Written on February 6th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 09:02 pm by Darren Rowse
State of the Blogosphere - February 2006
David Sifry has posted the first part in his latest State of the Blogosphere series of posts. This first one as normal picks up the topic of ‘Blogosphere Growth’. The summary statements:
- Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
- The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
- It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
- On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
- 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
- Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
- Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
- Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
- Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
- Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers
Written on February 6th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 03:02 pm by Darren Rowse
How to Make Your Millions through Blogging???
I just saw a blog post on a blog (I’m not going to link to it because it’s a pretty spammy site that pushes splog software and was filled with lots of affiliate ads) that made me laugh (and feel a little depressed all at once).
The topic of the post was about how to make massive income through AdSense and Affiliate programs through creating ‘niche content sites’. Here were their steps:
1. Set up a Blog - they recommended a variety of free blogging platforms (including WordPress.com - which if you dig even a little you find don’t allow you to use Adsense, YPN, Chitika or most other ad systems on wordpress.com).
2. Add your Google Adsense Code - (with affiliate button)
3. Find a related affiliate products (they recommend ClickBank - of course with an affiliate link)
4. Promote your blog (using pinging software - more affiliate links)
Easy isn’t it!
But what’s the missing step in this process to creating massively successful niche content sites?
How about Content?
While the article in question was obviously a cheap and nasty way to generate some affiliate sales for the author, I’m sad to say that the attitude of ‘build it and they will come - and you’ll grow rich’ is one that many bloggers buy into.
I’ve come across a few angry bloggers this week who seemed to feel that it was their right to have traffic to their blog after putting the effort into making it (despite the fact that they only had 10 or so free articles and a couple of 2 sentence original posts on their blogs).
I know this is pretty basic stuff for many enternetusers readers (apologies) but I’m finding it is a constant conversation that I’m having with bloggers.
BEFORE you set up a blog it’s important to ask yourself a series of questions to help you work out if a blog is for you:
• Am I willing to write regular (I recommend a minimum least 5 times per week - 5 is ok, but in practice I find 10 or more is ideal) content on my blog?
• Am I willing to interact with readers who might comment on my content?
• Am I willing to deal with comment spam (while there are tools to help with this, some will get through and you need to put time into deleting it as it comes in)
• Am I interested enough in the topic to blog about it for a long time?
• How much time am I willing to put into this blog each week?
• Do I know enough about the topic I’ll be writing about (or am I willing to learn)?
• Am I willing to stick at this blog for the long term - even if my blog isn’t successful quickly?
• Am I willing to watch what others in the blogosphere (and in other mediums) are writing on this topic?
While there are probably a few well trafficked blogs out there that break a few of these rules I would suspect that most successful bloggers work pretty hard at their blogging. Looking in from the outside, making money online can be quite ‘easy’ (and there are elements that some people do find easy) but the fact is that it takes a lot of hard work also.
Written on February 6th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
coComment - Tracking Blog Comments
There’s a fascinating idea being beta tested over at coComment which attempts to help those who leave comments on multiple blogs (as readers) to keep track of those conversations - all in the one place. It also gives you the ability to display these conversations on your own blog if you wish to do so and will alert you to anyone else’s response to the conversations you’ve participated in. Sounds like an interesting service.
found via TechCrunch
Written on February 6th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
Amazon to Launch Contextual Advertising
The word coming out of Amazon today is that they are considering developing a contextual advertising system similar to AdSense.
Up until now they have been using Google’s supply of advertisers to fill ads on their sites but wish to cut Google out of the equation and get into the ad business themselves.
Word is emerging on this new direction as they approach affiliates from their associates program to find if they would like to be involved in a beta test.
This could be difficult for them to do as many (if not most) of their Affiliates would currently be running AdSense or YPN ads and need to remove these current ads in order to beta test Amazon’s offering (as AdSense and YPN no not allow contextual ads on the same site page).
Written on February 5th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 11:02 am by Darren Rowse
Post to Comment/Trackback Ratio
Peter from pc4media has posted asking readers what their Post to Comment/Trackback Ratio? is. Peter’s PCTR (did I just make up a new acronym?) is 0.75 if he doesn’t include trackbacks and 0.66 if he does. Here’s his calculations:
‘1694/2245 = 0.75 (My old methodology.)
1694/ (2245+ 339) = 0.66 (Stowe’s “I’m stretching the conversational aspect” methodology)’
What’s your PCTR?
enternetusers’s total posts is 1970 (wow - I need to start planning a 2000 post celebration) and it has 17533 comments (that includes trackbacks - I’m not sure how to find out how many of them are trackbacks).
So my PCTR is 0.11.
Another way of saying it is that for every post there are 8.9 comments and trackbacks.
So what does it mean? Peter asks readers to say what their PCTR says about themselves as bloggers.
My thoughts are this:
I’m not sure comparing your PCTR with another blog is that helpful. While it might be an indicator of a blog’s interactivity it is difficult to make comparisons between blogs on different topics. Some topics lend themselves to lots of interaction and links from other blogs whereas others do not. This doesn’t make a blog successful or not.
Having said this - I think a ratio like this is useful to keep track of over time IF the goal of your blog is to increase interactivity and reader participation (as one of my goals here at enternetusers is to do).
Not only is it a bit of fun to do - but if instead of comparing it to other blogs you compare it from month to month or year to year on your own blog you might just have yourself an interesting measure of the health of your blog. Of course it’s not the only measure of health but it’s an interesting one to watch.
I haven’t previously kept an eye on a ratio like this (I guess I could go back and work it out if I had the time) but think I’ll do so in future. Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that my ratio has probably improved as enternetusers has gotten older. I also notice that the numbers of comments per post go up when I post less frequently - the activity in comments on a post seems to correlate with the length of it’s stay on the front page.
Maybe someone should develop a WP plugin? I’m not sure I’d show it on my blog publicly - but would use it on my dashboard - especially if it could give some historical figures.
Another ratio which would be interesting would be a Comment to Traffic Ratio (CTR?). To work out what percentage of daily visits to a blog comment would be interesting also.
Update: Read more about what some are calling the ‘Conversational Index’ at Don Dodge, Mathewingram.com and Stowe Boyd.
Written on February 5th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 09:02 am by Darren Rowse
Weblog Empire ReLaunches as ‘Dating Agency’ for Blogs
Duncan has been wondering what to do with his Weblog Empire domain for some time now and today announces the launch of it in it’s version 2 incarnation.
He describes it as like a dating agency for your blog where you can post about your blog and look for partnerships with other bloggers in terms of links. It is a forum set up.
I’d love to see the concept extended further in the future to have sections exploring other potential partnerships that go beyond link exchanging also - perhaps along the lines of bartering of services as I mentioned in my post on blogging skills a few days back. I’m not sure what Duncan’s intentions are with it much further than it’s present form as this isn’t a b5media project but I’m sure it will evolve in time.
Written on February 4th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 02:02 pm by Darren Rowse
The Benefits of Developing a WP Template
Kyle over at Warpspire has an interesting post reflecting upon the impact that releasing a WP blog template (which got picked up as one of the templates offered on WordPress.com) has had upon his blog’s success of late.
The results include increased traffic, loads of inbound links (which helps with SE traffic, ranking on Technorati and increased participation on his blog via comments).
This shows the power of developing a useful tool that is useful for others but that will also promote you.
found via ipears
Written on February 4th, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
What’s Wrong with Blogging? - Take 2
Last year I did something that I thought I’d never do (as a lover of blogs) - I invited readers to share what they thought was wrong with blogging and today I think it’s time to do it again.
I introduced the question last time by sharing a story of a debate between a Christian group and Pagan group where each group was asked to not argue FOR their own belief system but to share what they disliked about it. The result was fascinating.
Instead of it ending in an angry fight where everyone just had their beliefs reinforced the debate was actually quite constructive with both groups coming away having learnt something about the other and more importantly themselves.
Out of this story I invited readers to share (in a similar spirit) what they felt was ‘wrong’ with Blogging.
The benefits of Blogging are often talked up as though they are the answer to every online need - but I think most of us if we are honest would admit that it’s a format that does have limitations and has room for improvement. So - like last year - I thought I’d pose the question again.
What’s wrong with blogging? What are it’s limitations, weaknesses and where does it need to improve?
My hope is that by answering this question and deconstructing blogging a little we can play a part in the improvement of blogging as a whole. By identifying what’s wrong perhaps we can improve it.
Like last time the rules are simple - say anything you like about blogging as long as it’s not positive (note: I’m not inviting you to critique individual bloggers - but the medium itself). You can do this in comments below or by writing a post on your own blog (just leave a link below so we can find it). There are no wrongs and rights and everyone’s critique of the medium are valid and welcome.
So - what’s wrong with blogging?
Written on February 3rd, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 11:02 am by Darren Rowse
What Blogging Skills Are Missing from Your Blogging Toolbox?
Someone asked me the other day what skills I wished I had to enhance my blogging.
I was able to answer them very quickly as most of them are glaringly obvious to me and probably those around me. The gaps in my web skill set are mainly technical. Blog and Graphic Design, Blog Set up, Coding etc.
While I’ve learned so much over the three years since I started (I still remember the day I had to ask Rachel, who has been very patient with me, how to make words bold) I still struggle with some of the things that many of you can do in your sleep. For example setting up a WordPress blog is something I’m only now learning to do (the b5media guys don’t let me near the back end - and rightly so).
On one level this frustrates me a lot. I don’t like that if I want something done that goes beyond ‘tweaking’ my blog that I need to rely upon someone else. I also don’t like that even the most basic tweaks can take me many times longer to do than what others can do with a few keystrokes.
On the flip side of things I’m increasingly aware that it’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses and to work with them rather than against them. You see my brain is just not wired in a technical sort of way. I don’t naturally learn the technical things easily - in fact it takes numerous times of going through a process before I’ll get it (and even then I mess it up). While this is frustrating the realization that I’ve come to is that I don’t need to be good at everything because there are plenty of other people around who have the skills I don’t have who are willing to give advice, be hired to do work and even at times to do a little work for free or in exchange for some other services you might have to offer.
It is important to learn new skills and develop your abilities to do some of the basics but there will usually be an area that you’ll need to draw upon the expertise of others to balance out your own abilities.
I’d be interested for people to briefly share in comments below what type of blogging skills they do an don’t have. For one it’d be interesting to see what we do and don’t know collectively - but it might also be an opportunity for some working relationships to form between enternetusers readers. I’m pretty confident that between everyone in the enternetusers community we have the skills needed to get virtually every blog job done.
PS: I just saw this cool Photoshop Tutorial on creating Banner Ads over at Performancing which is exactly the type of instruction I need if I want to learn something technical. Step by step and using language that even I can understand. Of course I only have Photoshop Elements at present so it’s only ‘almost’ perfect for me.
Written on February 3rd, surf Active Apparel website earn money app zone.at 09:02 am by Darren Rowse
Gawker Launches Valleywag
I generally don’t announce when blog networks launch blogs but for some reason when Gawker Media launch one I sit up and take note - because they have an amazing strike rate of launching very successful blogs. They don’t take the machine gun approach and go for lots of small blogs - they launch a few BIG ones. Their latest is Valleywag - a tech gossip rag.
The cool thing about Gawker’s blogs is that they never launch empty ones. This blog has been filling with stories since 6 January and looking at the content already there I’ve already subscribed to it. Also looking at their stats it seems others are interested in it also - it’s had close to 13,000 visitors today already with still 6 - 7 hours to go until the day ends.
Read more at Valleywag
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