Written on February 15th, 2007 at 10:02 am by Darren Rowse
Future of Online Advertising - June 2007
Just a quick update to my previous upcoming schedule post. I’ve just confirmed the second New York dates.
I’ll be speaking at FOOA (Future Of Online Advertising) on 7-8 June. It looks like a pretty good lineup of speakers that they’ve already announced including Steve Rubel, Steve Olechowski from Feedburner, Chas Edwards from Federated Media, Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove and a whole heap more.
It looks like a worthwhile schedule and a pretty cool location (Gotham Hall - I wonder if there will be many Batman jokes).
This trip will probably be something of a whirlwind - I might be there a day or two either side but the March/April schedule will have more time for meetups.
Written on February 15th, 2007 at 06:02 am by Darren Rowse
NBA Blogger Sells His Blog to ESPN
Another story of a blogger selling their blog surfaced today with the announcement by basketball blogger Henrry Abbott from TrueHoop that he’s sold his blog to ESPN.
There’s no details of how much the sale was for - but Henry will be an employee of ESPN as part of the deal and seems pretty happy with the whole deal as it will open up new opportunities for him to travel and network in NBA circles. Congratulations Henry!
found via Chris
Written on February 15th, 2007 at 02:02 am by Darren Rowse
Zlio Review - Add a Shop to Your Blog
Over the last week or so I’ve been playing around with ZLio (aff) - a service that enables you to add a a shop to your blog or website. The most similar thing I’ve seen previously is Amazon’s aStore and Chitika’s Shoplinc program.
ZLio’s service is a very professional looking set up with some great features. It has previously been released in France and it’s only more recently been launched out of the US (they tell me there is a UK version on the way). You can tell that they’ve developed their product for some time now as it is quite advanced in how it can be used.
The best way to fully grasp the features of Zlio shops is to start one and start experimenting - before you do let me spit out some features and first impressions for you below.
While you read them feel free to check out the enternetusers Bookshop Zlio that I whipped up (it took me about 15 minutes once I added all my products - they mainly come from my essential books for bloggers list). I’m yet to do any customization or personalization of it but you’ll get the idea of what can be achieved hopefully.
- easy to start - you can literally have a shop up and running in a few minutes (they boast as little as three clicks)
- millions of products to choose from - they’re working with 100 French and US merchants (from big ones like Amazon and Buy.com to smaller ones with real niche focus)
- varied commissions - depending upon the merchants you choose to work with commissions can range from as low as 1% right up to 20% (that’s the range I’ve seen so far). This is a CPA (cost per action) model - so you’re only paid when someone makes a purchase. This is one of the big differences from Chitika’s shoplinc which is CPC (you’re paid per click on products).
- multiple shops per account - this is great if you have multiple blogs that you want to add specifically targeted shops to
- search engine indexable - search engines will start indexing your shop with the potential to drive SE traffic at them
- templates - there are a variety of templates available to make your shop look and feel like it matches your blog. Once you’ve chosen a template you can drag and drop elements around your page to make them look they way you want. Also brand it as your own by adding a logo.
- customization - if you’re a little more technically minded you can also do some coding to make your shop look your own by editing both the CSS styles and header/footer sections
- easy to use - adding products is easy and managing once they’re in your shop is great using categories. If there was one area I think they could improve it would be to give ways of uploading multiple similar products at once to a shop (adding products one at a time will hopefully ensure quality - but is quite time consuming).
- Blog Layout - in addition to the standard shop layout you can have your shop set up in a blog layout for something a little different.
- RSS ready - each shop has it’s own RSS feed
- Personal recommendations - when adding products you’re given the opportunity to label it as a ‘featured product’, ‘favorite product’, ‘I have it’ or ‘Add it to my wishlist’. You can also add your own descriptions, tag the product and even review it.
- metrics ready - add your own stats tool like Google analytics, site meter etc
- ZlioZone - a widget that will allow you to feature items in your store on your sidebar
- Community - there’s also a ‘community’ element of Zlio that I’m yet to really explore. It seems to have an element of social networking around it.
- Comments - those visiting your shop can leave their own reviews on products.
- Price Comparison - if the item that you’re featuring is available from multiple merchants readers are given a tool to compare the price of it.
- hostable on your own domain - integrate your ZLio shop even more into your blog by putting it on your domain
Zlio will be a great option for many bloggers wanting to add a shop to their blogs. I’d recommend playing around with it a little to see if it fits with you first - and if you go with it to add it to your own domain name to make it more integrated with your blog.
I’d also highly recommend linking into individual pages within your shop from your blog when you write on the products in the shop as this will help increase sales as well as get it more highly ranked in search engines. For example link to categories like blogging books or even to individual products like Advertising Secrets of the Written Word.
Similarly - personalizing your pages as much as possible with your own reviews, tags and descriptions will help a lot.
Give it a go and tell us how it works for you in comments below.
Written on February 14th, 2007 at 03:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Selling Blogs
Lorelle has written a comprehensive post (does she write any other kind) on Selling Your Blog: What Are Blog Buyers Looking For? which explores questions like:
- When is the Right Time to Sell Your Blog?
- How Much is Your Blog Really Worth?
- Selling Points for Selling Your Blog
I agree with everything she says but would simply add that ultimately a blog is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. There are many factors that different buyers and sellers will use to determine value (Lorelle outlines most of those that I can think of) - but in the end it is like selling anything - it is about demand and supply.
I’ve seen some blogs sell in the last year that had selling prices well above what I’d have paid personally for them - however the buyers had their own agendas in mind. At other times I’ve seen blogs sell for ‘bargains’ where the sellers had their own motivations for choosing the buyer that they did.
It’s a funny business we’re in - and I’m pretty sure we’ll see a lot more of this buying and selling of blogs in the coming months!
Written on February 14th, 2007 at 12:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Pheedo launch RSS Powered Ads
Heather Green has posted that this week Pheedo will be releasing an RSS Powered Ads product.
No it’s not an ad product to put in your RSS feeds - but one to promote your RSS feeds with.
Heather explains:
“Pheedo pulls the RSS feeds from marketers, retailers, and publishers into a skyscraper ad that is distributed across sites on in Pheedo’s network or other ad networks. Within the ad itself, you can subscribe to a feed, email an item, or submit the item to Digg, Del.icio.us, and other aggregators.”
Sounds similar to what BlogAds released a few weeks back and what Techmeme has been doing for a while now.
You can see examples of these ads in action on Pheedo’s home page.
Written on February 14th, 2007 at 11:02 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense Confirm Google Checkout Icons on Ads - What do You Think of Them?
The AdSense blog today confirms what we’ve all been noticing for a while now - they’ve started including a little Google Checkout icons on advertisers who use it (see below).
I’m interested to hear from publishers on whether they like it or not.
On one hand it does add something a little more eye catching to the ad which might increase CTR. Some publishers like them for this reason.
However I’m hearing from a few publishers that they feel a little used by Google with these icons - like they’re helping Google promoting their checkout system with no real reward. Some would like the ability to switch them off.
One or two have even suggested that Google need to make the icon a referral link that pays publishers a commission if someone new signs up for Google Checkout as a result of clicking on the ad.
What do you think of them?
Here’s how the icon will appear on ads on publisher’s sites (see the second ad).
They’re doing it in Google search results also with much less subtle icon which I’m glad they’re not imposing upon AdSense publishers (see it below).
Written on February 14th, 2007 at 07:02 am by Darren Rowse
11 Ways to Find New RSS Subscribers for Your Blog
This past two weeks I’ve been talking about how to make your RSS feed ‘Pop’ - to stand out from the crowd a little - however covering this topic has caused a few readers to ask RSS related questions that don’t necessarily relate to improving your feed but which are worth covering.
One of the questions I’ve been asked numerous times this week is:
How do I get People to Subscribe to my RSS feed?
It’s a good question and one that I have a few ideas on (but which it’d be great to get some discussion going on in comments). Of course the first question I ask people saying they want more subscribers is ‘do you have content worth subscribing to?’ Without something worthwhile on your blog the rest of this post will be meaningless. But once you are pumping out quality content here are a few tips on how to get more subscribers for it.
1. Promote Your Feed Prominently
One mistake that some blogs make is have their RSS feed link appearing too far down in the footer of the design.
As with anything you want to promote (ads, key posts, contact form, about posts etc) the higher on the page you have it the more attention it will have.
Check out how Copyblogger does it for a great example. He has he two buttons pictured to the left right at the top of his sidebar. As a result his feed counter has steadily grown over the past year.
2. Promote Your Feed with an Image
Similarly promoting your feed with something a little more eye catching than a text link tends to get it more noticed.
The little testing that I’ve done shows that the feedburner counter/button can work well, as can the orange RSS button that many bloggers use. You have just a few seconds when a reader first hits your blog to convince them to come back again - RSS is an ideal way to get them coming back - so you’ll want to do everything you can to get their eyes on a way of subscribing.
There are many buttons that can be used (check out a few at this button maker). While there’s nothing wrong with using more than one (see below) I’d recommend not going too crazy with all the buttons out there as one well placed image link can be just as effective (if not more so) than multiple buttons cluttering your sidebar.
3. Use Multiple Methods to Promote Your Feed
There is no rule on how many times you can link to your feed on a page. If converting readers to RSS readers is a priority for you consider a variety of subscription points.
For example here at enternetusers I have my Feedburner counter (which has a little animation and draws the eye), I have a bloglines subscriber button (as I know bloglines readers make up the majority of those following this blog) and I also have a subscribe page link which I know many readers use. Different readers will be attracted to different subscription methods - so experiment a little (without overwhelming them).
Another good is TechCrunch (with 178,000 subscribers as of today) who have the three options pictured (above).
4. Educate Your Readers
It is difficult to have a high RSS subscriber count if the majority of your readers don’t understand what RSS is or how to use it.
If your blog is on a non techie topic with a readership who doesn’t have much awareness of RSS write a post that explains what RSS is and how it can help them follow your site. Then add a link to that post under your RSS button to help educate them.
5. Offer RSS to Email Services
Some of your readers won’t get (or will refuse to use) RSS no matter how much you educate them. Don’t ignore them - but offer them a service that will convert your RSS feed into email for them. In this way you effectively still have RSS readers and they will get your content in a way that is familiar to them.
I offer this on my subscribe pages here at enternetusers and at DPS and get a good response. The number of people using it will vary a lot (for example at DPS it’s a much higher take up in proportion to RSS subscribers than here at enternetusers where I have a more RSS savvy readership). Feedburner offers this service as does FeedBlitz (and others).
6. Promote Your Feed in Off-Blog Communications
I’m seeing more and more bloggers promote their RSS feeds along side their blog’s homepage URLs in forum and email signatures as well as on other sites. Maybe it’s time we started putting our feeds on business cards also!
For example in a recent guest post here at enternetusers Glen Stansberry asked for his feed URL to be included in his byline.
Get into the habit of not only giving out your blog’s URL but also include your RSS feed and you might just pick up some new readers. As RSS continues to grow we’ll see more and more of this - so get in early.
7. Make sure Your Feed is discoverable
I learnt this the hard way a few months back when I did a redesign at one of my blogs and didn’t think to check whether the feed was discoverable (it wasn’t). As a consequence I lost at least a couple of months of new subscribers.
More and more people use auto discovery via their browsers - make sure yours can be found and that it’s working to make this a more seamless subscription experience for potential readers.
8. Full Feeds
The debate over full versus partial feeds rages on but my own findings having made the switch to full feeds here at enternetusers is that my subscriber numbers went up significantly in the weeks after giving my readers my full posts.
While there are a small number of readers who do prefer partial feeds - I find that the majority of readers prefer a full feed and that as a result most who provide them notice an upswing in subscriber numbers. Of course there are downsides in full feeds (for one they become more attrActive to scraper sites) so make your decision carefully - but if it’s subscriber numbers that you’re after full feeds will be something to consider.
9. Give Your Feed Readers a Bonus
Something I’ve seen more bloggers doing of late is giving their readers an incentive to read. For example Chris Garrett offered a free ebook to any subscribers. From what I hear it’s worked well for him.
I’ve seen others talk about putting exclusive information for subscribers into their feeds (how they did this I’m unsure) and putting subscribers into a prize draw for a giveaway.
Of course keeping people subscribed is another matter and a certain percentage would no doubt subscribe and then unsubscribe after the incentive disappears - that’s where having quality content and an engaging feed comes into play (see the rest of this series for this).
10. Promote your Feed at Key Entry Points
Where do people enter your blog? Are there some pages that bring in more traffic than others via search engines, referral links, social bookmarking sites etc? If so - consider these pages as key points to give your RSS feed a special plug.
For example if you’re fortunate enough to get some mainstream media attention or one of your posts gets on the popular page of Digg or Delicious - why not add a quick link on the page everyone’s arriving on to promote your feed?
Put out the welcome mat at key points and help your readers find a way to make themselves at home.
11. Run an Ad Campaign
One blogger that I worked with last year ran an AdWords campaign to promote his feed (with some success).
He created a landing page for his blog that had the one goal of converting those who landed on it into loyal readers via RSS and his newsletter. The results were really encouraging and a great way to launch his new blog. In fact it was so worthwhile that he continues to put a few dollars a day into a simple AdWords campaign to promote his blog.
Similarly - other bloggers have done the same thing using other ad systems like Blogads.
These are some of the ways that I’ve used to get readers to subscribe to my RSS feed - how do you do it?
PS - One last thing
Are you subscribed to enternetusers’s RSS feed? If not - You know what to do!
Written on February 13th, 2007 at 08:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking 13 February 2007
- Chris Garrett writes a useful post on Better Blog Branding which talks readers through some of the issues associated with choosing a name for a blog
- Media Week reports that Podcasting will Generate $400 Million in Ads by 2011
- SE Roundtable points at the Google checkout icons appearing in more and more AdSense ads. Some say it could lead to higher CTR for those ads.
- Megite has launched version 2.1
- Engtech shares how to earn a six figure income from blogging in two easy steps
- Dave Taylor writes about the google_hints attribute that AdSense are (and have been for a while) testing with some publishers. I’ve seen a few people test it and yet there has been no really movement toward it being released more widely so far
Written on February 13th, 2007 at 08:02 am by Darren Rowse
How To Drive Traffic to Your Blog - The Advice of a 12 Year Old
Remember 12 year old blogger David Wilkinson from Techzi? David and I have kept in touch with one another since I posted about him last and recently I asked him to consider writing a guest post here at enternetusers. I thought a 12 year old’s perspective on how to get traffic to your blog might be worth hearing. Here’s his post.
When Kevin comes up to you, and asks you to write a post for enternetusers.net, it’s not something you can really say ‘no’ to. Not that you’d want to of course, but more the fact that it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Why should I write, of all people though? Well Darren wanted to hear the methods that I as a young person use to drive traffic to my blog, without spending any money.
Learning the basics
First you need to grasp and understand that the Internet is a big place. Several billion web-pages, and often with very little time available to the end-user, they’ll use several techniques to find what they’re looking for.
SEO
Search? Standard engines like Google, Yahoo and Live are the most popular nowadays, and optimizing your site to be found easily, can be easy and hard based on many factors.
My best advice for someone starting out would be to start by building quality content for somebody to see, then progressing to “The Three Cs”. This way, you’ll get noticed by genuinely interested people, who’ll Actively want to play a part in your site’s development, by giving you quality feedback on ways to improve, design and usability.
If you have a blog or a website that’s been going for several weeks, perhaps a month or two, and you’ve done “The Three Cs”, or at least some of them, would be to start focusing on building on your existing content, with fresh, interesting, relevant and unique content. Note I say ‘relevant’ and ‘unique’. This is important. There are so many splogs out there now-a-days, that people can quickly distinguish whether an article has been written by somebody or not, at least the majority of the time. Relevance too, like I said, is a key factor. If you have a very personal blog, then one day write something completely off-topic about a new type of golf club that comes out, people will start to wonder if you and your blog actually have an aim or a purpose, which is yet another vital thing to consider.
If you’re somebody with a very mature blog, that is several months or more old, you can now focus on the technical side of things, which is mainly down to the spiders. If you’ve been blogging this long, then if you’re not on your own domain, or hosting, I recommend it, as it allows for greater flexibility, design and SEO. Search engine optimization? Yep! A Google Sitemap can be stuck on your server for the Google-Bot and metatags can be added, which let you pre-define information about your page automatically, such as the author, a description, keywords and feed information. This also makes usability easier for feed-ready browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer 7. Tacky pre-set designs become a thing of the past too, and upgrading to Wordpress can be a smart move, as the developer community there will help you along the way with every aspect of your blog, from the writing itself, to the advanced functionality like widgets that are available, and the themes that are freely downloadable to customize your blog’s look. Of course you could always give design a go yourself as I did at Techzi.net - though admittedly I enlisted the help of two professional designers as well.So, what are these ‘C’s that I’ve been talking to you so much about anyway? Read on to find out…
Community, communication, consideration.
The three founding principals of marketing your blog to an audience, whether general, or specific. People want to get be a part of the next thing, so give them a chance.
1. Community
Whether you start up your own community, or join others, via means of MyBlogLog, MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing and others, this is a guaranteed and proven way to get visitors, to get hits, impressions, and often quality traffic, because you know that these people haven’t just clicked on a random link or search engine listing, but have seen you or your website’s profile, and followed it through to your homepage/landing page. The best ways to get the profiles themselves noticed? See below…
2. Communication
I don’t mean ’spam’ by this either. Get involved in genuine discussions, with other people of similar interests, start up a civilized, profitable, knowledgeable discussion, then when you’re finished, ask if they’d take a look at your blog or website. You’d be surprised how many loyal readers have come to my own blog in this way. Simply leave comments in communities, on social networks, on other blogs, etc.
Still not quite your way of dealing with people?
3. Considering
All the time, you have to consider the reader. Who are you writing for? The reader. Who will be navigating your blog? The reader. Who should you devote your time, energy and attention to? The reader. Consideration is important, and you can show this in many ways. Either by having a clutter-free, easy-to-follow design, or you could alternatively try getting the readers involved, by asking questions in blog posts, or website statements, and opening up comments. If people comment, strike up a conversation with them, and keep them coming back. Answer their queries and requests with solid, reliable, dependable answers, and take note of the feedback they leave by using it, and putting it into action. If someone states that your text is hard to read, change the colour to stop it clashing so much with the background, or simply make it slightly larger.
There are lots of ways you can show consideration to your audience, and it shows just how loyal you are to your readers through this. If someone spots an inaccuracy in a blog post and tells you, don’t be lazy. Go change it! They’ll keep coming back, they’ll tell their friends, and in turn this C will do word-of-mouth marketing wonders.
The Element of Surprise
You’ve looked at both SEO, content and the ‘C’s now, but my last tip is probably what has brought me the large majority of my visitors, both loyal and one-off traffic hoppers. Differentiate yourself, do something different. Be daring, be random! Try something wild, or something completely unheard of, whether it’s outrageous, or greatly beneficial to the reader. Sometimes, even beneficial to the writer! (http://www.techzi.net/donations/) Mad things work out great sometimes, other times, they really can lower your reputation, so it’s time to take calculated risks here.
My advice? Follow your instincts. Be an entrepreneur. Take that risk. Make it happen. Throw a competition (http://www.techzi.net/competition/), for all the good it will do. Stand out and be different. Darren will sure know what I mean by that…
David Wilkinson writes at http://www.techzi.net/
Written on February 13th, 2007 at 02:02 am by Darren Rowse
Avoid Clutter in Your RSS Feeds
One trend that I’ve noticed lately among some bloggers is to stuff their RSS feeds with a lot extra information cluttering the end of posts on their RSS feeds.
RSS Extras
This ‘extra’ material can include:
- Ads - some bloggers are including multiple ads - text links, banner ads, affiliate links and more
- Feed flares - (services like Feedburner offer a large array of different things including ‘digg this’ links, copyright notices, delicious bookmark links, comment counters, email to a friend links, technorati counters, alexa rankings, feed circulation counters, buttons, stock tickers, trackback counters etc etc - Feedburner have lots of them.)
- Related Posts - a list of related posts
- Recent Comments - the latest comments on a post (I’ve only seen this once)
The list could go on and I suspect we’ll see more and more bloggers experimenting with different ‘extras’ to include in their feeds.
I have no problem with bloggers using their feeds for advertising or to leverage traffic back to their blog and I’m also in favor of people pushing the boundaries of how RSS can be used. However, when the ‘extras’ at the bottom of each post are bigger than the actual posts you write - then you’ve got clutter than will annoy many of your subscribers.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Those subscribing to your feeds are generally loyal readers. They’ve made a decision to subscribe because they’ve seen your blog somewhere and are probably familiar with it. While there’s nothing wrong with driving traffic back to your blog from your feed - you probably don’t need to educate them on every aspect of your blog on every post.
- Also remember that RSS subscribers are going to see your posts every day - variety is the spice of life but seeing the same long list of links at the end of your posts every single day could cause readers to get a little bored.
- Multiple posts per sessions - some of your subscribers will only read your feed every few days (or less frequently). As a result they might have to scan through 10 or so of your posts in a session - seeing the same long list of ‘extras’ 10 times in a row.
Once again - I’ve got nothing against bloggers experimenting with a few extras (I have a handful myself) - but keep asking yourself whether they add to or detract from your feed. In isolation (or in small numbers) extras can add a lot - but all together they can get a bit much.
One way to tell is to subscribe to your own feed and try to read it objectively. Does the way you’ve set it out frustrate you? If so it could annoy your readers also.
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