Written on October 9th, 2004 at 10:10 am by Darren Rowse
Study: Growth in Worldwide Ad Spend Led by Internet
Online expenditure on Advertising is expected to continue to rise according to this report:
‘U.K.-based media research firm ZenithOptimedia expects the growth of Internet ad expenditures to outpace other media worldwide, while advertiser confidence holds steady.
According to ZenithOptimedia’s quarterly global ad forecast, over the next two years, newspapers, magazines, radio and outdoor advertising are expected to lose about 0.1 percent of share each, while cinema will hold steady. Meanwhile, TV will gain 0.1 percent of share while the Internet adds 0.5 percent, according to the forecast.
Internet advertising has accounted for 3.5 percent of display advertising revenue this year, compared with 3.2 percent in 2003. ZenithOptimedia expects it to account for 3.7 percent in 2005 and 4.0 percent in 2006. By contrast, television leads other media in 2004 with a 37.6 percent share, followed by newspapers with 29.9 percent, magazines with 13.5 percent, radio with 8.8 percent, and outdoor with 5.3 percent. Global Internet advertising leads only cinema, which holds a 0.4 percent share.’
Read More at
Study: Growth in Worldwide Ad Spend Led by Internet
This is yet another pointer to the fact that blogs are positioned nicely to be an income earner - the big challenge is to find advertising tools that help turn potential advertisers in the direction of Bloggers as well as more established web sites.
Written on October 8th, 2004 at 05:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Page Rank Update
There is a lot of talk around the web at the moment about Google’s current page ranking update. You may have already noticed your blog’s page rank change - most of my blogs are pretty stable although I’ve noticed one of the new ones has gone up from 2 to 6 which was a nice surprise.
Much of the discussion in forums has been by worried bloggers and webmasters whose page rank has decreased and therefore are losing substantial traffic. Dropping down a ranking can mean the difference between a top ten result on Google and a top 100 result.
Jim Hedger is writing over at WebProNews about the page rank change with Google and writes:
‘ Most webmasters will remember last year’s Florida Update which turned Google’s rankings upside down for about eight weeks. That eight week period caused a great deal of turmoil for SEOs, small businesses and web masters. The Florida Update was introduced on November 15, just six weeks before Christmas and at the start of the most important season for retailers. If Google does update it’s algorithm in the next few weeks, another sudden round of “placement dislocation” may occur thus frustrating online retailers desperate for online Christmas sales. While it is impossible to predict such an update with 100% accuracy, there are a number of simple steps webmasters and SEOs can take to protect their clients in the case of a major update.’
Written on October 8th, 2004 at 05:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Creative Weblogging - Paying for Content
Creative Weblogging is offering to pay bloggers $5 for sending in an article to their growing network of blogs. Creative Weblogging is developing a similar blogging network to that of Weblogs Inc with an interesting array of blogs.
Obviously they’ve done their sums and worked out that in the long run they can make more than $5 per post on certain topics - interesting.
Written on October 7th, 2004 at 01:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Yahoo to launch Overture ads in RSS!!!
The RSS Weblog has just broken the news that Yahoo’s Overture (main competitor to Adsense) will be shortly supporting ads in RSS feeds. This is pretty significant news for those of us running contextual ads on our blogs - but only for those using Overture. The question on everyone’s lips now is if and when Google will follow in Overture’s footsteps and introduce such a system.
A number of options for advertising in your RSS feed already exist but I have to say that I’ve not seen anything that works terribly well yet. Most of the ads are rather annoying and stick out like sore thumbs. We’ll follow this story with interest.
Written on October 7th, 2004 at 01:10 pm by Darren Rowse
RSS Syndication Made Simple - Finding Content Made Easy
Steve Rubel (one of my newest favorite reads) has a very useful post on RSS Syndication Made Simple. It is one of the best and easiest to follow, descriptions of how to use RSS to find and read content of other bloggers and news sources.
Steve writes - ‘RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a new technology standard that enables any online publisher (corporate, blogger, media, etc.) to broadcast information onto the Internet in “feeds.” Users can elect to subscribe to as many feeds as they want and view them all at once or individually using one or more different RSS readers, or news aggregators. Such readers include high-end dedicated desktop software applications, mobile devices and increasingly sophisticated Web-based applications. No matter which aggregator you choose, you get the same great benefits: 1) you are alerted to new content from your favorite sites as soon as it hits the web and 2) you can aggregate all your favorite sources of information together and peruse them on one page.’
95% of what I write in my blogs I find through RSS - following specific blogs and using news alerts targeting keywords that my blogs are interested in. Every morning I wake up to a fresh stock of starting points for my days research and postings.
Within minutes of a news article or blog post hitting the internet I can know about it and be posting a link, quote or comment on my own blog responding to what is happening.
So if you’re not using RSS to find content for your blog you’re probably giving yourself a whole heap of work that you don’t need to go through each day - head over to RSS Syndication Made Simple and take a load off!
Written on October 7th, 2004 at 10:10 am by Darren Rowse
3 New Adsense Features Being Tested
Adsense may be testing some new features - I just stumbled upon a site that seems to be being used as a testbed for the new stuff. This is a page I first noticed two ads per page on - about a month before it became public that the rest of us could do that. I notice three new features so far:
1. Little dividers between the ads on the skyscraper site. It breaks it up a little and is a little different.
2. Change to Ads About Option - Also I just noticed that this particular user has another option at the bottom of their ads that says:
“Change to Ads About:” and then it lists five other related topics to click on. When you click on one of the options the ads change to ones related to the topic at hand.
3. Change to Ads About Search - Also after you click on a couple of ‘change ads’ options a search field comes up that says:
“Change to Ads About:”
This allows you to type in a request for ads about any particular topic!
So it seems Adsense are testing a feature that lets our readers choose their own topics for ads! Interesting. I’m not sure how many of my readers would take the time to toggle the ads. But this feature would be useful for ME if I could have a little more control over the ads my users see on particular pages - which I’m not seeing as an option.
Has anyone else seen these options on sites?
Written on October 7th, 2004 at 12:10 am by Darren Rowse
Keywords or Keyword Phrases? Effective SEO Strategy
About.com asks the question - should those wanting to optimize their site target single keywords or keyword phrases?
“Consider the keyword “cars.” A quick search for this phrase at Google reveals nearly 20 million web sites competing for a ranking for this phrase. Since studies show that few consumers make it past the first few pages of search results, that means that all but about 30 of these web sites are unlikely to see any traffic from this phrase.
Apart from the fact that even the most skilled SEOs would be hard pressed to earn top rankings on this keyword, it’s also not a very targeted phrase to optimize for. Will the searcher who types “cars” be looking for pictures of cars? Car sales? Car events? New Cars? Old Cars? The list could go on and on.
Web surfers tend to learn very quickly that in order to find what they are looking for, they need to target their search queries more carefully. So…get specific with your keywords.”
Read more at SEO 101 - Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research
Written on October 7th, 2004 at 12:10 am by Darren Rowse
The Blog Marketing Explosion
‘Rich Orr writes that blogging is ‘Possibly, the most powerful type of corporate marketing per dollar spent ever invented.‘
‘Blogs are a goldmine of formerly hard to get insight from CEO’s, marketing guru’s and others who never used to have a public forum. These business leaders are utilizing the internet to convey their personal thoughts on happenings in their industry and life. They are blogging for the same reasons they do public speaking, to build credibility for themselves and their company’s. Blogging has become a new … less time consuming and less expensive way to reach potential and current customers….’
Read More at The Blog Marketing Explosion
Found via Micro Persuassion
Written on October 6th, 2004 at 09:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Graphic Design Using Color
by: Kelly Paal
Color is everywhere and conveys a message even if we don’t realize it. While this message can vary by culture it pays to know what colors “say” in your own corner of the universe, and even what color means to your target market.
If you don’t think that color speaks just complete this sentence, “red means —- and green means –“ even a child will know what red means stop and green means go. If such simple ideas work for all of a given culture or market what could it mean to the graphic design of your website, brochure, or product if you know some of this information.
First let’s start with the basics. The color wheel. We’ve all seen it. The color wheel shows the basic colors, each wheel is different in how many shades of each color is shown, but they are essentially the same.
Color harmony, colors that go together well. These will be colors that are next door to each other on the color wheel. Such as blue and green. In reference to clothes these colors match each other. Instinctively most of us know which colors go together when we dress ourselves every morning.
Color complements, colors that set each other off, they complement each other. These are colors that are opposite on the color wheel. Such as blue and orange.
Color depth, colors can recede or jump forward. Remember that some colors seem to fall back such as blue, black, dark green, and brown. Other colors will seem to step forward such as white, yellow, red, and orange. This is why if you have a bright orange background it may seem to fight with any text or images that you place on it. The orange will always seem to move forward.
Now you have the basics so let’s go further. Just because to colors go together or complement each other doesn’t mean that yo necessarily want to use them on your project. I opened this article with the meaning of colors now here is an example, keep in mind this is one example from western culture.
Color Survey: what respondents said colors mean to them.
Happy = Yellow
Pure = White
Good Luck = green
Good tasting = Red (tomato)
Dignity = Purple
Technology = Silver
Sexiness = Red (tomato)
Mourning = Black
Expensive = Gold
Inexpensive = Brown
Powerful = Red (tomato)
Dependable = Blue
High Quality = Black
Nausea = Green
Deity = White
Bad Luck = Black
Favorite color = Blue
Least favorite color = Orange
So in designing your project it’s important to know what colors mean. You can now see why a black back ground with green type would be bad, beyond being nearly impossible to read, if your target market thinks that black represents mourning and green makes them sick. There are exceptions to every rule of course.
So you may want to include some research in what colors mean to your target market. Colors that would get the attention of a teen would probably annoy an older person and the colors that appeal to the older person wouldn’t get a second look from a young person.
Color may be one of the most overlooked aspects of design.
About The Author
Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal
Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.
Written on October 6th, 2004 at 11:10 am by Darren Rowse
Twelve Business Models for Blog Technologies
Online Business Networks Blog has an interesting post on Twelve Business Models for Blog Technologies
They divide it into four categories:
- Traditional Businesses Leveraging Blogs - including Individual virtual presence, Corporate virtual presence and Using blogs to improve existing processes.
- Selling Blog Technology - including Technology sales to the enterprise and Technology sales focused on individuals.
- Media Businesses Using Blogs - including Online communities, Premium Content and Blog-based media.
- Peripheral Services - including Enabling advertising to blog audience, Data about the blogosphere, Consulting and Education.
Its an interesting breakdown - where does your proBlogging fit into this framework? Most of mine to this point focusses upon 6. - Blog-based media.
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