Written on April 9th, 2005 at 11:04 am by Darren Rowse
MSN Spaces and Advertising
I find it interesting to see that MSN Spaces is now adding advertising to their blogger’s blogs. In a way if makes sense - they have 4.5 million users, even if it was just the users themselves who saw the ads thats significant exposure - let alone all the readers.
I’m surprised however not to see much reaction from bloggers about this yet. When I first heard the news I thought that there might be a bit of an outcry from MSN spaces users who resisted the idea of MSN using their blogs to make money for themselves without giving them anything but a free space to write. Perhaps I’ve missed these sorts of blogger’s posts - has anyone seen any? Update: in digging around I’ve now found a few but not as many as i’d have expected.
I’m also a little intrigued by MSN’s business model in comparison to Blogger’s (owned by Google) who used to have their Adsense ads on every free Blogger blog but who removed these ads about 18 months ago for some reason. I’ve always wondered why they removed these ads - Did they just not work? Were bloggers protesting too much? Do the search boxes that they now put on blogger blogs pay more? Or do they hope that every blogger in their program will add their own Adsense ads and blog better and smarter if they give them the chance to earn a share of the revenue.
I’ll be interested to see how this strategy goes for MSN Spaces and am especially interested to see if they offer a paid version where bloggers can opt out of the ads or even a system of sharing revenue on advertising with bloggers using some sort of system like Adsense.
Written on April 9th, 2005 at 03:04 am by Darren Rowse
The advantages of Different Types of Traffic
WorkBoxers writes a great post comparing Search Engine Traffic to Daily Visitors, Which Is Better? I agree with Scrivs again on this one - its a ‘both’ thing - both types of readers have their value to your blog. You can successfully target either one exclusively or even both depending upon what the goal of your site is.
Targeting Search Engine Readers - For example when we ran the Olympics blog last year we were not really too interested in loyal daily readers (apart from the two weeks of the game themselves) - we did have a few of them but the vast majority of the 2 million readers we got that month came in via Google. Whilst the loyal readers were great and added something special to the site they were in the minority and not our main focus. As Scrivs say its the SE readers that most believe click on ads more than loyal readers so this group of readers can be quite rewarding.
Targeting Daily Readers - However on the other hand enternetusers is a different kettle of fish - I love my readership here and am working my butt off to make them feel at home. The purpose of this blog is not heaps of one off search engine traffic because I want to journey with people, learn from them, teach them, grow with them and hopefully built mutually beneficial relationships with them. The SE traffic is nice but its secondary to my primary focus of loyal readers. If one day I do write an e-book (thanks for all the encouragement to do so) its the loyal reader who is more likely to buy it than the SE reader, the same is true for consulting work - so loyal readers can be profitable too.
Targeting Both - Other blogs that I run like Digital Photography Blog are more a combination of both - the large amount of SE traffic is great - it is responsible for most of the income I earn there - however its the smaller (growing) group of loyal daily readers that provide the life for the blog. They link to it from their sites, they contribute news, comments and even write a few articles for it. They don’t directly earn me big dollars as they are pretty blind to the ads but they help to create a site that attracts the SE traffic.
Another Category - Link Followers - As an aside I’d add a third type of reader to Scrivs two categories - its a slightly different group of readers that have their own distinct characteristics - they are the readers that come to your site via links from other sites. I guess I’m talking not only about those one off referals from fellow blogs but particularly those that come en-mass from large sites like Slashdot. I’ve written on this topic before but let me recap quickly on this type of traffic.
Links and the ensuing traffic from sites like Slashdot can be quite a rush, last night they sent me 40,000 visitors in a few hours - however its worth keeping in mind that this kind of traffic doesn’t click on ads in as great a numbers as SE traffic. it has also been known to crash servers and cause sites to slow down heaps (so beware its a ride not for the feint hearted).
This type of traffic is not so great for clicking on ads (although even at lower CTR the weight of numbers makes it lucrative) but it is great for a number of other reasons. Firstly the initial link from a site like Slashdot is quite powerful (they have a page rank of 9). Secondly there is usually a second wave of link ups after such a deluge of traffic - a small percentage of those numbers have their own blogs and sites and will link up to your post also which again helps with your SEO. Lastly a small number of these readers will stick around and become loyal readers of your site if you’re smart and work hard at hooking them in.
Interested in your opinions and experiences with different types of traffic.
Update: Michael also picks up Scriv’s post and writes his own at Making Money from Content Sites.
Written on April 9th, 2005 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse
Pay Per Click Advertising Costs Increase by 9% in March
This article is good news for those of us who are publishers for pay per click advertising programs like Google’s Adsense with advertisers paying 9% more for keywords than they were earlier in the year.
‘PRICES FOR PAID SEARCH LISTINGS rebounded in March, rising 9 percent to an average of $1.75 a click, according to the most recent Fathom Online Keyword Price Index, released today.
The average cost of keywords–which had fallen during the first two months of the year, after rising steadily from September through the holidays–now exceeds last December’s $1.70 by about 3 percent. Matt McMahon, Fathom Online’s executive vice president-corporate development, attributed the upswing in keyword pricing to seasonal shifts in ad spending.
While some industries’ keywords went up in price more than others, none of the categories tracked by Fathom Online fell last month. Telecom/wireless terms gained the most ground, growing by 23 percent to 95 cents a click–although this figure is less than the $1.09 per click that the category garnered last year….’
Read more at Search Advertising Costs Surge In March
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 09:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Blogger Supports Comment Spammers?
Duncan from the Blog Herald is on a Comment Spammer Hunt with two of his late posts - (here and here). Go Duncan Go!
Following the links in his posts I found a post at SEOBook (http://www.seobook.com/archives/000776.shtml) which left me feeling disturbed. Aaron writes it with qualifications that comment spam brings ‘negative 1000 karma points’ but he links to sites that sell comment spam technology and in reading his post I can’t help but feel he’s almost promoting it as a viable option for Search Engine Optimization.
I’m really shocked by this - I’ve been a reader of SEOBook for some time and have even linked to it in the past because of some of Aaron’s better posts - but this latest post disturbs me. As a blogger, as a reputable SEO operator - I would have thought that Aaron would have taken a different approach to this post.
His post title leaves me wondering if he’s actually hoping to get ranked well in Search Engines:
‘Cheap Blog Spamming Script, Blog Spam Comment Submission Software, & Lists of Spamable Blogs’
You can imagine what kind of traffic he is going to get to this post. Then he links to the sources of comment spamming scripts (giving those searching for the technology what they want) and building the page ranking of the comment spammers pages.
He then goes on to list the ‘quality features’ of the spamming script which includes - ‘autosubmit to unlimited sites’ and the ability to extract 1000 URLs to spam to in 20 seconds.
He compares the price of the script to Yahoo Directory submission and points out that with the comment spam technique you end up with loads more links.
Then he asks people who try the scripts to give him feedback. He writes
‘I also think there are many valuable techniques to the art of effective blog spam. Some people probably are better at getting their spam to stick than others are. Its all about relevancy and providing useful content. hehehe :)’
Aaron has some comments challenging this post in comments - I am one of them. Yes he softly says that comment spam is bad (in a vague way) but the overall tone of his post says otherwise in my mind and is irresponsible and frankly makes me sick as someone who has spent many hundreds of hours over the past few years deleting and working against spammers to keep my blogs free of the filth that they spread.
I detest comment spam for many reasons - they are parasites who suck the goodness out of sites and exploiting the hard work of others. Many of their work is in promoting what I consider to be junky sites, many of which are utter filth in every sense of the word. Anyone who supports comment spammers should be treated with suspicion in my mind. I’m disappointed with Aaron and won’t be gracing his site with my presence in future.
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 08:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Great Blogging Day
I love days like today when it comes to blogging - where a lot of hard work, planning and a bit of luck comes together for a satisfying day’s work. The past 24 hours have been quite satisfying on many levels:
- Last night I spoke at a seminar with a number of business people about my blogging. Some great opportunities have emerged for some consulting.
- On getting home from the seminar I found that one of my smaller blogs that averages around 500 visitors per day got a link from Slashdot which in the past 20 hours has brought 50,000 visitors to it.
- I spent a little time this afternoon with a business person and friend who I am pitching an idea to which I’m really excited about. It’s not just a money making idea which is what particularly excites me - it has the potential to have significant impact upon the lives of many in a sustainable business model. I’ll share more on this as it comes to be (or not).
- With the funeral of the Pope tonight that blog is obviously doing some pretty reasonable traffic and has generated quite a bit of interest from around the world.
So all in all its been a big day. Big in traffic, big in earnings (it was my biggest ever with Adsense) big in dreaming and ideas and big in connections with others. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 05:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Hustle, Passion and Resiliency
Another good post over at Jason’s Blog particularly this bit:
‘The older I get the more I realize that business is about three very basic things:
1. Hustle
2. Passion
3. Resiliency
You have those things it really doesn’t matter what the idea is… you can change your ideas all day long, in fact evolving is what you’re supposed to do in business. However, you can’t substitute hustle, passion, or resiliency.’
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 03:04 pm by Darren Rowse
When Blog Competition is Good
A number of people have asked me in the past 24 hours whether I feel threatened when a new blog starts up with the same topic as one of mine.
It is an interesting question and one that I usually answer in a number of ways.
Firstly I admit that I do feel a bit threatened. I think its a fairly natural feel some anxiety, threat or worry when someone else steps on what you perceive as your patch. I feel these emotions when I first see new blogs set up that have complete or partial overlap with a topic I’m writing about. It worries me from time to time that there is only one top ranking in the Search Engines for a keyword that I might be targeting - in a sense my ‘competition’ and I are in a contest for such positioning. The more sites on the same topic the harder it is to get to the top of the pile.
Many people respond to such competition in a negative way. In response to the threat they tend to either:
- ignore the competition (and hope they’ll go away)
- attack their competition (discredit and try to undermine them)
- worry themselves silly by monitoring their every move and attempting to copy everything they do in order to keep them covered
These responses to a competitive blog or website coming onto your patch are somewhat understandable - but in my opinion none of them are particularly helpful.
To ignore your competition is stupid - burying your head in the sand when there are others around making strategic moves doesn’t make much sense. Attacking your competition might work if you have reason to but in most cases you’ll probably just disillusion your readership and promote your competition. The third ‘worrying’ option can make you lose your identity as a site and wastes a lot of energy in defending your position rather than growing as a blog.
So how do I respond? Well after a little while of feeling threatened I generally try to snap myself out of the negative frame of mind and force myself to see it as an opportunity. You see I’m slowly learning that competition can actually be an enriching and life giving thing on a multitude of levels if you approach it with the right attitude. Let me mention a few ways:
Competition Raises Standards and Quality - There is nothing like a new competing blog to keep your quality of blogging high. Just look at any monopoly situation when competition enters the market. Usually in such situations the site who has had the monopoly gets a real shake up and wakes up from its complacent state and improves its services and products. It reminds me of when I used to play tennis - when I played a poor opposition I quite often found myself playing poorly but when I played a better player than myself I was usually amazed by how my own standards and abilities rose to match theirs.
Competition Raises an Industry’s Profile and brings Expansion of Markets - Whilst competition might compete with you for your current readership it might actually help expand the profile of the topic you’re writing about and expand the demand for information. Competition can create buzz on a topic which all will benefit from.
Competition as Partnership - One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned in blogging in the past two years is that my competition can actually be my biggest partners. Instead of taking a hostile position with a new blog on your topic why not introduce yourself, welcome them to ‘the neighborhood’ and build a relationship with them over time. This is in your best interests (and theirs) for numerous reasons including:
• Sharing Information - I have a number of competitors that I share information with freely. If I get a scoop I let them know asap. What goes around usually comes around and you’ll soon find them sharing hot tips with you too. I also give quite a bit of time to helping a few of my main competitors optimize their sites with their advertising. Again this may seem stupid but I believe its paid off many times over as they have given me a lot of advice back - in the process we’ve both improved our earnings significantly.
• Linking and Promotion - I promote some of my competitors so much that it can get a little silly. I link to their articles, mention them in newsletters, recommend their sites to readers when I know they have the information being searched for and I try to be generous with my outbound links. Again I am not just doing this in the hope that they’ll reciprocate (although its nice when they do) you see I believe that in doing so I’m also helping my readers by showing them to the best information available. I find many readers come to my sites because I’ll genuinely help them whether on my own site or someone else’s.
• Relevant Incoming Links - every Search Engine Optimization expert you’ll ever find will tell you that the best way to build your own site’s ranking in search engines is to have incoming links from quality sites on the same topics as yours. Who has these sites? The answer is pretty obvious - your competitors. In a round about way everyone helps everyone - by linking to them you increase the ranking of their site which in tern increases the power of their links coming back at you. All win (usually).
• Relevant Outgoing Links - I also believe that where your outbound links point can also play a part in how some Search Engines rank your blog. If your links go to relevant pages you are seen as more of an authority than if you don’t link to any of them.
• Credibility in the Industry - The best way to build your own credibility in an industry is when your competitors start recommending that their own readers check you out. It might take time to get to this point in a relationship with another blogger - but it can be a very powerful thing.
This whole notion of competition being good is a little hard to get one’s head around - building up your competitors is a freaky thing to do and to be honest can be a little risky (if you find they don’t play ball) - but in most cases I’ve found it to be a powerful thing that has strengthened not just their site but mine.
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 03:04 pm by Darren Rowse
$1,000 a day on Adsense
Jason Calacanis is talking Adsense earnigns again. I’m a bit surprised that a publisher like Jason is revealing his Adsense CTR and CPM figures so explicitly post. Not because I’m offended by it or anything (I actually find its pretty interesting) but because its against Google’s rules. (’m not going to refer to his actual figures here in case he decides to remove them later.)
A few people have asked me to comment on his CTR levels which I always hesitate to do mainly because comparing CTR from page to page or even blog to blog is so difficult to do.
Whilst I can look at the CTR he’s mentioned and see its at the lower end of what the range of my blogs do there are so many factors that can contribute to it ranging from positioning on the page, to design of ads, to the amount of other outbound links you have on your page (both within your blog or to other sites), to the topic of the blog that it is almost useless to compare one blog’s performance to another one.
What I’m more interested in with my CTR is comparing one blog’s figures over time - this (in my opinion) is the main usefulness of the statistic and I track my CTR in this way on all my blogs.
Jason talks about how they’ve optimized their Adsense ads the past few days which has seen a good rise in their earnings - up from $600 per day (just a week or so ago) to $1000 per day. Its amazing what a tweak or two can do for people. Yesterday I helped one person with their ads and they increased their CTR from less than 1% to over 5% with one small adjustment - quite amazing what a change of colors or position can do! I’m not going to go into what the strategy for doing this is because its all in my Adsense category already and I’d just be going over the same old stuff.
Update - Of course within minutes of posting this Jason has removed his CTR and CPM figures as I went over to leave a comment suggesting he did.
What still concerns me however is that in his comments others have followed his example and are revealing their own figures which could get them in trouble with Adsense.
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 11:04 am by Darren Rowse
Australian Blogger Get Media Attention - Is this as Good as it Gets?
A few days ago when I was lamenting the fact that Australian Bloggers don’t get enough local press coverage I was hoping that it might cause some reporters to do a feature or two - but I wasn’t expecting the article that the Herald Sun published today which highlighted a post on my personal blog that was written over a year ago titled I’m Pro SPAM! (click to enlarge the article - no online version that I can find). I laughed so hard when I saw this - I guess any publicity is better than nothing.
This goes to show that often its not the posts that you work hardest on and that are about your passions that get picked up by others (including other bloggers and journalists). Its actually something worth thinking about as an actual strategy for your blog.
Whilst we’d all like to get attention for our serious well thought through posts its often the gimmick post that get people interested in a site - thats why polls, quizzes, awards, parodies etc can actually be quite effective at hooking people into your site - in the hope that a percentage of them will read your other material and become loyal readers. One of the main reasons my early blogs got a lot of inbound links (and built their page rank) was because of posts like this one which people linked to in their droves.
So consider lightening up your blog occasionally with an original gimmick or two and you might just get some quality media attention (sarcasm) like this one too!
Thanks to Josh for the heads up about this article.
Written on April 8th, 2005 at 11:04 am by Darren Rowse
Blogging Fears - Disappearing from Search Engines
A couple of days ago I started a Blogging Fears mini-series and talked about Getting Hacked. Here’s another - Disappearing from the Search Engines
As many of you know I’ve been there - it sucks and has the ability to almost completely cripple a blog that relies upon SE traffic. If you’re relying heavily on search engine traffic for most of your posts - be warned - it could happen to you.
Advice: Diversify your blogging interests. Develop a variety of blogs on different topics and domains. Look at non blogging income streams or related blogging income such as consulting, books, speaking etc. Work on generating traffic from other non Search Engine sources like other sites and newsletters to loyal readers. Even consider keeping or getting a part time ‘real’ job until you know you can survive on your blogging income even if the Search Engines abandon you.
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