Written on October 13th, 2004 at 10:10 am by Darren Rowse

Travel Blog

Case Studies 0 comments

travel_blog.jpgTravel Blog is one of the best ProBlogging ideas I’ve seen for a while. They offer free blogs to travellers to update with their latest travelling stories and photos.

‘Travel Blog is a collection of travel journals, diaries, stories and photos from all around the world. The journals are added by real travellers, and recount real experiences and impressions from the places they visit. The site includes lots of features that help you keep family and friends back home up to date with your adventure.’

So how do they make money from their blogs? Adsense ads appear on most pages - and adsense ads for travel pay out pretty well from what I’ve heard and seen.

They also sell Travel Blog Journals on the side. I havn’t seen any affiliate ads yet on the site but suspect that they would do well to add some - especially ads for travel books (amazon), cheap flights etc.

Found via Seths Blog

Written on October 12th, 2004 at 06:10 pm by Darren Rowse

A Short Course in SEO

Search Engine Optimization 2 comments

SEO - A short Course is a useful article written about Search Engine Optimization that will help anyone seeking tips at how to Optimize their blog or website for Search Engines.

‘Anyone who does business on the internet today has heard of SEO (search engine optimization), and many have tried their hand at it themselves. Most find, however, that they don’t get much response from their efforts. This leads to a dilemma for a start-up business: Is there any way to capitalize on internet traffic without paying big bucks for a professional SEO?

The answer is, yes and no. As with anything in business, you can’t get something for nothing, and most people who own top listings for competitive search engine keywords have paid dearly for that privilege. However, there are some simple things that can help make your new website more friendly not only to search engines, but also to your customers:

1. Remember that your customers always come first! Make your site easy to use and easy to buy from, and you will win a loyal following. Simple, straightforward sites perform best all around. Clearly labeled navigation, informative page content, secure online purchasing and ease of ordering are some key elements to a successful website.’ Read more at SEO - A short Course.

Written on October 12th, 2004 at 02:10 pm by Darren Rowse

Great Wines of North Carolina

Case Studies 1 comment

Great Wines of North Carolina is another good example of a Blogger doing his thing by focussing upon a niche market. I’m not seeing too many obvious income streams on the blog - but its an interesting focus and one where he has a good change of capturing a large segment of the market that he’s writing about.

Brent explains his blogging strategy.

‘I aim to drive it to the top of the search engines for every major keyword associated with wine in North Carolina and the Yadkin Valley.

For example, when you type in “Raffaldini” as a search term on Google, I show up #2….someday this will overpower their site and show up #1…same with all the vineyards, and all the more common terms like “Yadkin Valley”, “North Carolina Wine”, etc… It will take some time…the funny thing is that I have not started yet! The rankings and traffic today are solely from my initial work, so watch and learn…I’ve done this a thousand times.

I’ll keep you posted as the progress unfolds. Last week traffic increased about 20%, every week it gets a little bit busier!’

If he indeed reaches his goal of dominating Search Engine results for his key words he’ll be in a great position to run some well paying private advertising of local wineries and perhaps run Adsense on his site (if there is a big enough stock of good ads).

Written on October 12th, 2004 at 11:10 am by Darren Rowse

Blogging Resources - Inc.com

Blogging Tools and Services 0 comments

Inc.com has a good list of blogging links including blogging tools and ‘how to’ guides.

Written on October 12th, 2004 at 11:10 am by Darren Rowse

The rise of Micropayments

Advertising 0 comments

Clickz has an interesting study into the rise of micropayments which might be of interest to some bloggers. My experience of blogging is that its hard to get much in the way of big payments in one’s income stream but that one way forward that many of us are exploring is to generate many small payments which all add up to something more substantial. If you could get each person who visits your site to pay (whether directly or via advertising) a few cents - over time it would add up. Micropayments in my opinion could be the way of the future and are a particularly relevant topic for enternetuserss. The article reads:

‘A study of 1,112 Americans aged 12 and older, conducted by Peppercoin and Ipsos-Reid, found 17 percent of survey respondents saying they’d use a non-cash form of payment (credit, debit or charge card) for purchases under $5. That percentage, according to the pollster, equates to some 37 million Americans.

The survey also found more than 14 million Americans made digital content purchases in the past year for less than $2. That represents a 350 percent increase over the previous year (2003 — 4 million; 2004 — 14 million). Of the 14 million people who purchased items costing under $2, approximately 1.4 million consumers purchased such items from five or more Web sites.

“In the physical world, we were surprised to see how much value and benefit consumers realize from using credit cards. They want to use them for their everyday purchases,” Perry Solomon, VP of strategy and co-founder of Peppercoin, told ClickZ Stats. “Specifically, they want to use them for the everyday purchases that they make many times a month, such as for coffee, fast food, vending and parking. This shows that consumers feel comfortable with the speed, convenience and security of electronic payments.”‘ Read more.

Written on October 12th, 2004 at 11:10 am by Darren Rowse

A day in the life of a Search Engine Optimiser

Search Engine Optimization 0 comments

SEO Scoop has written up a day in the life of a search optimiser which gives some hints into what those SEO types do with their time. Its actually got some remarkably similar features to what my daily rhythm can look like as a blogger and will give you some food for thought if you’re interested in finding tools to bump up the search engine referrals to your blog.

It also might depress the hell out of you :-)

Written on October 11th, 2004 at 10:10 am by Darren Rowse

URL info - Analyze and Improve your Blog

Blogging Tools and Services 0 comments

URL info is one of the most useful tools for enternetuserss that I’ve recently stumbled upon.

It may not look overly sexy when you first surf into it but this simple page has 107 useful tools for you to analyze and improve your site. They describe it as follows:

URLinfo is a tool for handling web pages: finding information about it, translating it, finding related pages, etc. To use it, type a URL (web page address) into the box in the top frame. Then choose a tab (such as General or Cache), and click on the name of the specific tool you wish to use. The Translate and Search tabs require a bit more, but should be self-explanatory. Click on the [info] link at the end of any tab for details about it.

Some of the tools are more useful than others - but overall I think you’ll find plenty of information there to help you improve your blogging. Its a definite bookmarkable link!

Written on October 9th, 2004 at 06:10 pm by Darren Rowse

Beer Blog

Case Studies 4 comments

logo_tagline.gif The Brew Site is an interesting commercial blog focused upon Beer (sounds like my kind of blog!). They are basing their income stream at this stage around Adsense. I’ve done a little research into beer keywords and the ads should pay reasonably well and the topic is one which should attract a fair amount of visitors. There are probably a few other income streams that they could add into the mix to add a few dollars a day to the mix.

The design is clean and professional, the content genuinely helpful and the concept is great - I’ll be interested to see how they progress.

Written on October 9th, 2004 at 03:10 pm by Darren Rowse

Blogs for Lawyers

Business Blogging 0 comments

Feedmelegal> has a good post on how blogs can be useful for lawyers.

‘How can lawyers benefit from the use of weblogs? Feedmelegal does not intend to repeat at length what has been written by others, but to summarise and to an extent build on the insightful thinking that has already emerged, as follows:

· given their ease of use, and in conjunction with webfeeds which drive new content into the global blogosphere, blogs enable lawyers to carve a visible niche for themselves in their chosen areas of expertise or specialism (how many lawyers out there are experts or specialised in particular fields but do not market the fact, properly or at all?);

· they can be used for multiple marketing purposes and the sharing of knowledge, from an individual lawyer’s blog, to a practice or industry group blog, to a firm blog;’

Read more at Weblogs: A Primer for Lawyers>

Written on October 9th, 2004 at 11:10 am by Darren Rowse

Blogging for Dollars - CFO Magazine - October Issue 2004 - CFO.com

Business Blogging 0 comments

It seems that articles about how executives are blogging are appearing every day now - here is another one - Blogging for Dollars

‘Once the domain of the disgruntled and demented, Web logs are being embraced by business executive…

In an earlier time, say 2000, managers at Microsoft didn’t appear to be such big fans of blogs. Actually, few corporate executives were. Back then, the personal Web pages gave a free and open voice to customers and ex-employees — too often, irate customers and disgruntled ex-employees. In some cases, corporations went to court to try to get business-bashing bloggers to cease and desist….

Things have changed. Blogs, once the domain of the malcontent, have gone mainstream, thanks in large part to the thousands of Web logs dedicated to celebrities and defunct TV shows (”Buffy” bloggers, you know who you are). In the process, business leaders have come to value what they once feared about Web logs: these online diaries provide an easy way to reach a large audience. Venture capitalists, for example, now use Web logs to uncover inventors and entrepreneurs with promising new ideas. Corporate directors, including those at enterprise resource planning giant SAP, have launched blogs to help them better communicate with stakeholders. And managers at some companies, including Sun Microsystems, use blogs (among other approaches) to talk to employees and let employees talk to one another.’ Read more at Blogging for Dollars




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