Written on September 20th, 2007 at 11:09 pm by David Shawver city of Stanton
enternetusers Archive Page - Up and Running
One of the final tasks that needed to be completed with the enternetusers redesign was to get our Archives Page up and running.
I’m pleased to say that today it’s up and running and presents our archives both by Date and Category - highlighting a few key articles from each category with a short description.
We also included a search function in it to help readers find posts on topics that they can’t find otherwise.
The thinking behind the page is that it effectively becomes another Sneeze Page that drives people deeper within the blog.
I’m sure we’ll continue to evolve it over time - but any feedback you have in the mean time will be greatly appreciated.
Written on September 20th, 2007 at 09:09 pm by David Shawver city of Stanton
WordPress 2.3 - What You Need to Know….
With WordPress 2.3 set to be released on Monday - Aaron Brazell has put together another of his ‘10 Things You Need to Know…’ posts introducing WordPress users to the new features that this next version includes.
WP 2.3 includes Tags, Update Notifications, Canonical Redirection plus lots more.
Read Aaron’s introduction to the new version at 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3.
What do you like the look of in WP 2.3? What would you like to see them add next?
Written on September 20th, 2007 at 07:09 pm by David Shawver city of Stanton
AdSense Announce Google Gadget Ads
I’ve been seeing these on a few blogs lately (they must have been part of a beta test) - but today AdSense have launched another type of ad unit - Google Gadget Ads.
Gadget Ads are a little hard to explain (In essence they are a mini web page that loads in an ad unit) - but the AdSense blog has one on it that you can play around with.
It’s one for AdSense that starts off looking like this:
Enter a URL and it presents you with this (without the page reloading):
There is a scrollbar to see more of the ‘page’ in the ad.
Click the ‘get started’ tab and you see:
And click the Terms tab and you get this:
These ad units are not something that you can sign up for or ensure that they appear on your blog. They will rotate onto your blog if you enable image ads to be served and if your blog is on a topic which relates to that which advertisers using the unit are advertising.
AdSense say that rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper ads are more likely to serve them up.
Written on September 20th, 2007 at 05:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Make Money Online Blogs - Should You Start One and How to Choose a Profitable Topic
In today’s video post I want to respond to a reader’s email by talking a little about how to choose a niche topic for your blog.
One mistake that many bloggers fall into when they discover the idea of making money from blogging is to start a blog on that very topic.
It is understandable in some ways - many people first read about the idea on a blog on that topic and automatically assume that to make the kind of money that that blogger is making they just need to copy what they are doing.
The problem is that the ‘make money online’ niche is crowded, there are already many established blogs, to be successful in it you need credibility and runs on the board (or a unique approach to it) and it really has a limited audience when compared to many other niches.
I make considerably more money from other blogs than I do this one - despite being one of the first writing the topic.
So what topic should a blogger choose and how do they make that decision?
In this video I share a few questions for PreBloggers to ask themselves.
I expand on each question in this post - How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog.
Written on September 20th, 2007 at 12:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
How Not Throwing the Baby Out With the Bath Water Earned me Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars
Today I want to tell you a story - a story of how not throwing the baby out with the bath water has earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Just under two years ago a controversy erupted in the the ‘make money online’ segment of the blogosphere that involved a lot of hype, anger and attack.
It involved the launch of a new advertising network product called - Chitika eMiniMalls.
I had been beta testing this new ad unit for a few weeks and was one of a small group of bloggers who blogged about my experience of it and how it had significantly increased my earnings. I wrote my first review of Chitika here.
A couple of weeks later after continuing to experiment with the ad unit my earnings with Chitika continued to grow and I revealed that I was earning over $700 per day with them - they’d become my biggest earner.
The result of me (and others) reporting my success with Chitika caused a real stir around the blogosphere and when Chitika announced an affiliate program which paid 10% commission the ’stir’ quickly became ‘hype’ as many bloggers pumped Chitika up as being an AdSense killer and the answer to all problems of bloggers struggling to make money online.
I attempted to communicate a more balanced review of the ad unit (they work well on some blogs but not others) but the frenzy and buzz that surrounded Chitika for a few weeks was like nothing I’d ever seen around a product launch before.
Of course the positive buzz around Chitika didn’t last for too long. Chitika made a few mistakes in their launch (I suspect overwhelmed by the numbers of those signing up) and in getting the mix between serving publishers and advertisers they had to make some tough decisions which saw some publishers see decreases in earnings. This of course didn’t go over terribly well with many.
At the same time some publishers found that Chitika didn’t work on every blog (as they’d read some promoting the affiliate program promising) and became disillusioned by Chitika and anyone who had promoted them.
The resulting backlash against Chitika was as strong and vicious as the previous weeks of positive buzz had been - the pendulum has swung to the opposite end of it’s trajectory. Many bloggers expressed real anger, quite a few vowed never to use Chitika again, accusations of fraud and scrupulous behavior flew left right and centre. I took a lot of flak for my positive (yet in my opinion balanced) reviews of Chitika (in fact the attacks on me in those months were the most vicious I’ve ever experienced and escalated to a point where my property was physically assaulted).
While many many bloggers jumped off the Chitika ship as the popularity pendulum swung away from them - I felt that while Chitika had issues and had made some mistakes that they were a company with potential. They needed to improve their service - but the basics that they had put in place were good and in time I felt that they’d improve.
Rather than jumping ship (or throwing the baby out with the bath water) as many were doing I decided to do two things:
- give constructive and encouraging feedback to Chitika - While much of the blogosphere descended into snark and attack I decided to attempt to help Chitika improve. I did this in part because I felt it was the right thing to do and that they didn’t deserve all of the hits that they were taking - but also because I knew that if they improved what they offered - that it’d enhance my own business. I told them what I liked about their product, what I didn’t like, what I wished they’d change and what I wished that they’d add.
- experiment with the use of their service to see how it worked best - I spent significant time in those early months really tweaking and tracking the use of Chitika’s ad units. I saw from my own experience and the reports of others that it didn’t work on some blogs yet did on others - so I decided to work out where it did work best and how to improve it’s performance. This resulted in a series of tips posts including Chitika eMiniMalls Tips.
A few other bloggers quietly took a similar approach in the midst of the Chitika bashing that went on around us. The results were quite amazing.
Firstly - Chitika improved. Since that time the company as grown and offered a variety of new ad units. They have had their ups and downs but what they offer now benefits many bloggers. While these ads still don’t work on every blog - many bloggers have found ways to make them work for them. I know a few who make more than I do from Chitika each day.
Secondly - My own experience of Chitika and what they contribute to my business has confirmed to me my hunch that it wasn’t something to jump ship on. I revealed in a post 4 months ago that I’d earned just under a quarter of a million dollars using Chitika - of that figure is now well in excess of the quarter of a million dollar mark and continues to confirm to me the value of taking a different approach than being swayed by popular opinion and doing something positive instead of being caught up in the pendulum swings that the blogosphere can become distracted by.
Is the Pendulum Swinging Again?
In the last week we’ve seen a pendulum swing over the launch of BlogRush service that reminds me a little of the Chitika fiasco. The service launched in a frenzy of praise and hype as bloggers jostled to benefit from referring others. While many posted about it advising caution and trying to paint realistic expectations - some posts that I read painted this new and untested service as though it was the Messiah!
Yes - BlogRush needs to take some responsibility for the way they presented themselves (they talked themselves up as you’d expect - and gave bloggers an incentive to talk them up) but many bloggers took it to another level and promised the world from the service.
In the last 24 hours - since the release of BlogRush stats - the pendulum has swung and I’ve seen quite a few bloggers painting the service as ‘evil’. Once again bloggers are jumping ship left right and center and accusations are beginning to fly.
While I don’t know if BlogRush will ultimately be as successful for bloggers as Chitika has been for those who remained on board - I found myself wondering how many bloggers are in danger of prematurely throwing a potentially good thing away simply because it didn’t work for them in the in the first day or two.
- What would happen if rather than dismissing or attacking BlogRush bloggers looked the service over and compiled some constructive feedback for it’s creators?
- What would happen if bloggers took the time to analyze how it works and to experiment with different ways of using it?
- What if bloggers pressed pause on their judgement and allowed the creators of this product to improve it?
I’m not saying bloggers should blindly accept every new service that comes along as ‘the answer’ - there may come a time to ‘jump ship’ from BlogRush if it doesn’t work (either for anyone or in individual circumstances) - however I wonder if we all need to take a chill pill and let things run their course a little.
Yes - it may be a big flop - but perhaps if we give it (and other services that emerge) a chance we might just see things grow into something worthwhile that enhances our blogging.
Just my two cents worth.
Written on September 19th, 2007 at 08:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
What are your BlogRush Statistics Like?
It seems that BlogRush (the traffic generating tool released earlier in the week which I gave a first impression review of here) has updated the member dashboard to give publishers statistics on how things are performing.
I’d be interested to collect some data from readers on how it is going for everyone.
My own results have some good and bad things about them.
On the positive side I’ve referred quite a few bloggers to the program which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of credits. I’ve earned a lot more credits so far than they seem to have been able to serve.
On the negative side - while my headlines have been shown around 70,000 times I’ve only had 35 clicks on them. That is an extremely low Click Through Rate of 0.05%! I didn’t expect it to be high but thought it might have got somewhere in the 1% range (which would have brought in 700 clicks from the 70,000 - but this is pretty disappointing.
I know it is still very early days and they’ll find ways to improve things but it’s not a great start in terms of driving actual traffic so far.
Now that could have something to do with my headlines (although I try to write engaging ones) - however I suspect it also has something to do with the positioning that a lot of bloggers are using for the widget. I’ve seen a lot of widgets low on pages where I suspect they’ll rarely be seen by readers - let alone clicked.
It’s easy to look at these results and give up on BlogRush - I personally think it’s too early to jump ship or write it off completely. This is just a few days into launch and the only way is up in terms of performance. I suspect that the BlogRush developers will test and tweak their design and add new categories to make links in the widget more relevant to content on blogs.
I’m going to try to improve the CTR by trying a few of the techniques in my Tips for Using BlogRush post - particularly experimenting with different categories.
PS: I’m looking forward to seeing more detailed reports (still under construction) as I can’t wait to see how my different blogs have performed as compared to one another. Having this information will help bloggers improve their own CTR as they test different categories and watch to see how they convert differently.
Written on September 19th, 2007 at 05:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Speedlinking - 19 September 2007
A few links for your reading pleasure from the last few days:
- SEOmoz has taken on VC funding to help it continue to grow and improve.
- Liz shares the secret to massive Digg and StumbleUpon Traffic without spamming
- Interesting Observations does some analysis of how many times top blogs use ‘he’ and ’she’ on them.
- Copyblogger suggests that telling readers to ‘click here’ can actually convert better than other types of links
- Alister spotlights the the Wordpress dashboard as another secret source of blog traffic
- Ben shares 10 steps to build an online media empire - based upon the recent expansion of eMoms at Home
Written on September 19th, 2007 at 12:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Can a Blog Get Too Much Exposure?
Reader question time - can a blog get too much exposure?
I was over at Techmeme earlier today and after scanning through the latest stories there realized that TechCrunch is mentioned over 60 times on the front page. I did a keyword density test on the page and the word TechCrunch was the most common on the page with a keyword density approaching 3%.
Of course, this is partly because the TechCrunch40 conference is going on at the moment so there’s more than normal buzz going on - but I guess it’s made me wonder whether a blog can suffer from overexposure in a niche.
Another brand that could have suffered from this over the weekend was BlogRush which had so much buzz in this niche of blogging about blogging that I saw numerous bloggers complaining that it was being covered too much.
This isn’t a post bashing TechCrunch, Techmeme or BlogRush (I’m a fan of them all) - but rather just me wondering out loud whether there comes a point where a blog can dominate a niche too much and begin to harm it’s brand as a result of it’s over exposure.
What do you think? When does exposure tip into overexposure for you?
Written on September 18th, 2007 at 09:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Monetize Your Mobile Website with AdSense
AdSense publishers who are logging into their AdSense accounts today will notice a new link in their Overview page - AdSense for Mobile - Get Started.
It seems that AdSense have just launched this new service which enables publishers with Mobile websites to monetize them.
To use it you need to have a page that is ‘mobile-compliant’ or the ads won’t display. More on this from the Google AdSense Help pages:
“If you don’t currently have a mobile website (and chances are, if you’re not sure, then you don’t have one), you can create one by rewriting your existing website in a mobile markup language, such as XHTML, WML, or CHTML. You’ll also need to make sure the layout of your website is properly formatted to display on mobile phones.
In addition, your mobile website will need to be developed using server-side scripting such as PHP or ASP. Many web hosting providers support PHP, and in many cases, you can PHP-enable your webpages simply by changing the file extension from.htm to.php. Thereafter you can paste the PHP code snippet into the section of the page where you want the AdSense for mobile ads to appear.”
Once you’ve got a mobile compliant website setting up the ads looks pretty simple - very similar to setting up ads for normal websites actually with a similar wizard to design ads. Ad units come in two sizes (single and double) - both are just text ads (pictured below).
Thanks to Michael for the heads up on this one.
Update: A few hours after we broke the news Google post their official announcement announcing AdSense for Mobile. Remember where you heard it first :-)
Update 2 - this release is only for publishers in some countries. These are included in the list - US, England, Germany, Spain, Ireland, France, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, China, Australia, India and Japan.
Written on September 18th, 2007 at 08:09 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Amazon Announce Amazon Widgets for Associates
The Amazon Associates Program have entered the 21st Century by announcing Amazon Widgets.
They’ve gone fully into it with 16 widgets for your blog covering a range of functions (listed below).
Some of the widgets are open to everyone - others are exclusively for Amazon Associates (those enrolled in the affiliate program).
Update - exploring these a little deeper reveals that some of the 16 are actually just ‘classic link’ options (ie things we could already do. There are a few new options - but those options listed towards the bottom of the list below were already available.
The Widgets
Unbox Videos
Show studio previews for a huge range of recent and classic movies or tv shows available from the Unbox video download service.
Slideshow
Make elegant slideshow widgets out of images chosen from products across the entire Amazon catalog - CD cover art, DVD’s, books, anything!
Product Cloud
Take tag clouds one step further by showing Product Clouds - clusters of product titles relevant to your page
My Favorites
Express yourself by recommending and commenting on products from Amazon.com. Let everyone know how you feel and what you like!
Wish List
Show your Amazon Wish List in a widget and let everyone know what you like. Or show your friend or relatives Wish List to help plan a special occasion.
Quick Linker
Quickly and easily link to relevant Amazon.com products as you write your blog posts or page content by including custom HTML tags as you type.
Search
Let your readers find and explore interesting products from Amazon.com without them leaving your site.
aStore Widget
With aStore widgets, you can display products from your aStore. You can add aStore widgets to various pages of your website and drive traffic to your aStore.
Product Links
Link to specific products in our catalog. Also, power up your Product Links with Product Previews by Amazon!
Product Previews
Have you ever wondered how to give visitors to your site more information about the Amazon products you merchandise - without taking up more space? Or how to keep visitors on your site until they’re ready to buy? If so, Product Previews is the product for your site!
Text Links
Satisfy your inner wordsmith, and link to favorite destinations, search results, or any other page on Amazon.
Context Links
Automatically identify and link contextually relevant phrases within your content to Amazon products.
Omakase
Leave it up to us! Automatically feature ideal products based on Amazon’s unique knowledge about what works for your site, for your users and for the content of your page.
Banner
Use an Easy Link to feature a variety of Amazon.com promotions or select a promotional banner to feature specific product categories.
Search Box
Enable your visitors to search the Amazon.com catalog by placing product search boxes on your webpage.
Recommended Product Links
Automatically feature products based on product categories or keywords.
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