Written on July 6th, 2005 at 05:07 am by Darren Rowse
How Many Blogs to Focus Upon?
Paul wrote a week or so ago about his decision to scale back his blogs to those which are most profitable in a post titled One site or one hundred sites?:
‘a couple of weeks ago I sat down and made a spreadsheet of all my sites and where my revenue was coming from. I found that over 90% of my revenue was coming from two sites. That left me with two options:
1. Drop the non-performing sites. These sites obviously have the potential to be successful otherwise I wouldn’t have started them, but they also take time.
2. Work more on the non-performing sites. This requires that I spend less time on the sites that are performing.I chose the first option because it’s much easier working on two sites opposed to twelve sites.’
It’s an interesting piece and an issue I’ve been wrestling with a bit of late. As I look at my 20 or so blogs there is a huge difference in earning capacity between the highest and lowest earning blogs.
When I first started rolling out new blogs in greater numbers about 12 months ago I remember promising myself that I would cull the ones that did not perform. What I was doing was putting the feelers out there to find which worked and which did not. The ones that worked I’d work more on, the ones that did not I’ll let die.
It’s a nice theory but in practice I’m not sure I’ve really seen it work for a number of reasons.
1. I’m a hoarder - This was evident when I sorted through the boxes that I keep under my desk before we moved house a couple of months ago. They were filled with all kinds of sentimental and ‘useful’ (well they might be one day) bits and pieces from my past. I find it hard to let go of anything that ‘might’ one day work - this includes my blogs.
I have a number of poor performing blogs that I hold onto with the hope that they might hit it big one day. The thing is that they actually could hit it big - but how long is it feasible to wait before I turn my attention to other ventures?
2. It takes time for blogs to take off - The reason I have this hoarding approach is because on a couple of occasions I did hold onto blogs that in time did take off. One that is currently seeing increases in traffic is my laptop review blog which I started last October but which has only really begun to grow significantly in traffic over the past couple of months. It’s still not massive but the signs are there that it could be significant down the track.
In fact this is the story for most of my blogs. The first 6 to 12 months can show few signs of growth (particularly if you’re using a completely new domain) and then out of the blue can come success….sometimes. It’s a hit and miss game.
So I find myself living in a bit of a quandary at times - torn between ruthlessly culling or selling off my slow growers and playing the waiting game for that burst of traffic that may never come.
Luckily for me, I am in a position to be able to play the waiting game to a point - I have some blogs that have already risen to a level of paying me enough to be able to put time into the slow burners. However I often find myself wondering what would happen if I was to take the time that I spend on the low profit blogs I write each day and put it into my profitable ones or even put it into new ventures - some of which could be cash cows. Am I being wise in the way I spend my time?
How long would (do) you sit on a non earning blog before giving up?
Written on July 6th, 2005 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse
Interview with Ashley Norris - Shiny Media
As I mentioned in my ‘I’m home’ post - I was fortunately to catch up with two talented enternetuserss whilst I was in London - Ashley Norris and Katie Lee from Shiny Media. Ashley and I have been emailing for sometime now as Shiny have been a blogging enterprise that I’ve been following for a while now - and so the chance for a face to face catch up was too good to pass up. I came away from out time together having had both a very pleasant afternoon - but also feeling as though I’d just met a couple of fellow travellers who knew both the ups and downs of the ProBlogging journey (a rare feeling).
So I’m really happy to present this interview with enternetusers - Ashley Norris.
enternetusers - Thanks for your time Ashley – can you tell us a little about yourself and Shiny Media? What is it, how did it come into being, who is behind it etc?
Ashley - It was set up by three freelance technology journalists (myself, Chris Price and Katie Lee) around two years ago. Egged on by Neil McIntosh at The Guardian newspaper (who is the Godfather of British commercial blogging), we launched a gadget blog for the UK and Europe called Tech Digest. For the first six months or so we didn’t take it very seriously. Then the adsense money started rolling, we became aware of what Nick Denton was doing at Gawker and people started talking to us about buying the blog, so we thought we’d explore what else we could do. We then started Shiny Shiny, which at that time was the first gadget blog written for women and aimed at women. Since then we have launched the fashion blogs Shoewawa and The Bag lady, techy blogs Games Digest and Mobile Digest, ethical consumer guide HippyShoper and now the online auction freak show that is Bayraider.
enternetusers - How do you decide what topics to write blogs on? Do you start with a topic and then find a blogger, or with a blogger first? Is it about finding something commercially viable or something that is a passion or an interest of someone and building a commercial blog around it?
Ashley - When we launched the gadget blogs we really protecting our interest as we knew that if we didn’t do it someone else would. Funnily enough since we launched all the UK gadget mags have seriously ramped up their online activities. As for the trio of blogs aimed at women, they were part of a realisation that women read blogs but were poorly served by online publishers. Shoewawa has been a success as there are thousands of women who are every bit passionate about shoes as blokes are about their electronic toys. We want to produce blogs that are fun and interesting, and so far people have appreciated what we are trying to do and the cash has followed. We are more interested in creating blogs that are unique, funny and entertaining than we are following key words.
enternetusers - How would you describe the philosophy of Shiny Media?
Ashley - I suppose it is similar to most commercial blog publishers in that we want to create an online publishing empire. However we want to produce blogs that maintain high editorial standards, and also in a funny kind of way reflect British culture to the rest of the world – a bit like Ealing Film Studios did in the 40s and 50s. I love the fact that Bayraider (our online auction blog) is so full of British cultural references, but thanks to Time Magazine naming it as one of its top 50 coolest websites in the world, it now has a mainly US-based readership
enternetusers - How do you monetise your blogs? How successful have your methods of making an income from your blogs been?
Ashley - Like most commercial bloggers we spend most of the day working out how to maximise revenue from Adsense. But several of our blogs have strong support from affiliates and we do use agency clearing houses occasionally too. There has also been some sponsorship from Telewest (UK broadband/cable company) and infamously from cleaner company Dyson, but also from some smaller advertisers too. I feel we have reached the stage now where the more imaginative UK ad agencies are starting to take us seriously. It is difficult to know whether there will be an explosion of proper advertising and sponsorship on blogs or not. I guess it will come, but probably not as quickly as it has happened in the US.
enternetusers - Do you pay your bloggers? How do you determine these payments (if you do pay them)? What is your relationship with those that write for you? Ie do they own the content or do you? Do you see them as employees? Etc
Ashley - We pay almost all our bloggers – we have a team of around twenty now. Some get a monthly fee, others are on a revenue share, and some get paid per post. It is hard to say which works best to be honest. It really depends on the individual. Some of our bloggers are established journalists, others are getting their first break as writers. I think we are really lucky as we have some superb writers who deliver very readable blogs. I genuinely get very excited when there’s a new post on Bayraider as Stuart’s posts almost always make me laugh out loud.
enternetusers - Why have you chosen blogs as a way of delivering your content and not other styles of websites?
Ashley - If I am honest I’d say we chose blogs, not because of affinity with blogging, but because in those day we were very green and Typepad seemed an easy way of running a news oriented website. Obviously as time has gone by we have become immersed in blogging culture (Katie has always been drowning in it) and learnt a great deal about content management on all kinds of websites. I do love the immediacy of blogs, especially in tandem with RSS feeds, and the informal style that many bloggers have honed. I passionately believe that blogs are the future of editorial on the internet. I find it incredible that so few people in the UK realize this yet.
enternetusers - What would be your main advice for a blogger just starting out hoping to make an income from blogging?
Ashley - Well, don’t take any advice I give too seriously. It took us a year to start making money out of Tech Digest! I think there is money to be made, but not the gold rush that some have predicted. So it is matter of developing a blog and sticking with it. The thing I value above all else of my partners is that they are both doers who’ll not just get passionate about things but will also put the hours in to make things happen. I think to succeed you need to be committed and to work with similarly committed people. I should add that none of the three Shiny partners are full time, but that will come shortly. The other thing is to work the media. We take our PR very seriously and have been rewarded by mentions in almost every major newspaper in the UK and US as well as appearances on CNN and ITV.
enternetusers - How does Shiny Media’s approach to blogging differ from other blog networks like Gawker and Weblogs Inc?
Ashley - Well we respect them both for differing reasons. You have to admire the sheer balls of Calcanis to launch that many blogs that quickly, and the quality of the blogs that Denton produces is astonishingly high. Comparing Shiny with Gawker or Weblogs Inc is laughable as they obviously are much bigger companies with much more traffic than we are capable of attracting at the moment. I do subscribe to the Calcanis theory that each niche will have around three or four successful blogs, though we’d obviously prefer to be number one in a niche we developed.
enternetusers - Where do you see Shiny Media in 5 years time? What is your hope/dream/mission/vision for it?
Ashley - It is hard to think that far in advance. We have another five blogs lined up for the summer and another ten scheduled to launch before the end of the year. Some will be very UK focused, while others, we hope, will have international appeal. If we had a stable of innovative blogs that were well read and well liked that made us a bit of cash, all three of us would be very happy.
Written on July 5th, 2005 at 09:07 pm by Darren Rowse
What Caught My Eye in RSS
As I slowly make my way through the 10,000+ unread RSS feeds that have accumulated in my Bloglines account over the past month a number os posts have caught my attention which I thought I’d highlight here. Some of them have been mentioned by my guest bloggers but there’s no harm in doubling up:
- Jensense announced New Horizonal Ad Links ad units added for AdSense publishers - my initial reaction is that it’s always nice to have more options, but that they seem a little ugly on first look. I’ll have to have a think about where they could be useful on my blogs.
- Jen also did two interesting posts on Yahoo’s contextual advertising system which is under testing. In one post she compared the relevancy of Yahoo’s ads and Googles and in the other post she noticed the length of descriptions that advertisers get on the Yahoo system.
- Typepad have been rolling out changes including comment moderation, new themes and the ability to ad ads to their blog to help cover their subscription fees.
- Tris (and many others) talked about the move from Apple which could take podcasting to the next level - adding built in support for podcasting in iTunes. I have to say that when I heard this whilst away I couldn’t wait to get home to play with it with my newly acquired iPod.
- Microsoft are recruiting bloggers on a variety of topics including fashion, food, style, music, sports, technology and television.
- There is an interesting post over at The Watchmaker Project about the emerging 9Rules network.
- Whilst we’re on the topic - the redesigned 9Rules Network (they do redesigns more than I post!) opened itself up for a second round of proposals to join it’s network. It’ll be interesting to see who joins in the next batch.
- The Blog Herald has a great list of Blog Networks.
- Mick Stanic points to a good article on Australian Business Blogging in the SMH.
- BlogKits went on Hiatus as Jim Kukrai has taken over at ReveNews.
- Joel Comm has released an updated version of his e-book - Google Adsense Secrets (affiliate link) which is now something like double the size with loads more information. See my review of the 1st edition here.
- Andy has a good audio interview with Blog Herald and Weblog Empire owner Duncan Riley.
- Brad at WebJunkie writes a good post on Selling a Website out of his experience of recently selling Blog Catalog. It’s a good read that would be valuable next time you’re in the position to sell up.
- Define Blog posts some tips on How to me more Productive in your blogging. I’ll second the idea of using ‘away’ on your IM. But I’m not sure about not having food handy - fruit and nut chocolate is my secret blogging weapon!
Ok - that’s just some of what caught my eye. What else did I miss?
Written on July 5th, 2005 at 08:07 pm by Darren Rowse
Posting Frequency Observations
One of the things that going away and not checking your RSS feeds for a month can do for you is help identify who is blogging how much.
I generally clear my bloglines account every day. As a result I don’t notice from day to day which of my 350 or so feeds are updating frequently.
Being away for four weeks has left me confronting 7000+ unread items (many of which I won’t read). However in scanning through them I’m surprised to see how little some of my favorite bloggers are posting. In 30 days some of them posted less than 5 times.
I won’t embarrass anyone by naming names - however some of them are pretty prominent and in my ‘must read’ list.
On the other hand I also observed that some of the bloggers that I follow are even more prolific at posting than I am - with literally hundreds of posts over the 30 or so days.
I don’t really have a point to make - just an observation that I’ll file away to think through later on.
How often have you posted in the past 30 days?
Written on July 5th, 2005 at 05:07 pm by Darren Rowse
Adsense now allows Click Fraud Reporting
Jensense has a bit of a scoop - she’s been asked by Google to announce a new feature that enables people to report a publisher who is committing click fraud:
‘If you know of a publisher engaging in click fraud, you can now report them anonymously by clicking the “Ads by Google” on that publisher’s site, and then including the term “invalid clicks” in the comment field. And if you do not wish to stay anonymous, you can include your email address as well.’
Read more at Reporting publisher click fraud to Google just got easier
This comes on the tail of Google allowing people to report Adsense spam.
Google are definitely taking things up a notch when it comes to cleaning up their system which has obviously been abused by many for some time now.
I applaud them for their efforts but get a little nervous about them also and wonder how many times these tools will be used by competing publishers in the hope of gaining a competitive edge over another site.
I have confidence that the Adsense people will be able to weed out this type of behavior of course - but I’m still a little nervous about it.
Written on July 5th, 2005 at 09:07 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers French Interview
If you speak French you might be interested in this interview I did with InternetActu.net. The interview was conducted in English and then translated. I hope it translates well.
If you want to translate it back into English you might want to use Google’s translation tool which presents it like this. It’s not perfect but you get the gist.
Written on July 4th, 2005 at 12:07 pm by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Returns to ‘Normal’
Home
After 4 weeks of travelling around Turkey, the UK and Singapore V and I stumbled back into Melbourne this weekend.
Whilst the trip was amazing, it’s very nice to be back also to familiar sights, sounds, tastes and smells.
I’m still not quite on Melbourne time (jetlag is still taking its) toll. I’m probably a day or two away from resuming a regular posting here but will gradually get back into the rhythm.
Meeting Shiny Media
A couple of days ago (what day is it anyway??) I was fortunate to meet with Ashley Norris and Katie Lee (pictured left) from Shiny Media in London. It was in my last hours in London and a fun way to ease myself back into ProBlogging world. Ashley and Katie both moblogged pictures of our booze up meeting here and here.
I’m really impressed by Shiny Media and hope that one day soon we can work on a project together. Their journalistic background is part of their real strength and they are also brilliant at getting the attention of the mainstream media with their PR - quite inspiring.
Guestblogging
I wanted to thank those of you who have left comments and sent emails in response to my request for feedback about the guestblogging here over the past month. Your thoughts have been greatly appreciated and I’ll do a little more thinking about them over the next few days. In the mean time there are three things I want to say:
1. I think the experiment was a success on a number of fronts. For starters it brought together a diverse group of bloggers who produced some interesting and high quality posts. Secondly it kept my blog ticking over (in fact the first two weeks it increased readership and the second two weeks it kept things at over 75% of what they were).
2. Having said this I also hear the feedback from many that they come to enternetusers not to hear the voices of many but the voice of one. I feel humbled by it but for some reason many of you have found my thoughts to be helpful on the topic of ProBlogging - as a result in my absense a percentage of you have checked into the blog less whilst I’m away.
3. I’ve had a number of emails expressing concern over the idea that perhaps enternetusers will permanently become a group blog. Whilst I’ve given it a little thought, after reading the feedback I’ve decided not to go with it. Instead I may invite single bloggers to join me from time to time for short periods, but except for holidays this blog will remain largely a single author blog. Sorry - you’re stuck with me!
Anyway - I’m back and I wanted to say hi.
I’ve been working on a few ideas for enternetusers this past week that I’ll gradually share over the next month. I’ve come home feeling reasonably rested (although I had to go straight to a conference yesterday) and really keen to continue to improve what enternetusers can offer. As always I’m open to your ideas about how to make it better.
Stay tuned for normal blogging shortly.
Written on July 4th, 2005 at 04:07 am by Jenstar
Ads: You can show them to guests only!
Posting a follow up to Nicole Simon’s Ads: You can post them later! I thought I would mention a common practice used by membership sites or other types of sites that require registration, such as message boards. You can easily show ads just to those who are not logged in, leaving those who are regular members without any ads at all.
Many publishers running AdSense on phpBB message boards use this technique, since you can use variables or different templates to give one set of users (ie. Guests) AdSense or other affiliate ads. Then you can specify that registered or logged in users (or even a specific group of registered users) do not see any ads at all. Or while guests might see 3 ad units and an Ad Link unit, registered users only see a single ad unit or an Ad Link unit.
You can also set up custom channels and track what registered users and guests are bringing in to your AdSense account. You might find guests are responsible for 85-90% of your AdSense income from that site, so it would make a great “feel good” community gesture to remove AdSense from those who are registered. And you can use an ad free environment as an incentive to encourage users to register, if you are striving for increased numbers of registrations.
Written on July 4th, 2005 at 04:07 am by Nicole Simon
Ads: You can show them later!
Many blogs have two audiences, sometimes equally divided, sometimes not: The daily readers and the visitors through links and search engines. But most of us treat those visitors the same - presenting them the same layout, and the same amount advertisement. Why?
If you analyze your earnings, you should see a difference between profit from your daily blog readers and visitors through links and search engines. It is because of their different focus in attention.
Daily readers ‘know’ your layout and will get very blind on advertisement. The other group is searching for something particular, and therefore is very open to contextual advertisement. Daily readers get annoyed by too much advertising (even when it is contextual), and the other group loves them.
But as you would like to earn money, there is no way to please the daily readers … or? There is. Think about it one second. What is the difference between both groups?
It is the amount of time since you published the article.
If your blog is listed good on search engines, it will at least take some hours to fetch your new article and often take a day to rank you. Your rank for an article slowly rises, so it is save to assume, that while your daily readers are through with your blog in a week, search engine and link traffic will start after a week.
So my suggestion is: Start showing advertisement if an article is more than some days old! This will need some programming you might not be able to do of your own, but someone can do for you.
Or: you can use such mechanism to display different ads based on the age of the post or gather more information how your website performs at the different times slots.
With this you get happy daily readers and still profits from your websites!
Written on July 3rd, 2005 at 01:07 am by duncan
The enternetusers guest blogging experiment: good or bad?
Perhaps my last post before Darren returns this coming week but a very easy question to the many wonderful enternetusers readers out there, perhaps as means of feedback for Darren: The Guest Blogging Experiment at enternetusers: Good or Bad?
From my perspective I’ve loved the freedom to write in the first person and ponder some interesting questions that I might have otherwise not raised at the Blog Herald, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of the contributions for other guest bloggers as well. Certainly one of the wonderful things Darren has going here at enternetusers is the extremely strong “feedback” community if you like, in terms of those willing to leave comments. Whilst I’ve had some great comment threads at the Blog Herald I certainly can’t match the consistent commenting on nearly every post here at enternetusers, and from the third party view point I think that’s a major aspect that for me makes this blog a must read..indeed on occasion (even from my own posts) I can learn more from the contribution of readers comments than I did from the initial post.
On the flip side I suppose there has been a lack of consistency without Darren’s guiding hand present here at enternetusers. Some days have had more posts than others, and the quality or interest has varied for me personally.
Share your thoughts. Darren will be back in Bleak City (Melbourne) this week and I’m sure he’ll be interested in your thoughts. Indeed I have little doubt that he’ll reflect on it as well, but why not get the ball rolling.
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