Written on June 22nd, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
How to Optimize a WordPress Blog for SEO
Thanks to Jeremy for letting me know about this excellent post on Optimizing WordPress for SEO.
It’s amazing what a few simple tweaks will do to your search engine ranking.
Once you’ve read it you might also be interested in my own post on SEO for blogs.
Written on June 22nd, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
Do you Advertise Your Blog
Do you advertise your blog?
I’ve noticed quite a few bloggers experimenting with advertising on AdWords, Adbrite (aff), BlogAds and Text Link Ads (aff) over the last few months.
Perhaps it’s a symptom of the massive increases in numbers of blogs out there competing for readers - or perhaps it’s a symptom of the increased focus on blogging with a commercial edge - or perhaps it’s a result of something else.
Whatever it is, it’s happens more and more and I’m interested to hear the experiences of those who are running ads in the hope of bring in traffic.
Here’s a few questions for you to answer (feel free to answer anonymously if you wish and to tackle one or all of them):
- Why do you advertise your blog?
- What ad programs do you use?
- What impact has it had?
- What tips would you give others wanting to do the same?
My own experience with advertising my blogs is reasonably limited.
I have experimented with using both AdWords and BlogAds - especially in the launch phase of new blogs - but have not had massive success with it to this point.
I’ll write a post in the coming days with a few tips that I’d advise bloggers wanting to advertise their blogs but would be interested to hear the experiences of those who’ve been doing it a little more seriously than I am.
Written on June 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 pm by Darren Rowse
Chitika launches Multi-Product Unit
Chitika have just announced a new ad format - the Multi-Product Unit.
Basically they are the same as single product units in operation except that they highlight 4 products at once. One is more dominant than others but if you scroll over the other products you’ll see them highlighted live in the ad unit.
Those who are already Chitika Publishers can automatically use them by just logging in and choosing the ‘468 x 180 Multi-Product Blog Banner’ unit from the ‘Select eMiniMalls Format’ drop down menu.
At this point they only come in the one size which might make it difficult for some blogs that don’t have an appropriate space but it’ll be useful for others. Hopefully they add some more sizes down the track (although it’d be hard to do small ones with space considerations).
You can test them at Chitika’s Multi-Product Unit.
PS: Links in this post are affiliate links.
Update: I’ve had a lot of emails from people asking me whether Chitika are ‘better’ than they used to be - let me give a quick response.
My advice on Chitika eMinimalls has never changed. They work brilliantly for me - they earn me a similar amount as I earn from AdSense and do especially well on any of my site’s with a product focus (gadgets especially) BUT they don’t work for everyone.
There have been a lot of “Chitika Hate” campaigns over the last few months (most of them unfair in my opinion) as a result of some problems that they had initially around auditing and one or two months when payments went out late.
Since it all ‘hit the fan’ I’ve personally not had any problems. My payments have come on time and they’ve continue to perform well. My monthly audit is still in the 10-15% range and from talking to others their audits have not really varied month to month. The amount you are audited depends upon many factors including the source of traffic.
My advice is that if you are going to give Chitika a go to go into it like any other ad program - ie with realistic expectations. To do well from it you’ll need decent traffic, you’ll need to be smart about how to place and design your ads and you’ll need a topic that relates to the products that they feature. As with all programs - I advise to enter into them expecting good things but willing to experiment with different placements and targetting to see what works best. If it works - keep tweaking it to improve your results - if it doesn’t and you’ve given it a fair run try something else.
For more on Chitika eMinimalls check out my review on them and my Chitika eMiniMall general tips and tips on how to increase CTR.
Written on June 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 09:06 am by Darren Rowse
Sexy AdSense Ads
One of the side effects of staring at blogs with ads on them all day is that I generally don’t see them any more.
But yesterday I spotted some AdSense ads on a number of sites that definately got my attention.
There’s a screen capture of one of the ads below:
There were other version on the sites that rotated through with each page impression - in each case there was an image behind the AdSense ads that made it look like the person in the image was holding the ads. Some were provocative like this one (I’m sure naked women holding ads get more attention than most) others were not.
I’ve seen similar tactics before and on each occassion they didn’t last long before AdSense either banned the site from the program or before the images around the ads just ‘disappeared’ (probably at the request of AdSense).
Today I went back to the site and they were gone - I suspect someone from AdSense had a quiet word in the publisher’s ear.
Violating the AdSense rules like this is not worth the risk. In doing so you jeopardise your potential earnings with AdSense which in the long term could be very costly.
If in doubt about what you can and can’t do with AdSense ads - simply email them and ask.
Written on June 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 04:06 am by Darren Rowse
How much Traffic does Being Ranked 1 on Google Bring?
Ever wonder how much traffic the top keyword position on Google can bring in on a keyword?
Chris Smith sheds a little light on the topic and gives an example of one site he was working on that had a very popular term (which he calls ‘term X’ that fell from 1st to 2nd place for a few days:
‘I can tell you that our site receives approximately 30k of visits on average per day from Google, just from keyword searches for Term X. There’s typically one or two Sponsored Links just above us on the SERP, and a few Sponsored Links on the right side column, too.
When we dropped to second slot on the SERP for Term X, we lost approx 18k of visits per day. So, there it is: the difference between the number one slot and the number two slot for a major keyword term comes to about a 60% change in visits!’
He then finds terms that have similar levels of searches on Google Analytics to his ‘term X’ to show what other types of terms would be getting 30,000 or so visits a day from Google.
Now I’m not sure how accurate all his analysis is but it does show the power of being well ranked for popular terms can be!
Written on June 21st, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
Scoopt Words - Interview with Graham Holliday
A few weeks ago I started getting emails from readers telling me about a new way of making money from blogs that they’d come across by the name of Scoopt Words.
I’ll be honest and say that the emails came at a busy time for me and I didn’t give it enough attention and follow up what it was all about but the emails have persisted (to a point where I get one a day now) and I thought I should take a little more of a look at it.
Scoopt Words is a service that takes a middle man approach between bloggers and editors of publications and which will negotiate the sale of your blogging content for you. The concept is pretty simple really and on many levels makes a lot of sense to me - so I decided to approach them for an interview which they were kind enough to grant me.
What follows is an interview with the head of Scoopt Words, Graham Holliday. Graham has been gracious enough to not only answer my questions but is willing to take some of yours also over the next day or two. If you have any - simply ask them in the comments section below and he’ll stop by and answer as many as he can.
Thanks for your time Graham - Can you tell us a little about Scoopt and what you’ve been doing since you started?
Scoopt launched in July 2005 and was the first citizen journalism photo agency. It has since sold photos to newspapers and magazines all over the world. ScooptWords is in beta, as they say, and launched around 2 weeks ago.
What is Scoopt Words and why did you start it?
At the moment, ScooptWords is simply a payment mechanism for bloggers who want to sell content and editors who want to buy it. We will soon aggregate the best blogs and blog content available under our commercial license. We will then push this content, and the bloggers, to editors who are interested in buying.
We started ScooptWords for a number of reasons. Firstly, there’s a lot of good blog content out there and some of it could walk into magazines, trade publications and newspapers. Secondly, there’s no obvious route to market for the blogger beyond an approach from an editor. Thirdly, your average blogger may not always understand copyright, contracts and what words are worth in cash in different publications.
From my own experience of blogging at www.noodlepie.com I have seen my work stolen, copied and plagiarised on a number of occasions for no payment. I know I’m not alone. However, I have also been commissioned by several editors to write pieces specifically because of my blog, further strengthening our belief that there is a market for quality, commercially licensed blog content.
Lastly, we also believe that all journalists will become bloggers before too long and some bloggers will become journalists. Some will also need a route to market and a trustworthy payment mechanism. We hope they’ll chose ScooptWords.
Why should a blogger let Scoopt sell their content?
Because we’re completely transparent and because, with Scoopt and now ScooptWords, we’re working hard to revolutionise and democratise the media. And because we’re a proper media organisation run by journalists and editors, not just a dotcom dabbling with user-generated content.
What type of publications have been buying this content?
Early days… We’re still very much in beta-stealth mode. Remember we only slipped onto the radar a couple of weeks ago :) We’re pursuing all channels. The response has been very positive from bloggers and editors, but it’s a huge unknown area we’re stepping into here. We hope to have some answers before too long :)
How much do bloggers receive? How to you figure out how much to charge those buying the content?
Bloggers receive 50% of the first sale and 75% of all subsequent sales. The initial high cost is to offset our costs.
As for the price we negotiate with editors: At Scoopt we’re all journalists, ex-journalists, editors and commissioning editors. Between us we’ve written books, edited trade magazines and written for everybody from TIME Magazine to The Guardian, BBC Publications and US and Canadian newspapers. While we don’t claim to be world experts on pricing, we think we have a reasonable idea as to what the fair market price is for words appearing in print publications. And we strongly believe if blog content is good enough to print it’s good enough to pay for.
Do you Actively promote content to editors for sale or do editors have to come to you requesting to republish content?
We will. That’s phase 2. Once we have the blogs signed we will push the quality end of those to the right people. We’re also developing a series of smart search tools for editors to find content licensed by ScooptWords. As it is very early in our development, this is a bit of a chicken and egg argument. The more bloggers we have, the more and better content we can push and the better chance of success all round. So, bloggers should sign up now :)
Do bloggers have any say in who takes up their content and how much they are paid or do they sign away these rights?
They have to, and can and should, trust us to make the deal. Editors are ALWAYS on deadline and so we NEED the authority to act INSTANTLY on a blogger’s behalf. So we use the Scoopt pictures model: you come up with the content and we’ll do the hard work. If you want to do your own negotiation, then you’re free to pitch directly to publications, but there’s an art to that. It’s easier said than done and takes time to perfect.
How many times can you resell the one blog post?
Difficult to say. Speaking from personal experience as a journalist I have sold a number of stories several times. I ended up selling one piece eight or nine times to a number of non-competing markets in four or five countries. I see no reason why blog content shouldn’t make resells just because it’s blog content.
Do bloggers get bylines/links back in the posts that you sell?
We absolutely strive to get editors to use a byline and link back where appropriate i.e. if the story appears in the online version of the print publication. We stress to bloggers that this is up to the editor. The reason for that is simple. Some publications don’t run bylines - period. I’m thinking here of publications like The Economist and some of the trade press. While we think it HIGHLY unlikely that an editor will not run a byline if they ordinarily run bylines, we have to cater for all publishing opportunities to maximise the possible number of sales for bloggers. If they don’t run bylines from their own staff journalists, they’re hardly likely to change policy for a blogger :)
What does Scoopt Words require from bloggers for them to participate?
It’s open to all. It’s free. Just sign up and add the button to your sidebar. That’s it. Obviously, a blogger has to believe what they are producing could realistically appear in a magazine or newspaper.
How many bloggers do you represent?
We can’t reveal numbers at this point and nor in the future on grounds of commercial sensitivity. I can say we’ve been pleased with the take up and the interest. Very positive :)
What levels of success can bloggers expect to have from partnering with Scoopt Words?
We simply don’t know and no-one does, but we’re going to give it our best shot. I would say that there is every chance a blogger, writing good, original, literate and well structured posts has every chance of making a sale to the right market. We’re already getting approaches to connect particular editors, publications and media agencies with blogs on niche topics. We fully expect this interest to grow along with the opportunity for making a sale
Do you find different topics have a higher level of selling than other topics? What topics seem to be selling best?
Again - sorry to repeat - but you’re just way too early with this question. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve received a number of media requests for several niche topics. We’re chasing these up. Although we have our hunches, it’s simply too early to say where the real demand is.
Feel Free to ask Graham your own questions via comments below. Also you might like to check out the Scoopt Words Blog.
Written on June 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 05:06 pm by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking - 20 June 2006
- Gilad has produced a WP plugin that resolves the non-www/www/index.php issues with WP and that redirects them all to one consistent location.
- Peter Forret has been tracking down blog spammers and found one in Austria (via the newly designed BlogHerald)
- WP’s Theme Viewer has relaunched with a new design - looking nice (via Blogging Pro)
- London’s Shiny Media are looking for summer interns - so are Gawker
Written on June 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 11:06 am by Darren Rowse
How to Install WordPress
David at Blogging Pro has a useful post for those wanting to switch to WordPress but who are daunted by the process. His post is My WordPress Install Process.
Similarly Rachel has a screencast of her install process - which was so simple that even I could do it!
Of course then there is the official Installing WordPress Guide
Written on June 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse
Screwy Bloglines/Feedburner Results?
Is anyone else seeing ALOT of old posts coming up in their Bloglines account as new posts today?
I know this happens from time to time on an occasional basis but today it seems that every second unread item in my Bloglines account is one that I’ve read before. Some have dates on them from weeks ago while others have todays date on them despite them being written a week or so back.
I’m not sure whether it’s just on Feedburner feeds but it could be as every feed that I’ve seen it happening on so far is a FB one. Very odd and increasingly frustrating for this blogger who relies on news aggregation accuracy pretty heavily.
update: thanks to those who’ve commented below pointing out that this isn’t a Bloglines problem but a feedburner one. Detail below on discussion on it.
This messup has highlighted a couple of things for me:
1. Just how many bloggers are using Feedburner (I’d estimate that of the 600 feeds I’m following that one in six would be having the problems).
2. It’s made me aware of just how many blogs have not been updated in quite a while. I have a lot of feeds in my list that havn’t been posted to for weeks, months and even a few that have not been posted to in a year. It might be time for an RSS spring clean.
Written on June 20th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 05:06 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense Survey Questions - Have your Say Here
A number of readers have emailed me parts (or and all) of the AdSense survey that some publishers were sent over the weekend. Here are a couple of the more interesting questions that they asked. I’m not sure how serious they are about all of these things but they must shed a little light on some of what AdSense are considering:
How interested would you be in the following capabilities if they were offered within Google AdSense?
- Selecting the types of advertisers that appear on your site
- Managing other publishers’ AdSense accounts for them
- Selecting ad categories to appear on your site
- Gathering information about your visitors
- Applying AdSense earnings towards AdWords marketing
- Specifying your own ad formats and sizes
- Paying for phone support
Site targeting is a feature that enables AdWords advertisers to list specific sites on which they’d like to advertise. Which (if any) of the following new features would most increase your satisfaction with site targeting - being able to:
- Choose which advertisers can appear on your site
- Allow advertisers to see how their ads perform specifically on your site
- Give advertisers more information about your site
- Offer your website inventory at a more granular level than domain
- Set a minimum CPM for ads on your site
How would you answer these questions?
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