Written on December 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:12 am by Darren Rowse

Google Release surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.Zeitgeist Report

Pro Blogging News 9 comments

Two weeks ago it was Yahoo sharing the most searched for terms in it’s engine - today Google shares theirs with their annual Zeitgeist Report.

Google’s top searches for the year:

1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki

The top searches on Google News:

1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006

Also check out their What’s Hot page, their current events page, their milestones page and their entertainment and sports pages.

Share This

Written on December 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:12 am by Darren Rowse

Online Etiquette and the Culture of a Blog

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 22 comments

Michael Moncur has written a thoughtful post asking Whatever happened to online etiquette? which bounces off (and largely rejects) the NYT piece by David Pogue of the same name.

I think Michael makes some worthwhile points - particularly in his third point about Anonymity and fifth point about content inspiring community.

Anonymity - while some do like to hide behind anonymity I find that the majority of attack within blogging circles happens not because people can remain hidden but because it actually gets them attention and they think it will raise their profile. Thankfully the ’snark strategy’ to build a blog’s profile has died away a little over the last 6 months. While it can raise your profile it can also destroy your reputation.

Content Inspiring Community - Michael quotes a comment from Gina Trapani of Lifehacker which is insightful and worth highlighting again:

“Also, netiquette in public forums has a lot to do with the content around which the community is centered. Lifehacker’s posts set out to help folks, so in kind, our readers want to help us and each other back. Digg is a popularity contest of oneupmanship. Gawker is all about making fun of things, so its readers mock each other and it right back in the comments. Karma’s a boomerang.”

My feeling is that sites develop a culture around them. This is often set by the tone and voice of those who set them up and provide the lead (in the case of a blog - the blogger/s).

If your blog is written in a positive, optimistic, helpful and inclusive voice then I find that those commenting generally respond with a similar tone. Write in a snarky, negative, rant dominated tone that makes fun of others and you can expect a very similar vibe in your comments.

In fact I think that this principle extends out of your comments section into the way that other bloggers interact with you from their blogs also.

Of course there are exceptions to this - even the most positive and helpful bloggers get attacked from time to time - but I find that this is more the exception than the rule.

What do you think?

Share This

Written on December 19th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:12 pm by Darren Rowse

Group Writing Project - Day 1

Pro Blogging News 16 comments

Day 1 of the Reviews and Predictions Group Writing Project is over and 55 submissions have arrived in my inbox from readers who are competing for the $2500 in prizes.

This round includes a few posts from our sponsors themselves (they’re not in the running for prizes but wanted to participate in the fun too). Alongside them we have a wide array of posts ranging from haikus, humorous pieces, lots of predictions and quite a few posts reflecting upon different niches this year. Together they make an interesting read.

Thanks to our sponsors - Rob Schaumer, DeveloperCube, eMoms at Home, Thrive Web Marketing, Dave Taylor, Poker on a Mac, Information for Her Australia for Australian Women, The Blogging Times, bloglinkr and 451 Press (see below for the full list of prizes).

There’s still 3 more days to get your submissions in and join the fun. Just follow the procedure outlined here.

• The Three Amigos by Scott
• Haiku #35: Consoles Reviewed by Tim
• The Top Five surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.Money Topics on Free Money Finance by FMF
• Top 10 Sports Predictions for 2007 by Aaron
• Why People Hate Lawyers - Just Read their Blogs! by Andrew
• Why We’ll Fork Over $15.00 to Hear Britney’s New CD in 2007 by Roberta
• Predictions for 2007 by Jason
• Why I Won “Time’s Person of the Year” by Sarakastic
• 2006 Web Wrap-Up by Robert
• Creative Ideas for Business Games by Anna
• To Think a Lost Cell Phone Started it all by Mama Duck
• Looking Ahead in Homebrewing by Rob Zazueta’s Brew Blog
• Growing My Mind and Options by Deb/Jersey Girl
• The Year Ahead is What Looms by Colin
• The Rapper Cook’s Preview Into Her 2007 Menu by SimCooks
• Lessons Learned in 2006 by Basil
• 5 biggest mistakes in heart rate monitor training by Jesper
• The Five Biggest Movie Gambles of 2007 by Dave
• Whats the year going to bring by Marcus
• Reviews and Predictions from a Canadian enternetusers by David
• I see the future and it is good by Captain Hops
• A History of My Preaching Websites and Plans for Future by Sherman
• The Year of the Client by Carolyn
• 2007 Prediction: Blogs will be replaced by Joshua
• Creating a Logo by Pawel
• 11 reasons why 2007 will be the year for plus size fashion by Glen
• New Year’s Resolutions For Bloggers by Domtan
• Reflections… without a mirror by Sarah
• Nostradamus’ take on Gardening by Stuart
• 2007 Psychic Predictions by Matt
• Sneak Peek : Top News Stories of 2007 by Xaymaca
• Blogs aren’t the story in 07! by Ted
• Looking back to look ahead by Rod
• 10 Reasons to Choose a Russian Blue by Simonne
• Reflections on a Self Made Blogger by Tyler
• Review of 10 best blogs for me in surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.& why by nakedpastor
• Looking Back and Looking Forward by Simba’s Mom
• 5 Technology Discoveries That Changed My Business in surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.by Desiree Scales
• The Google Maps API: Predictions for 2007 by Cameron
• What I expect from the 2007 Chicago Cubs Starting Pitchers by Joe
• Reviews and Predictions by Doug Karr
• A Preview of What to Expect tfrom bloglinkr by Michael
• Motorsports Predictions from The Garage by Gary
• 7 predictions for ‘07 by Brandon
• Monetize This by Ken
• The Year That Was - For Digital Film Makers by Jason
• 2006: Revelation of a Video Games Blogger by Patrick
• The Biggest Blogging Mistake I Made In 2006 by George
• Qigong is the New Yoga by Martial Development
• Hopes for a More Conservative 2007 by Adam
• Thanks For Making My Year by Kamal
• Personal Review 2006 by Tony
• Incursion into the Blogosphere - A Post Fairy Tale by Yan
• 7 Things I Learned Since Becoming An Web Entrepreneur by Griffen
• The Top Headlines of 2007 by Stefan

Thanks to everyone who has participated in Day 1. Looking forward to seeing tomorrow’s batch.

Now as promised - here’s the prize list to inspire you to enter!

The Prizes

• DeveloperCube - a forum for web developers - is offering a $100 Amazon gift voucher.
• eMoms at Home is offering two free passes (worth $349 each) to a 12 week group coaching program that she’s running in January. The course (via phone) is about how to be more productive and build a business. Read more on it here.
• bloglinkr is offering $100 cash or $500 in advertising credit on their service when they launch in the first quarter of 2007. bloglinkr is a new ad network exclusively for blogs and sounds like an interesting project to watch in the next few months.
• Thrive Web Marketing are offering a medium level webhosting package for a year that includes 100MB of webspace, 4000MB data transfer a month and more (worth $240).
• Rob Schaumer is offering a $100 gift card (of the winners choice) at GiftCertificates.com.
• The Blogging Times has offered $100 cash to their winner. Thanks to Minic for this prize.
• Information for Her Australia for Australian Women is offering $100 cash (via PayPal). This is a site for Australian women giving information on health issues, rural women, indigenous women and more.
• Poker on a Mac (a poker site for Mac users) is offering a 30gb video ipod to their winner.
• Dave Taylor from Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support and The Intuitive Life Business Blog is offering a copy of his book ‘Growing Your Business with Google‘ and $100 cash as his prize.
• 451 Press is offering one lucky winner a Nintendo Wii (worth $250). 451 Press is a blog network.

Share This

Written on December 19th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 05:12 pm by Darren Rowse

Speedlinking - 19 December 2006

Pro Blogging News 4 comments

• An Australian Blogging Conference looks like it will be held in Brisbane in March of next year according to Peter Black who is organizing it - via Des Walsh
• Josh Dorkin put together a useful post on copyright and what to do when someone steals your content
• Search Engine Journal has a post looking at Google’s definition of what is a Good and Bad Link in their rankings
• Perfect Blogger has started a series on the Questions to Ask Yourself before starting a blog. The first three are good ones. I’ve written some similar questions at 3 factors to consider before starting a blog and 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers.
• Ed Kohler writes 6 ways to Grow a Comments Feed on a blog. Do you use and promote a feed for your comments?

Share This

Written on December 19th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:12 am by Darren Rowse

What to Buy Me for Christmas

enternetusers Site News 10 comments

Yesterday I went to my PO Box and was surprised to find four Christmas Cards and two Christmas Gifts from enternetusers readers.

Interestingly this is the third day in a row when I’ve had such surprises in my mail box - something different for me as last year I think the only Blogging Christmas mail was one card and a note from a deranged reader that bordered on stalking (don’t ask).

I find it interesting on a couple of levels.

• Firstly, in this cluttered virtual space that we all inhabit a way to stand out from the crowd a little is to send something tangible using snail mail (certainly got my attention).
• Secondly, what a wonderful little medium this is that connects people from around the globe that would never have heard about one another in any other way.

What to Get enternetusers for Christmas

I’ve also had a couple of readers in the last two days asking me what they can get me for Christmas? On both occasions they said that they’d enjoyed my blog this year and that it’d helped them earn more money and as a result they wanted to give something back. One asked if I had a tip jar.

I feel very strange about this. For starters the idea of strangers wanting to send a present or tip for something I love doing (and make money from anyway) is a little hard to get used to.

Added to that that - I struggle enough telling my family what I want for Christmas. I feel very fortunate and lucky to not really need anything this Christmas. In fact I feel guilty about how much I have that I don’t need.

So - here’s my Christmas Wishlist. If you feel so inclined to give me a gift please don’t feel the need to send me anything but you might like to choose from this list.

• Oxfam Unwrapped - gifts that help people in poverty around the world
• Tear Australia’s Very Useful Gift Catalogue - similar to Oxfam’s
• Heifer’s Meaningful Gifts - similar again

Please share the love a little this Christmas with those in need.

And if you really want to give me something you can always help spread the news of my blogs a little by favorite-ing me over at Technorati or add a link to enternetusers and/or Digital Photography School to your sidebar.

Share This

Written on December 19th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:12 am by Darren Rowse

AdSenseAd Clarify Policy on Images Near Ads

Adsense 29 comments

The AdSense team have finally come out and publicly written about their policy on images near their ads. This is long overdue as it has been almost a year since I’ve had publishers asking me about the topic and have seen publisher experiment with the practice of putting ads above, below or beside ads.

In short - they are saying that their policy is that you cannot place images near ads in any way that suggests a relationship between the image or the ad - even if you put a line between the image and the ad (something that I’d previously been told was fine - so they’ve changed their tune on this).

Here’s what they wrote on their blog:

Can I place small images next to my Google ads?
We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered. That’s not a good experience for users or advertisers.

What do unacceptable implementations look like?
Here are some examples that wouldn’t comply with our policies.

Share This

Written on December 18th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:12 pm by Darren Rowse

enternetusers Group Writing Project - Reviews and Predictions

enternetusers Site News 179 comments

It’s time for another enternetusers Group Writing Project - and this time we’ve got 10 prizes worth between $2000 to $2500 USD!

PLEASE READ ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE SUBMITTING. Particularly pay attention to the instruction to submit NEW posts not previously written ones. Old posts (written before today) won’t be accepted and will not be eligible for a gift. Thanks for your understanding.

The Topic

This project’s topic is ‘Reviews and Predictions…….’

Your task is to write a post that looks back or looks forward (on what is up to you).

• You might want to look back on the year that was (topical for this time of year)….
• You could make some predictions about what the new year will bring in your niche….
• You could look back on some aspect of your life….
• You might use the post to make some resolutions for the year ahead….
• You might like to give an award for the last year to someone in your niche….
• You might look back on the 10 biggest developments, 5 biggest mistakes, 72 best quotes…. of your niche….

Write it in any style you like, a rant, list, poem, video, pictorial, haiku, podcast….. anything

Be as creative as you can and take this in any direction you like. You’ll have a much better chance of getting your post noticed if it’s useful and/or interesting to readers and write something relevant to the topic of your blog.

Once you’ve written your post simply follow the process for participating that I’ve outlined below (please note - to be eligible for the gifts from our sponsors you need to follow the guidelines below).

The Prizes

This project has attracted sponsors willing to donate some great prizes with a total value of over $2000 (and up to $2400 depending what people choose to take). All values below are in $US and all cash prizes can be paid via PayPal.

• 451 Press is offering one lucky winner a Nintendo Wii (worth $250). 451 Press is a blog network. Thanks to Steve for this prize.
• bloglinkr is offering $100 cash or $500 in advertising credit on their service when they launch in the first quarter of 2007. bloglinkr is a new ad network exclusively for blogs and sounds like an interesting project to watch in the next few months. Thanks to Michael for this offer.
• The Blogging Times has offered $100 cash to their winner. Thanks to Minic for this prize.
• Information for Her Australia for Australian Women is offering $100 cash (via PayPal). This is a site for Australian women giving information on health issues, rural women, indigenous women and more. Thanks to Toni for this prize.
• Poker on a Mac (a poker site for Mac users) is offering a 30gb video ipod to their winner. Thanks to Mike for this.
• Dave Taylor from Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support and The Intuitive Life Business Blog is offering a copy of his book ‘Growing Your Business with Google‘ and $100 cash as his prize.
• Thrive Web Marketing are offering a medium level webhosting package for a year that includes 100MB of webspace, 4000MB data transfer a month and more (worth $240). Thanks to Ross for this prize.
• eMoms at Home is offering two free passes (worth $349 each) to a 12 week group coaching program that she’s running in January. The course (via phone) is about how to be more productive and build a business. Read more on it here. Thanks Wendy for this prize.
• DeveloperCube - a forum for web developers - is offering a $100 Amazon gift voucher. Thanks to Patrick for this prize.
• Rob Schaumer is offering a $100 gift card (of the winners choice) at GiftCertificates.com. Thanks Rob!

Thanks also to those others who offered to sponsor this week. As I mentioned - there were 50 offers of prizes which was quite overwhelming. I’ve chosen prizes based upon reader feedback from last time. Readers liked actual prizes, cash etc more than services.

How To Participate

Here’s how to participate and put yourself in the running for a gift. Please read this as it has changed slightly since last time:

Please note - one entry per person - and not per blog. Please only submit NEW posts.

1. Write a ‘preview or review’ post

• Be as creative as you’d like - take it in any direction you want as long as it relates to the topic.
• Give your post a good title. Once all the posts are listed it’ll only be your title that sets it apart from others. It doesn’t have to have the words ‘review’ and or ‘preview’ in the title.
• Feel free to write your post in your own first language.
• Please consider putting a link back to this post on your post so that your readers know you’re participating. You don’t have to do this - but it’d be appreaciated to help grow the project.

2. Let us Know about your post

• Once you’ve posted your post let me know about it by sending me an email via my contact form.
• Please include your name (as you want it to appear in my list), your post title and the URL to your post (not just to your blog’s front page).
• Submissions must be received by me the the end of Thursday 21 December (as long as it’s still Thursday where you send it from I’ll accept it). If they come in after Thursday they won’t be included in the list and will not be in the running for the gifts.

3. I will post 2 links to your post

• In the day or two after you let me know about your post I’ll post a link to it in two places. Firstly there will be a daily (ish) list of the submissions from the last 24 hours. Secondly there will be a central list of all submissions for the project so we can see everything on one page.
• I’ll post my final list of submissions on Friday and will announce those who receive the gifts then.

4. Surf Surf Surf

• This is where you take over. Surf the submissions received. Leave comments, make connections with other enternetusers readers and enjoy reading what others have to say.

5. Link Link Link

• There is no formal ‘judging’ as this is not a competition. Instead - I encourage you to surf through the submissions at the end of the week and announce your own winners on your own blog. Name a top 5 or so and share the link love.
• Probably the best part of the last group project was the amount of inter-linking I see happening between participating bloggers as a result of their posts. It’s obvious that people found new blogs through it and that the benefits of participating was way beyond getting a link from me but flowed on to a lot of new connections and links between other bloggers.

6. Prizes

• On Friday I’ll randomly select 10 participants to win the 10 gifts and will post the winners at this point. The rest of us can muse over what could have been and then we’ll get ourselves ready for next months project.

Share This

Written on December 18th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 07:12 pm by Darren Rowse

I’ve been Bruced!

enternetusers Site News 8 comments

Poet Robert Bruce recently put together a poetic video for everyone’s favorite Copy Writing Blogger and I have to say I was a little jealous - to my knowledge no one’s ever written a poem or made a video for me before.

But I lived in hope! :-)

Today Robert emailed me with a very kind message thanking me for someone who helped get him into blogging and pointed me to a link that he said I might like to check out.

I’ve been Bruced!

Share This

Written on December 18th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:12 am by Darren Rowse

How to Cut Through the Clutter of an OVERLY BLOGGED STORY and Get Noticed

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 12 comments

Aaron just IM’d me to let me know that my post on TIME being linkbaiter of the year has climbed up to #3 on Techmeme (actually it got to #2).

The irony is that my in jest (attempted humor) accusation that TIME have pulled off the most successful linkbaiting of the year has in term become a pretty nice piece of linkbait itself and has managed to cut through the clutter of the many hundreds (if not thousands) of bloggers writing on the topic of TIME’s award.

Now in the scheme of things my post hasn’t pulled me in massive traffic and I’m laughing at the thought that a post I wrote in 20 seconds without much thought is getting this sort of attention when other posts I’ve slaved over this week have gone largely unnoticed (it’s always the way). However - there’s a lesson in here somewhere.

How to Cut Through the Clutter and Get Noticed

So if so many people are writing about the same story how do you rise above the clutter and get your post on it noticed?

A number of mini lessons come to mind:

1. Find a Fresh Angle

By far the most common post that I’ve seen on the ‘Person of the Year’ story today in reading blogs is bloggers claiming to be person of the year or writing that their readers are. Basically people are regurgitating TIME’s story. While this is a totally legit way to blog about it (and I considered it myself) there is little chance of anyone really engaging with the story too deeply beyond your loyal readers and subscribers. The only people really getting much traction with this approach today will be either those with big loyal readerships or those who were very early with breaking the story.

Finding a fresh angle on a story that is being written about to death is the best way to break above the clutter. Before hitting ‘post’ on such stories ask yourself

• ‘is there some way that I can turn this story around?’
• ‘how else could this story be reported?’
• ‘how does this story impact my niche?’

2. Be Fast

Living in Australia means that quite often when stories break late in the evening or early in the morning in North America it’s possible to pick up on a story considerably ahead of the majority of bloggers.

There’s no skill involved in this respect on my part on this occasion - I just happened to see the story breaking (it came in via email from readers) and responded as quickly as I could. When a big story breaks - the speed at which you’re able to respond counts for a lot.

3. Be Controversial or Humorous

My intent with this post was to put a humorous spin on a story that I knew would be massive. The reality was that my ‘humor’ was actually seen as ‘controversial’ by some (you should see some of the emails I go over this post).

Whether it’s humor or controversy - both can help your story stand out a little from the clutter. I don’t purposely do the ‘controversy’ thing much these days but it can pay off.

4. Use Striking Images

Another thing that I notice about many of the posts from bloggers on this topic is that the majority of them who are using an image are using the front page of this issue of TIME magazine (right).

While this is a fairly logical image to use it’s an image that is going to be seen in many thousands of RSS feeds over the coming days. I’m already becoming blind to it.

I decided to use a different image for my post - this one (a screen cap from the article itself):

My reason for this image was simply that it stood out more. I liked the color, I liked the layout and I thought it was a much more striking and attention grabbing image than the front cover of time.

5. Promote Your Post

Now if I’d actually intended this post to be linkbait and get attention (I didn’t) I would have promoted myself a little better than I did. The reality is that I just posted it and promptly forgot about it (it was Sunday and I was being Daddy at Home Alone with Baby).

However if I’d thought more about it I would have sent the link to a few other key bloggers in the hope of getting a few key link ups.

While some bloggers resist promoting themselves I think that it’s actually a legitimate way to get noticed (as long as you don’t go overboard and start spamming). Here’s a post I’ve written on asking other bloggers for links that might help with this.

PS: speaking of people surfing the wave of this story. Check out Alister’s Time Person of the Year (un)official seal for your blog!

Sell Homemade Video zone.- me!" border="0" style="margin-bottom:1em; border: 0px;" />
Read the Time article
Get your own seal

Share This

Written on December 18th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:12 am by Darren Rowse

What are People Searching for Online This Christmas

Pro Blogging News 7 comments

Epiar Market Research Blog has put together an interesting list that tracks what ‘Christmas’ things people are searching for online this year. Here are the first 8 items on the list. They are estimated searches as measured across all search engines.

See the full list at Christmas Wishes Expressed in Internet Search

Share This