Written on April 18th, 2005 at 07:04 am by David Shawver Stanton
Squarespace Review
Richard from Pharma Blawg has a good review of the blogging platform Squarespace and writes:
‘If you want to use all of Squarespace’s offerings, it’ll probably take a bit longer to learn than Typepad and Blogger, but in my view the extra time is well worth it. Equally, if all you want is a good looking blog without adding multiple modules (yes, Squarespace operates a modular system where you add different modules as you please), you’ll be able to get up and running very quickly. ‘
Read more about Squarespace at its official site
Written on April 17th, 2005 at 09:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Mind Sharer - On Adsense
MindSharer has had some good Adsense related posts in the last few days that some might find helpful.
- Adsense - Is the red hot text ad service cooling down?
- How to get better targeted ad from Adsense?
Written on April 17th, 2005 at 04:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Why Google is a Tactic not a Strategy
There is an interesting article over at SEO Chat titled - Why Google is a Tactic not a Strategy - which has some worthwhile advice in it.
‘The long and short of it, folks, is to plan your online marketing strategy so that no one tactic is responsible for supporting your business. The irony of the Web is that a lot of the tactics that don’t revolve around SEO actually help you with search engine positioning. Link placement, press release writing, content syndication and even offline marketing can all contribute to better placement in search engines.’
Wise words - don’t put all your eggs in the one basket - if if that basket has the potential to bring you a lot of goodness.
Written on April 17th, 2005 at 04:04 am by David Shawver Stanton
enternetusers on WebProNews
Yesterday I was approached by Rich at WebProNews with the request that they be allowed to republish some of my content on their site. I was initially quite flattered by the offer as they feature some of my favorite bloggers including Steve Rubel, Wayne Hurlbert, Robert Scoble, Jeremy D. Zawodny, Andy Beal and more.
Once the flattery wore off (after all we’re all just blokes sitting in front of computers) and I gave it a little more objective thought I began to sort through a few costs and benefits of going with this approach. I emailed the five bloggers above for their opinion and ended up seeing it like this:
On the upside
- Builds Profile - getting your name out there and building profile is probably the biggest benefit of this partnership. WebProNews is a widely read website with some quality contributers. The common theme in the advice that the bloggers I approached gave was that this was the best aspect of it.
- Inbound Links - each article that they use of mine has a number of links back to the blog of the author and other projects that they are working on. This of course helps with SEO.
- Google News - WebProNews gets picked up by Google News which again takes your posts to a larger audience and gives you further reach.
On the downside
- Off site readership - One of the things that my blogging colleagues advised was that there is a risk that my readers might come to my blog less because they can read some of the main posts elsewhere.
- Duplicate content - My main initial concern was that my content is being duplicated in more than one place. This is not looked upon well by Google.
- Increased chance of those you’re writing about finding your posts - Steve replied to my email with the caution that what is written gives you a wider exposure which brings an increased chance that it will get found by those you write about or those that disagree with you which might bring criticism. I guess is the cost of increased traffic any of any variety…
After summing up the advice of the WebBlogPro Bloggers and considering the goals and objectives of enternetusers I’ve decided to allow them to reproduce some of my articles. My page on their site is here (two articles so far). Already it has brought me a few new visitors - a couple have even made contact via email from it which is encouraging.
If you’re here from WebProNews - welcome - I hope you stay around and contribute to the many discussions happening through my blog already.
Lastly I’m interested in my regular reader’s opinions of this move. By no means is it a permanent thing - I’m assured I can end this at any time and whilst I might ‘own’ or ‘edit’ this blog I believe its actually more than just mine - you all have a part to play and I’d like to hear your opinions and reflections on how I run it. So if you’ve got two cents to add about whether I should or shouldn’t let them publish my stuff speak now!
Written on April 16th, 2005 at 10:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Bloglines is Down
If you’re having trouble logging into Bloglines tonight you’re not the only one. It looks like they are having some sort of database problems. Others reporting difficulties include:
to name just a few.
Unfortunately this is becoming more of a problem for Bloglines - its the second extended problem I’ve had in a few weeks. Perhaps its rapid growth is taking things a bit beyond what they can handle.
I’m going to do some serious looking for a non web based News Aggregator this week - I can’t afford to have my News Aggregator offline like this - it’s costing me money each time it goes down. What do other Mac users use to track RSS feeds? Interested in others experiences.
Written on April 16th, 2005 at 10:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
enternetusers Email Newsletter Update
If you’ve signed up for the enternetusers’s Email Newsletter in the past 36 hours you’re not alone. I’m really happy to say that there are already over 60 of you who’ve taken a step deeper into enternetusers in this way. Scanning the list I see quite a few regular contributors to the comments of this blog as well as a couple of what I’d consider to be A-lister bloggers - overall the quality of those in the list is fantastic and I’m hoping we’re going to have a good time with it.
If you’re impatiently waiting for an newsletter to hit your inbox you’ve got a few more days to go as I will be sending the first ever one early next week.
As I said in the introductory post - the newsletter will be no more than a weekly one at this stage with highlights of the week that was on enternetusers - a few special ‘members only’ tips - previews of enternetusers news and down the track some competitions. Sign up in the sidebar to the left and join the growing numbers of readers who want to take their blogging to the next level with enternetusers.
Written on April 16th, 2005 at 02:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Free Advice and the Entrepreneurial Blogger
Jason Calacanis writes that by optimizing their Adsense ads Weblogs inc have just raised their daily Adsense earnings to $1400 per day (it was just $1000 per day a week or two back). He asks Adsense experts for advice on how to take it up a notch (he wants to get it to $2000 per day in the next couple of months) and offers a free dinner for those who are willing to help and whose advice works.
Paul takes offense at Jason’s post writing:
‘To me this is just insulting. The guy is making $1400/day (min.), which he equates to $511,000/year and wants free help to get to $730,000/year (min.) along with Amazon help. Does this seem strange to anyone else or am I missing something here? For helping him earn an extra $200k/year I can get a free dinner. Awesome.’
I have to say that I had some similar thoughts as I read Jason’s post - although I probably wouldn’t word it quite as strongly as Paul does.
I guess the question it leaves me wondering is - ‘At what point should someone start paying for the advice or sharing the benefits that they receive from the input from others?’
Whilst the strength of blogging is the free exchange of information, transparency and sharing of lessons learned - some are obviously taking such freely shared information and profiting from it more than others. Whilst on one hand I have no issue with this (I do it myself) - is there some sort of a line where those earning a living from blogs have a responsibility to share the gains they make from advice from others who generously give what they know?
I’m actually not sure of the answer to this question or how one would find such a line but would like to think that there is a place for us all to move a little beyond the free advice approach.
As someone earning a living from blogging I would generally opt for the following approach:
1. Look for the information for myself first in the free options - as Paul writes there is a wealth of free information online when it comes to Adsense. There are numerous forums for Adsense publishers as well as sites like this one with categories full of tested advice. Yes it takes time to sort through the advice and work out what works - but it is where I’d start.
2. Watch what others are doing who are making a go of Adsense. It goes without saying but there is a lot to be said learned from doing a bit of surfing and seeing what others are trying.
3. Ask for Advice with those you have good relationships with. I know of 20 or so publishers that I feel I have a good enough relationship with to ask a question of. I wouldn’t just pick someone randomly for free advice.
4. Search out the services offered by ‘experts’ and pay for advice. I’ve done this on a number of occasions. There are just some things i don’t know enough about and will pay for if it will help me increase my earnings enough or save me a lot of time and energy. I also believe that at times you get what you pay for and that the advice might end up being better by purchasing it.
From time to time I do ask questions on my blogs - but increasingly I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable to do so if it will directly benefit my earning capacity to know the answers. I’ve found myself deleting or modifying posts a number of times recently for this very reason.
I know that my readers know I earn $100,000+ per year from blogging and feel a little hypocritical asking directly for free advice when I am probably in more of a position to pay for it than others. Recently when I’ve asked for advice or help from other bloggers I’ve been willing to pay a little for their time - I think this is fair if it will increase my own earning capacity.
I also think that those of us who have found how to make a few dollars from blogging have something of a responsibility to share even more than others.
So how would I approach wanting to optimize my adsense ads if I were in Jason’s position? If I’d exhausted the above options and still wanted to post something on my blog I’d probably word it a little differently. Rather than ask for free advice for me and my network I’d probably start a post inviting people to share with each other (and me) what they’d been learning. I’d want to be open that I was interested in the answers for my own benefit but suggest we all discuss it openly and publicly so that we could all benefit. I’d also be willing to share pretty explicitly what I’d already done to increase my earnings so far so that it was not just a one way street of knowledge sharing.
This is not too different to what Jason has actually done in this post although I’d probably reveal a little more about what he’d found the ‘better spots’ for their ads to be and be a little more inviting of a public discussion.
This is just my personal conclusion and something I’m currently grappling with. I don’t have ‘the answer’ and suspect there isn’t one. Entrepreneurial blogging is still in its infancy and there are not any blueprints to follow so its really up to each blogger to make their own calls about what their responsibilities to others might be.
I’m interested what others think about this?
Written on April 16th, 2005 at 12:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Putting Google Adsense ads inside your Posts
Duncan wrote a helpful post on How to place Google Adsense ads next to your text - like he says in his post - one of the best positions I’ve found for Adsense ads is within or as near as possible to your content.
Whether you use this approach will of course depend upon the overall purposes of your blog (for instance I don’t do it as much here at enternetusers - but do it more at Digital Photography Blog).
Duncan posts the code that he uses to get his ads into his text - I use a slightly different approach (add a “<” to the start of this code and a “>” to the end (and change the channel and publisher code to your own)…
script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-XXXXXXXXXXX”;
google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 250;
google_ad_format = “300×250_as”;
google_ad_channel =”XXXXXXXXX”;
google_color_border = “FFFFFF”;
google_color_bg = “FFFFFF”;
google_color_link = “A40323″;
google_color_url = “999999″;
google_color_text = “000000″;
google_ad_type = “text”;
//–></script>
<div style=”float:right;margin-left:7px;margin-right:10″>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>
</div
This is the code for the 300 x 250 pixel ad on this page. I place it after the title tag and before the body tag on the individual page (I’m using MT on that blog).
The disadvantage of this approach is that it can crowd your post a little, especially if you also place photos in your post at the top of the page - its worth playing around with it to see where it works best on your blog before doing it.
Feel free to use and adapt the code above and let me know how you go with it.
Written on April 16th, 2005 at 01:04 am by David Shawver Stanton
Adsense Ad Click Variations Explained
One of enternetusers’s readers - Charles - asks the following question:
‘do you know anything about what drives the sometimes wild variation in day to day click values…’ (see longer version of the question).
It is a good question and something that I know many people ask so I’ll answer it publicly. There are a variety of factors that could explain the phenomenon of the variation of click values.
Geo Targeting - the global positioning of the reader clicking on the advertisement can have significant impact upon the value of the advertisement. I know of two bloggers who started blogs at the same time on the same topic - one of which has a.com URL and gets traffic from around the world, the other of which has a.nz (New Zealand) URL and gets quite a bit of NZ traffic. The.com blogger’s click rates are significantly higher than the.nz one’s. In my opinion this is largely due to the fact that advertisers targeting NZ readers are not paying as much for the ads as advertisers in other parts of the world due to market size and competition between advertisers. This could explain quite wide fluctuations in click values.
Demand and Supply - a number of Adsense publishers that I know of tell me that they’ve tracked variations in click values on a variety of levels. Most of these might not explain wide variations. They include:
• monthly cycles - some believe that at the end of the month prices go down as some advertisers have spent their monthly budget and withdraw from the market for the remaining days until the following month.
• weekly cycles - many publishers believe that weekends tend to have lower click values than weekdays as advertisers are wiling to pay more per click to get midweek traffic (this might vary from site to site depending upon the topic of ads).
• seasonal factors - many publishers notice an increase in traffic values in the lead up to Christmas and other holidays. Correspondingly after Christmas can be a low patch for many.
• changes in competition for keywords - this is difficult to track but it makes sense that when a new advertiser enters the market for a particular keyword that prices can fluctuate considerably as a bidding war takes place. This could be triggered by events (sporting, political etc) or simply by advertisers starting or ending a campaign to launch new products or services
• other factors - I’ve seen publishers write that many factors contribute to click values - one I read recently believed that the weather even impacted his! I personally am not sure this would explain click value changing - it might impact impression levels though.
Variation between Ad Values on a Page - the variation might actually be explained by the value of ads displayed on your page. For instance some of my blogs can be displaying up to 12 or so ads on each page (over three ad blocks). There can be quite a large difference between what the top paying advertiser displayed is paying and what the 12th highest ad is paying. Usually the highest paying advertiser is the first ad shown on the first adblock in your page’s source code. The lowest paying ad on your page will be the last ad on the last adblock in your source code.
I’m certain that there are other factors that could explain variation between ads shown on one block and invite readers to submit their own ideas below.
Update - Another factor that some of you have reminded me about is Smart Pricing.
Written on April 15th, 2005 at 11:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Competition - Design a Blogging Course
I just got home from a graduation ceremony - my graduation ceremony - I finally finished my Bachelor of Theology and have a piece of paper to prove it.
During the ceremony to keep myself awake I started to wonder what a course in Blogging would look like - a Bachelor of Blogging. I thought it would make an interesting ‘Open Mike’ post where we all submit our answers. I’ll give a prize to the best answer.
If you were to enroll in a course about blogging what would you want it to include as core subjects, electives, assignments etc.
If you’re ‘beyond’ enrolling in a course yourself - how would you teach it if you were designing a syllabus? What would be essential reading? Who would be your guest lecturers (and what would you ask them to speak on)? What subjects would be central? How would you grade students?
Get a little creative with your answers if you like and submit them via comments below or post it on your own blog and leave a link in comments to it below.
Prize - I’ll award my favourite answer with a link in my menu to your blog for a week or so (ok its not much but it is better than nothing). Competition closes Monday - Aussie time.
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