Blog Ads
It looks like Adbrite (an ad network) and Feedster (an RSS Search Engine) have decided to team up to provide ads to bloggers.
They’ll be offering three options for running ads on your blog:
- Ads directly on your blog
- Ads in your RSS Feed
- Podcast Advertising (not available yet).
It is a pretty smart move on both party’s parts. Whilst bloggers could already access the first option with Adbrite (I’ve been using them for a year or more on some of my blogs) this partnership will put Adbrite into contact with a whole new range of publishers that the previously had no access to. It will also be one of the first options for RSS advertising - beating some of the major ad networks to the punch.
Found via Blog Herald
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Active Apparel website 1cecilia28
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