Written on February 10th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:02 am by Darren Rowse
Vanilla Forums
Have any readers had any experience with Vanilla as a forum platform?
I’d be interested to hear people’s feedback.
Written on February 10th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:02 am by Darren Rowse
How AdSense Determines Which Ads to Show Where - Ad Rank Explained
Inside AdSense has a useful post on how AdSense determines what order ads will appear on your site. While the price an advertiser is willing to pay per click is definitely a factor it’s not the only one. There is a complex algorithm behind it which they attempt to explain by writing:
‘So, you ask, how is Ad Rank determined? While bid price (the price advertisers are willing to pay for each click per thousand impressions) is obviously an important factor, we also calculate advertiser Quality Score to make sure the best performing ads will always appear on your site. Quality Score takes into account factors such as an ad’s relevancy and click-through rate (CTR) (i.e. how likely users are to click on a given ad) because a higher CTR sometimes outweighs the benefits of a higher bid price. This ensures that your site always displays the ads representing the highest revenue potential for you.’
They also attempt to clear up a commonly asked question about image ads and how they determine when to show them or not.
You might also wonder: “But image ads usually take up multiple ad slots — does this limit the amount of money that I can make?” Good question, but no — for an image ad to appear on your site, it has to produce an effective CPM greater than the sum of the individual text ads.’
Written on February 10th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse
(Another) Day in the life of a enternetusers
Since writing my last day in the life of a enternetusers post my daily rhythm has changed a bit since I wrote it in November 2004 (and updated it in April 2005). As a result I thought I’d describe my daily workflow again.
It’s worth noting that this is a fairly ‘typical’ day, not so much because I follow this same set routine every day as it’s set out here, but because I generally do most of what I describe here on an average day (in addition to many other things that pop up as I wander through this crazy life of mine).
7.15am - V’s alarm goes off, she gets up and gets ready for work. I fall back to sleep (ok, some things haven’t changed - except that I’ve trained her not to hit snooze. Plus we now have a bigger bathroom so the hairdrying happens there meaning extra sleep for me!).
8.15am - V wakes me up and I drag myself from bed, get dressed and drive her to the train station. On the way home I grab a large takeaway latte from a local cafe.
8.30am - I return home, latte in hand and sit down at my PowerMac to begin my day’s blogging activities (I often grab a bowl of muesli to keep me going also). The morning generally looks like this:
8.31am - Check Email (I use Entourage at present) from the night. There are usually around 300 - 400 emails in my inbox from the previous night, including comments from blogs for moderation and a small handful of spam. The rest are largely emails from readers. I deal with my email in a Triage-like method as outlined here.
9.15am - I’m rarely fully finished checking email by this time (in fact the emails come in all day so it’s a day long task) but sometime towards the end of clearing the inbox I begin the task of seeing what is going on in my virtual world. I look at this process as like doing my rounds and it involves opening my ’start up Folder’.
Start Up Folder - in Firefox I have a folder of bookmarks called ‘Start Up’ which contains about 40 web pages that give me a very quick overview of how my online business is going at any point in time. I open this folder in tabbed browsing all at once and quickly flick through each page (not spending too long in any one place). My Start Up folder contains:
- Blog Stats - I have a sitemeter stats package running on each of my blogs - each of which is opened at the summary page in the Start Up folder. This gives me all the vital signs for each blog including it’s total visitors and page views for the day so far and the last hour’s figures. In most blogs that’s all I want to know at this point. I know approximately what is ‘normal’ for each blog so it’s only when I see something abnormal that I investigate further. ie if I see the last hour has seen more than normal activity I’ll check out where the visitors are coming from and what the entry pages are that they are looking for.
- Earnings Stats - I have quite a few income streams running on my blogs, many of which don’t earn much per day, so I only have the larger income earners in my start up process. These are AdSense, Chitika, Amazon, ClickBank, Fastclick and a couple of other affiliate programs. As with blog stats I know what is ‘normal’ and don’t spend long analyzing these figures unless something it wrong…. or very right.
- Other Stats - I have an assortment of other metrics programs that I take a glance at in this process. These include a number of watch-lists at Technorati, BlogPulse and MyBlogLog. It also includes Digital Point’s Keyword Tracker, My Feedburner RSS stats and Google Analytics (which is in my start up folder but probably shouldn’t be because I’m not using it much these days as it takes too long to check).
- b5media - I also have a growing list of internetusers links in the start up folder including some stats pages, earnings pages and our internal communications blog.
- Bloglines - The last thing in my Start Up folder is Bloglines which is not really part of the starting up process but leads onto the next part of my day.
My Start Up Folder process usually takes 15 or so minutes (unless there is something abnormal to follow up on.
10.00am - Most days i pause at this time for a shower, coffee and to check on my vegetable patch.
10.30pm - Now begins a task that lasts most of the rest of the day and which revolves around two tools, Bloglines and ecto. This task is a little thing I like to call ‘Blogging’.
I have my Bloglines arranged into folders that line up pretty closely with my blogs. You’ll see in the screen cap one called ‘photography’ which contains a number of sources that I track daily for my digital camera blog. Under it is my ‘Blogging’ folder which is full of sources for enternetusers. The ‘A List’ is my Problogging must reads which I have in a separate folder because they reliably break news that I want to be aware of extra quick. My folder lists are about 30 in number and I track just over 500 feeds in total.
These 500+ feeds are on a variety of topics obviously but are also of a variety of types. Most are feeds from blogs, but others are from Google News, Topix, News Papers etc.
I also watch a number of Bloglines keyword searches that correspond with keywords that I want to be aware of others writing on the topic of.
My process for working through Bloglines is pretty simple. I tackle it one folder at a time. I open a folder and then click feeds with unread items one at a time (i.e. some of my folders are watching 100+ feeds so I don’t want to open the whole folder at once - I am for bite sized tasks that I can knock off one at a time).
As I open feeds I scroll through them pretty quickly looking for items that might be useful. If I find one I do one of two things.
- If it looks like I can deal with it quickly I open the item in a new tab of firefox.
- If it is just a ‘maybe later’ type item I tick the ‘Keep New’ box in Bloglines to remind me of it for later.
In the majority of cases I open items straight away in a new tab.
I generally wait for at least 5 or so tabs to be open (or try to get to the end of a folder if it’s a smaller one) before I begin the process of sorting through them. If it’s an item that I can use I generally blog about it then and there.
My posts are generally fairly short and I can knock them off pretty quickly using ecto which means I don’t actually have to log into the back end of my blogs to post a new story but can post to all of my blogs from the one tool. If the item turns out to be something I can’t use I close the tab.
If the item is something I want to write about but it’s a longer piece that will interrupt my workflow I generally write a few notes in ecto and include a link to the site and post it to my blogs as a draft for me to come to later in the day when I write my longer posts.
Once I’ve dealt with a folder I move onto the next one.
Some folders I work through every day (or several time per day) because they are blogs that I have a higher posting frequency to - whereas other folders I will only clear every day or three (as a result they are less frequently updated blogs).
As I say - this process generally lasts all day (as does that of checking email).
The only folder that I have that is not specifically tied to one of my blogs is my ‘Vanity Folder‘. This folder contains a number feeds that are specifically watching for mentions in blogs and other news sources that use keywords that are pertinent to me. ie if someone is talking about me or one of my blogs/ventures it helps me know about it. These feeds are largely bloglines keyword searches but include a technorati watch-list or two also.
12.30pm - the theory is that at around this time I have lunch. The practice is that you can probably safely assume that most days I don’t notice I’m hungry until 2.30pm.
Usually at about lunch time I’ll open my Instant Messaging clients (Skype and Adium (Adium is a client that manages multiple clients like MSN, AIM, Yahoo and Google Talk). I am not on IM as much these days simply because I found it interrupted my workflow too much. At it’s height I was getting well over 10 IM message conversation initiations per hour (and getting very little done).
1.00pm - The afternoon routine tends to be a mixture of:
- Email (see above)
- Bloglines Blogging (see above)
- internetusers - our little blog network now has 80 or so blogs in it. As you would expect - this means a lot of work. While our team of bloggers help out with the load there is a lot of work to be done. I try to review a blog each day and give feedback to bloggers, interact with channel editors and bloggers, help out where I can with admin, add to the conversation on the internal communications blog and interact all day with the other directors.
- Networking - I attempt to connect with other bloggers each day. This isn’t hard with the levels of bloggers pinging me via IM but I also attempt to seek out other bloggers who I am wanting to develop working relationships with. Some of these I am working on joint projects with, others we have more of an informal/supportive/peer coaching relationship with and others I’m trying to learn as much as I can off. I do a lot of my networking via IM, VOIP (skype) and email. Occasionally it even heads into real life when people are in Melbourne. Every week or so I catch up with other local bloggers for coffee (it’s nice to actually have face to face conversations with people when you do so much in a virtual space).
1.00pm - Alternate 1 - There is another type of afternoon that I do from time to time (often on Mondays when the rest of the world is still having it’s Sunday and there are less emails and IMs). On these days I take my laptop and head to a local cafe to attempt to clear my email inbox or do some writing on projects I’ve been putting off.
I really enjoy these times of being offline (I go to a cafe with no WiFi) and find I am often very productive (it could be the coffee).
1.00pm - Alternate 2 - There is one last type of afternoon that I find myself doing which revolves around consulting. From time to time I am approached by companies or individuals who want to engage my services in some consulting work (generally blogging related). In most cases these are not consulting on specific blogs (I unfortunately have to say no these days to most requests along the lines of ‘can you look over my blog’ due to time constraints) and are more along the lines of helping companies think about strategy as they develop products. These have included some interaction with a few Web 2.0 type companies and others (big and small) who are developing products and services for bloggers. I don’t get into the technical side of consulting but rather it’s more around conceptual/vision/features etc. To this point I’ve not written about these interactions here at enternetusers due to NDAs. All I will say is that there are some very creative people out there who are developing some great products. I enjoy this work and am finding the requests are coming a little more frequently. It’s definitely another income stream for bloggers who build a profile in their industry.
3.30pm - Break Time. My worst time of the day for thinking clearly about anything at all is mid afternoon and so unless I’m very busy I tend to take this time off. I put my computer to sleep and generally either have a sleep myself, do some gardening, get out with my camera and do some photography, take a walk or catch up with a friend.
5.00pm - I like at this time to do a bit of a check up on how the blogs are going and generally use my start up folder again. Once again it’s brief.
Also at this time I often do some less hands on work (ie not actual blogging - but planning or reviewing). I often brainstorm new original posts for enternetusers at this time or look over one or more of my blogs to see how they are going with SEO etc.
6.00pm - V calls to let me know she’s almost at the train station and I need to go pick her up. For the next few hours I rarely blog or am online. Occasionally if we’re just watching TV I’ll pull out my laptop and do a little surfing around at this time of the day, perhaps clear a small bloglines folder or two - but generally this is a time I stay away from blogging.
9.00pm til Late - V generally heads to bed (pregnant women do tend to like to sleep a lot I’m told) and I generally settle in for my ‘night shift’ as I like to think of it.
Night times for me resemble day times in that I do the normal tasks, but they are also a time that I write a lot of my original content, especially for enternetusers. I like to have a a longer post ready to publish on enternetusers by the time I head to bed (usually 1am-ish) and it’s usually in the evenings that I put these posts together.
The reason I like to publish this last post for the day is because I like it to to go live on the blog around the time that my North American readers are getting up and to the office. While I don’t generally pander to any one group of readers I do this because North America is where most of my traffic comes from and yet when they are up is when I’m generally asleep. During my day time I generally post throughout the day so to have post set to go off while I sleep makes sense (in my mind at least).
Also in the evenings I often write non blogging material. For instance when I was running the six figure blogging course the evenings were for preparing for this. Other writing can include answering questions for email interviews that people do with me.
Lastly, late at night is also a time when I can connect with other bloggers via IM as they wake up in their part of the world. One has to make the most of those windows of opportunity to connect when we’re all awake.
1.00am - I generally do a last quick check of the stats of my key blogs just to make sure everything is running smoothly and head to bed. Most nights by this stage I’ve cleared the majority of emails and quite a bit of my bloglines. Of course when it all begins again in a few hours time the inbox is full and there are a few thousand unread items in bloglines!
I generally sleep VERY well. I go to bed tired and sleep deeply.
Weekends - these days I blog a lot less than I used to on weekends. I do tend to find an hour or two here and there but it’s mainly monitoring and brief posts.
Occasionally if I find myself with an hour or two to spare on the weekend I like to do some outside the box, creative work (dreaming up a Meme, thinking up a new blog topic etc). I also occasionally get a good idea for a series of posts while I’m out and about on the weekend and generally write it in my notebook (usually with me) to be acted upon later.
A few final reflections:
The above sounds a lot more structured and well thought out than the reality is. While I generally do cover most of the things I’ve mentioned above in a day, the reality is that my days are often very unstructured and somewhat chaotic.
That is partly my personality type (I’m a fairly flexible and relaxed person) but also partly the nature of the job where often stories break unexpectedly or situations arise that need to be dealt with quickly.
The other thing that is worth mentioning is that every day is different from every other day. I’m amazed by the variety of opportunities that arise to break up this routine. For example earlier in the week I was interviewed by a writer (face to face) who is writing a book on media, a couple of weeks ago I took the day off and went to the Australian Open tennis, yesterday I was asked to speak at a conference on blogging and tomorrow I’m helping a friend set up a blog. Sometimes the unexpected happens and other days I go seeking it - attempting to break up the routine (I need variety).
Some of you will have read this and will be going out of your minds with the idea of spending most of the day alone with a computer. I’m very aware that this daily rhythm is not for everyone’s personality type. I have studied personality types quite a bit and know that I’m an introvert (I get energy from being alone). As a result this style of work is ideal for me. I do get time with others (virtual and real) but a lot of my time is alone, working at my own pace. I go out of my way to balance this with as much real life interactions with people as I can outside of blogging hours (weekends and evenings). I’m also involved in the running of a small church which fills in the gaps during the days and evenings and puts me in face to face relationships each day which is great also.
Written on February 9th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 03:02 pm by Darren Rowse
The Problem with Hosted Blog Platforms
Emily reflects upon the problem of starting a blog on a hosted service like TypePad and relying upon the subdomain URL you are given when you do in a post rather appropriately titled Starting a new blog? Get your own domain name! Do NOT use a subdomain.
‘The irony here is that I actually own a lot of domain names and I genuinely can’t fathom why I didn’t just use a domain of my own when I started this blog. Don’t make the same mistake as me or you could end up feeling trapped like I do right now. Consider yourselves warned.’
My main advice to new bloggers on this topic is to attempt to think ahead as much as possible. While it’s difficult to see too far into the future and it might feel a little excessive to fork out for a domain name and hosting (and it seems difficult to set up) i might save you quite a few headaches in the future.
Of course if you are trapped on a subdomain it’s not the end of the world either. There are some very successful blogs out there on them or who have used different methods to move to new set ups from them - all is not lost - but if you are in start up mode think carefully.
Written on February 9th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Successful Affiliate Marketer Shares Knowledge
I was just surfing through SitePoint forums this afternoon and came across a thread that was well worth a read. It starts with a post by a guy by the name of Jon who posts a screen capture of his Commission Junction affiliate earnings. In the last couple of months he’s earned over $81,000.
Now one needs to take posts about high earnings with a little caution because they are often followed with a ‘buy my e-book’ link. But in this case I think he’s the genuine deal and offers some very good advice to others wanting to follow in his footsteps.
Unfortunately the thread degenerates into a flame war over whether his screenshots are real and it all gets pretty snarky at times - but it’s worth persisting for his advice as he goes. I’ve included a few of his comments below.
Keep in mind that he doesn’t reveal his sites, and I don’t blame him for this, but does reveal at one point that at least some of them have a financial focus. He used to do adult sites but has gone more ‘mainstream’ and has been at this since 1994 (worth remembering - this is a long term game). Here’s a little of what Jon has to say:
Some invaluable advice on Usability and Market Research:
‘Whenever people want to attract more users and more cashflow, they make the mistake of thinking too much like a website owner. Take a step back for a moment and look at it from the user’s perspective. Is this a site that you would tell your friends about? If not, what would make you do so? What stands out that’s different about your site from all of the others? It’s tough, but you need to go through this process and truly figure out what changes need to be made so that you stick out from all the rest.
Another thing you should consider is market research. Ask your friends, your family, even random users about what they think of your site compared to the others. Do some research on your competitor’s sites. What makes them so popular that you don’t have? Is it really just their name? Is it their content? Does the site load quicker? Are there fewer annoying ads? What’s the incentive to play there? Where do they promote? etc..
Market research is hands down one of the most important and overlooked processes by webmasters these days. Large and small alike. Why do you think the big boys are so darn popular so quickly? They do their research, and they continue to do so, nonstop. Every weekend, I dedicate hours and hours to market research on every single site I own, and all of the new ones I’ll be launching, just so I can keep myself well versed with everything in case a problem arises, or changes need to be made. Also, LOG EVERYTHING YOU FIND. Do this so you don’t forget it later. Sometimes the smallest finds can be your biggest assets.’
On focussing upon what you love doing:
‘I’m currently in my mid 20’s, and I’ve been doing internet marketing/advertising since the early-mid 90’s. Even though I am
My advice to everyone is that if you’re passionate about the sites you own, just keep plugging away at it and never give up. Be as creative and original as possible in both your content and advertising methods. With the internet, you truly do have the power to accomplish anything. Just keep learning and applying new methods, and you’ll be fine.’
Responding to a question about buying a lot of ‘turnkey sites’:
‘Here’s what you should do instead.. Buy 5 turnkey sites at most, and see if you can handle those. Market/advertise them the same way, but you may be able to tap into that $10k and give your sites a larger stream of traffic. I’ll bet if you take things at a slower pace, and give each site more love and dedication, they will grow into earning a lot more than just $1 a day from Adsense. Set small goals for yourself. Always log the information of what works and what doesn’t. You should be trying to create a system for yourself, so that you can apply it over and over again, and keep yourself at a fairly high success rate. Once you’re confident that you’ve reached the level of the system where you can give a 95% success rate to a new site, then all that’s left is to create volume. With your working system in hand, and a bunch of confidence on your side, you can easily create 100’s of new sites each year that work on the same platform and start taking in serious income.
On Strategy:
I guess the best system to follow that is pretty much the same for everything, is the very early stages of a site’s development. Before you even secure a domain name, lay out the idea of your site in front of you, either on paper or in Notepad. Weigh out the pro’s and con’s of the site. Research as many competitor sites as possible. Figure out which keyword themes they are ranking well for, do your research on those keywords, and figure out for yourself what is making them so popular on the engines. Once you’ve laid out some traffic information, start jotting down ideas to make your site “unique”. One of the primary goals your site should bring to the table is that it is different from all the other ones out there. Something about it needs to scream out to the crowd “LOOK AT ME, I’M DIFFERENT, AND BETTER”. That’s what can really make users keep coming back to your site over your competitors.
SEO is definitely a major player, but it doesn’t have to be your only option. I think the absolute best way to attract attention and traffic to a site is through viral marketing (word of mouth). Perhaps make a contest of some sort if you can. Hand out flyers to friends, just get the word out. Offline advertising can be just as cheap as online advertising….
Sometimes, you’ll run into a dead end and the only wise thing to do is abandon the project or save it for a rainy day sometime next year. Don’t be afraid to give up on a site, many times I do the same, and then I figure out how to make it work months later. I know I say never give up, but sometimes, a dying site needs to be cut loose, and it takes a lot of guts to disband from a project you may feel passionate about. Only cut it loose though if it’s doing more harm than good. Sometimes people feel that a non-profitable site is still profitable in other areas (spreading the word about something).
Read the full thread at SitePoint Forums - Screenshot: My CJ Stats
Written on February 9th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:02 pm by Darren Rowse
AdRotator - Ad Rotating Plugin for WordPress Users
Over the last few days I’ve been playing around with the AdRotator - Ad Rotating Plugin for WordPress here at enternetusers. The ads you see in the banner position are now rotating through three different options so that every third page view gets a different ad.
The plugin allows you to rotate AdSense ads also.
The beauty of rotating ads is that on sites with either high page views per visit and/or high numbers of repeat/loyal readers you are going at least part of the way to combat ad blindness by creating a more dynamic and ever changing appearance to your blog.
AdRotator lets you rotate as many different ad though your ad position as you like and you can use it on multiple positions on your blog.
I’m yet to have any problems with it. Installation was simple (once I found where to download it - ie its on page 2 of the plugin page and not the front page) which is saying something for me, one of the more technically challenged bloggers going around.
Installation involves simply uploading the plugin via FTP into your wp-content/plugins directory and then uploading a.txt file per ad position you want to run. Full details are pretty well explained (with an example of the files you need to upload) in the User Manual page.
I’m certain that there are other Ad Rotating scripts that you can use but in terms of simplicity and reliability I’m finding AdRotator to be a worthwhile option for WordPress users.
Written on February 9th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
How to Measure a Blog’s Success?
As I was writing my post a couple of days back on the Conversation Index (comment to post ratio) that some bloggers are talking about as a measure of success for blogging I found myself asking the question:
‘How should a blog’s success be measured?’
As I mentioned in my post, the conversational index might be a useful calculation to make overtime to measure the interactivity on a blog - but this is only one possible element of success that a blogger might choose to evaluate.
Here are a few other measures of success that different bloggers might use to evaluate how their blogs are going. Some will be more or less relevant for different blogs and will depend upon the goals and objectives of the blogger:
1. Traffic - The most common ways that bloggers seem to evaluate a blog are the different measures of traffic. Different bloggers seem to have their own preferences for different aspects of traffic:
- Unique Visitors - individual IP addresses logged to a page
- Page Views - the total number of pages viewed (it’s useful to watch the ratio of pages viewed per visitor - the higher it is the stickier your site is)
- Hits - the number of requests sent for a file to the server
2. Length of Stay - I know some bloggers who watch the time that the average visitor stays on a blog as a measure of stickiness.
3. RSS Subscribers - RSS subscriber levels is increasingly coming into play for many blogs. While it varies greatly from blog to blog in terms to how many readers are utilizing it I’m finding it more and more common to find bloggers who have a pretty good grasp on the numbers of subscribers (something most of us had little idea on even a year ago). Services like Feedburner and Bloglines make it easier to keep an eye on these numbers.
4. Comment Numbers - We’ve already discussed this so I won’t go on about it except to say that it’s useful for engaging the level of interaction on your blog.
5. Comments Length - I tend not to focus so much on this but know of some bloggers that are incredibly proud of the effort that their readers go to in responding to their posts.
6. Comments Quality - This one is difficult to measure (it’s pretty subjective) but is worthwhile to consider in my opinion. I’d much rather 3 comments per post that add something to what I have to say (even if it’s disagreement) than 20 that say ‘nice post’. While the ‘nice post’ comments are welcome - my own goals in writing go beyond a need for admiration and are more about creating conversation that stimulates change in my readers and in myself through what they add to the dialogue.
7. Other Feedback from Readers - This is high on my list of things that give me an indication of the health of my blogs. Emails and Instant Messaging conversations are brilliant for gauging what people think of your blog and more importantly how they are using it. For example a couple of months ago I noticed that I had quite a few emails from readers of one of my blogs asking for information on exactly the same thing. The topic was one that I’d previously covered which told me that my design of that blog wasn’t really adequate as they were not finding what they wanted quickly.
8. Other Participation from Readers - There are many ways that readers can participate on a blog that go beyond comments and emails. One that I watch here at enternetusers is the level of subscribers (and unsubscribers) to my newsletter. A sudden influx of subscribers is often an indication that I’ve written something that has hit home with readers (or an indication that I have a lot of first timer readers). Other participation might include response to polls, competitions and other calls to action.
9. Incoming Links and Trackbacks - The levels of incoming links to your blog can be an indicator of both how well or how badly you’re writing (depending upon the nature of the links). Incoming links are good for a blog in most cases because of the incoming traffic that follow them but also because they are a major factor in climbing the rankings in search engines. They can be monitored in a number of ways:
- Trackbacks - while some bloggers hate them most blogs utilize them to further conversations and as notification of what others are writing about you.
- Search Engines - type in ‘link:domainname’ into Google and you can get a good quick picture of the incoming links that that search engine has indexed for your blog (example for enternetusers). A more automated way to monitor incoming links (backlinks) in the major search engines is to use digital point’s backlink checking tool.
- Blog Indexing Services - services like Technorati offer services to monitor what other bloggers are writing about you (example for enternetusers)
- RSS Searches - I use the search function on Bloglines to monitor keywords such as ‘enternetusers’ and ‘Darren Rowse’ to watch what others say about me (sounds paranoid but it’s a wonderful way to interact with different bloggers who are responding to your posts who you might have missed otherwise). In doing so you do pick up on some incoming links that trackbacks don’t pick up.
- Referral Stats - Most statistics packages offer the ability to track where your readers come from to get to your blog. This shows you the things they are searching search engines for but also the sites that are linking up.
A word of warning - while monitoring the above is useful some bloggers fall into the track of becoming quite addicted to checking these types of statistics and can become a pretty egotistical and unproductive exercise. I take note of these things personally but its only something I do every now and again unless there is some sort of breaking news or a crisis to manage.
10. Search Engine Rankings (SERPS) - how high your blog ranks in search engines for different keywords is something that some bloggers monitor carefully as an indicator of success. Services like digital point’s keyword tracker is a useful tool for monitoring this if you want a way to do it that is a little more automated than constantly surfing Google to monitor it manually.
11. ‘Top Blogs’ lists - There are numerous ‘top blog’ indexes going around. Many see these as pretty egotistical exercises, especially those which only link smaller numbers of bloggers but some can be more useful:
- Technorati have a ‘top 100‘ but also rank all blogs in their index
- Blog Pulse have a top 40 blogs list also and also have different ranks for all blogs
- Feedster has a top 500 list.
- Truth laid bear has a number of lists including their famous ecosystem (which indexes thousands of blogs), their traffic ranking list and a top post list.
- Bloglines has a top blogs list
- Daypop has a top Weblogs page
There are also many many other similar pages that attempt to index and rank blogs on different factors - some rank on a topic basis, other on a location basis etc. I personally don’t use these much as an indicator of how my blogs compare with other blogs but check one or two of the above over time to see if my blogs are on the improve or not in the scheme of things.
Another similar system that is not focused solely upon blogs is Alexa.com which has a traffic ranking system (example for enternetusers).
12. Awards - Blog Awards are everywhere at this time of year and for some are highly important measures of success (although as my recent poll on the topic found - not important for the majority of bloggers).
13. Social Bookmarking - I’m finding in my interactions with bloggers that there is a growing desire to get linked to and ranked well on social bookmarking pages like del.icio.us and digg.com (to name just two). While I wouldn’t use this as a primary measure of success (I think it can become an obsession for some) it CAN be an indicator of success on a more micro level (ie on a post by post level) - although it’s definitely open to manipulation.
14. Frequency of Posts - One of the things that channel editors monitor over at b5media is the number of posts that our bloggers are writing per week and month. While we don’t come down too heavily if targets are not met it does give us an indication of how a blog is going that is often quite insightful on a number of levels. It is sometimes an indicator that something else is not quite right with the blog.
15. Income - IF your goals as a blogger are along the lines of earning an income from your blog - then a pretty obvious indicator of success is the bottom line. There are many ways of measuring income depending upon the income stream.
16. Blogger Profile - I was speaking with one blogger last week who has developed a business blog on his industry (a specialized and very small industry). His blog gets less than 100 visitors per day and earns no direct income - however it is a raging success in the eyes of it’s blogger because he is quickly becoming known as an expert in his industry. His blog will never appear on a ‘top 100 list’ but it’s led him to many opportunities i in his field and has been one of the most worthwhile things he’s ever done in his business.
17. Blogger Passion and Satisfaction - This is one of those that is difficult to measure - but one that I’d rate of great importance. When it comes down to it, if a blogger loses interest and energy for a blog then many of the other areas above are likely to suffer.
18. Other - This list could be many many points longer because for every blog and blogger there is a different set of goals and objectives and for every set of goals and objectives there will be a way of measuring success. I surveyed a couple of other bloggers while writing this post and their own indicators of success included things like:
- ‘Getting a Book Deal’
- ‘Picking up Chicks’
- ‘Getting customers for my business’
- ‘Having Fun’
- ‘Networking with Others in my Industry’
- ‘Learning about my topic of Interest’
I’m sure that many of you will have others I’ve not mentioned here - so I’ll ask the question…
How do you measure success on your blog?
Written on February 8th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 07:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Hate Links
A couple of related links that came through my inbox this morning:
- The Stop Snark Manifesto - One blogger’s attempt to end Blog Snark-i-ness
- Handling Hate - Andy Hagans on ‘Hate’ in the blogosphere
Written on February 8th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 06:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Turn to Compete with AdSense
I’m thinking of starting my own contextual advertising company. It seems to be the thing to do with YPN getting into it last year, MSN on the way, Amazon rumored to be getting into it and today talk of yet another competitor to AdSense - ‘Turn’.
The word is that Turn (presumably to be located at Turn.com) plans to go head to head with AdSense. It’s being headed up by Jim Barnett former Altavista CEO and has reportedly got $10,000,000 in VC backing.
Definately a story to keep an eye on.
PS: Turn.com is registered to Turn Inc. until 2 August 2012 - looks like a long term project.
Written on February 8th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Blogging with or without Comments?
Mathew Ingram has an interesting discussion going on around the topic of Is a blog without comments still a blog? after the flack that Russell Beattie has gotten from not using them.
Russell decided to cut comments largely for time reasons as far as I can see it - he was sick of dealing with spam and flames and wanted to put his time into other activities.
I read of Russell’s experience and can quite honestly hear what he’s saying. Comments have the ability to build up in the time that they take to manage as your blog grows and as more and more bloggers enter the blogosphere.
On the other hand I feel strongly that one of the best things about blogging is the interaction and conversation that it creates.
So is a blog without comments a blog?
While I know some blogging purists who believe a comment-less blog is not a blog, my own opinion is not quite as extreme. Here are a few random thoughts that come to mind that I’ll throw into the mix:
- Some topics generate more conversation than others - this is pretty obvious but worth considering when making the decision of whether to activate comments. enternetusers is my most commented upon blog (by a LONG way). This is partly because I’m writing about a topic that it seems everyone has a comment on. I’m also writing to an audience who are used to writing and expressing opinions. Not to have comments on this blog would be quite bizarre.
- Different writing styles impact comment numbers - I intentionally write in a voice that invites interaction. I go out of my way to ask questions, to add their experiences and to help in the learning/teaching process. Other bloggers do not write in this voice and will there for have less response from readers and might actually find comments to be more of a distraction than anything because they want to be the voice of authority on their topic. I guess this comes down to your blog’s goals also.
- Traffic levels impact comment levels - different ends of the spectrum of traffic tend to struggle with comments for different reasons. Bloggers with low traffic often express to me embarrassment for having post after post with no comments on them (not a great first impression for readers perhaps) whereas at the other end of the spectrum - highly trafficked blogs struggle to administer comments (deleting spam, monitoring flaming, responding to questions etc). I understand the feeling from both ends and think that while it’s easy to be critical of bloggers who turn off comments it’s worth considering the reasons that might have led to the decision.
- Not having comments can actually be an advantage - One of the bloggers that I read daily who uses his lack of comments to his advantage is Seth Godin. While I personally find it frustrating not to be able to tell Seth what I think at the end of posts the advantage for him is that he gets a lot of people linking to his posts because their comments happen on their own blogs. This vast amount of incoming links helps him achieve higher Search Engine Ranking. I bet he also gets a few more emails than many bloggers get - I know I’ve emailed him numerous times over the last year or so (and he responds!).
- Changing the Rules Halfway - I’ve seen a number of bloggers switch off comments have get criticized heavily for it - yet there are other bloggers who don’t have comments (and never have had them) who don’t seem to get the criticism. Perhaps the secret is to think through this issue before you start your blog and to not change the rules halfway? Of course it’s difficult to know what work comments will bring to your life a couple of years into the future - but it’s worth considering.
- Middle Ground? - One strategy that I’m surprised more bloggers don’t experiment with is having comments turned on with some comments and off with others. I do know of some bloggers who have comments switch off after a certain length of time to deal with Comment Spam (there is a whole debate around this too) but another approach would be to pick those posts which might be more appropriate for comments to allow them and to keep others shut off. This isn’t a strategy I’ll be employing but might be middle ground.
Like Russell says though - it is his own blog and ultimately is his decision and ultimately he has to live with the consequences of that (maybe more time, probably more direct emails, perhaps less traffic from those seeking community and maybe a different style/voice of blogging).
What do you think about blogs without comments?
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