Written on August 3rd, 2005 at 05:08 pm by David Shawver
Inside the Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta with Jen
I thought Jen at Jensense was very quiet about Yahoo’s Publishing Network Launch and suspected she must have had the inside word and now it’s clear she did as she’s announced she’s part of YPN’s beta test. I’ll say right up front I’m very jealous as I’ve been trying to get on the beta test group too (I’ve been chatting today with a couple of different Yahoo people) - but to no avail due to not living in the land of opportunity (USA) :-). I guess I’m just geographically challenged.
Jen shares a few of her initial observations of the program. Here are the things that I like the look of:
‘All the obsessive stat checkers will love a feature that YPN has implemented into their control panel. When you login, under the daily balance, it states “* Estimated as of Aug 2, 2005 at 7:45 PM PST” This will give publishers a very definitive look as to what time the stats are current until.’
and
‘Something that is very cool about payment options is that it appears publishers have the option of transfering their YPN earnings over to their Yahoo search marketing account, if they use the same login username for both accounts. This is something AdSense/AdWords customers have requested since the launch of AdSense, so it is nice to see this as a feature YPN is implementing for their publishers.’
Overall YPN doesn’t look as remarkable feature wise as what some had been building it up to be. I guess it’s early days and they don’t want to reveal all their cards to Adsense before it goes live with a wider group later in the year. They will also have some bugs to weed out I guess - it’ll be interesting to watch Jen and other’s experiences.
If you’re in the US you can sign up for the beta here (be quick). Once you do let us all know how you find it!
Written on August 3rd, 2005 at 04:08 pm by David Shawver
31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 3
It’s day 3 of the enternetusers project to better our blogs in 31 days. I’ve just posted the last post in the Strategic Blogging mini series and am about to kick into a new series of posts on a topic that I sense a lot of bloggers (including myself) probably need to think through - Blog Apathy (stay tuned).
As well as the posting that I’ve been doing more readers have been submitting their own blog tips on a range of topics. Here are the ones I’ve been notified of in the past 24 hours (there are some quality posts here - I highly recommend you visit them and participate in the learning):
- Scrivs has written a great post over at WhiteSpace on Developing Community (not sure if it’s written specifically for this project but he let me know about it and I think it’s very relevant). It talks about building community on your blog or website.
- Cary submitted a post on the Secrets of Google Sitemap which will help readers think through one of Google’s latest tools for web publishers
- Hugh has posted his top 10 Blog tips over at The Angel Blog. It’s a great list.
- You have to see this Carol Warren Stanton online. Just a couple weeks after releasing the company's Juice Pack Helium, Mophie has released a better Kevin Carr for the iPhone 5. (which connected to my post on the same topic which has some great conversation going on in it).
- Markus has submitted another post (he’s in the lead with two so far) on Keeping organized when you post on more than one topic.
Thanks for those who’ve been submitting tips - but also to those of you who are visiting these links. I’ve heard back from a number of those who have participated that they’ve had quite a bit of traffic as a result and are making some good new friends. I’m also pleased to report I’m learning already too and am looking forward to what the community of enternetusers comes up with next!
Written on August 3rd, 2005 at 01:08 pm by David Shawver
Strategic Blogging - Action Plan
This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series. It’s the last one!!!
We’ve reached the last step of the strategic plan and now we finally get to a time of planning (and doing) some action.
In each of the ‘activities’ break down your strategy into achievable tasks. You might like to break it down into some sort of a timeline.
- what will you do in the next month?
- what will you do in the next 3 months?
- what will you do in the next 6 months?
- what will you do in the next 12 months?
Your action plan should contain very specific tasks.
Some might be ongoing tasks like:
- ‘post 10 posts per day every day for the next month’
- ’start 1 new blog every month until October’
- ‘add 3 new affiliate links to my blog every day this month’
- ‘write 1 press release to promote my blog each month’
Others might be one off tasks like:
- ‘apply for Adsense program and integrate into blog’
- ‘get to know blogger X’
- ‘do survey of my readers to find out who they are’
- ‘write a series of posts on <insert topic here>’
Once again these tasks need to be specific, measurable (you need to know when they’re complete) and achievable. In doing this you’re achieving the very big picture dreams and objectives that you’ve previously set one step at a time.
You’ll see once again below that I’ve filled in (in a very simplified way) how some of the strategic plan might build as you add your action plan. In reality each ‘issue’ could have multiple strategies - each of which could have multiple actions assigned to them. By this point you should be left with a larger list of ‘things to do’ that you need to prioritise for and then begin to work through. Once again these actions should be broken down into small enough parts so as not to overwhelm you. Make them measurable and achievable so you can begin to tick them off and create some momentum to your blogging.
Read more of the Strategic Blogging Series.
Written on August 3rd, 2005 at 07:08 am by David Shawver
Yahoo to launch blog ad network Wednesday
It looks like Wednesday is the day that Yahoo will launch its Publishing Network if this article at CNET is right.
‘Yahoo is planning to launch on Wednesday an ad network for small Web publishers intended to strengthen its hand against rival Google, a source familiar with the plan told CNET News.com.’
Looks like we (and numerous other sites) were right.
Update - looks like it’s official now with the New York Times featuring an article about YPN. Initially it will be just 2000 sites that beta test the network with this being opened up at the end of the year to others. Looks like those of us not in the beta have another 5 months of Adsense and need not get so excited about YPN after all. No prizes for where the 2000 blogs will be from I’ll bet.
Written on August 3rd, 2005 at 06:08 am by David Shawver
Strategic Blogging - Strategy
This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series.
We’re almost at the end of the strategic Blogging plan now - this is the second last post - phew!
You’ve analyzed your current position and have looked into the future to how you want your blog to be in each of the activities of your blogging - now you basically need to compare one with the other. How does your current reality and future vision compare? Do they match up? If they do you’re either a brilliant blogger, you’re lying or you’re not aiming high enough.
For most of us the current reality doesn’t match what we want to achieve.
What major changes do you need to make to get to your future vision?
Albert Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same old things the same old ways and expecting to get different results’ (paraphrased). The only way you’ll see changes in your blogging is if you change your approach. Which of your ‘activities’ needs to change? How?
You might find that some of your activities are doing well and don’t need too much changing - but the reality will be that we can all improve in all areas - and that in some areas more than others we might need a complete overhaul if we want to really achieve something. Make a list of the changes you need to make.
Once again I’ve included a diagram that hopefully illustrates how this might look (in a very over simplified form).
Read more of the Strategic Blogging Series.
Written on August 3rd, 2005 at 02:08 am by David Shawver
The Age Old Debate - Excerpts of Full Posts in RSS Feeds
Marketing Sherpa has a good post with 7 tips on podcasthing, RSS and blogging that might be of interest to readers. Here’s one on RSS that I subscribe to:
‘#1. Don’t give it all away
Whether you’re promoting in a third-party RSS feed or using a feed yourself to get content from your site to users, the rules should be the same: entice them just enough to lure them to your site.
If your entire goal is to get people simply to read your feed, then fill it up with as much copy as you want, Lawrence says. But if you’re interested in actually driving traffic to your site, give just enough content to draw them further in.’
Of course this is NOT a tip that all bloggers subscribe to and I can just see the comments this post will probably get now - many bloggers feel that RSS should give full posts rather than just excerpts.
I guess it depends upon your goal. As the quote above indicates - if you’re just interested in having as many people read your content as possible and don’t mind if they never come to your blog and don’t mind if your content appears in full on other people’s sites then full posts in feeds will be for you. But if you’re interested in building a community and discussion around your posts and want to limit how much of your content appears else where then excerpts may be a good bet for you.
It’s an age old debate - perhaps its time for another round of opinion in comments below.
Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 09:08 pm by David Shawver
The Latest State of the Blogosphere
Sifry is doing another State of the Blogosphere series - the first of which looks at some overall growth figures of the Blogging community. Here’s his summary points:
‘Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005
The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily
About 55% of all blogs are Active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year
About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekl’
The posts later in the week will probably shed more light on the topic of the state of the blogging community - I’m especially interested in what they’ve got to say about the rise of fake blogs which in my anecdotal evidence seems to be an increasing problem.
Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 06:08 pm by David Shawver
Yahoo Publishing Network - Coming Soon
The rumors that the new Yahoo Publishing Network (a competitor to Google’s Adsense program) have been circulating the web of the past few days on a number of blogs and forums including Webmaster World, Thread Watch and at Jensense. It looks like an announcement could be imminent.
Fueling my own speculation is a comment left here at enternetusers by Yahoo’s Josh Stomel a few minutes ago on an older post on YPN. Josh wrote:
I will tell you what..
YPN is going to be real real hot..
Get ready…
Now maybe I’m reading a bit much into it - but I wonder if Josh is just REALLY excited about something - something that perhaps is just days, if not hours away from being announced.
Hold onto your seats contextual advertisers publishers - you might just be in for some big news.
Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 02:08 pm by David Shawver
31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 2
Here are the latest tips that readers of enternetusers have written in the last 24 hours as a contribution to the wider community’s learning on the topic of Blogging. It’s part of our 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project. I hope you enjoy:
- Syntagma wrote a post titled Blog Tips for August that tells the story of a new blog they are setting up.
- Marlene suggested we take a look at an article over at Inc.com on The Top 10 Things You Should Know Before You Blog - an article written with some solid advice on blogging.
- Markus has written a post titled Blog to Learn (it has an english version below the original) that gives some worthwhile experiences from his blogging experience on blogging about German Soccer.
- Andy has submitted a report on keyword reseach (which I’m yet to read)
As I’ve said before - feel free to write your own Blog tips - just let me know via comments about your own post and I’ll link up to them for the duration of August.
Written on August 2nd, 2005 at 11:08 am by David Shawver
Strategic Blogging - Issues, Present Position and Future Direction
This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series.
Issues
If we want to design a strategy to help us reach our goals we need to identify the areas in which we need to work. At this point in the strategic plan we take time to break down the task of blogging into activities or issues that we face.
What are your main activities?
The answer to this question will vary from blogger to blogger depending upon their focus and current approach to blogging - but they will probably include some of the following:
- finding content
- writing content
- blog design
- marketing and publicity
- administration (monitoring comments, processing cheques, book keeping)
- finding and managing advertisers
- managing other authors
- search engine optimization
In a sense what you’re describing here are the areas that you need to achieve in to make your blog successful (the above list is only partial). The list may include tasks that you already do well, don’t do well or don’t yet do at all.
In identifying these issues or activities you define areas that you’ll need to consider some strategy in.
Present Position
Having identified each activity that you need to engage in to be successful in achieving your objectives and goals you now do a little analysis of how you’re currently performing in each activity. The question you want to answer with each are is:
Where are we?
What am I doing well in this area? What am I neglecting? What is working and what isn’t working? These are all good questions to ask. You may want to do a ‘SWOT’ analysis here (look at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and assess the current reality. Be honest with yourself - if you’re anything like me there are some things that you’re doing very well and other things that you’re ignoring.
Whilst it may not be pleasant to acknowledge current short fallings it’s vitally important as your blog will only ever go as far as your weakest area allows you to.
Future Direction
Now you’ve described the current reality you again should look in to the future in each of the activities that you’ve identified and ask yourself:
Where do I want to be in this specific activity in a year?
You know where you are now but what are you going to work towards? For example you might have identified marketing as one of your ‘activities’ an in analyzing it find that you’re great at marketing to other blogs in your niche but that blogs outside your niche and non bloggers have never heard of your blog. As a result you might say that in a year you want to be known outside your niche and be getting exposure in the wider media.
In a sense you’re again setting mini goals, breaking down your overall ‘vision’ into specific areas of your blogging.
Go through each of the activities that you’ve identified already and come up with some future direction. Be specific enough in each one that you can measure your success in each area. Don’t write how you’ll achieve this direction yet (that comes next) - rather try to paint a picture of the future in each of the areas of your blogging.
Below you’ll see a table that illustrates how each of the above three steps might look if you put them into some sort of spread sheet. Of course I’ve completely oversimplified the process here in order to illustrate the point. Each ‘issue’ is likely to have a multifaceted description of the present position and may in fact have a number of ‘future directions’ for each.
Read the rest of this series at Strategic Blogging Series.
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