Written on May 11th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 03:05 am by Darren Rowse

Timing Your Blog Posts for Maximum Impact

Writing Content 18 comments

In the last two days I’ve been fortunate enough to have Lifehacker link to two posts (here and here) on my Digital Photography School blog. The results have been two wonderful days of traffic with not only links from Lifehacker but quite a few secondary links from other sites that flow on from such a prominent link.

One of the things I’ve been reflecting upon about the two link ups was the difference in impact between their two posts. The first one sent some very nice traffic but was about half as prolific as the second one.

While there are perhaps a couple of factors at play - the main one was the timing of the two posts.

The first post went up on Lifehacker in the middle of the life hacker day (they tend to post most of their posts during the daytime in the US). It wasn’t the first post of the day but it wasn’t the last either. After they posted it there were numerous other posts that went up to other sites on that day. The post with my link in it remained at the top of the Lifehacker home page for no more than an hour.

The second post went up as the last post for the day. This meant it was the most recent (and therefor first) post on lifehacker for around 10 hours.

While these were probably not the most highly trafficked hours on Lifehacker (who I assume has more readers during the daytime in the US) the traffic that resulted in the extended period at the top of their home page was significantly higher than on the first day when there was a quick initial spike in traffic but then a tapering off.

So what’s the application of this little observation?

Ultimately unless I manage to find a way to bribe the team at Lifehacker to link to me every night as their last post timing the links that others give you is something that is based pretty heavily upon luck.

However while timing the links that others give might be out of a blogger’s control the timing of posts on your own blog are well within your control and perhaps it’s worth considering what posts are left to sit for longer periods of time. I’ve never really given much thought to this myself but have talked to a couple of bloggers today who have and who use a couple of strategies:

1. One blogger told me that if he’s going to post posts with affiliate links in them that he saves them for the last ones of the day to maximize the length of time that the links appear at the top of his blog.

2. Another blogger told me that she is trying to impress another blogger or catch their attention (with a link in her post) that she often attempts to time her posts to maximize the traffic that she sends. She does this by either posting the post in peak viewing time or by making it the last post for the day.

Of course many bloggers also consider timing their posts in other ways - I know of quite a few who make sure a post goes up every morning just as the east coast of the US is waking up to maximize their exposure for the day (this is something I do from time to time myself).

Do you consider the timing of your posts? What factors do you consider and what strategies do you employ?

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Written on May 11th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:05 am by Darren Rowse

Making Money Blogging Without an Ad in Sight

Blogging for Dollars 16 comments

One of the distinctions that I’ve made previously about blogging for money is that there are Direct Methods and Indirect Methods for doing so. Direct methods are where blogger makes money FROM their blog and Indirect methods are where a blogger makes money BECAUSE of their blog.

enternetusers.net tends to focus more upon direct methods but I’m increasingly finding examples of bloggers who are using indirect methods.

Probably one of the most prominent examples of a blogger making money because of his blog (among other things) is Seth Godin.

The most recent indirect money maker for Seth is a couple of seminars that he’s running in June. The first seminar is a 12 seat seminar (very exclusive) which costs $3995 (USD) per person. The second seminar is a 60 seat seminar at $950 per person (discounts for multiple attendees from the one company).

Now Seth’s ability to hold seminars that attract people willing to pay that much for his time doesn’t only come from writing his blog (he’s written numerous books - many of which he gives away free online - and regularly speaks at conferences etc) but his blog is part of his approach to raising his own profile which results in many income earning possibilities.

The only ‘ads’ on Seth’s blog are for himself and the products that he sells. No AdSense, no affiliate programs, no banner ads - just Seth.

Seth embodies the ‘give it away‘ strategy that many bloggers making money indirectly from blogs use. In giving useful, unique and free content to his readers in his books, e-books and blog and by encouraging his readers to pass it on he continues to expose his ideas and personality to more and more people. Along the way the income generating opportunities arise and he’s able to sustain himself for the next round.

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Written on May 10th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 10:05 pm by Aaron Brazell

Alternablog: Mobile Blogging

Blogging Tools and Services, Miscellaneous Blog Tips 4 comments

This post has been submitted by regular contributor - Aaron Brazell

For the most part, when people talk about blogging they are talking about a very conventional style of communication which describes what most of us are used to - a top-down, linear mostly text medium. While this is the most common blog type, there are other varieties as well. We know about these, for the most part: podcasting, photoblogging, moblogging and videocasting, to name the most common alternablogs.

During the next few weeks, my column will revolve around exploring some of these alternate blogging types, some of the benefits to them and entry into that blog mode.

Moblogging
Mobile blogging, or moblogging as it is called, is a rapidly growing phenomenon where bloggers can submit entries via mobile phones, PDAs and Blackberrys or other mobile device. The idea is really quite simple - journalize where I am.

While I have dabbled in moblogging a little bit over the years, it isn’t something that I’ve taken to. But increasingly, more people are. WordPress offers built in mobile support. A blogger sets up a secret email box that WordPress can periodically check for new content. If any content is present, it will post that content as entries. Mobile entries can be submitted to this email box via text message or mobile email service.

There are WordPress plugins that make the whole process more reliable and even provide additional features. Postie is one such plugin that comes to mind. WordPress is not the only mobile blogging platform though. Blogger has its own moblogging feature.

Other Mobile Blogging resources:

• KABLOG is a tool for mobile phones and PSAs that support posting based on the Metaweblog API. It supports most of the major blog platforms including WordPress and Movable Type.
• An old entry (2003) from Joi Ito but still has some useful tools.
• And of course, what would a Google search be without a post from Darren that is full of helpful information. :|

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Written on May 10th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 09:05 am by Darren Rowse

Some enternetusers News

enternetusers Site News 66 comments

Source via Steve

Update: Ok, it’s been 45 minutes since posting this and it’s getting a little out of hand as I’ve had quite a few emails of congratulations, bloggers asking for interviews and a reporter (a Fairfax one oddly enough) call me to do a story already.

If you click the image or check the ’source’ links you’ll get the full picture.

Update 2: Ok - perhaps I wasn’t clear enough - but this was an attempt at humor. The above story is not true. It is a joke using a little ‘make a fake newspaper tool’ that I linked to in the ‘Source’ link and in the image itself. No more requests for interviews or asking if I’d like to invest money in Web 2.0 projects please (I’m up to two calls from journalists, two investment requests and about 15 emails of congratulations)….

Sorry for leading people up a garden path but I thought I’d made it obvious enough…. perhaps this says something about much people trust blogs…. or how little they read ’source links’…. or how much people think enternetusers’s worth…. or something else?

I think I’ll stay away from attempting to joke around on this blog in future.

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Written on May 10th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 08:05 am by Darren Rowse

Link Lust

Pro Blogging News 65 comments

Which 3 Blogs or Websites would you most love a link from?

Why?

I’d be interested to see a list of lusted after links to see what blogs are mentioned repeatedly.

Share you top 3 in comments or write a post about it and leave a link to the post below.

Update: A couple of ways that you might like to acknowledge the blogs that you’re lusting after links from are Link Leaks and Blog Tipping.

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Written on May 10th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:05 am by Darren Rowse

8 Reasons Why New Media is Growing

Pro Blogging News 26 comments

“Why is New Media becoming popular?”

After being introduced to a friend of a friend as a ‘full time blogger’ the other night at a pub I was asked the above question by the friend of a friend. He accepted that ‘New Media’ is popular - but was at a bit of a loss as to the reasons for WHY it was.

I answered his question by reflecting upon a number of the things I see happening at present in wider culture and talked about how blogging and other forms of new media seem to be tapping into some of these 9 factors (I’m sure there are more than 9 - but these are what came to mind). Just a warning - this is a longish and slightly philosophical post - if you don’t have time to read it you might like to bookmark it to ponder later. Also note that much of this comes from a variety of reading I’ve done on post-modernism and culture, particularly in my reading around new forms of spirituality and why they are emerging:

1. Participation

For many years the way we’ve interacted with news and knowledge has been in a very one way form. Our society has had professional experts and news reporters who seek news and knowledge on our behalf and who present it to us for our consumption. The experts do the work and in a sense the rest of us are quite passive in the process.

This is not cutting it for many these days who not only want to know the latest news or knowledge but instead now want to interact with it and even participate in it.

Expertise and Knowledge is still valued but there seems to be a move towards an understanding that true expertise lies in the collective rather than the individual. As a result conversation and a sense of belonging is central in many forms of new media.

People want to interact with news and with the rise of technology they want an opportunity to even take part in it’s creation and reporting. We see this through blogs, podcasts, the rise in the camera phone in many news stories (remember the images from the London bombing?) etc. The line between reporters and consumers of news and information has blurred as people participate in media more and more.

2. Suspicion of Institution

Government, Church, Business and other institutions have had an increasingly tough time in recent decades. Whereas in days gone by ‘Big’ was respected and looked to as legitimizing something - I’m sensing a change and the beginning of a return to the micro. I’ve seen this on many levels in recent times ranging from a decline here in Australia of people’s opinion of the church (perhaps partly a result of various scandals and failings over the years) through to a rise of the ‘inner city village’ which seems to be happening more and more in different parts of our city as people intentionally decide to shop locally, put their money in community banks and seek alternative lifestyles.

I don’t have figures to back it up but anecdotal evidence among my friendship groups seems to indicate a growing sense of disillusionment and suspicion of mainstream media outlets also. Here in Australia most of our media is controlled by a small number of players and there is a lot of talk in the circles that I hang around in about alternatives sources of news - many of them online.

3. Playfulness

Excuse my language but Australians love to ‘take the piss’ out of people. I’m not sure how that translates into other settings but there is a certain irreverence and playfulness that exists in the way that people interact with one another in daily life.

Childhood seems to extend well into adulthood for many also as they seek to find ways of escaping ‘the grind’ and enjoy life. Video games are played more by adult males than children and gadgets seem to be more about entertainment than productivity or a couple of examples of this.

New media has a playfulness about it in many instances also. Irreverence, humor and ‘taking the piss’ (especially of institutions) are all givens in blogging and pod-casting efforts - to the point where almost anything goes.

4. Relationality

(I may have just made up a word) Perhaps this is just an extension of ‘participation’ but I’ve noticed in the last decade or so (especially in younger generations) a change in the air when it comes to individualism.

While there is still a big focus upon looking out for your own best interests (selfishness frustrates me and I see it everywhere) there are plenty of indications around that people are thirsting to connect with one another.

Of course the way we connect and have relationships is changing with the rise in different technologies that allow cheap and easy connections across vast distances - but the desire to belong to communities of like minded people remains (and is perhaps growing).

As I’ve said above - new media is at its best when it involves conversations, collective learning and being a part of things that are bigger than just yourself.

This is one of the main reasons I got into blogging three years ago - the day I discovered blogs I was sucked into the conversations I saw happening on topics that meant something to me - I’ve never looked back.

5. Holism

The world used to split life in segments. We had work lives, home lives, sex lives, spiritual lives, social lives, dating lives etc etc etc. In recent years there has been a return to a more holistic and integrated lifestyle. Rather than compartmentalizing there is a desire among many to integrate and connect these once fractured aspects of our existence.

New Media can buy into this compartmentalized world view but I wonder with the advent of tools like news aggregators whether we’re starting to see people controlling and integrating their different interests into the one place. ie now in the same tool I can get the latest gadget news, read a soap gossip column, check out the latest Bollywood news, get news of my football club’s latest fundraiser, hear about a great new way to cook biscotti from an Italian chef and find out tips on how to get rid of that annoying rash!

While Web 2.0 gets a lot of criticism - many of the tools being developed in it at present will take this holistic/integrated thing a lot further as we see the convergence of aspects of life that we’d never would have dreamed of.

6. Juxtaposition

Perhaps this is a generational thing (I suspect it’s not) or maybe it’s just me growing up (it had to happen eventually) - but doesn’t the world seem a lot less black and white? While I used to want ‘the answer’ or ‘the information’ and didn’t want to hear different opinions or ideas that might clash with one another - these days I seek out juxtaposition and paradox in my life.

People seem increasingly comfortable with hearing diverse opinions and living with contradiction. I see this in many of my friends (and if I’m honest my own life) where people hold strong values that quite often contradict the decisions that they make (perhaps a better word is hypocrisy?).

I met one person who embodied this a few months ago. She told me that she was grappling with the fact that she was really passionate about social justice and advocating for the poor (she does ALOT of volunteer work for different organizations) yet she has just bought herself a $15,000 fridge. She couldn’t make sense of her decision but had this strange sense of being ok with it even though it didn’t quite seem to fit.

As New Media and Web 2.0 moves towards convergence and integration (see last point on holism) I guess we will increasingly see a juxtaposition of ideas side by side.

7. DIY

I was in a hardware shop the other day and noticed an area that was set up with around 50 chairs all set up like a meeting was about to happen. I asked what was going on and was told that it was their ‘learning centre’ where they ran classes on how to do various maintenance jobs around the house. They ran over 30 classes a week and were booked out for at least a month.

‘Do it Yourself’ TV shows and magazines are pretty massive here in Australia (almost to the point where a year or so back it felt like there was little else on TV). People increasingly seem to be feeling empowered to do things that they’d previously have paid an expert to do for them.

It’s not wonder that thousands of people around the world are looking at what they see on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers and are deciding that they could do that themselves.

I heard of one Melbourne teenager who was listening to dance music one day a few years ago and decided that he could produce similar kinds of sounds on his PC. He’d never really done anything like that before but after looking at some websites that told him what to do and after downloading some software he put together a number of tracks that he promptly posted on a music website.

Six months later he was being played in London clubs. He was just a kid messing around in his bedroom one day and what everyone thought was the coolest artist the next.

New Media is making kids (sometimes grown up ones) famous (in their niches) all over the world.

8. Immediacy

Last week I was in a food court and saw a woman completely loose it because the McDonalds staff were not able to get her a cheese burger and fries in the 60 seconds that she wanted it in. She was told there’d be a three minute wait and she threw a tantrum as a result.

I laughed at the situation at the time but when I came home and my laptop took a few seconds longer to start up than normal and I began to wonder if it was time for an upgrade I realized that we’re all much the same. We want ’stuff’ now! Waiting is not part of the equation any more.

Now I’m not saying that this need for everything to be immediate is a good thing (I think we need to slow down) but one of the reasons I think new media is appealing to people is that it’s very fast.

This hit home to me when I was online the day that the London bombings happened last year and when I saw read first hand reports and saw pictures from within the subway within minutes of the incidents happening.

Just yesterday Steve Rubel proudly proclaimed that bloggers had the story of Gmail being down before the press did.

New Media is light footed, nimble and quick - so much so that many mainstream news sources just cannot compete any more. I notice this most with a couple of Monthly magazines and periodicals that I subscribe to - I don’t remember the last time when they broke a story to me that I’d not read about within hours of the announcements being made.

Photo Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

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Written on May 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 03:05 pm by Darren Rowse

Plagiarism and Blogging

Pro Blogging News 11 comments

The Boston Globe has a piece today on plagiarism and blogs which points to a blog that I’ve been reading for some time now via RSS - Plagiarism Today.

”’A-list bloggers don’t see much copy-and-paste plagiarism because their popularity insulates them,” said Plagiarism Today’s Bailey. ”Unknown bloggers aren’t plagiarized much because they’re undiscovered, and if they are read their content is usually too personal to be used elsewhere.”

So who gets ripped off the most?

”It’s the midrange bloggers, like me and Beth,” Bailey said. ”We’re talented enough and have enough of a base to be known within a circle, but unknown enough to not be recognizable immediately by your average visitor.”‘

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Written on May 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 01:05 pm by Darren Rowse

Rebuilding Movable Type

Blogging Tools and Services 27 comments

Mike’s post at Business Logs announcing their latest design project (a redesign of A Socialite’s Life) has an interesting commentary comparing Movable Type and WordPress - specifically with the dynamic nature of WP and the need to ‘rebuild’ MT.

‘I now realize why larger weblogs are switching to WordPress — when a site posts a dozen or more entries per day for the past few years, rebuilding the individual entry archives takes a long time. A long, long time. About 32 minutes each rebuild. There is now an option in the newer version of Movable Type to switch to dynamic publishing (aka each individual entry archive request is retrieved from the database dynamically, no static files, like WordPress) but turning the option on and getting it working is not really something a non-technical person can accomplish. WordPress has dynamic publishing on by default (I’m not a WP expert, but I don’t think you can turn it off, not that you’d really want to) so it’s easier for a novice user to setup dynamic publishing using WordPress than with Movable Type.’

This is a difference that has made me start all my newer blogs with WP. There’s nothing worse than having to do a half hour rebuild (it can take longer some days) to make a small change in a sidebar or header. I love some of MT’s features but if you’re going to grow a large site over time you either need to work out how to make it dynamic (beyond me) or consider a dynamic platform.

Update: Mike’s written a great post as a followup that compares Movable Type and WordPress in quite a bit of detail.

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Written on May 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 01:05 pm by Darren Rowse

Yahoo’s Advertising Overhaul Officially announced

Yahoo Publishing Network 5 comments

Loren has posted details of the email that Yahoo sent it’s advertisers which has details of the overhaul they’re doing on their advertising program. Looks like they’re definitely doing some worthwhile updates including geo-targetting, quicker ad activation, budgeting/planning tools etc. To be honest I had thought Yahoo already had all this built into their system and am quite surprised that they’ve let AdWords get so far in front.

Also read the official press release announcement from Yahoo as well as a note to YPN publishers on the YPN blog telling them that the improvements in the advertisers end of the process will lead to improved performance of their ads also.

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Written on May 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia392 zone.at 12:05 am by Darren Rowse

Digital Photography School Progress Report

Case Studies 14 comments

It’s been just over a couple of weeks now since I launched my last blogging experiment (Digital Photography School) and as I said in my vidcast last week I want to periodically report on how it’s going and what I’ve been working on as I go along.

It’s early days but so far I’m reasonably happy with Digital Photography School’s progress. By no means is it a launch on the scale of some of the big blog network’s launches that get tends of thousands of hits on their first days - but it’s promising. So far it’s averaging about 600 daily visitors and is earning around $10 per day (through a combination of AdSense and Affiliate links).

What have I been Focussing On?

DPS is still in it’s launch phase and as a result I’ve been working hard on the following elements this week:

Writing Content - The writing of quality content was my primary task in the lead up to launching this blog and it has continued to be my main focus since. My topic is ‘helping people get the most out of their digital cameras’ and so I’ve set myself a goal of writing on post on that topic each weekday. So far I’ve not had any problems with keeping to this goal as I have a list of 200 or so topics that I want to cover over the next few months and have plenty of experience on the topic to draw on.

I’m attempting to keep the tips at a pretty accessible level (aiming at beginners through to medium level users) and am drawing as much as I can upon my own story and experiences. The feedback that I’ve had from some readers (via email as I don’t have comments) has been quite positive and I’ve had a few emails asking me to cover specific tips.

SEO - My strategy for growing traffic to this blog is two fold. Firstly I want to grow a loyal readership and secondly I’m hoping over time to grow the blog’s search engine ranking and grow the number of referrals from Google and it’s fellow SE’s. As a result I’ve spent time this week thinking through some SE strategies which have included some of the following ‘onsite techniques’:

• Getting the URL structure right (putting post titles in URLs to get keywords in there)
• Thinking carefully about keyword use in post titles
• Making titles live links
• Watching keyword density

I’ve also been working on ‘offsite techniques’ which have largely been about attempting to get other sites to link to it. My main strategy for this has been to approach others in the niche that I know and have a relationship with. I’ve also emailed a few relevant blogs with links to posts that I think they’d appreciate. This has had some success so far but is something I need to work more on.

Interestingly, because DPS is so lowly ranked in Google, the pages that link to it are generally ranked more highly for it’s keywords than DPS itself. For example my vidcast post is well ranked on ‘Digital Photography School’ as are quite a few other blogs and sites that linked up to it. Also my feedburner RSS feed is ranked quite well for the term! This will change in time.

It’s way to early to make any real call about the success of my SEO strategies after just two weeks. I know I have been indexed by Google (currently ranked 64th for “digital photography school” and already getting the odd referral from Google for some more obscure search terms. I’m expecting that there will be no huge improvement in my Google referral numbers for a number of months (I’ll most likely languish in the sandbox for a while) but I’m willing to wait it out and prove my worth.

Newsletter Promotion - one of my main efforts to build reader loyalty has been to promote my newsletter list. I’m using Zookoda to maintain this list and have been doing quite well with it already with a list o 128 subscribers so far (it’s getting around 10 new subscribers a day).

I’m in two minds about what strategy to use with the list. At present I’ve promoted it to a once a week newsletter type email (similar to enternetusers’s) but I’m seriously considering changing it to be a list that shoots off an email at the end of each day with the ‘tip of the day’. I need to make a call on this in the next few days before the list grows much more.

RSS Promotion - I’ve not promoted this quite as heavily as the newsletter but am definitely working on getting people to subscribe in one way or the other. My Subscribe page gets decent levels of traffic and seems to be working well. There are currently 99 RSS subscribers according to Feedburner’s stats.

Cross Promotion - As I mentioned in the vidcast - part of the reason I launched this new blog was to see what impact I could have in launching a second blog on a similar topic to one that I already have. In a sense this is an experiment with leveraging traffic and diversifying my blogging by going deeper into my niche.

I’ve been heavily cross promoting DPS from my other digital camera blog and have found it to be worthwhile.

You can see via the traffic graph to the left that there have been two ’spikes’ in traffic since launching. The first one on the 22nd was the day I soft launched the blog by linking to it on my digital camera blog and mentioning it in my blog’s newsletter. The link to it in my newsletter wasn’t that prominent but 500 visitors for the day wasn’t a bad start.

Since that time I’ve linked to DPS most days that I’ve written a new ‘tip’. The results have been a steady flow of traffic across (usually around the 200 to 300 visitors a day mark).

The second spike (on 2nd) was another link in my newsletter. The newsletter is sent to around 10,000 subscribers and about 15% of them visited the blog within 24 hours. This time the links to DPS were more prominent and the flow on impact was much higher. Interestingly since that newsletter spike the traffic on the blog has been noticeably higher as some of the readers from it have decided to keep coming back.

Of course I also linked to the blog from enternetusers on the 2nd May which will accounts for some of that spike (although interestingly very few people came over as a result of that link which to me shows the importance of ‘relevancy’ in cross promotion - ie people here are interested in blogging now cameras).

Comments upon the ‘experiments’

In the vidcast I mentioned that I was experimenting with two ‘non blog-like’ elements on this blog.

No Comments - The experiment here is to see what impact NOT having comments has on a blog. The results so far (and it’s early days) are that I can’t see too much impact in the numbers of other blogs linking to me to continue the conversation (a theory I was testing). The only other thing to report on this front is that it’s weird not having that immediate feedback (feels almost unnatural) - on the other hand I do like the fact that this blog will not ever have comment spam.

I’m yet to decide whether I’ll continue to leave comments off this blog or not. I’m toying with the idea of having an occasional post that allows them down the track but in the mean time I’ll continue the experiment (there’s no point doing an experiment if you’re not willing to see it out).

No Outbound links - The other experiment was to see what impact having no outbound links in posts would have upon AdSense CTR. So far it’s difficult to actually measure the results of this experiment. CTR is reasonable, but it’s not as high as some of my other blogs. The reasons for this are numerous:

• The topic is not really product specific - I find that blogs talking about specific products tend to convert pretty well
• The traffic to this blog is largely referral traffic - I find that SE traffic tends to click on ads more
• Ad positioning is not highly aggressive - while it’s reasonably prominent I’ve attempted to keep the position of AdSense ads on this blog a little less aggressive than on some of my other blogs. For example here at enternetusers on individual pages I have an ad inset into the top right hand side of posts. At DPS they are largely under posts (and on some longer articles in posts).

I am pretty certain that CTR is higher than if there were loads of outbound links in sidebars but in the weeks ahead I’ll do some experiments to see what impact some different ad placements will have.

PS: I’ve also had a little luck in the last few days with some of my posts on Digg, Delicious and Reddit. For example this last post on 10 ways to add variety to your digital photography has been bookmarked quite a bit. It doesn’t bring massive traffic but it’s enough to raise the daily visitor levels a little.

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