Written on October 26th, 2005 at 10:10 am by Darren Rowse
Chitika eMiniMall Audit Complete
Chitika have completed their audit for their eMiniMalls (aff) month of September. I’ve just checked my figures and am happy to see that the audit has only decreased my earnings for the month by less than 10% (less than last month).
This should mean that those who earned over the minimum of $10 for September will receive their payment via PayPal in the next 24 hours or so (update: payments will be made 31 October). Those in countries without PayPal will get checks once their total hits $50.
One of the improvements that Chitika has been talking about recently has been a more seamless and quicker statistics package. I’m really looking forward to the day that they implement some of the following:
- Real Time Stats (or at least stats that update throughout the day)
- Real Time Auditing (the wait until the end of the month to see what you actually earned is something that many publishers will become frustrated with - if they could actually make this ‘real time’ so that publishers don’t see the difference between audited and un-audited figures they would probably do themselves some favors)
- CTR, eCPM, click value (including some of these stats might be handy. Publishers can work them out for themselves - but it’d be nice to see at a glance how one’s sites are performing in these ways from day to day)
- Dynamic Stats (ie to be able to view a month at a time, last 7 days etc would be handy - at the moment to know your september earnings for instance it has to be totaled by hand or copied and pasted into a spreadsheet)
- CSV files (the ability to download an Excel file with a variety of different reports would be very handy)
- Graphs (it’d be great to see visual representations of earnings and where they come from)
- Channels (I’m predicting the week they implement channels will be the week I can increase my eMiniMall earnings by 10-20%)
These are just some of the things on my Chitika eMiniMalls wishlist when it comes to their statistics - what would you want when eMiniMalls come out of beta?
Written on October 26th, 2005 at 10:10 am by Darren Rowse
Apologies
Once again my apologies for enternetusers being down off and on today. The server upgrade of a few days back still has some bugs which my host is endeavoring to sort out. Hopefully we’ll be back to normal again soon.
Written on October 25th, 2005 at 03:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Blogger Suggests Combatting Splogs with Click Fraud
I’m a bit surprised by Mitch Ratcliffe’s suggestion on how to get Google to fix the BlogSpot Splogs problem. He recommends click fraud:
‘The solution to the problem it to click gratuitously and never make purchases on the links at blogspot sites and to keep doing so to drive down conversion rates. This likely will be interpreted as click fraud by the system and, if it isn’t, the advertisers are going to be so angry about the costs of these clicks that turn into nothing that they’ll drop the program or exclude BlogSpot from their placements.’
While I understand his reasoning (create a pain and Google will have to make changes when it starts to hit their hip pocket - and those of their advertisers) I definitely don’t agree with the method.
For starters if you do this and you’re an Adsense publisher (as Mitch is) it’s likely to get you banned through Google tracking your IP address. Keep in mind that Google has sued people caught for click fraud over the past year.
I also have an ethical problem with clicking on ads for non genuine reasons. Perhaps I’m going to get accused of being a goodie two shoes again - but click fraud is theft. Not only that - it takes money from innocent advertisers, puts it in the hands of spammers themselves (I can’t think of any way to encourage them to start more splogs faster) and can only harm the prospects of other genuine publishers as advertisers leave the system and/or decrease the amount that they are willing to spend on advertising.
I do acknowledge splogs are a problem - but I’m not convinced that click fraud is the answer.
found via seo book
Written on October 25th, 2005 at 03:10 pm by Darren Rowse
How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs
I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to earn an income from or through their blogging.
I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to earn an income from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.
The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the ways that bloggers are currently making money through blogs.
Income Streams for Bloggers
Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers. No longer are bloggers only presented with the Adsense and/or BlogAds choice - instead they now have a massive array to choose from. Getting the most publicity recently have been Chitika’s eMiniMalls of course but there are just so many other options now that also include:
Adgenta, CrispAds, Text Link Ads, Intelli Txt, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, TextAds, Fastclick and OneMonkey (to name just some of the options - I’m sure I’ve forgotten some) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (so I hear).
RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big dollars through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.
Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion.
Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.
Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.
Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.
Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.
Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!
Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fundraising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.
Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).
Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell enternetusers.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress (although I have to say they’ve lost one of my own orders and are being quite unresponsive to my requests to follow it up at present). While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.
Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background earning money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.
As time rolls on there are more and more blog earning opportunities opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas in comments below.
Written on October 25th, 2005 at 01:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Blogging as ‘Normal’?
It’s been a frustrating few days - this morning I got up ready to get back into some serious blogging only to find that my blog’s were no longer online. The problem was with EV1Servers who seem to have come under some sort of data center attack today which caused my server to be out of action for 6 or more hours putting me even further behind after a weekend of being offline.
I guess these things happen from time to time and we just have to roll with the punches. Apologies for those who’ve been frustrated with this blog in the past few hours - hopefully things will be sorted now.
Written on October 24th, 2005 at 11:10 pm by Darren Rowse
Healthy Blogger
I just got a phone call from a enternetusers reader in the UK who was ringing to see if I was out of hospital.
I was very grateful for the call - it’s nice to know that people care.
However there was one surprise in the call - I haven’t been in hospital.
So just to clear up some rumors that have been circulating thanks to someone with a vivid imagination and a bit too much time on their hands.
- Yes I have been unwell
- No I haven’t been in hospital
- No I have not lost sight in one eye (or two for that matter)
- No I am not on my death bed
- No my blogs are not for sale (I don’t know where that one came from)
Thanks to the many people who have emailed or left comments on my blog with well wishes. I do appreciate it. I am doing quite a bit better and just needed a couple of days off.
Blogging will resume as normal tomorrow.
Written on October 22nd, 2005 at 05:10 pm by Darren Rowse
What happens when a enternetusers gets sick
I’ve had one of those 24 hours.
Last night I went to bed with sore eyes after a long week of work.
This morning I woke up unable to look at anything brighter than my clock radio without my right eye bursting into tears.
Going outside was painful - watching TV uncomfortable, looking at a computer screen almost unbearable (here I am blogging with sunglasses on! If only you could see me now.)
The doctor thinks its a virus or allergic reaction and ‘hopes it will pass’. I’m sure it will but it got me thinking…
It’s been a bit of a freaky experience - lying in my darkened room this afternoon my mind began to wander towards some ‘what if’ scenarios - ‘how would a pro-blogger survive without sight?’
It’s a bit of a fatalistic and depressing train of thought to follow but it’s worth considering I guess. We take our health for granted so much. Working for yourself means there’s no sick pay, no health cover etc - luckily we’ve been putting some money aside for such emergencies - but I’d like to see some discussion around what provisions other solo-entrepreneurs put in place to cover long term illness/injury etc.
I’m fine - don’t worry. You’ll probably not hear from me for the rest of the weekend - but I’m interested in your thoughts.
Written on October 22nd, 2005 at 11:10 am by Darren Rowse
Customizable background colors for Chitika eMiniMalls
One of the more common complaints that I heard about Chitika’s eMiniMalls is that publishers are unable to change the background color of the ads. This made it very difficult for publishers with any other color background to their blog than white.
In the last couple of ours this changed and Chitika added the ability to change the background/tab color by using the following code.
‘ch_color_bg = “#CCCCCC”;’
Publishers can either insert this manually into posts or use the eMiniMall code maker to do it.
I’ve also been told that the engineers at Chitika have been working on getting rid of a few bugs that were meaning the ads struggled to be shown on some browsers. The word is that they are now much more compatible on the latest release of firefox and other browsers. This could lead to better CTR if you have a significant amount of readers using such browsers.
Written on October 22nd, 2005 at 12:10 am by Darren Rowse
Reflections on the Six Figure Blogging Course
A number of bloggers have asked me to write my reflections on being involved with running the Six Figure Blogging course over the past couple of months. Yesterday Andy and I did the last of six calls and today I’ve been reviewing how I felt it went.
While there are a handful of things that I think we will do differently in future runs of the course - overall I’d have to declare it to be a success on a couple of levels.
Business - Firstly it was successful in a business sense. We had 1100 or so people sign up for the free preview call (which indicates it’s a pretty popular topic) and 80 or so enroll in the course. This exceeded our expectations and made doing it worth our while. Some have commented that we must be rolling in cash as a result of it - I would encourage them to remember that half of the fees were paid to affiliates, there were then expenses of calls, transcripts recordings etc and that lastly Andy and I shared the revenue.
I’m not saying we made a loss or anything - it was worth our time - it just wasn’t at the level that some have written about :-)
I would also add that while it was worth while it was also a lot of work. Between preparing content, answering questions between calls, proof reading transcripts, keeping the course blog up to date with content and moderating comments - it was a pretty busy six weeks on top of my normal schedule. It was definitely fun - but not something to be entered into too lightly.
Learning - Secondly after hearing the feedback we’ve heard so far I’d say that the course was a pretty successful learning experience for all concerned. Some of the feedbck that we got at the end of yesterday’s call was pretty amazing. One person told us all that he’d put some of the principles into place that we mentioned in the first two weeks and in doing so had paid for the course already. THAT is what the course was really all about so I was pretty satisfied that we must have done something right. I also learned a few things - not only about running a tele-seminar course but also about ProBlogging.
Where to from here?
This is something that Andy and I have talked about quite a bit. As you’ll see on the course home page - we’re now working on a home study version of the course. This is in response to the many people who have expressed an interest in participating but who couldn’t afford to participate in the live version. We’re yet to set a price but expect it to be in the vicinity of half of what the live course is. Cheaper because you don’t get the interaction of the live calls, but still covering the same content that we did over the last six weeks.
Andy and I are also hoping to run another live and updated version of the course early in surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia397 zone.for those who want a more interActive version. We’ve also even talked a little about a live in person intensive version of the course somewhere in the US next year if we can find enough people who would be interested in coming to spend a day or two with us.
I think it would also be a pretty safe bet to see Andy and I working together on some other similar products in the year ahead.
If you haven’t already signed up for the free preview call of the course you might like to do so here. It will give you a free hour long preview call but will also include you on an email list that will announce when the home study version and any new courses are ready to go.
Written on October 21st, 2005 at 09:10 am by Darren Rowse
Targeting Secondary Keywords on Your Blog
Jamsi has published a worthwhile post over at workboxers on how he used the Overture tool to find a keyword that was less searched for but also less competitive to target his blog on. He explains it a lot better than I do:
‘I noticed that the keyword “Funny vids” (which I had used) was very popular, however I entered the keyword “funnyvids” and saw that it was being searched for A LOT LESS than “Funny vids” BUT still enough traffic to pursue.
I decided to start easy and aim for a top 3 spot using the keyword “Funnyvids”.. and it worked. On the 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) I achieved a rank in the top 3. My website statistics quadripled and whilst nothing to rave about, I was relatively pleased. 90% of my traffic was now coming from search engines. (1.2% from the US Military. Should I be worried?!?)’
Take home point - sometimes it’s better to target keywords on your blog that are not the most popular ones. The problem with popular keywords is that everyone is targeting them - pick a less searched for term and you might just find yourself on a winner.
This is a great strategy - the only thing I would add is that once you’ve established yourself highly with a less popular keyword and have built up traffic, inbound links etc - at that point you might find yourself able to switch your keyword focus slightly to the more popular keyword. This is not something you’d probably do very quickly - but in time you can build upon the success of the lesser searched for keyword with the real deal.
So in Jamsi’s example - in another year when he’s got a lot of loyal readers and SE profile - it might be worth switching back to ‘Funny vids’ as the main keyword being targeted on the site.
This is the experience that I had with my Digital Camera Review Blog. When I first started out I concentrated on a variety of less popular terms because the term ‘Digital Camera’ was just too hard. In more recent times I’ve begun to target the Digital Camera word more than previously with some success. These days I regularly find myself in the top 10 on Google for the term - something I’d never have been able to do in the early days.
Of course I’ve been at it for over 2 years now - it’s not a short term strategy.
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