Written on January 28th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse
28 Million Blogs Given Pro Blogging Opportunities
28 million (or more) blogs are about to be given the opportunity to blog for money with the latest updates to MSN Spaces says eweek. The latest MSN Spaces update covers a number of areas as well as the option to run ads with Amazon and Kanoodle. That’s a lot of bloggers about to enter the pro blogging space!
Read about the changes at MSN Spaces official update entry
Found via BlogHerald
Written on January 27th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 04:01 pm by Darren Rowse
AdSense tests Rich Media and Change Referral Rules
Two important posts over at Jensense today (why news break every time I go away):
1. Google AdSense begins rich media beta test - very interesting news. Google are going beyond just text ads and are testing a variety of other types of ads including interstitial (I’m not a fan of these - they are an ad page that sits between the actual page people want and where they came from that often make you click a link to continue on to the page you want), expanding ads (when you scroll over or click on an ad it expands) and floating ads (those that seem to hover over the page). This is sure to cause a real stir among both publisher and those who hate online advertising - especially any kind that might have an increased annoyance factor.
Jen says these are likely to be site targeted ads (not contextual). If you spot any of these ads I’d love to hear from you.
2. AdSense silently adds a 90-day time limit on AdSense referrals - Previously if you referred a publisher to AdSense with one of their buttons you’d earn $100 when they got to their first $100 of earnings. Now they’ve added a clause that says you only get this $100 commission if they make the $100 in the first 90 days that they are a publisher. I have to say I’m not at all impressed by this development. I’ve referred a number of people to Adsense in the past few months (20 or so) but am yet to see any earnings from them which indicates that none have hit the $100 mark. Last time I checked with readers they hadn’t had any payments either (let me know if you have). To me it just seems like they are changing the rules mid stream and that 90 days is quite a short time frame. In my experience as someone who consults with AdSense - it’s not uncommon for publishers to take longer than 90 days to get their first cheque. I’m pretty disappointed in this finding - and to see that they seem to have made the change without making any public announcement just seems a little underhanded.
Written on January 27th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Reader Submitted Links
I’m just back from 24 hours away to escape the heat which Melbourne has been having (it’s been in the 40’s a bit this week - with lots of bush fires around our state adding a slight smokey smell to everythng). We stayed with the in-laws (who have air-conditioning) which was cooler until the electrical storm which brought a power blackout!
Anyway - here’s a few links that readers submitted while I was away:
- Link Baiting is getting a lot of attention at the moment - here’s a couple of links sent to me over the last two days - BizNicheMedia Link Baiting Competition: $1000 Prize and Link Baiting Cast Study
- Google Gone - Baseball Blogger decides to stop using AdSense becaue of Google’s agreement to censor searches in China.
- The Do’s and Don’ts of Requestion Links - like the fifth point says - quality content is the best way to get links, but some of the others might help.
Written on January 27th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 01:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Update (sort of)
Lots of webmasters are reporting changes with Google referral levels this week. Many believe it’s not a new update but a rolling out of changes already made in one or two datacenters. If you’re into tracking Google changes you can try make sense of it at the WMW discussion at Google Datacenters Watch. All seems normal on my blogs - although I know of a few enternetusers readers who’ve had some big shifts in the last day or two.
Written on January 27th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 08:01 am by Darren Rowse
Names
Yesterday one of the bloggers on our b5media discussion forum asked for the rest of our opinions on how its best to display your name on a blog. The discussion was interesting with a variety of approaches put forward. Some bloggers preferred their first and surname, others a nick name and in an IM conversation afterwards on the same topic I talked to one blogger who wanted to keep their name off the blog all together (not a b5′er). My reply in our discussion (written on the run on the way out the door to a BBQ to celebrate Australia Day today) was as follows:
“I vary mine from blog to blog but on enternetusers always use my full name because of the goals of that blog. ie there the blog is at least partially about building my reputation and profile on the topic.
On some of my other blogs I do not want to be as prominently featured because the topic and ad revenue are more central and I don’t want them to be dependant upon me as such.
Also consider privacy/security in your decision. Sometimes a little anonymity (at least keeping your surname out of it) could be a good thing.”
How do you display your name on your blog? Do you use your full name, just a first name or a nickname or are you an anonymous blogger? If you have multiple blogs do you do it the same way on all of your blogs? Interested to hear how others do it and why.
Written on January 27th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse
Should Bloggers Write for Humans or Computers?
I’ve been toying with writing this post for a number of weeks now after reading a number of posts on the death of Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers.
Nick over at Performancing kicked it off (at least it was the first one I’d read for a while) with Why Bloggers Don’t need SEO which I think is a great post making some valid points.
His main argument, as I read it, is that if you write for humans instead of computers that you’ll find you’ll build traffic, get subscribers, get links from other sites and as a result you’ll grow in your Search rankings.
In a sense by writing for humans you ARE doing a very organic SEO as one of the main things SEO experts teach is to get relevant, one way links from other sites.
It’s a pretty strong argument for ‘writing for humans’ and a similar one to what Steve wrote in his recent post (point 4) where he argues strongly that you should write for humans first and computers second.
While I don’t think either Nick or Steve would argue that SEO principles should be ignored completely one might conclude from reading posts like these that SEO is a waste of time and should slip off the radar for bloggers.
I am one blogger that does not believe this. My Dad always used to teach me that when there are two arguments on a topic that in many cases the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
My recommendation is that there is a middle ground and that writing for humans and writing for computers are not mutually exclusive things (and I’ll note that I’m not accusing either Nick or Steve of saying that they are).
Here’s a number of random thoughts that I’d keep in mind when exploring this topic:
1. I would argue that the degree that you write for humans/computers will need to vary from blog to blog somewhat. As I wrote a few posts back here - as I look at my blogs I see some that need SE traffic more than others. enternetusers is one that does not rely heavily upon SE traffic (although I’ve noticed more of it of late) while my gadget blogs do. This is because of the nature of what people are looking for on those blogs.
Here at enternetusers people are looking for community, a learning environment and fellow travelers/teachers to explore a topic over time. On my gadget blogs people are looking for information on a particular product for a particular time. A much smaller percentage of them want to build community around those products - instead they want to make a decision on what to buy and their first point of call is a search engine where they’ll type in ‘product name review’. While writing for humans is still important in these blogs SEO is still worth exploring - in fact as I look at the traffic on some of these blogs search engines account for the vast majority of visitors.
2. Sometimes SE traffic leads to repeat traffic - While writing for humans can lead to SE traffic as Nick points out, I believe the opposite is true also.
As I mentioned above, enternetusers has recently seen an increase in it’s SE traffic (mainly from Google). This has been partly because of the process Nick describes in his post (ie lots of incoming links as a result of writing useful content) but also a little SEO. The great thing I’ve noticed though is that quite a few visitors from SE’s are staying on as regular readers. I regularly get emails from readers saying things like “I found your site after searching for ‘insert search term here’ on Google and have been coming back every day since….”
3. SE traffic converts to revenue best - the topic of this blog is ‘helping bloggers earn money’ and I’d be doing readers a disservice if I didn’t mention that in my experience (and that of others) SE traffic converts better with Advertising and Affiliate programs than repeat readers. Of course not all bloggers have money making as a goal of their blog so this is less important to some - but worth keeping in mind.
4. SEO CAN be a distraction - There are many ways bloggers can become obsessed with one element of their blogs to the point that the rest of their blog suffers (point #5 here) and SEO is one of them. While I do argue that SEO is something to learn about and keep in mind as you blog I do not think it’s the only aspect that needs to be worked upon. I know a number of web-masters that have become obsessed with SEO and have seen it’s negative impact upon their blogs. Keep it in balance.
5. Blogs as a Natural SEO format - Most blog platforms come in their default mode in a format that is well optimized for Search Engines. In addition to the fact that blogs link to each other, they usually have good URL structures, interlink well within the site (via categories) and are regularly updated (creating fresh content that Google loves). There are things you can do to enhance your SE ranking there is no need to be overwhelmed by it because you usually have a good starting place.
My Approach
I guess for me it boils down to this. I do primarily write for humans - I want my blogs to be useful to them and work hard to provide good content. However most humans who use the internet use search engines to find content when they don’t already have a source of information for their interest. As a result I want my blogs to be findable in Search Engines and think it a wise move to do what I can to help this process along by learning about how Search Engines work.
While this does not mean I ignore the human element - it means I keep in mind the principles of SEO as I develop blogs and write posts on them. To me balance is the key and a combination of SEO and concentrating on quality content has been successful for me to this point.
To read more about Search Engine Optimization you might like to read my post on SEO for blogs.
Written on January 26th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 07:01 pm by Darren Rowse
How to bring your blogging productivity levels to 0 in one simple step
b5media’s blogs have come to a standstill today.
No its not server problems and no our bloggers have not started a mutiny. No it’s much more evil and sinister than that.
In our private bloggers internal bloggers communications one of our bloggers, Jesse, introduced everyone to Escapa!
Before you visit the link - be aware you could be about to destroy your productivity for the day.
Let me know your record time - I’m at 21.12 second but there are b5′ers who’ve gone way past that :-)
Written on January 26th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Blog Resolutions
Evan Schaeffer posted a good list of blog resolutions back on 2 January that I only just spotted (via LexBlog). In it Evan gives 10 resolutions with quite a few good sub points under many of them. The only resolution I’d add to the list is ‘don’t post such a great post so early in the year when I’m on holidays!’. It’s well worth the read in full but here are his heading to give you a taster:
Resolution 1: Mix It Up
Resolution 2: Prove You Have a Personality
Resolution 3: Be a Better Writer
Resolution 4: Write for the Computer Screen
Resolution 5: Use Photos
Resolution 6: Don’t Be Obscure
Resolution 7: Build a Community
Resolution 8: Experiment with New Weblogging Ideas
Resolution 9: Don’t Let Your Weblog Make You Crazy
Resolution 10: Learn from Other Weblogs
Written on January 26th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 09:01 am by Darren Rowse
WordPress Feedburner Plugin
Rachel just pinged me on IM to let me know of post she’s just writtten which I really wish she’d written a year ago. It’s about a WP Plugin called WordPress FeedBurner Plugin which makes your Feedburner RSS feed (if you have one) the one that is autodiscovered by feedreaders like Bloglines when people want to subscribe to your blog.
So here at enternetusers for example I’ve long had a Feedburner RSS feed (it’s the orange button with the number towards the top of my sidebar) but being the untechie guy that I am I had never changed my blog to make it the one that readers find when they use an RSS auto discovery tool. As a result readers were subscribing to my default enternetusers RSS feed.
Now in lots of ways this doesn’t matter - both feeds get the information to readers which is the main thing. The only real negative is that it has meant my feedburner statistics that tell me how many subscribers there are and which posts they click through onto has been inaccurate.
Needless to say - I’ve just installed the plugin (a very easy set up) and any new subscribers that I get should be on the new feed.
Of course if you’re not using Feedburner this will be a bit of a useless post to you (and if you’re not using WP it might just frustrate you unless you find a plugin for your own platform).
Update: The cool thing about this plugin is that it converts any existing subscribers to my old feeds to the feedburner one. As a result my stats button has gone from around 1700 earlier in the day to over 3000 in just a few hours. No I have not just had an influx of new readers - it’s just starting to count them accurately for the first time ever.
Written on January 26th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 05:01 am by Darren Rowse
High Traffic Blogging Steve Style
Steve Pavlina has another good blog related post on How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) which has some sensible advice in the form of a list. His points are interesting because they are very untechnical and illustrate his own strategy (a successful one from what I can see) to focus very hard upon creating high quality content. Almost every point on his list touches on content creation as being the main focus:
1. Create valuable content.
2. Create original content.
3. Create timeless content.
4. Write for human beings first, computers second.
5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.
6. Let your audience see the real you.
7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.
8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.
9. Keep money in its proper place.
10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.
Keep in mind that the focus us Steve’s blog is personal development and so some of these posts come out of that experience and probably relate more closely to that than for some other topics.
For instance in #3 he writes:
‘While I do occasionally write about time-bound events, the majority of my content is intended to be timeless. I’m aware that anything I write today may still be read by people even after I’m dead. People still quote Aristotle today because his ideas have timeless value, even though he’s been dead for about 2300 years. I think about how my work might influence future generations in addition to my own. What advice shall I pass on to my great grandchildren?’
I think that this is a brilliant strategy which relates very well to a topic like personal development. Many of the principles that Steve talks about are timeless as ‘being a human’ is timeless. However with some topics timeless content is more of a challenge. Writing timeless content about digital cameras can be difficult (when they are often obsolete before they hit the shops). There are some posts that are more timeless than others in that niche (ie tips on how to take a photo for example) but many posts on such a blog will be fairly time dependent.
Another example is # 4 where he writes:
‘A lot has been written about the optimal strategies for strong search engine rankings in terms of posting frequency and post length. But I largely ignore that advice because I write for human beings, not computers.’
Once again I completely agree with Steve that this is a great strategy for many blogs. Like he says there has been quite a few articles going around of late talking about how SEO is dead and a useless art for bloggers. While I agree with elements of these posts I would add that for some blogs SEO is a very worthwhile strategy. Again on the ‘personal development’ theme I suspect that readers will be looking for a longer term relationship with a web site than on some other topics. Once again I’ll talk digital cameras. While there are some avid digital imaging addicts that settle on a site and are loyal readers of it - anecdotal evidence tells me that the vast majority of web users that want information on the topic of digital cameras are looking for the information in a one off and short term burst - usually while researching a purchase for a digital camera. The first place most of them head to is the search engines. As a result on a topic like this where your goal is to give advice to those in the market for a camera, SEO is a relevant strategy. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write for humans or provide valuable content but the emphasis is slightly different. I’ve seen this personally as I look at the different strategies between my own blogs. For example while SEO is important for my Digicam site it’s nowhere near as crucial for enternetusers which attracts repeat loyal readers due to it’s nature.
None of this is to say that any of Steve’s points are invalid or wrong - in fact his list is valuable - they just need to be taken and adapted to each blog to see which apply most and to what extent.
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